The Church and Indigenous Peoples in the Americas

In Between Reconciliation and Decolonization

Michel Andraos, Michel Andraos

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781532631122
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Indigenous and non-Indigenous voices come together in this volume to discuss both the wounds of colonial history and the opportunities for decolonization, reconciliation, and hope in the relationship between the church and Indigenous peoples across the Americas. Scholars and pastoral leaders from Chile, Bolivia, Brazil, Mexico, the United States, and Canada, and Indigenous peoples of Mapuche, Chiquitano, Tzeltal Maya, Oglala Sioux, Mi'kmaw, and Anishinaabe-Ojibwe reflect on the possibility of constructing decolonial theology and pastoral praxis, and on the urgent need for transformation of church structures and old theology. The book opens new horizons for different ways of thinking and acting, and for the emergence of a truly intercultural theology.

Part One

Regional Indigenous Theological Voices and Responses

A: Bolivia

1

Toward a Church with an Indigenous Face: Some Premises and Urgent Challenges11

Roberto Tomichá Charupá, OFM Conv.

Pope Francis, in his first apostolic exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium, clearly highlighted the transcultural character of the Christian message and, consequently, the urgency of a Christianity which is also transcultural, capable of assuming in its expressions the plurality of ancestral and emerging cultures, which are always in a process of transformation. In fact, “we would not do justice to the logic of the incarnation if we thought of Christianity as monocultural and monotonous. While it is true that some cultures have been closely associated with the preaching of the gospel and the development of Christian thought, the revealed message is not identified with any of them; its content is transcultural.”12 Such an affirmation allows us to better understand what John Paul II expresses in his encyclical, Fides et Ratio, when he refers to the second criterion of discernment of the relationship between faith and cultures—a criterion valid for all times, according to which “the Church cannot abandon what she has gained from her inculturation in the world of Greco-Latin thought. To reject this heritage would be to deny the providential plan of God who guides his Church down the paths of time and history.”13 Therefore, Christian memory and transculturality represent two interrelated theological moments whose continuous deepening and re-reading allow us to live and express a Christianity that has an Indigenous face, mind, and heart.

In the case of the Latin America and Caribbean peoples, the Christian process that they lived was, as expressed by bishop Toribio de Mogrovejo (1573), a “new Christianity of the Indies,” or rather, a Christianity that was colonial, dependent, and peripheral, and in which the religious-Christian elements merged with the political and economic interests of the Spanish and Portuguese kingdoms of the times.14 In this context of colonial Christendom which included and controlled Christianity, we need to understand the emergence and consolidation of the Latin American and Caribbean Church. It not only subordinated but also (except in some cases) displaced—and even destroyed—Indigenous religious expressions. We must say that some missionaries spoke out and even gave their own lives in defense of justice for the Indigenous and black people; as Pope John Paul II remarks,

they chose to live among the Indigenous peoples from the beginning, in order to learn their language and adapt to their customs. Others promoted the formation of catechists and collaborators who acted as interpreters . . . In this living together with the Indigenous peoples, many missionaries became farmers, carpenters, builders of houses and temples, school teachers and apprentices of the autochthonous culture.15

It is precisely this living together (convivencia) of the missionaries among the Indigenous people that allowed the church to begin to glimpse some alternative traits of what the Second Vatican Council would later define as an “autochthonous church.”16

This paper intends to summarize some characteristics, or theological-cultural features, of what is an “Indigenous autochthonous church” from two perspectives: (1) the Latin American Indigenous memory and (2) current Indigenous theological proposals.

A Theological Presupposition: “The Revealed Message . . . Has a Transcultural Content”

In order to approach, get to know, understand, and learn from Indigenous wisdom, an important premise is the attitude of listening, respecting, and being open to otherness and diversity. Our way of seeing, thinking, and responding to a specific reality is always conditioned by a certain context (geographical, domestic, familiar, cultural, social, etc.) and, therefore, the same happens to our way of thinking, our way of living Christianity, and our way of being the church. Every human experience—and consequently, every Christian experience—is always contextual and, therefore, accentuates certain features, moving others into the background. For this reason, “Christianity will have to respond ever more effectively to this need for inculturation. Christianity, ‘while remaining completely true to itself, with unswerving fidelity to the proclamation of the Gospel and the tradition of the Church, will also reflect the different faces of the cultures and peoples in which it is received and takes root’.”17 In other words, from the point of view of personal experience, “the expression of truth can take different forms. The renewal of these forms of expression becomes necessary for the sake of transmitting to the people of today the Gospel message in its unchanging meaning.”18 From there comes the urgent need for today’s men and women in the church to incorporate other ways of knowledge and other logics as integral parts of living an authentic Christianity. These wisdoms—which are living experiences of faith and theological truths elaborated from other norms and languages and are generally more narrative, more symbolic, and celebratory—need to be incorporated into the ecclesial tradition of the Americas today.

Through this attitude of listening, encountering, and possibly convivencia (living together) with those who are different—as the Indigenous world could be—and with everything that represents diversity (like other living beings, the cosmos), the gestation of a Christian church, which is by nature missionary and has its origin in the Trinity itself,19 is made possible. As noted before, it is a local church that lives and reflects on Christian faith from its own context in a continuous transformation, and therefore its theology will always be open, itinerant, and nomadic, but with deep roots that converge precisely in the Christic-Trinitarian mystery which is present in all that exists.20 This position, in fact, is founded on the same principle of the incarnation, because the Son of God assumed the whole of human reality, with its peculiar distinctive traits, in order to elevate it to communion with the Father, according to his salvific design.21 For that reason, “we would not do justice to the logic of the incarnation if we thought of Christianity as monocultural and monotonous,” because the content of the revealed message “is transcultural.”22 Moreover, the Word placed his dwelling (John 1:14) in the world, and the Holy Spirit is present in the whole of creation, which is aspiring to its redemption and full harmony (Rom 8:22). Therefore, creation has a cosmic dimension in close harmony with our surroundings. Or, as the Vatican II document, Gaudium et Spes, expresses, “by His incarnation, the Son of God has united Himself in some fashion with every man,” and later on, “the Holy Spirit in a manner known only to God offers to every man the possibility of being associated with this paschal mystery.”23

From these theological principles, well-founded on Scripture, the ecclesial tradition, and the current ordinary and extraordinary magisterium, the cultural and religious expression of different peoples manifest not only the “seeds of the Word” and the “seminal Logos,”24 but also the Paschal Mystery itself, which is welcomed, expressed, and celebrated through their own symbols. These expressions reveal the One-Triune Mystery, and, as Pope Francis declares, following Saint Bonaventure, “the Trinity has left its mark on all creation . . . each creature bears in itself a specifically Trinitarian structure, so real that it could be readily contemplated if only the human gaze were not so partial, dark, and fragile.”25 In reality, today’s challenge is precisely “trying to read reality through a Trinitarian lens.”26 In other words, we need to revisit the Christian tradition through the lens of relationships, connection, and interpenetration, or, as expressed in classical terms, we need to recover the theological dimension of perichoresis in all the spheres of human and ecclesial life. This perception of reality is precisely...