More on Imperialism and Religion

Written by: Duncan B. on 1 April 2025

 

In 2022, during a Papal visit to Canada, Pope Francis apologised many times for the abuse that Indigenous children suffered at Catholic-run residential schools, as well as for the Church’s adoption of policies that stripped away Indigenous culture. He said that “taking away the children, changing the culture and mentality, and erasing an entire culture was effectively a genocide.”

Indigenous Australians would welcome similar apologies from the heads of the Catholic, Anglican and all the other denominations that did the same thing in Australia, for their part in helping to destroy Indigenous culture and languages.

In Canada, as in Australia, Africa and everywhere else in the world conquered by imperialism, the invaders had a firm belief in the superiority of Christianity as a religion over all other religions. With their strong racist views, they believed that the indigenous inhabitants were members of an inferior race with inferior cultures and religion.

In Australia these racist views made them blind to the fact that they were dealing with a people who were deeply religious, with a culture profoundly influenced by their spiritual beliefs. The invaders could not comprehend the strong ties the Indigenous people had with their Country. The invaders believed that their actions were ordained by God and therefore justifiable. They saw themselves as the rightful inheritors of the land and were entitled to take it from a lower form of man which was destined to die out anyway.

Indigenous leaders are calling for churches to go beyond merely apologising for the harm caused by their past actions, but to deliver justice to Indigenous Australians. Some have called for the churches to pay reparations. Among these is Professor Anne Pattel-Gray. Professor Pattel-Gray is an Australian Aboriginal theologian and author.  She is a Bidjara/Kari Kari woman from Queensland, and the first Indigenous person to obtain a PhD from the University of Sydney. Her books include The Great White Flood: Racism in Australia. 

In 2023 Professor Pattel-Gray wrote, “Reparations are another critical part of decolonising the church, as this is where Indigenous land is given back, or Indigenous peoples are compensated for its theft. Colonial invaders stole this land from the Indigenous peoples and the collusion between the Australian government and churches has given churches  great wealth, power and privilege. It is not enough to say “Sorry”. It is important for Australian churches to act on delivering justice to Indigenous Christians. Now is the time for “Voice”, “Truth-telling” and “Treaty.” And now is the time for churches to atone for the sins of their forebears and pay reparations to the Indigenous churches and nations for the theft of land, for slavery, cultural genocide and the stolen generations.”

The call for reparations is a just one which should be supported. However, given the way churches have used every legal trick that they can to try and avoid paying reparations to the victims of sexual assault by priests, there is not much hope of the churches ever paying one cent in reparations to Indigenous people without a struggle.

Imperialists used religion to justify their actions

Written by: Duncan B. on 25 March 2025

 

Marx wrote about the economic structure of society and of the legal and political superstructure which arises on it. As recent articles in Vanguard have shown, culture is a part of the superstructure. Religion is another part of that superstructure.

For centuries, colonisers and imperialists, such as the Spanish Conquistadores in South America, the British colonisers of America and the British, Dutch, French, Belgian, German and Italian invaders of Africa, India, Asia and Australia have used religion as a justification for their marauding. 

They interpreted passages in the Bible to justify their conquests. (1)  From the 15th century, several Popes authorised and blessed the activities of the Spanish and Portuguese colonisers of Africa and South America with a number of Papal Bulls.

One Bull issued in 1454 allowed the Portuguese to take possession of any land they discovered in Africa, and to enslave any non-Christian inhabitants they encountered. A Bull issued in 1493, after Columbus returned from his first voyage to the Americas, defined the demarcation between Spanish and Portuguese territory in the New World.  This Bull, and another issued in 1529, gave the Spanish ruler the authority to compel the native people to convert to Christianity, by force if necessary. This the Spanish zealously did, while also enslaving or massacring thousands of Azteca and Incas.

Although the Papal Bulls referred specifically to Spain and Portugal, other European nations such as Britain and France, interpreted this “Doctrine of Discovery” to mean that they too had a divinely sanctioned, papal-endorsed right to own any lands they discovered and to colonise any non-Christian inhabitants.

