Ethnocentrism

Throughout the centuries people have always thought of their particular culture (society, religion,  nation) as being superior to all others.  “America First”  is not by any means  new; it is actually a primitive view.  In 1907, a Yale University sociologist coined a word for this “tribal tendency” to be first, or the only, or the superior to all others; he called it ethnocentrism.  He defined ethnocentrism as the belief that “one’s own group is the center of everything, and all others are scaled and rated with reference to it…Each group nourishes its own pride and vanity, boasts itself superior, exalts its own divinities, and looks with contempt on outsiders.” 

Ethnocentrism is the belief that the members of one’s own party, society, religion, culture, or nation hold the truth and all others are wrong.  In the extreme, ethnocentrism is the belief that one’s own party, society, religion, culture, or nation are the only true human beings.  

The early explorers and settlers in the Americas saw the native tribes as less than human.  They described them as “talking animals,” “beasts in human form,” implied that they were “formed from decaying debris left behind by the Great Flood.”   Even though Pope Paul III proclaimed in 1537 that Native Americans were human beings with rational souls,  no one has paid much attention to that proclamation even to the present day.

Ethnocentrism was not and is not limited, however, to the early explorers and settlers of the Americas.  It existed in the native tribes as well.  The word Kiowa means “the real or principal people.”  The Navajos called themselves Dine'é which means “the people.”  Many other tribes called themselves “men,”  (meaning the true men).  These tribes saw the European intruders as less than human. It was “Kiowa First,” and “Navajo First” from their perspective.

“The Way” suggests that there is no such thing as Spaniard, German, or European, Greek, or Navajo, or Kiowa  or America First (Galatians 3:28)!  A New Age beckons and we must be done with our foolish notions.