Christian belief in its own superiority gave colonialism essential moral validation

Evidence

Likewise, John Hick challenged the paradigm of the absoluteness of Christianity, as articulated in 1901 by Ernst Troeltsch, by pointing out the harmful effects of religious absolutism. One of these effect, Hicks says, is that during the colonial era, “the conviction of the decisive superiority of Christianity infused the imperial expansion of the West with a powerful moral impetus and an effective religious validation without which the enterprise might well not have been psychologically viable.” — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 734

Categorization

• QUESTION: Hick quotes Troeltsch’s 1901 articulation of Christian absoluteness — worth chasing how Troeltsch himself framed it and whether he later revised it.
• XREF: Connects to the broader claim about ideology serving empire seen in critical theory readings and in earlier tempels scholarship. — connects to: Theological blessing of slavery severed slaveholders’ natural moral impulses — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long: The Legacy of White…, 251; Christianity was the non-negotiable core of civilized status in the antebellum Americas