People who live in glass longhouses shouldn’t throw stones
Recently, Bethany Paquette, a graduate of the Christian faith-based Trinity Western University, applied to Amaruk, a Norwegian-run outdoor adventure company, for a summer job.
Her application was rejected in an email sent to her by an executive of the company, Olaf Amundsen, apparently because she did not meet the minimum qualifications that the company required.
But then things got weird.
Mr. Amundsen’s reply went beyond bureaucratic niceties. “I’m sorry but we cannot offer you a position at this time, but we will keep your application on file,” wrote Amundsen.
His response then expanded into a personal attack on Ms. Paquette’s religious beliefs as a graduate of Trinity Western.
Highlights include assertions like: “People who did not agree with [the Christian] church would be flayed, burnt, roasted, quartered etc.”
A rejoinder to Ms. Paquette’s “God Bless” went something like: “I am not a young First Nations boy sexually abused by a priest into submission for years while locked in a concentration camp (as in residential school) ... so your propaganda is lost on me.”
Paquette seeks legal council
Ms. Paquette has, not unwarrantedly, sought recourse through the BC Human Rights Tribunal.
The messy details of this exchange will be sorted out by the tribunal, and in the court of public opinion. The latter, I earnestly hope, will find in favour of Ms. Paquette for the simple fact that Mr. Amundsen and his colleagues were extremely crass in their mean-spirited attack.
Most incomprehensible, however, was the ridiculously ill-founded argument proffered by Mr. Amundsen, a self-proclaimed Viking with a PhD in Norse history, that his Viking culture had been “destroyed by Christianity.”
I find it hard to believe that a Jewish, Muslim or Hindu applicant would have been subjected to the same outburst or accusations. The Christian church, associated as it is with the dominant culture of the West, seems to be the only religious institution that can be impugned without ramification.
As an example, Bill Maher’s atheist apologia film Religulous focuses almost exclusively on the weirder elements of Christianity, with only tangential references to other religions.
It is this sense of open season on Christianity that leads to outlandish claims such as “Christianity destroyed Viking culture” even if the logic behind the claim is tenuous at best.
Selective reading of history
In my own little way I have held a profound interest in Norse history since I had the very good fortune to pursue a couple of honours-level medieval history seminars during my undergraduate days at the University of Manitoba, under the estimable guidance of Professor John Wortley. These courses, combined with my own Norse heritage, produced in me a life-long interest in the history of the Vikings and the world of early medieval Europe.
Now, I certainly can’t claim to have pursued the study of the Norse with the same academic rigour as someone with a PhD in Norse history, but I am left agog at Mr. Amundsen’s fusillade of accusations against Ms. Paquette in particular, and Christianity in general which are, even to a layman, utterly fallacious.
Recent studies of Viking history have broadened our understanding of the people and their period beyond the simple caricature of a violent mob. More than murderous villains, Vikings were explorers, settlers, and traders who left their mark from Newfoundland to Istanbul. Nonetheless, at their historical apogee, a Viking was not someone you’d invite over for tea.
It strains credulity that Mr. Amundsen would traduce Christianity when it seems like it was the Vikings doing the destroying in the latter centuries of the first millennium. Christian monasteries were prime targets for marauding Vikings who appeared from the sea, ransacked the goods, murdered a few priests, took some hostages, and then slipped away back amongst the waves. Once back in Scandinavia the Vikings would hoard their booty, and when a Viking lord would pass away, his servants would be murdered to be buried alongside him.
Christianity brought literacy, morality to Norse
Rather than destroying culture, Christianity brought to the Norse literacy, morality, and a degree of globalization that allowed them to integrate with the rest of Europe and beyond.
It has to be said that the Christian church is not without blemish. Mr. Amundsen’s tirade, if you can sift through the vitriol, contains a modicum of truth. The church’s protection of abusive clerical leaders, its complicity in the residential schools, and even Trinity Western’s anachronistic stance on gay marriage all stain what is, in many regards, a noble institution.
The fringe elements of fundamentalist Christianity which deny the most obvious scientific discoveries malign the vast majority of Christians who hold no such views, and besmirch the worthy contributions to science made by Christians such as Gregor Mendel, Georges Lemaitre and Francis Collins.
Despite the many problems of the Christian faith, implying that Viking culture was some pacific utopia laid low by the expanding Christian church is more Hagar the Horrible than history.
David Grebstad is an amateur historian and former Winnipegger now living in Etobicoke.
