heathenish

Abolitionist Rodney French, a Massachusetts merchant and politician, called it the “most disgraceful, atrocious, unjust, detestable, heathenish, barbarous, diabolical, man-degrading, woman-murdering, demon-pleasing, Heaven-defying act ever perpetrated.”

The celebration has its roots in pagan rituals and is still going strong despite a 1714 law that outlawed it as “superstitious, idolatrous and sinfule, an abominable heathenish practice”.

“Give us another war with Germany, Mexico and all the other heathenish countries in preference to another blast of this distressing flu,” a physician from Tennessee wrote.

Better Joe hath suggested some specific remedies, which Isaac the Joiner decries loudly as the cant of heathenish superstition; and indeed, one wonders at the applications of bone.

They tell us that our institutions are corrupt, that our societies are patriarchal, and that the African traditional religions are heathenish.