Creating Christian Indians: Native Clergy in the Presbyterian Church by Lewis, Bonnie Sue (2003) Hardcover

by Bonnie Sue Lewis

Histories of missions to American Indian communities usually tell a sad and predictable story about the destructive impact of missionary work on Native culture and religion. Many historians conclude that American Indian tribes who have maintained a cultural identity have done so only because missionaries were unable to destroy it. In "Creating Christian Indians," Bonnie Sue Lewis relates how the Nez Perce and the Dakota Indians became Presbyterians yet incorporated Native culture and tradition into their new Christian identities. Lewis focuses on the rise of Native clergy and their forging of Christian communities based on American Indian values and notions of kinship and leadership. Originally, mission work among the Nez Perces and Dakotas revolved around white missionaries, but Christianity truly took root in nineteenth-century American Indian communities with the ordination of Indian clergy. Native pastors saw in Christianity a universal message of hope and empowerment. Educated and trained within their own communities, Native ministers were able to preach in their own languages. They often acted as cultural brokers between Indian and white societies, shaping Native Presbyterianism and becoming recognized leaders in both tribal and Presbyterian circles.In 1865 the Presbyterian Church ordained John B. Renville as the first Dakota Indian minister, and in 1879 Robert Williams became the first ordained Nez Perce. By 1930, nearly forty Dakotas, sixteen Nez Perces, a Spokane, and a Makah had been ordained. Lewis has mined church and archival records, including letters from Native ministers, to reveal ways in which early Indian pastors left a heritage of committed Presbyterian congregations and a vibrant spiritual legacy among their descendants.

Hardcover

First published April 1, 2003

Reviews

[Daniel Kleven · Rating 5 out of 5]

I checked out this book after coming across a fascinating figure--Artemas Ehnamani, the second ordained Dakota clergy in the Presbyterian church. Ehnamani was ordained in 1867 (following the first ordained Dakota pastor, John Renville, in 1865). Ehnamani's son Frances Frazer, and his grandson Phillip Frazier would also go into ordained ministry, and this story is at the heart of so many things that interest me -- religion, race, Minnesota, missions, culture, translation, "boundaries," and "bridge-builders."

I suspect that when most people think of "Indian missions" they adopt a simplistic framework. Committed Christians might think that Christian missions is by default noble and good; most scholars and popular culture assume Christianity was a devastating force, part of "kill the Indian, save the man," including the legacy of boarding schools, destruction of Indian cultures, and the overall project of settler-colonialism in America.

Lewis's book is fascinating because it puts in center stage a set of people that have often been overlooked: the Christian Indians themselves. Considered "sellouts" to the white man's religion on one hand, yet never accepted by the norms of whiteness on the other, these figures lived in a liminal space, in-between two powerful cultural forces at a time of great upheaval. The accounts were fascinating to read.

The book focuses on Presbyterian missions among two main groups, the Dakota (mainly in Minnesota) and the Nez Perce (in the Pacific northwest). I was most interested in the Dakota, being literally close to home, but the whole account was instructive.

Throughout the course of the book, some of the white missionaries come off exceedingly well, others poorly, and most as a mix. The same with Indian pastors--though their conduct was not analyzed as much through a moral lens as an analytic one, as to how they navigated competing cultural claims. Two figures that I would love to follow up include more study of Ehnamani, and his white counterpart John Williamson, "A Brother to the Sioux," a second generation missionary who grew up among the Dakota, and who modeled a ministry of mutuality, identification, and partnership with them, rather than hierarchy.

The book draws on deep archival research, letters, denominational records, and includes a number of pictures that are a wonderful addition to the book. It pairs well with another related book: Conflicted Mission: Faith, Disputes, and Deception on the Dakota Frontier

I walked away from this book with fewer broad-brush labels, and a lot more particulars--the stuff that real history is made of. Highly recommend.

[Donald Linnemeyer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great topic and solid execution. Bonnie Sue Lewis offers the story of the Presbyterian Church among American Indians, specifically of the Nez Perce and Dakota tribes. The story is complex, and Lewis is aware of all the nuances going on. I just wish she had gone into more depth in a few areas, specifically in regards to official Presbyterian policies of the era and the reasoning behind them. What she had was good; I just wish there was more.