Evangelical Postcolonial Conversations

Global Awakenings in Theology and Praxis

Kay Higuera Smith, Jayachitra Lalitha, L. Daniel Hawk, Kay Higuera Smith, Jayachitra Lalitha, L. Daniel Hawk

• Publisher: IVP Academic
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780830896318
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Théologie chrétienne

How can the church respond to issues of imperialism, race and globalization? Constructing an evangelical postcolonial theology may be the solution to dealing with these ever-growing issues. Gathering together essays presented at the 2010 Postcolonial Roundtable at Gordon College, this groundbreaking volume seeks to reconcile the ugly history of cultural dominion and colonialism with new perspectives on global society.Rethinking and reimagining the concepts of identity, power, interpretation and historiography through the lens of Christianity, the editors provide readers with new ways of understanding and bettering the world."The Christian faith of the future must be a joint enterprise in which the descendants of the colonized and the descendants of the colonizers come together, reflect on the past and imagine a different and better future together, " contributor Brian McLaren states. "That work will involve risks and dangers for both groups, and the contributions of both are essential. One lesson the gospel surely teaches us is this: we are all connected."Addressing themes like nationalism, Christology and western conquest, contributors discuss reasons Christians need to be careful how they frame their conversations on global topics. The language of "mission" can be misconstrued in light of postcolonial perspectives, and the essays dig into the role of evangelicalism in modern Christian outreach to help us keep pace with what God is doing in our era.

Part One

MISSION AND METANARRATIVE

Origins and Articulations

Introduction to Part One

Mission and Metanarrative

Origins and Articulations

The evangelical revivals that swept through the United States and the United Kingdom in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries generated a missionary movement of unprecedented magnitude. Mission agencies deployed countless men and women to bring the light of Christ to unreached peoples and deliverance from the bonds of darkness. The missionary vision promised salvation not only from sin and satanic oppression but also from ignorance, superstition and savagery. The unquestioned premise of the missionary movement held that God had providentially raised up the United States and the United Kingdom to fulfill the Great Commission and that the extension of their empires also extended the benefits of Christian civilization for the good of the entire world. Evangelizing therefore went hand in hand with “civilizing” (or “assimilating” or “improving”) indigenous converts and separating them from their cultures, which were regarded as primitive, backward or even demonic. The biblical narrative of salvation thus fused with the Enlightenment metanarrative of emancipation to explain and justify evangelical missions.

The chapters in this section explore the mixed legacy of evangelical missions in North America, India and sub-Saharan Africa, and the role of the Bible in extending Euro-American hegemony. L. Daniel Hawk and Richard L. Twiss render an account of missionary collusion with the US government’s civilization program and the racialized interpretation of the Bible that facilitated it. Gregory L. Cuéllar and Randy S. Woodley then expand the scope of the story to encompass the whole of the missionary enterprise in the United States. They interrogate the way Christian mission is marked and remembered, and press for a new paradigm that accords indigenous people the lead in rendering the narrative of missions. Jayachitra Lalitha focuses on the missionary legacy in India and how colonial oppression played out in control and discrimination of subjects in terms of gender and caste as well. Her study of the interactions between white missionary and native women reveals how the Bible, and its interpretation, constituted both an instrument of colonial hegemony and a source of empowerment for low-caste women. Victor Ifeanyi Ezigbo and Reggie L. Williams offer a third variation on the theme of missionary colonization of minds and peoples with a reflection on the white Christ the missionaries presented and the “biblical Christianity” they attempted to instill. In response they elaborate the contours of a postcolonial African Christology that overcomes the colonial mentality, fosters African theological self-identity and autonomy, and makes a substantive contribution to global theological discourse.

1

From Good: “The Only Good
Indian Is a Dead Indian”

to Better: “Kill the Indian
and Save the Man”

to Best: “Old Things Pass Away
and All Things Become White!”

