How much harm has the European church caused the indigenous peoples of North America? According to the paper I have been sharing with you recently the answer is a great deal. The American Indians (as the paper refers to them) were not without a deep spirituality when the first Christian missionaries arrived among them to preach the Gospel. But in this life at least this Gospel became for them very bad news as their culture and tribal identities were wiped out leaving them traumatised and confused.

I would suggest that we should critique that missionary effort in two ways: how it was achieved and what it sought to change in the AIs.

First, the missionaries were quite willing to use coercion in their attempts to secure conformity with their interpretation of the good news. For example, in 1883 a Court of Indian Offences was set up on AI reservations in order to eliminate ‘certain of the old heathenish dances’ and to exchange such customs with Christian ‘civilised’ practices. Breaking these rules would result in harsh punishment including the ‘withholding of food rations’ and being locked up for up to six months in prison. Such physical coercion, while ensuring compliance, surely goes against the heart of the gospel of grace. And yet such actions reflected common techniques used over the centuries by the European Christians in their missionary work.

The second critique to be made of the missionaries is that they failed to differentiate between traditional culture and faith. In the example above was it not possible to see that while certain religious aspects of the dancing may have needed to change, the dancing itself was an expression of the indigenous culture and could possibly have been incorporated within their new faith? Much of their spirituality seemed also to be their culture – their emphasis on land and creation, their valuing of wholeness and connectedness between humanity and creation, and their healing techniques of utilising roots, teas/herbs, and drumming. The central focus of the missionaries was firstly to secure the soul’s place in heaven and then in managing the converts’ sin while they remained on earth. Eradicating sinfulness was therefore a key component of what they did but it is clear that they could not differentiate between religious, idolatrous practices and what was merely harmless culture.

An essential element of wellbeing is having a positive and strong identity, but the AIs’ identity was severely damaged by the European missionaries as they sought to do away with their culture and the historical ties to what was for them sacred land. Far from creating within them a positive self-image based on their new ‘faith’, the missionaries, coupled with the colonisers, left the AIs severely damaged as peoples.

Clearly the church – at least in some quarters – has learned a few lessons since that period. But are there examples today of church failing to see the difference between culture and religion?