Rescuing the Gospel from the Cowboys: A Native American Expression of the Jesus Way
IVP, Downers Grove, Illinois 2015
Review by John D Wilson
I finished reading this short but challenging book while on a ministry trip in Papua.
Here is why Rescuing the Gospel struck me as significant, but also a challenge to read. Canadians and Americans perhaps will feel this as it focuses mainly on the American colonization of North America with some allusions to the Canadian context. It gives a sketch of the history of the Native American encounter with the expanding white nation, driven as it was by a sense of divine justice, even mandate ("manifest destiny") in converting the "savages" to their Post-Enlightenment ways in which their philosophy and gospel blurred into one grandiose vision of western civilization as the new Christendom.
As a non-American it is impossible for me to know how North Americans reading this would feel. However, it is an eye-opener to the injustices, inhumanity, and arrogance of the approach. In some ways it reminded me of the forced conversions and conquests which took place under force of arms of the conquistadors, which horrified me when I studied that sad period in the history of the expansion of Christianity.
The final question it leaves is why did they have to wait 500 years for this? That long wait means that some of the opposition comes from Native American Christians who still believe and righteously guard the un-culturally relevant presentation of the gospel, worship in foreign ways, and sing old western hymns translated decades ago.
As I put the book down, GIDI in Papua, Indonesia was celebrating their 53rd anniversary in a number of centers and countless churches across Indonesia. At the event we attended in a soccer stadium in Wamena, every song sung had been composed by Papuans and more were sung in tribal languages than in Indonesian. Some of the speakers spoke in Indonesian, the trade language, which crosses the numerous language barriers in Papua; but some spoke and prayed in their own heart language (See article on page 2).
Besides this, there was a drama led by men and women dressed as they were when the first missionaries arrived, and several worship dance teams performed. The main offering from the people was truckloads of fruit and vegetables which were sold for thousands of dollars!
I could not help thinking on the difference between the 50 plus years for the Papuans and the 500 years for the Native Americans. And during the following week I sat with several young men and one young lady discussing contextual issues they themselves raised!
Rescuing the Gospel from the Cowboys is not an easy book for western logic or for our inherited worldview, but I think this is a good challenge for any of us, and a reminder that we are blind to our own worldview and do not easily recognize how much the Christianity we know is wearing old western clothes.