An American Hermeneutic
of Colonization

L. Daniel Hawk and Richard L. Twiss

In 1820 secretary of war John Calhoun sent the Reverend Jedidiah Morse on an intelligence-gathering mission to the Indian tribes living within the domain of the United States. Calhoun directed Morse “to ascertain the actual condition of the various tribes” for the purpose of “devising the most suitable plan to advance their civilization and happiness.”1 The mission was stimulated by the passage, in the previous year, of the Civilization Fund Act, which authorized the distribution of funds to benevolent societies for the purpose of educating Indian peoples “in the habits of civilization.” Congress had passed the act as a means of “providing against the further decline and final extinction of the Indian tribes,” which, in the prevailing opinion of the time, the inexorable advance of settlement rendered inevitable without government intervention.2 Most of the funds were subsequently disbursed to Christian denominations and mission agencies, which were regarded as essential for “laying the foundations for [the Indians’] civil, social, and religious improvement” and imparting “the blessings of civilization and Christianity.”3

Morse was one of the leading intellectual, civic and religious figures of his time and had become troubled by the “blots” on the “character of our ancestors, and of our nation,” specifically

the manner in which we have, in many, if not most instances, come into possession of their lands, and of their peltry: also, to the provocations we have given, in so many instances, to those cruel, desolating, and exterminating wars, which have been successively waged against them; and to the corrupting vices, and fatal diseases, which have been introduced among them, by wicked and unprincipled white people.4

These “national sins,” he believed, should be redressed by extending “the blessings of civilization and Christianity” to the Indians.5

Morse’s report includes the manuscript of a speech he delivered to a gathering of Ottawas at Michillimackinac. It offers a revealing snapshot of Christian perspectives at this pivotal juncture in white America’s interaction with indigenous nations. Morse begins with encouraging words: “Your fathers, the christian white people . . . are devising plans for your happiness. The Congress of the United States, the Great Council of our nation, feel for you, also, and have put money into the hands of your Father, the President, to promote the welfare of the Indians.”6 There follows a long account of the decline of Indians to the east and south due to pestilence, the loss of hunting grounds and the settlements of the white people. The Indian way, Morse avers, will not survive, for the time is past when Indians can “associate with white people, as their equals.” White people are increasing, Indian lands are being lost and, bereft of game to hunt and furs to trade, Indians “will give themselves up to idleness, ignorance, and drunkenness, and will waste away, and by and bye, have no posterity on the face of the earth.”7 Morse assures his listeners, however, that Indians may yet become partakers in the blessings that all whites enjoy. To help them, he declares, “your christian fathers, will send among you, at their own expense, good white men and women, to instruct you and your children, in every thing that pertains to the civilized and christian life.” Indigenous peoples stand at a precipice: “Civilization or ruin, are now the only alternatives of Indians.”8

Morse continues,

Among the means for your civilization, in addition to what have already been mentioned, we will bring you the best, the only effectual, means of making you truly happy—we will bring you the Bible, the best of all Books. We will teach you to read and understand it. This book is a revelation from God, and contains the words of eternal life. It reveals the true character of God, the Great Spirit, in whom you profess to believe, and of man, and the relation and duty of man to his Maker, and to his fellow men. It maketh wise to salvation, by revealing a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the way of salvation by him. It contains the doctrines and precepts of the Christian religion. This book causes the wide difference which exists, as you see, between the white man and the Indian. We will bring you this blessed book. We will teach your children to read it, that they may be happy, and comfort you; that they may know how to live, and do good; and how to die, and to live forever.9

White Makes Right

Morse’s speech manifests the assumptions and ideology that have defined white thinking and practice in relation to the indigenous peoples of the continent throughout America’s history. The framework of this thinking is as follows: Anglo-Saxon civilization represents the pinnacle of human development and progress. It has been founded on Christian principles, which articulate the highest vision for human well-being and happiness. As is manifest by the burgeoning white population, the nation’s inexorable advance westward and its victories over resistant Indian nations, the future belongs to the white race, which is establishing a new society in the United States.10 Anglo-Saxon civilization and Christianity merge in the New World, rendering the United States the apex and engine of human advancement, achievement and liberty. The indigenous peoples of the continent, by contrast, are part of a past that is rapidly fading away. Indigenous peoples and their way of life are headed toward extinction. Indian culture is primitive, simplistic and savage—a vestige of the human past that will be swept away by the ineluctable advance of civilization.

