Indigenous Missions

“This Gospel shall be preached to every nation, kindred, people, and in every tongue, and then the end will come.” (Mat. 24:14 / Rev. 7:9)

While an extraordinary amount of financial and human capital has been invested in the harvest of indigenous mission-fields around the world, it has often come at the cost of a Gospel that was never appropriately contextualized or satisfactorily comprehended by its intended audience. And while missionaries have defended and continue to defend historical methods of conveying the Gospel, as from a colonial point of view, the results are often the same. And this can now be seen as a compounding tragedy, as the intended audience, while often having a prophetic tradition of a future redeemer, were patronized as being primitive or “uncivilized”, which left little room for theological discussion, much less collaboration. This in its own way is is doubly unfortunate, as the composition of many indigenous languages revolved around a spiritual cosmology much older and far more complex than that of Christianity. And this issue continues to have some relevance, as the Indigenous worldview has often left translators at a loss for words, literally. Ironically, in the process of proselytizing the heathen the church in many ways became the victim of its own conceit. And, in its complicity in the destruction of many of the world’s earliest languages through its mission schools, it systematically eliminated the means for the Gospel’s natural transmission through indigenous languages. Not only was this a loss for human knowledge, but it impeded the spread of the Gospel throughout indigenous communities, as Natives were effectively deprived of the only means at their disposal for fulfilling the Great Commission.

As a result, what little remains of these same languages is now almost entirely devoid of its earlier theological composition. Yet, contrary to the trend there have exceptions. As in Alaska for instance, where Father Veniaminov of the early Russian Orthodox Church undertook the herculean task of biblical translation into a number of Alaska Native languages. Likewise, so too did the Anglican Church of Canada, when it appointed the Archdeacon Robert McDonald, a mixed-blood Ojibwa, to Fort McPherson, Yukon Territory in the year 1862. And who, with the assistance of certain Kutchin leaders, developed a phonetic language called Takud’h, through which the Bible, The Book of Common Prayer and the Hymnal were translated. The Takud’h Bible then, as it came to be known, has since been recognized as a gem among biblical translations, as it reads with a clarity and nuance rarely encountered. And taken from the perspective of an ancient and deeply spiritual people, to read the Bible in Takud’h is a little like taking off a pair of sunglasses in a dimly lit room, as if someone had turned the light on, with passages rendered in living color, rather than the black and white of common print, and so clearly that the scriptures take on a life of their own.

In either case, whether it was the work of the Russian Orthodox Church in Southeast Alaska, or the efforts of the Anglican Church among the Arctic Gwich’in, not only was the Word translated directly into the Indigenous vernacular, but it was done through the efforts of divinely inspired missionaries, working in conjunction with the Native people themselves. In the Russia Orthodox Church, due to the inevitable predominance of Native clergy and their corresponding missionary work, an Indigenous synergy took place, resulting in the Alaskan Orthodox Church during the territorial period being referred to as simply The Native Church. In a similar fashion, the same can be said for the Gwich’in Church of the Canadian Yukon and NE Alaska. With the Anglican Church providing little more than a supporting role, and with a hands off approach to what they referred to as “a move of God”, it’s singular history could be likened to another chapter of Acts, with shamans and hereditary chiefs voluntary converting to Christianity, many becoming apostles themselves.