How is religion tied to imperialism?

Christianity and colonialism are often closely associated with each other because Protestantism and Catholicism participated as the state religions of the European colonial powers[1] and in many ways they acted as the "religious arms" of those powers.[2] According to Edward Andrews, Christian missionaries were initially portrayed as "visible saints, exemplars of ideal piety in a sea of persistent savagery". However, by the time the colonial era drew to a close in the last half of the twentieth century, missionaries became viewed as "ideological shock troops for colonial invasion whose zealotry blinded them",[3] colonialism's "agent, scribe and moral alibi."[4]

In some areas, almost all of the colony's population were removed from their traditional belief systems and were turned into the Christian faith, which the colonizers used as a reason to destroy other faiths, enslave the natives, and exploit the lands and seas.[5][6][7][8][9]

Explanation: