Tag: human sacrifice

Defending child sacrifice: The ultimate expression of cultural relativism

By John Stonestreet, Glenn Sunshine, Wednesday, September 03, 2025

Unsplash/K. Mitch Hodge
Unsplash/K. Mitch Hodge

Recently, a history teacher from Littleton, Colorado, went viral for praising the way the Incas, her favorite empire, sacrificed children. She also reprimanded “white education” for wrongly teaching generations of Americans that the practice was bad. I’m not making this up. 

After noting that human sacrifice was common within most ancient civilizations, the teacher clarified that the Incan version offered victims from the upper class because they were closer to the gods. Also, the Incas drugged children before leaving them to die of exposure on top of a mountain. Objections to this cultural practice, she continued, are primarily due to a white perspective, which focuses on the negative aspects of great civilizations while ignoring their wonderful accomplishments. 

Defending child sacrifice is the ultimate expression of cultural relativism. In this view, all cultures are equally valid, except white cultures that judge others. To paraphrase a former colleague, there is no difference between cultures that love their neighbors and cultures that eat their neighbors. 

Of course, this teacher’s innovative defense of the Incas misses a few important points. First, children as young as four were sacrificed. Even if they could consent at that age, does that make it any less horrific? But of course, they cannot. The teacher fails to mention evidence of a 4- to 5-year-old child who was tied up before being buried alive. The simplest explanation for drugging the young victims is minimizing resistance … not kindness. 

To that point, is there any scenario in which drugging a child and leaving her to die could be considered kind, even if that were the intent? Just as inconvenient to this narrative are the Incan sacrificial victims found who died from strangulation, suffocation, and being stabbed in the back.  

The most important motivator for this Incan practice is that it was considered an honor for a child to be chosen for sacrifice. So, children were frequently “volunteered” by parents in order to curry favor with the emperor. Children were offered when an Incan emperor died, on the birth of his heir, at times of crisis to lure the gods to their side, and for other ceremonial occasions. 

Another aspect of this conversation neglected by the teacher is, what changed? Why is this kind of child sacrifice today universally viewed as abhorrent. The answer is Christianity. 

Believing that every human being is made in the image of God, Christians from the earliest centuries argued for the inherent dignity of the marginalized in society, especially women, slaves, and children. Christians in Rome opposed the practice of infanticide, rescuing unwanted infants who were left to die and raising them as full members of the Christian community. They also opposed abortion. 

Thus, the defense of children became a feature of Christian witness throughout history. For example, in the 19th century, missionary Mary Slessor was known for rescuing twins who had been left to die. The tribal people of Nigeria believed one twin was always a child of a demon. Her actions ended that deadly practice.  

To be clear, sacrificing children continues to be one of the most consistent features of this fallen world. Today, aborted children are the victims of our wrong ideas about sexuality and the meaning of life. Most embryos created during the process of in vitro fertilization are deemed to be “excess,” and left to die in freezers or medical experiments. Children are taught to be confused about who they are and thus become experiments of medical sterilization and surgical mutilation, and victims of the latest religious hysteria of adults. Christians who oppose these practices today are in good company within Church history. 

As the western world detaches from its Christian foundations, we should expect that more children will be devalued and harmed in more ways. A consistent feature of pagan societies is for children to be in danger. We should expect the same as a society repaganizes.  

On the other hand, a consistent feature of Christians within a pagan society is that they worked to protect and defend children. This remains the calling of the Church today.

This article was originally published on Breakpoint.

John Stonestreet serves as president of the Colson Center, equipping Christians to live with clarity, confidence, and courage in today’s cultural moment. A sought-after speaker and author on faith, culture, theology, worldview, education, and apologetics, he has co-authored five books, including A Practical Guide to Culture, A Student’s Guide to Culture, and Restoring All Things. John hosts Breakpoint, the nationally syndicated commentary founded by Chuck Colson, and The Point, a daily one-minute feature on worldview and cultural issues. Previously, he held leadership roles at Summit Ministries and taught biblical studies at Bryan College (TN). He lives in Colorado Springs, Colorado, with his wife, Sarah, and their four children.

