The Practice of Native American Christianity

Abstract

The fields of Native American religious traditions and American religious history have reached something of a shared critical juncture. Although there has been a long standing scholarly interest on writing about missions to Native Americans from a variety of viewpoints, recent years have seen the publication of a number of fresh considerations of the diversity and texture of Native American Christianity—or better, native Christianities. Native communities have long woven the stories, signs, and practices of the Christian tradition into the fabric of their lifeways, in rich and resourceful ways, even under the direst of colonizing circumstances. But only recently has scholarship begun to take this fuller texture into account: most recently, Native and Christian (1996), edited by James Treat; Native American Religious Identity (1998), edited by Jace Weaver; Sergei Kan's Memory Eternal: Tlingit Culture and Russian Orthodox Christianity through Two Centuries; Clara Sue Kidwell's Choctaws and Missionaries; and Christopher Vecsey's multivolume study of the varieties of native Catholicism, of which volume two, The Paths of Kateri's Kin (1998), is of most interest here. This recent scholarship reflects new perspectives of native scholars entering the field and more publications that anthologize a range of native Christian viewpoints into single volumes. It has also to do with more sustained accountability among normative scholars to native communities and the way that consultants in those communities imagine their religious lives.

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“…Some AI Christians—who often worship in liturgically oriented churches such as the Episcopal Church—also participate in these rites. Indeed, scholars have noted that ownership of both native practices and the Christian tradition has increased, and recent years have seen a narrative shift “away from missionaries and their intentions to what native peoples made of the Christian tradition” (McNally 2000:835).…”