Christian Universalism and the Conquest of the Americas

There's a tension at the heart of Christian universalism and it's there right from the beginning. Once you get Christians who are armed with swords or, you know, horses or guns in the case of the conquistadors, then you can essentially justify conquering people who are not Christian. So that is why essentially the paradox of Christianity is that it inspires people to aspire to conquer the whole world... While also suffering from the anxiety that doing that is somehow to portray the example of the crucifixion. And that's a tension and a paradox that continues to lie at theHeart of the West today. I mean, it may be secularized, but it's still absolutely there.