Guided by these ideas, Christian reformers like Morse were propelled by a sense of moral obligation to improve the condition of Indians. In practice this meant educating them into the civilized practices, lifestyle and modes of thought that enabled participation in the new human society that was emerging in the New World. Morse’s words reveal the crucial role the Bible was to play in this program. Conceived as a compendium of principles and precepts, the Bible could be employed as the primary instrument for teaching indigenous peoples “how to live, and do good.”

Against those who argued that Indians possessed an inferior intellect, Morse and other reformers asserted that their so-called savagery was the result of arrested social development. The reformers held that Indians were capable of improvement and civilization and so should be brought into the literate universe of which the Bible was the center. The Bible thus constituted both the cause of “the wide difference . . . between the white man and the Indian” and the means of eliminating the difference. Morse was confident that “civilization, and a knowledge of the scriptures, will doubtless dispel the mist which has so long hung over these nations, and show them not to be inferior to any other people.”11

Morse’s sentiments were rooted in a long history. John Eliot, the Puritan missionary whose work became the prototype for Protestant missions to the Indians, believed that civilizing the Indians was necessary for their successful conversion to Christianity. Eliot therefore suppressed indigenous religious practices and required that his converts adopt, among other things, English-style clothing, agricultural practices, monogamous marriage and English hairstyles.12 Rigorous indoctrination in the tropes of Protestant thought and discourse brought about a corresponding inner transformation.13 To protect his converts from the deleterious influence of indigenous ways, Eliot established Praying Towns that separated Christian Indians from their families and communities.

This separatist sensibility derived from the internal boundaries the Puritans erected to differentiate themselves from the indigenous peoples. The Puritans regarded themselves as the visible community of God’s elect and deeply valued their English cultural heritage.14 Delivered from tyranny by a passage through the sea, they saw themselves as the people of God settling a new Canaan. They approached their “errand into the wilderness,” however, with fear and trembling. The Indians’ way of life struck the colonists as the very antithesis of godliness, moral restraint and civilized behavior. In Puritan eyes, Indians were lascivious, slothful and “undutiful.” They did not hold ownership of property. They were “indulgent out of measure” with their children. They were bloodthirsty. They had no laws. They didn’t wear pants.15 They were, in the words of Cotton Mather, “doleful creatures who were the veriest ruins of mankind; who were to be found anywhere on the face of the earth.”16

Worse yet, the Indians were agents of Satan. The new Canaan the Puritans settled was

A waste and howling wilderness,

Where none inhabited,

But hellish fiends and brutish men

That devils worshiped.17

Mather called the Indians Satan’s “most devoted and resembling children”18 and declared that “their whole religion was the most explicit sort of devil worship.” When the Salem witch hysteria broke out, Mather suggested that the causes might lie with the Indians. “Their chief sagamores,” he exclaimed, “are well known . . . to have been horrid sorcerers and hellish conjurers and such as conversed with demons.” The Indians, in sum, constituted the “irreducible, satanic other” against which the Puritan community constructed its identity.19

Informed by Puritan perspectives and practices, subsequent missions sought to obliterate the savage indigenous identity and replace it with a civilized Christian one. Early missionary John Sergeant described the objective as “the total eradication of all that marks them as native . . . to root out their vicious habits, and to change their whole way of living.”20 The association of “white” with civilization and Christianity, and “Indian” with savagery and idolatry, constituted the unquestioned framework of American thought and policy well into the twentieth century—effectively rendering indigenous cultures incompatible with Christian faith and practice. “The truth is,” declared a prominent mission agency in 1856, “that Christianity has little affinity with the indolent, migratory, nomadic habits of the Indians. The two cannot abide together.”21 Education would bring about the transformation of indigenous identities, with instruction in the Bible as the linchpin of the curriculum.

Might Makes White

Christian mission agencies constituted the de facto arm of the US government’s civilization project throughout the nineteenth century. The reported success of mission schools early in the century suggested a promising partnership between gove...