Native Americans, The Mainline Church, and the Quest for Interracial Justice

Phillips Hansen David

Description

The Native American drive for self-governance is the most important civil rights struggle of our time - a struggle too often covered up. In Native Americans, The Mainline Church, and the Quest for Interracial Justice, David Phillips Hansen lays out the church's role in helping America heal its bleeding wounds of systemic oppression. While many believe the United States is a melting pot for all cultures, Hansen asserts the longest war in human history is the one Anglo-Christians have waged on Native Americans. Using faith as a weapon against the darkness of injustice, this book will change the way you view how we must solve the pressing problems of racism, poverty, environmental degradation, and violence, and it will remind you that faith can be the leaven of justice.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Christian Church
• Religious intolerance
• History of religions
• Christianity

Informations

• Publié par: Chalice Press
• Date de parution: 03 janvier 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780827225299
• Langue: English

Extrait

“David P. Hansen captures the first steps that must be taken in a conversation that is far past due for members of mainline Christianity. Hansen’s book illumines the gradual and painstaking actions of the church to recognize the harms inflicted throughout history and, more importantly, harms being inflicted in this present moment. Without recognizing the sinful motivations of a society built on exploitation, true wellness and harmony cannot exist. Native Americans, the Mainline Church, and the Quest for Interracial Justice is a vital first step in putting together the pieces necessary for our society to achieve racial justice.”
—Glen Chebon Kernell, Jr., Executive Secretary of Native American & Indigenous Ministries, Justice & Relationships, United Methodist Church
“Native Americans, the Mainline Church, and the Quest for Interracial Justice is a stunning achievement! An insider to a mainline church, David Phillips Hansen powerfully blends theological insight, rigorous history, and personal experience to illuminate hard truths about the church’s often repressive interactions with Native Americans in ‘Christianity’s collusion with conquest.’ But his account is far more than critique. It is also a conceptually grounded, pragmatic call to the church to engage with present-day Native Americans around acts of reconstruction (fundamentally remaking relationships) and reparation (repairing persisting cultural, economic, and land-related damage). Moving all toward social healing through justice. Truly an essential read for all concerned about indigenous peoples and social justice.”
—Eric K. Yamamoto, University of Hawaii School of Law
“Churches who seek to become open to others are on the right track, yet in order to make progress they need the guidance provided in this book. Little will change without digging deep into our histories of conflict, exploring genuine forms of non-patronizing relationships, and fundamentally transforming both church and world in the encounter with others. As the mainline begins to reshape its still troubled relationships with Native Americans, many other relationships will be reshaped as well.”
—Joerg Rieger, Vanderbilt University, Author of Unified We Are a Force
“David Hansen knows the white mainline church well enough to know that we have some confessing to do. At the top of the list is our shameful treatment of Native Americans, which is inseparable from our understanding of Protestant Christianity. Although our own denomination, the United Church of Christ, has made a formal apology, much more is needed to confront the cultural, economic, and political subjugation of Natives. This book provides both an analysis of our sin, and a way forward to redemption.”
—Robin R. Meyers, Mayflower Congregational UCC Church, and Distinguished Professor of Social Justice, Oklahoma City University
“Having taught and worked cross-culturally in South Dakota for many years, I see clearly that the greatest obstacle to human progress everywhere is the failure to understand historical and contemporary contexts. This exceptional book provides those contexts remarkably well and argues compellingly for right action, speaking to the hearts and minds of people of all faith traditions. It should be required reading in seminaries and university courses and highly recommended to all readers.”
—Charles L. Woodard, South Dakota State University, and Author of Ancestral Voice: Conversations With N. Scott Momaday
NATIVE
AMERICANS,
THE MAINLINE CHURCH, AND
THE QUEST FOR INTERRACIAL
JUSTICE