The imperialists also used the so-called “Curse of Ham” as a justification for enslaving black people. In the Book of Genesis, a drunken Noah placed a curse on his son Ham, Ham’s son Canaan and all their descendants, condemning them to perpetual slavery. (2)

From the fifteenth century, religious leaders cited this “Curse of Ham” as justification for enslaving black people, based on a mistranslation of “Ham” as meaning “black-skinned” from the original Hebrew. 

The indigenous inhabitants of the countries conquered by the imperialist powers were invariably seen as being members of “inferior races”, “primitives”, “heathens”, “savages” and “cannibals”. Missionaries sought to “save their souls” and convert them to the missionaries’ particular version of the one true religion. They did not care that the intended converts had their own centuries-old belief systems. This certainly was the case in Australia. At the time of the colonisation of Australia, the spiritual beliefs of Australia’s indigenous people were tens of thousands of years old.

From the 1820’s missionaries set about trying to Christianise, “educate” and assimilate Aboriginal people into colonial society. Indigenous languages and cultural practices were banned at the missions. Children were separated from their parents so that they could not learn their language and culture from their elders. The same happened in other countries that the imperialists invaded. Cultural oppression, along with massacres, enslavement, disease and dispossession were the weapons imperialists used against the indigenous peoples wherever they set foot. A fig leaf of religion covered naked greed.

(1) For example, in the Old Testament, Genesis 1:27 and 28. “So God created main in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he him. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have domination over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”

Then there is Psalm 2 verses 7 and 8. “Ask of me and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.” A justification for imperialism and its treatment of native peoples if ever there was one!

In the New Testament, St Paul’s Epistle to the Romans 13:1 and 2 continues in this vein. “Let every soul be subject to the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.” This was the fate of any Aztecs, Incas, Native Americans, indigenous Australians or any other indigenous people that resisted the colonial invaders.

(2) Genesis 9:24 and 25. “And Noah awoke from his wine and, and knew what his younger son had done unto him. And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.”

Corporatised Religion

 Written by: John G. on 21 April 2021

The deaths of 46 aged care residents at St Basil’s Home for the Aged in Melbourne suburb Fawkner raised failures and financial and operational arrangements in the Greek Orthodox Church.

Covid deaths at other church homes in Sydney, the Dorothy Henderson Lodge run by BaptistCare and Newmarch House run by Anglicare, suggest these may not be aberrations but systemic failures. They also raise the issue whether behind this lies the entwining of religious enterprises in corporate capitalist systems of purchasing labour power and production and sale of care services. 

If St Basil’s and the others are aberrant individual failures, then further regulation and a tight system of compliance auditing by competent independent inspection authorities would be the response, if one trusted a capitalist government and others to create such improvements for people. History identifies that such trust would be misplaced.  

Where these are the product of systematic failures, even the supporters of this economic system accept solutions that require a rebuild of the system to effect necessary change. 

Judgement of bad apple failure or systemic problem can only be made by examining the manner of service delivery by church run operations more generally than those of St Basil’s and Greek Orthodox Church. 

Major religious institutions have extensive operational “commercial” arms. Most operate as Legal Trusts which provide no transparency as to their financial and operational affairs. Some are more centralised while others like the Greek Orthodox and Catholic churches operate through thousands of separate operational enterprises. Their charitable arms sometimes provide public operational and financial reports.  Below are insights into a couple of church operations and their nature gleaned from publicly published reports. 

Wesley Mission’s Commercial Operations 

Wesley Mission produces a public annual report. 

Originally operating from one Sydney church it has broadened to a limited extent with 85% of its staff now Sydney-based. The public accounts provide an opportunity to look into this church’s operations as a service providing enterprise in this capitalist economy to see how much institutions have been drawn into capitalism. Relevant details are outlined here: 

Wesley Mission’s operations, workforce and finance by the numbers

Wesley’s revenues in the 2020 financial year were just shy of $230 million, including income from sale of services of $117.5 million and government grants of $97 million. Donations and legacies were less than $8 million or 3.5% of the church’s total income, a tiny amount of church operations.  

