Post One

The Damned Church

“And ’tis most evident and plain that simple Nature is the most harmless, inoffensive, and virtuous mistress. ’Tis she alone, if she were permitted, that better instructs the world than all the inventions of man. Religion would here but destroy that tranquillity they possess by ignorance; and laws would but teach ’em to know offense, of which now they have no notion” (Behn, 131).

Footnote: In reference to the indigenous African tribes, Behn describes them as acting within their true “nature.” OED, Nature: “Chiefly Christian Church. This impulse as contrasted with the perceived influence of God on man. Cf. Phrases 6a.” Behn directly opposes the idea that religion is a positive and purifying doctrine, preceding and supporting the Rousseauian philosophy of the State of Nature. The Rousseauian State of Nature purports that people were in their purest and most innocent state before society, that Behn, as later explicitly written by Rousseau, believes is corrupted by religion. Humans act significantly worse when they are educated and civilized. Behn and the narrator both believe the Native American tribe to be so simplistic that they have not yet formed a society or religion, almost in an infant-like state. Anita Pacheo expands on this in her article:

According to Oroonoko, Christianity’s purely otherworldly sanctions, its aim of instilling fear of punishment in the next world, provide no real stimulus to be good or honest in this world, unlike honor, belief in which really can make human beings frightened of the immediate consequences of their bad deeds. In expressing this view in her novel, Behn would seem to be subverting rather than endorsing conservative freethinkers’ faith in the ability of the Christian church to guarantee the good conduct of the vulgar. (253)

I agree with Pacheo that Behn seems to be damning Christianity as a force of evil, especially in this passage. The only religion the narrator intimately knows is Christianity and he claims it would “destroy their tranquility.” Behn disavows Christianity as a positive force, as demonstrated by her use of the word “Nature” in a positive context, referring to the OED definition above. The narrator assumes the Native American tribe possesses no religion of their own, that they are not performing a religious rite in itself. Behn’s observation about the wholesomeness of Nature relies on the condescending and racist notion that they are virtuous due to their inexposure, for if they are practicing religious rites, the whole theory collapses. If they were practicing religion and simultaneously maintaining a more tranquil society, as we know today Native Americans did and do have their own religious rites, the narrator unambiguously condemns the Christian Church as a destroyer of peace. This is the only religion he knows, the religion to which he refers in the passage and in his use of the word “nature.”

Works Cited

Oxford English Dictionary. "nature."

www-oed-com.proxy-um.researchport.umd.edu/view/Entry/125353?rskey=20ehPv&result=1#eid.

Pacheco, Anita. “‘Little Religion’ but “Admirable Morals’: Christianity and Honor in Aphra

Behn’s Oroonoko." Modern Philology, vol. 111, no. 2, 2013, pp. 253-280, doi.org/10.1086/673098.