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Native Americans continue to be marginalized in the mainstream church, although they’ve been exposed to Christianity for centuries
by K.B. Schaller | The Good News | June 5th 2009
Tags:
Breathmaker, Native Americans, Seminole
Chickee Baptist Church, First Seminole Indian Baptist Church and House of Prayer Full Gospel Church are all centered on leading Seminoles to God, whom they call “Feshahkee-ommehche,” meaning the Breathmaker.
The virtual invisibility of these Native American churches is a result of centuries of marginalization mixed with evangelism. According to Wiconi International, an evangelistic outreach to Native Americans, an estimated 20 million native people lived in what is now the United States prior to European arrival in America.
By the late 1800s, there were only 230,000.
The 2000 U.S. Census counted 2.5 million exclusively American Indian and Alaska natives living in the United States.
The dwindling number of Native Americans was due largely to wars, massacres, malnutrition and European-introduced diseases against which the natives had no natural immunity.
But Europeans also brought the Christian faith – and it forever changed the native world as they knew it.
Thomas S. Giles, in an article in Christian History & Biography magazine, explains that when Europeans landed in modern-day New Mexico in 1514, some Aztec natives were open to Christianity. But when it was brutally imposed on them by the Spanish conquistadores, the natives totally rejected it.
Giles further cites European brutality as the single greatest obstruction to native conversions.
This recurring theme was further demonstrated from 1646–1675 during the establishment of New England’s Massachusetts Colony Praying Towns.
Although the Praying Towns were constructed to shield native converts from Euro-American hostility and encourage them to replace traditional Native Indian beliefs with Christianity, this outwardly benevolent experiment had a dark underbelly.
The towns were constructed to provide a human barrier of defense around the Boston settlements. According to the Columbia Encyclopedia, this protected whites during the 1675 King Philip’s War, but resulted in the Praying Indians’ near total destruction.
They were killed by other natives who regarded them as traitors and the British who suspected that they secretly supported Metacom, the chief of the Wampanoag Indians whom the English nicknamed “King Philip.”
Praying Indians also discovered that even within the church they were treated as second class, regarded with suspicion and not respected as equals with their European counterparts.
Considering that attitudes are passed down generationally, brutality’s far-reaching after-effects are evident even today.
According to Ron Hutchcraft, whose international ministry has a Native American outreach, even after 500 years of missionary efforts, only an estimated 5 percent of natives identify themselves as Christians.
In his book “One Church, Many Tribes,” the creator of Wiconi International, Richard Twiss, says that the mainstream church separates itself from Native American Christians for fear of syncretism – mixing Christianity with non-Christian practices. In fact, the Lakota author says syncretism is so feared that any use of traditionally native instruments, such as drums, rattles or reed flutes, during worship has been all but demonized.
However, some churches, like those that compose the Native American Church (as opposed to the Native American Christian Church), do incorporate some non-Christian practices in their doctrine.
Yet, Twiss believes that churches that validate and support traditional native customs that do not conflict with Christian doctrine would establish a stronger connection to the native community.
On the Wiconi website, Twiss says that pastors from other cultures are quick to respond when asked to assist native churches, but they seldom invite an Indian pastor or group to enrich their congregations.
To this day, native churches are largely regarded as “a perpetually needy mission field with nothing of its culture to offer that is of value to the church,” Twiss notes.
Twiss believes that mainstream congregations should treat native members as “co-equal participants” and remember that God does not require us “to abandon one sin-stained culture and embrace another sin-stained culture.”
Twiss, however, is not without his critics. Deceptions in the Church, for instance, states on its website that “Richard Twiss claims that what he is doing is not syncretism, when it is the very definition of syncretism.”
Nevertheless, Twiss writes in “One Church, Many Tribes” that he witnessed “a turning point in modern Christian history” at the 1996 World Christian Gathering of Indigenous People in New Zealand. At the gathering, many indigenous Christians chose to extend forgiveness to the dominant, mainstream church, which they believe has continued to persecute and marginalize them for generations.
Through this act of forgiveness, Twiss says he believes native people are now uniquely positioned to declare worldwide that there is a better way “through Jesus Christ, the Waymaker … the way to successful living.”
South Florida-based Novelist K.B. Schaller (who is of Cherokee and Seminole descent) is the author of “Gray Rainbow Journey” and attends First Seminole Indian Baptist Church in Hollywood. Schaller is also a member of the Native American Journalists Association who contributes largely to native publications. She wrote this article especially for The Good News. For more information, visit www.KBSchaller.com.