Glenn Sunshine is a professor of history at Central Connecticut State University, a Senior Fellow of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, and the founder and president of Every Square Inch Ministries. He is a speaker, the author of several books, and co-author with Jerry Trousdale of The Kingdom Unleashed.

Source: Christian Post

Chants and incantations to Aztec gods of human sacrifice in California’s public schools?

I have told my seminary students for years that a society or culture is never in a state of stasis.  It is just the nature of human societies – they are constantly in flux, heading in one direction or the other, getting worse or getting better, depending on your perspective.

(Photo: The Christian Post/Katherine T. Phan)

I have never been more depressed to have been proven right about American society’s increasing volatility.  Current news stories contain harrowing reports of ever more radical “woke” philosophies being imprinted on the impressionable minds of our nation’s youth – in this case the six million primary and secondary students attending California’s public schools.

If you were concerned about the cultural divisiveness of the centrifugal forces generated by Critical Race Theory, Intersectionality and Black Lives Matter, wait until you see what the formerly “Golden” State of California is contemplating inflicting on the unsuspecting youth of their state.

Christopher Rufo reports that next week the California Department of Education will decide whether to approve a statewide “ethnic studies” curriculum with the goal of “decolonizing” American society of its biased “Eurocentric” white “hegemony” over the indigenous peoples which allowed white settlers to establish a “regime of coloniality, dehumanization, and genocide.” 

As Rod Dreher reports on Rufo’s research “the ultimate goal is to “decolonize” America and replace it with a new social order of “countergenocide” and “counterhegemony” which will overthrow the dominant Christian culture and result in the “regeneration of indigenous songs, chants and affirmations” culminating in teachers leading students in chants to Aztec gods, seeking empowerment to be “warriors” for “social justice” and importuning the Aztec God of war and human sacrifice, Xipe Totec known as “Our Lord the Flayed One” because typically victims of human sacrifice, before they were disemboweled, dismembered and eaten, were skinned alive (Wikepedia, “Human sacrifice in Aztec culture”).

The curriculum asserts that “white Christians committed ‘theocide’ against indigenous tribes, killing their gods and replacing them with Christianity.”  This all culminates, according to Dreher and Rufo, with students shouting “Panche beh!  Panche beh!”  seeking ultimate “critical consciousness.”

This is all so comprehensively evil and destructive it is hard to know where to begin criticism of this dangerous, divisive, retrograde cultural vandalism.  The idea that a tax supported public school system would, or could, be used to unleash this vicious cultural and spiritual poison into out young people’s consciousness is both extremely offensive and quite possibly illegal. 

How does this curriculum not violate the First Amendment’s “establishment clause?”  If public schools are not allowed to sponsor Christian prayers, why would they be allowed to sponsor prayers to an Aztec pagan idol to whom human sacrifices were offered routinely?

If California’s authorities approve this curriculum, they should be challenged in court.  Approval of this curriculum would also reveal that California is indeed a state surrounded on all sides by reality. 

Thank God for Christopher Rufo and Rod Dreher for having the courage to warn Americans about this looming, highly flammable fuel for a cultural apocalypse.  They are like modern, cultural Paul Reveres sounding the warning, “The Barbarians are coming! The Barbarians are coming!”

Rod Dreher titles his column “The Re-Barbarization of California”  and asked this rhetorical question:

Social-justice Marxists who want to teach millions of children in the state’s public schools to achieve liberation against the descendants of European colonists  of 500 years ago by teaching them to chant to Aztec gods who required human sacrifice.   How do you think this is going to end?

Dreher then closes with this line “Wake up folks, and read the signs of the times.”

Dr. Richard Land, BA (magna cum laude), Princeton; D.Phil. Oxford; and Th.M., New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, was president of the Southern Baptists’ Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (1988-2013) and has served since 2013 as president of Southern Evangelical Seminary in Charlotte, NC. Dr. Land has been teaching, writing, and speaking on moral and ethical issues for the last half century in addition to pastoring several churches. He is the author of The Divided States of America, Imagine! A God Blessed America, Real Homeland Security, For Faith & Family and Send a Message to Mickey.

Source: Christian Post