Religion and War
Religion and War.Religion has played many, often contradictory, roles in the history of American warfare. With the conquistadors came Roman Catholic priests and brothers to bless, or challenge, Spanish attacks upon indigenous peoples. Two of the most notable of those clerics based enduring theoretical contributions on their knowledge of colonial warfare: the Dominican Bartolomé de Las Casas (1474–1566) concerning the humanity of Native Americans, and his fellow Dominican Francisco de Vitoria (1483–1546) concerning the ethics of international relations. Warfare between the first generation of English settlers and Native Americans brought out the worst and the best in the colonists' religious leaders. The much respected first minister of Cambridge, Massachusetts, Thomas Shepard, could yet herald “the divine slaughter of the Indians at the Hand of the English” after battle with the Pequots of Connecticut in 1637; the Rev. John Eliot of Roxbury,...
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