Native American archbishop a source of pride
By John Lamb
For David “Doc” Brien, from the Turtle Mountain Reservation, it was worth the four-plus-hour drive.
“I consider him one of our great chiefs of the native community, a spiritual leader from the native perspective,” Brien said. “It’s like one of your family members in a way.”
Though Turtle Mountain is a Chippewa tribe and Chaput is a member of the Prairie Band of Potawatomi Tribe, Brien sees the priest as figure for all American Indians.
He believes having such a high-ranking American Indian in the Catholic Church attracts other American Indians to the faith.
American Indian Southern Baptist leaders will meet for The Gathering to consider ways to help American Indians connect to the Gospel.
By Carla Hinton
Falls said one reason that more American Indians don't turn to Christianity is the Christian faith community's troubled history with American Indian tribes. He said past encounters between Christian missionaries and American Indians have left a legacy of suspicion in the American Indian community.
"The same Christians who brought us Christianity are the same people who took our land and tried to take away our culture, so it's understandable," Falls said. "I'm presenting it not as an accusation, but it is a barrier."
He said he grew up in a Christian household because his father converted to Christianity. However, Falls said he encountered the doubt and suspicion of Christianity when he met other American Indians while attending the University of Central Oklahoma.
He said some American Indians he encountered considered Christianity to be a "white man's religion."
Moreover, many Indians blend Christianity with their Native religions. Do Christian churches count them all as Christians? Probably not, but they should count for the sake of this argument.
Fischer has implied Indians are avoiding Christianity because they're too dumb and blind to see its benefits. But a sizable minority of them are Christians. So the thing Fischer can't imagine happening has already happened.
Rather than fantasizing the value of Christianity, why doesn't Fischer do the research? Compare the health and wealth of Christian Indians to non-Christians after controlling for things like gaming revenues, access to jobs and healthcare, and so forth. Fischer believes the Christian Indians will be better off; I'm guessing there'll be no difference.
Christians violate 10 Commandments
Unlike Fischer, Falls understands what the problem is. So does everyone who's ever talked to or read about Indians, including schoolchildren. It's not that Indians are too cowardly or superstitious to embrace the "light." It's that they hate Christians for their long history of lies and hypocrisy. For stealing their land and killing them in violation of Jesus's commandments.
How stupid do you have to be not to understand this? The first colonizers brought diseases with them, squatted illegally on Indian land, enslaved some of the Indians they found, and forcibly tried to convert others to Christianity. Fischer wouldn't accept that and neither would any other Euro-American. Why does the idiot think Indians should've accepted it?
For more on the subject, see Fischer: Indians Were Thieves and Fischer: Indians Should Emulate Pocahontas.
Below: "I pray that God will dispose of the Indians in our way," said the good Christian Pilgrim to himself. "If not, we'll have to dispose of them ourselves in about 15 years."
Fischer, well...A Nazi by any other name would reek just as much of chemical weapons.
ReplyDeleteI must be missing something here. Where is it carved in stone that Christianity is good for anyone at all?
ReplyDeleteWhen it gets to the point that Christians are divided against each other and Christianity itself comes in the form of Jim Jones, David Koresh, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, how does one distinguish Christ teachings in any of these men?
I was raised Baptist Pentecostal and never felt any connection to God from this form of Christianity. It was divisive, bigoted, racist and discriminatory towards the poor. Today, I see Christianity as a form of government with bureaucracy, profit, and materialism all in a cohesive effort to exact wealth here on earth using the afterlife and guilt as weapons of conformity.
Especially after seeing how the Catholic Church mishandled and expanded pedopilia and then was pardoned through political and monetary bribery.
There are many non-believers and athiest that show more humanity and wisdom over religious zeals that have something to sell and expect good intentions to reward them when they pass on, even when those good intentions keep suffering continuous and go against everything we know to be moral and sane.
Religion takes a great idea and perverses it to the opposite ends.
I don't need religion to make my heart feel, my eyes open, my mind clear or my soul at peace.