DAVID PHILLIPS HANSEN

An imprint of Christian Board of Publication
Copyright ©2016 by David Phillips Hansen.
All rights reserved. For permission to reuse content, please contact Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, [phone], copyright.com .
Biblical quotations are from the following:
The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha , Expanded Edition. Revised Standard Version. Containing the Second Edition of the New Testament and an Expanded Edition of the Apocrypha. Edited by Herbert G. May and Bruce M. Metzger. New York: Oxford University Press. Copyright © 1973, 1977 by Oxford University Press, Inc.
The Oxford Annotated Bible , Copyright © 1962 by Oxford University Press.
Revised Standard Version of the Bible , Old Testament Section, Copyright 1952; New Testament Section, First Edition, Copyright 1946; Second Edition © 1971 by Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America.
The Oxford Annotated Apocrypha , Copyright © 1965, 1977 by Oxford University Press, Inc.
The Apocrypha , Copyright © 1957; The Third and Fourth Books of the Maccabees and Psalm 151, copyright © 1977 by Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America.
A percentage of the author’s royalties will be contributed to the Eagle Butte Learning Center in support of its mission.
Print: 9780827225282 EPUB: 9780827225299 EPDF: 9780827225305
Printed in the United States of America
This book is dedicated to the Eagle Butte Learning Center
The Eagle Butte Learning Center (EBLC) for American Indian pastors and lay leaders is a ministry of the Council for American Indian Ministry of the United Church of Christ. Located in Eagle Butte, South Dakota on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation, EBLC is strategically and geographically placed where it is accessible to reservation pastors and lay leaders. The mission is to offer an education that is theologically and culturally relevant to reservation pastors, particularly the Lakota pastors of Dakota Association in South Dakota where the largest concentration of American Indian United Church of Christ churches are located. Educators, theologians, and pastors who come to teach are carefully selected for their cultural competency or their potential for cultural relevancy; most of them have doctorates in their fields of study. Together, all are learners and teachers.
Because of dire finances and complicated family situations, educational events are offered to pastors, lay leaders, and often their families in the form of weekend retreats and workshops. Pastors and lay leaders select the subjects of retreats and workshops that would help them. The staff finds faculty who can address the requested subjects. Small grants, gifts, and memorials are used to provide meals, lodging, and transportation for the students, and the faculty are asked to donate their time and travel.
The Eagle Butte Learning Center is unique in every way!
Contents
Acknowledgments
P ART O NE: B EGINNING
1. An Introduction
Knowing Our History, Defining Our Mission
A Personal Story
A Qualifying Disclaimer and Challenge
2. Mapping the Terrain
Who Should Be Interested?
What Is Interracial Justice?
The Book’s Design
Defining Terms
P ART T WO: R ECOGNITION
3. The European Foundations of Cultural Imperialism
The First Crusade and the Doctrine of Discovery
Infidels and Indians
Romanus Pontifex and Inter Caetera
Sublimus Dei
The English Reformation and Counter-Reformation
The English Invasion of Ireland
The Pauperization of Elizabethan England
4. Coming to America
Jamestown: The Holy Experiment
The Bible Commonwealth
The Pequot War
Praying Towns and Cultural Genocide
Increase Mather and King Philip’s War
5. Christian Collusion with Colonial Conquest
The Great Awakening and Missionary Zeal
The Cornwall Mission School
The Civilization Fund
Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Policy
The Marshall Trilogy
Westward Expansion and Indian Wars
Indian Boarding Schools
Henry Pratt and Other “Friends of the Indians”
Native American Resistace
Federal Policies
The Present
P ART T HREE: R ESPONSIBILITY
6. Christianity at a Crossroads
Defining Our Identity Story
Decoding Our Identity Story
From Dogma to Dialogue
7. Images of God and Our Social Order
Deconstructing Monotheism
Reimagining the Character of God
P ART F OUR: R ECONSTRUCTION
8. The Journey of Repentance
The Mainline Church in Transition
The United Church of Canada and First Nations Peoples
P ART F IVE: R EPARATION
9. An Economy in the Service of Life
Sacred Land and the Resolution Copper Mine
Behind the Veil of Economics
Economics in the Service of Life
Religion and Class
Connecting Ethics and Economics
10. A Theology of Land and Life
Creating a New Identity Narrative
Sacred Sites
Cautious Hope
Finding an Alternative John Locke
A Theology Fit for the Future
Human Rights and Well-being
A Justice Parable for Today
Appendix: The Importance of Names
Index
Acknowledgments
I appreciate the hard work of many who helped me bring this book to completion. Jean Roth Jacobs, Phyllis Cole-Dai, Charles McCollough, and Rosemary McCombs Maxey read early drafts of this manuscript and gave me valuable advice and encouragement. I am grateful for the support of these friends.
Much closer to the date of publication, Michael Austin, Provost of Newman College, Wichita, Kansas, gave me helpful suggestions. Joerg Rieger, the Wendland-Cook Professor of Constructive Theology at Southern Methodist University, generously offered to read portions of my manuscript, as did George Tinker, Clifford Baldridge Professor of American Indian Cultures and Religious Traditions at Iliff School of Theology, Denver, and pastor of Living Waters Episcopal/Lutheran Indian Ministries in Denver. Professor Rieger also recommended that I contact Chalice Press, now my publisher. The members of Pine Valley Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Wichita, Kansas, and Brookings United Church of Christ, South Dakota, gave me time to write while I served these congregations. I owe a special debt of gratitude to my editorial consultant, Professor Charles Woodard, Professor of English at South Dakota State University, Bookings, and to Ulrike Guthrie, my editor.