How did different Europeans use religion to both justify and question European treatment of other peoples?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

A. Use of religion in treatment of other peoples
1. belief of other peoples as possible Christians
2. humanity determined by the existence of a rational soul
a. settled—at least for Catholics—affirmatively by Pope Paul III
in the 1530s
3. missionaries tried to provide evidence of admirable qualities in other peoples
a. Aztec's had values similar to those of their Franciscan evangelists
b. friars depicted Aztec society as a mirror image of the society
the missionaries had left in Spain
c. openness to the milder Christian message
d. natives practiced "just" war by traditional Christian standards
4. missionaries could cite examples like these for every native community
where they worked
5. rationale of cultural practices through religion
a. human sacrifice should be seen as evidence of the misplaced
piety of its practitioners
b. pitiable state as victims of the devil
c. developed into a new way of viewing people
1. all peoples were created equal but passed through
various universal stages of historic development