Evangelizing to Native Peoples: Orthodoxy and Protestantism

[_Seraphim_]

Evangelizing to Native Peoples: Contrasting Orthodoxy with American Protestantism
Written by Glen Chancy   
Monday, 19 May 2008


"I think Orthodoxy just has a better embrace of the material world and is not as fearful of certain traditional things being pagan or occultic. Sometimes they are, but a lot of times they’re not. Whereas in the Western Evangelism there was always a rush to judgment."
 
"Does it seem then that Orthodoxy is more comfortable with pre-existing traditions?"
 
"Oh, there’s no question."

"It seems then with Orthodoxy there is more of an emphasis on taking what was there and perfecting it rather than always wholesale remove it."


"...the simple difference between the East and the West in Christianity is that in the West the ultimate object of devotion is a proposition, but in the East it’s a person. So in the Eastern Church there are persons everywhere – icons that we look at, a lot of talk about Angels, and there is a lot of mention of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We have prayers for the people who are departed. It’s very people-centered and quite peopled everywhere.
 
"Whereas in the West it’s all about propositions and rational statements and building your Theological and philosophical arguments off this, that and the other. In the West, when they come to a people group what they are really trying to get them to do is to assent to some propositions.
 
"So you have a lot of focus on the book, and the propositions that are written in the book, and making sure that you get these people to assent to these propositions.
And in the East, they go into a people group and the focus is on the people. 'How can we make your life better?' 'How can we allow you as people to be in better relationship to the key person which is God and who is also the three persons the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?' So it’s all a relational emphasis on the surrounding persons. In the West its more rational."

[Keble]

One should point out that the only places in the USA that are majority Episcopalian are reservations, or that we have a bishop of Navaholand. The Presbyterians, on the other hand, converted the majority of (south anyway) Koreans. I also find his platitudinous comparison of East and West preposterous.

[Quinault]

Define "Native peoples" please. Native to the US?

[Kav]

'Native peoples' is a politicaly correct and worldly way of saying 'the people who were there first and present either an inconvenience or opportunity to further our selfish goals of personal enrichment via resources, human labour, strategic geographic dominance or cultural assimilation.

If a mormon missionary knocks on your door after you bought some AMWAY dishwater detergent from a member in his stake, you are a native.

The simplest way to understand Orthodoxy and missionary work is to look at history. The Apostles were missionaries, and Pax Romana the natives. What was the impact?

Skipping a few years, Saint Hermann brought Orthodoxy to Alaska. I was gifted with a visit to his small island home many years before my own conversion. The history of russian Alaska
isn't soft sea otter pelts and samovars, but one of enslavement and murder of the native peoples. One monk was the ONLY positive example and advocate for native rights.

That the influence of Saint Hermann won out is seen in the spread of Orthodoxy in that state and beyond.
 

[ialmisry]

'Native peoples' is a politicaly correct and worldly way of saying 'the people who were there first and present either an inconvenience or opportunity to further our selfish goals of personal enrichment via resources, human labour, strategic geographic dominance or cultural assimilation.

If a mormon missionary knocks on your door after you bought some AMWAY dishwater detergent from a member in his stake, you are a native.

The simplest way to understand Orthodoxy and missionary work is to look at history. The Apostles were missionaries, and Pax Romana the natives. What was the impact?

Skipping a few years, Saint Hermann brought Orthodoxy to Alaska. I was gifted with a visit to his small island home many years before my own conversion. The history of russian Alaska
isn't soft sea otter pelts and samovars, but one of enslavement and murder of the native peoples. One monk was the ONLY positive example and advocate for native rights.
That the influence of Saint Hermann won out is seen in the spread of Orthodoxy in that state and beyond.
 

Actually, yes, his spirit won out, but no, he was not the only one.

The party of monks, for instance, were placed under house arrest because they complained to the Czar the treatment of the natives, and administered the oath of allegience to the natives, ie. naturalized them, giving them civil rights. St. Innocent and others said it was a pastoral duty to pass information about mistreatment up the hierarchy to report to the Holy Synod and thence to the Czar.  Works on the Pomo Amerindians in CA (near Fort Ross, ie. Russia America) attribute their survival as a culture and as a relatively large tribe as the fact that they were under Russsian protection (the Russian had settled Amerindian refugees, like the Miwok, from the Spanish across SF).  The treaty of sale had guarenteed the "civilized" Amerindians, a promise not kept.  The Tlingit, or as they said "the Orthodox Tlingit chiefs" filed complaint to the President, stating that they knew that the Czar did not "sell us as slaves but gave us some rights which the Congress affirmed." The Russians themselves fared no better from the Americans.  When St. Tikhon arrived, St. Alexander Horovitsky brought his attention immediately to the problems of the natives, and he went personally to AK to attend to them.

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