The cost of purchasing labour power directly was at least $163 million though the accounts don’t exclude that being larger. Surplus for the year was $9.6 million. 

It has a huge asset base of $489 million, with liabilities of $269 million, the bulk of which is care residents licence agreements of $173 million. Wesley Mission’s net capital value is $220 million. 

It had 2,251 employees, 813 full-timers and 938 part-time and 500 casuals, 73% women and engaged an army of 4,592 volunteers for 92,598 hours proudly boasting they saved $4,231,729 in wages. The voluntary labour represented just 2.5% of all labour power used by the church in their operations. 

The figures involve the church operating service provision by purchasing labour power from 2,251 wage workers for $163 million supplemented by volunteer labour equivalent to 10 full-time staff. In addition, some ‘clients’ were employed in packaging and other industrial production,

The tiny portion of both income and labour derived by donations in all forms, as against the 97.5% of labour-power purchased for the provision (production) of services, reveals how deeply the church has been integrated into the capitalist system of production, purchasing labour power for its production.

The integration includes the alienation of the labourer from the product of that labour, the commodity of care. 

Fundamentally the Wesley Mission is operating as a capitalist with 97.5% of its labour power purchased, employing wage workers. 

Religions as Capitalists

There is no basis for expecting any difference with larger institutional churches. In fact the big bazookas of church capitalism are the Catholic Church with its extensive school network and its massive St Vincents operations across the whole country as well as Diocesan Trusts , the Anglican Church of Australia Trust Corporation, the Presbyterian Church of Australia Property Trust, Uniting Church Trust Association Limited, and other religious groups running schools and limited care services also ending up in capitalist relations purchasing wage labour.   

The Catholic Church, one of Australia’s largest employers   

 

An internal Catholic Church research paper on employment, “Our Work Matters” published in November 2017, identified that the Catholic Church purchased labour power from approximately 220,000 people by compiling data from 3500 agencies or 99.5% of its affiliated organisations. 

 

The total combined employed Catholic workforce amounted to 1.8% of Australians selling their labour power.  This gives some idea of the scope of the integration of this Church alone to wage labour purchasing in Australia. It was a bigger employer than the big 4 banks combined, all local government across the whole country, just 23,000 short of the Commonwealth public service,  and more than the Woolworths group at the time. 

 

77% of the employees of the Catholic Church are female. 84,801 of the workforce was full-time, 92,700 part-time, 40,301 casual with some whose status was not confirmed. Pay and conditions of 89% are covered by enterprise agreements and awards. 

 

These numbers exclude priests, brothers and nuns, who number just another 7,988 in the Catholic workforce apart from the Bishops. 96.4% of the labourers utilised by the Catholic Church are not religious officers. Just 5.3% of the Catholic workforce is utilised in pastoral parish and diocesan activity. 

 

The Church purchased the labour power of 194,823 wage labourers in its education, health, aged care, and social services provision. That was 94.7% of the labour force whose status was identified that the Church utilises. 

 

The Catholic Church overwhelmingly operates as a capitalist in purchasing the labour power it uses to produce services.

 

The Wesley Mission and other religious-run service operations are purchasing wage labour to produce services, commodities, sold in aged and disability care homes, contracted to government for provision of shelter for the homeless, teachers at religious schools, etc. To the aged, disabled and homeless, the staff and others are carers, not engaged in capitalist production as productive labourers. However, to the religious institutions they are employees, wage labourers producing commodities – care, education, etc. 

 

The religious institution exchanges a part of its capital for their labour-power to produce the services, as does a capitalist in metal manufacture exchange part of its capital for labour power to produce manufactures, for instance. 

 

The religious institutions are thoroughly integrated into the capitalist mode of production. 

