wfn.org | Speaker calls for truth and reconciliation commission

["Daphne Martin_Gnanadason" <Daphne.Martin_Gnanadason@warc.ch>]

Uniting General Council 2010                                    

>News Release 
>22 June 2010

Speaker calls for truth and reconciliation commission
By Jerry Van Marter, UGC correspondent

A renowned Native American leader today appealed to the
newly-created World Communion of Reformed Churches to establish a
truth and reconciliation-like commission to “seek ways to make
restitution to tribal people” for the churches’ complicity in
“co-opting the Bible as a tool of colonialism and imperialism”
in North America over the last 400 years.

Richard Twiss, a Lakota/Sioux originally from South Dakota and
now living near Portland, Ore., said such a commission —
comprised of indigenous people from North America and the global
South — is necessary to overcome “cowboy theology,” which he said
has perpetuated “a distinct evangelical bias against Native and
indigenous culture and ways.”

The “demonizing” of Native religious expressions means that
“most (Native American) people reject Christianity because
they consider it a white man’s religion,” Twiss said, “and it
breaks my heart because Jesus is the hope of the world in all its
brokenness.”

Twiss, who became Christian in 1974 while in the depths of drug
and alcohol addiction, said “following Jesus started out very
simple … but then becoming a Christian became very complicated”
as institutionalized churches insisted that Native American
cultural and religious expressions were unacceptable. “I had to
change my clothes, cut my hair, play different musical
instruments — just a drum wasn’t good enough anymore. We were
never allowed and never learned to contextualize the gospel in
our culture,” he said. 

The story of Native American suppression “is the worst
occurrence of ethnic cleansing and genocide in the history of the
world,” Twiss said. War and disease reduced the Native population
in North America from some 50 million in 1400 to barely 230,000
in 1895. “But, perhaps what makes the story most tragic is that
so much of this was the result of the misappropriation of the
biblical narrative that was co-opted as a tool of colonial
imperialism.” 

But Twiss sees signs of hope in the emerging missiological model
called “missio Dei” (“mission of God”), which, he said, “points
to the radical communal nature of God” rather than focusing on
the institutional nature of the church. “God’s very nature is
missionary. It is not primarily about the propagation or
transmission of intellectual convictions, doctrines, moral
commands,” he said, “but rather about the inclusion of all
creation in God’s overflowing, superabundant life of communion.”

In “missio Dei,” Twiss said, “indigenous people find a place of
identity, belonging, value, peace, justice and affirmation —
Shalom. Can we re-imagine a new or changed future where people
are living out their faith in Jesus in light … together as fellow
learners and co-equal participants in the life, work and mission
of Jesus?”

The Uniting General Council 2010 in Grand Rapids, United States
(June 18-28) marks the merger of the World Alliance of Reformed
Churches and the Reformed Ecumenical Council to form the World
Communion of Reformed Churches. 

>Contact: Kristine Greenaway
>Executive Secretary, Communications
>World Communion of Reformed Churches

UGC News Room – Calvin College - Hoogenboom Center Room HC 204
Cell phone: 1-616-826-5540 or 1-616-826-8636
News Room: 1-616-526-7885
email: kgr@warc.ch
web: www.reformedchurches.org (
http://www.reformedchurches.org/#_blank )