Welcome to home in my heart, KB Schaller. Please tell my readers about the Native American Christian Church and your books.
It is a pleasure to be a guest on your website. Thank you for having me. I appreciate the opportunity to comment on the surprise many express that there is such a thing as the Native American Christian Church (NACC). It is not, however, to be confused with the Native American Church, which incorporates practices not found in the NACC.
In South Florida, where the state’s greatest concentration of Native Americans live, there are at least nine Native churches. In Oklahoma, by contrast, home to a much greater number of Native peoples, there are some two hundred fifty churches. Only an estimated three to eight percent of Native Americans identify as Christian, so congregations tend to be small.
Notwithstanding, most are vibrant, thriving entities. Native Americans traditionally are spiritual people, and that quality carries over into their Christianity. Although not all of the congregations have Native pastors, a good percentage of them do.
Mainstream Christian churches have, traditionally, tended to be quite Euro-centric, disallowing and labeling all things Native as pagan and occult.
Lately, though, Native ministries such as Wiconi International have sought to strip away the “demonizing” of any and all things Indian, including clothing, native instruments, and hair length restrictions for men.
Others such as Lakota (Sioux)-based He Sapa (New Life) ministry are increasingly led by “homegrown” Native Americans concerned with both the spiritual and temporal lives of Native people.
In fact, it is the unbending attitudes within the Euro-
centric church that fuel the angst of my novel’s characters in Gray Rainbow Journey,winner of a USA Book News National Best Books Award, and its sequel, Journey by the Sackcloth Moon.
Both story lines describe the tough choices that heroine, Dina Youngblood, a young Native beauty, must make between the Traditional Spirituality of her heritage and The Jesus Way. Her life is further complicated by her love for childhood sweetheart, handsome firebrand, Marty Osceola. Reared by the most feared shaman on the Florida East Coast and reputed to have dark powers of his own, he regards Dina’s new faith as a “sellout”.
Then there is zealous Native evangelist, Aaron Burning Rain, also smitten with Dina, who brings his big tent revival to Dina’s tiny Native community and preaches no compromise between the two belief systems. Poised on the threshold between the two worlds, she must make heart wrenching choices.While some mainstream Christian churches embrace Mark 9:40, “For he that is not against us is on our part”, others remain entrenched against anything that does not reflect Euro interpretations of Scripture.
I can only hope that all factions will one day move closer toward Galatians 3:28:
“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.”
Thank you for this enlightening post. I love learning something new.
Visit K.B Schaller on her website.
Visit K.B Schaller on her website.