 

Notoriously, religions are tax-exempt and their charitable and not for profit arms operate tax-exempt, while the case of St Basil’s sees millions transferred to the Church, supporting leaders living in luxury. The tax exemptions largely remain though religious enterprises are thoroughly capitalist in their mode of operations, and they have accumulated enormous financial, land and other assets. All assets are the accumulation of values, representative of accumulated commodities, the products of labour previously engaged in production of commodities.

 

Those assets represent the religious institutions’ accumulation of past labour exploited from wage workers as surplus value. We can conclude churches generally are now exploiters of labour on a grand scale.

Bosses luxury lifestyles accompany capitalist mode of production. 

 

The relations of production of the Catholic Church are reflected in the sumptuous lifestyles of some of its leaders. The former Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart lived in an upmarket Kew mansion, pictured above, valued at $3 million when listed for sale recently. This was a downgrade on the Archbishop’s residence for decades until the 1980s, Raheen, now the home estate and mansion in Kew of the billionaire Pratt family.

 

The church also spent $872,000 on a beach house with bay views in Dromana for Archbishop Hart, which he now personally owns after buying it off the Archdiocese for $1.12 million in 2017.

 

So much for vows of poverty.

 

The scandal in aged and other care across the land following hard on the heels of exposure of abuses in Church-run orphans and children’s homes, as well as their educational institutions, involves religious institutions and other capitalists all engaged in a capitalist system of labour power purchase to provide services and thereby profit, accumulating capital. 

 

This is a systematic failure in production of services for the people. It requires systematic change, a rebuild of the care and other service provision. 

 

By the nature of the capitalist system, with its army of wage labourers tending to eliminate from the field any other alternative means of securing labour power necessary for producing goods or services other than by the purchase of labour power as capitalist not consumer, religious institution have been drawn into the capitalist mode of production. 
 

Capitalist competition’s tendency to drive costs down runs services down

 

The outcome in capitalism is competition’s tendency to drive down costs, reduce staffing levels, reduce spending on facilities and inputs like food and medical services. Religious institutions are thoroughly integrated into that capitalist mode of production in their care and educational service provision. 

 

The costs are borne by the people. 

 

The catastrophes at St Basil’s, Newmarch House and Dorothy Henderson Lodge, as well as Greek Orthodox leaders reported adoption of capitalist lifestyles, is the tip of a very large iceberg in the care, education and social service provision industries run by religious institutions.  The case of the Catholic Church workforce confirms that systemic problem with the mode of production of these services. 

 

As these incidents and the aged care industry are investigated, more of these capitalist characteristics will be exposed. 

 

To resolve the catastrophic tendencies at stake in the provision of care services, much more than tinkering within capitalist service provision will be needed.

 

It confirms the need for an independent working class program for the well-being of the people with independence and socialism driving the elimination of the trends capitalism sets in train, ruining the lives of people.  

 

 

St Basil’s Covid Catastrophe and Corporatised Religion

 

Written by: John G. on 20 April 2021

Revelations about huge payments from aged care homes run by the Greek Orthodox Church to the Archdiocese shocked many in the light of how hard Covid hit the residents of the church-run St Basil’s Home for the Aged in the Melbourne suburb of Fawkner.

45 of St Basil’s 150 residents died in the middle of 2020 as the Covid outbreak swept through Melbourne, and another 38 aged care residents at private sector Epping Gardens home also died. These two homes death toll comprised 10% of the Victorian total of 820 deaths in the outbreak. 

Families have been distressed by how the church authorities and the home’s administration failed to act in a decisive way with urgent empathy for the aged, infirm and, in large numbers, ill-fated residents as the disaster overwhelmed them and the staff. The same thing occurred in Sydney aged care homes, the Dorothy Henderson Lodge run by BaptistCare, and Newmarch House run by Anglicare.

The St Basil’s and the other experiences raised questions about how much religious institutions have been drawn into capitalism and are running as businesses. 

The reality of these incidents, and the operations of the care enterprises in which they took place, stand out in contradiction to the conception, promoted by religious leaders, of religions being pastoral and charitable institutions whose leaders are dedicated to lives of service and sacrifice to nurture their congregations and help the poor and needy, sworn to lives of poverty, seem so far from the realities here. 
 
The ABC programs, 4Corners and Background Briefing, revealed business dealings of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese on April 12, including that $22 million was paid in rent and fees by St Basil’s to the Archdiocese over a period of 8 years. A real estate estimate suggested that this was double commercial rates for the premises. In the same period, government provided $73 million in support. 

This largess came from an enterprise, St Basil’s reporting turnover of just $12, 155, 203 in the 2019-20 financial year. Donations and bequests comprised just $131, 781 or 1% of the income of the home. Government provided $11,813,784 or 97% of St Basil’s income in grants and other revenue. The rest was revenue from investments. The financial realities are that St Basil’s is fundamentally (97%) a corporation producing and selling aged care services to government. The residents and their families are the consumers of the services produced, not the purchasers. 

The System of production and sale of Care Services

The system by which the service production is secured is telling.  While it seems to go without saying, care services production at St Basil’s was undertaken by St Basil’s purchasing labour power and setting it to work, that transaction is important to understanding the nature of this Church enterprise. 

Some further detail on this point. St Basil’s workforce at the time that the Covid disaster was raging through the home’s residents in June-July 2020, comprised 2 full-time, 103 part-time, and 3 casual employees as well as 2 volunteers working the equivalent of 64 Full-time employee hours as reported to the Australian Charities and Not-for-Profit Commission.

This church enterprise purchased the labour power of 108 wage workers for a total cost of $7,882,834 and utilised that wage labour to produce the commodity they sold to the Government, aged care services. St Basil’s operations fitted fully in with capitalist production modes generally. The enterprise is operating as a capitalist in its purchase of labour power and mode of production and sale of care services.   

The governance of St Basil’s as with other Greek Orthodox service agencies or commercial enterprises is in the hands of the Archbishop. He is the sole stakeholder who appoints the board of St Basil’s as is the case with other Church enterprises. This led on to other issues.

The ABC reported the Church had bought Archbishop Makarios a luxuriously appointed $6 million high-rise apartment in Sydney with extensive views of the Harbour Bridge and Opera house as well as broad harbour vistas. The ABC noted that they had multiple reports of another $3 million spent in renovations to upgrade this church provided home of Archbishop Makarios. 

They also noted the Archbishop (above) has multiple ceremonial robes valued at up to $30,000 each with their rich gold embroidery and other adornment.  

A question arises as to whether the governance and system of operations of the Greek Orthodox Church enterprises led to leaders living lives of luxury at the expense of quality and safe service provision in church-run homes?

It is not as though working class families and friends can generally purchase these services from individual carers themselves. Long gone are the days of individuals needing aged care services buying individual carers’ labour other than among the quite wealthy. Some remnants of that individual system remain, but even there the service provision to those other than the very wealthy is now more likely to be purchased through agencies rather than by purchasing an individual service provider’s labour directly. 

Making authorities accountable and steps to never experience this again 

This examination cannot speak for the families who lost loved ones in church-run homes. They are more than capable of doing that themselves as Spiros Vasilakis, whose mother died in the epidemic, continues to illustrate, as the matters are aired publicly. This article cannot provide definitive answers or exposure of church leaders in this matter. It cannot make the relevant authorities accountable. 

What it suggests is there are wider issues of how much religious institutions today have been drawn into capitalist production, and whether those institutions have been drawn into acting as capitalists, driving the tendencies towards compromises on the quality and safety of care service delivery.  

The ABC and the further information above opens the door to revealing something of the corporate side of the Greek Orthodox Church. The wider issue of whether it is an aberration, a bad apple, or the tip of the iceberg of systemic failure goes to the whole system of aged and disability care, church run schools, and social service provision operating in Australia. 

That will be the focus of another article - Corporatised Religion – looking into other religious organisations and their operations.