Task force acts to sharpen focus on native spirituality
1/30/2001 News media contact: Linda Green · (615) 742-5470 · Nashville, Tenn
NOTE: A photograph will be available.
TULSA, Okla. (UMNS) - Spirituality is the common thread that Native Americans share regardless of the tribe or nation to which they belong.
Although that spirituality is expressed differently, members of a United Methodist task force believe that credence must be given to how native people express the Christian faith. The church's Native American Comprehensive Plan (NACP) will give particular attention to that topic for the next four years.
Meeting Jan. 26-28, the task force members said they will explore the contributions that native cultures, spiritual expression and values can make to the mission of the United Methodist Church during the 2001-2004 quadrennium. NACP members believe the past four years have been marked by a decline of the culture and spirituality among native people in the United Methodist Church as well as throughout the country.
Created by the 1992 General Conference, the NACP emphasizes Native American spirituality, congregational and leadership development, and involvement in the life of the United Methodist Church. The denomination has 19,000 Native Americans among its 8.4 million U.S. members
The 2000 General Conference authorized a change in the task force's membership to enable a broader spectrum of grass-roots Native Americans to participate in the plan's policy and decision-making procedures. General Conference, the denomination's legislative assembly, also removed voting rights for church agency staff people and the Council of Bishops representative, and gave voting privileges to American Indian members from each of the church's five geographic areas in the United States.
The new members bring creative ways of looking at what the plan has done in the past four years and will rejuvenate areas that have been lagging, according to Ann Saunkeah, a Cherokee from Tulsa, Okla., and executive director of the plan. The task force has 31 members -- 19 voting and 12 nonvoting.
"With more grass-roots involvement, my vision as executive director is to continue working with faith and vigor to ensure that native ministries flourish in the United Methodist Church," she said. "We have so much to offer to the church and to each other because of our diversity and cultures. Our differences can enhance every aspect of the denomination."
Native people in the United States represent 554 federally recognized tribes or nations and a significant number of state-recognized tribes, all with distinct languages, cultures, history, religious traditions and economic bases.
"For nearly 500 years, native Christians have been expressing their love for God in creative and meaningful ways," Saunkeah said, as she outlined recommendations to assist the task force in its work. "We must begin to trust our heritage in all of its diversity. Our cultures are distinct, but they are equally valid. The Gospel does not lose potency when shared from a native tradition."
A 1990 Census report estimated that 1.9 million American Indians live within the boundaries of the church's 65 U.S. annual conferences, and more than 60 percent live in urban areas. The denomination has more than 200 Native American churches, ministries and fellowships in the country, and 28 are in urban areas. Statistics report that American Indians represent a rapidly growing population within the United States. Although their roots are deeply connected to tribal communities, more than 60 percent of Native Americans live and work in urban areas.
Oklahoma, with 49 tribes, has the largest concentration of American Indians in the United States. In the United Methodist Church, many of them reside in the Oklahoma Indian Missionary Conference, which has 7,500 members and 91 congregations. Native American United Methodists, ministries and fellowships can be found from the tip of Florida to Alaska, and the denomination has large populations of American Indian members in North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Mississippi, Arizona, New Mexico and California.
"Our commonality among all the nations in this United States is our spirituality, and we view spirituality differently," said the Rev. Kenneth Deere, a staff executive at the churchwide Commission on Religion and Race in Washington and a member of the Muscogee tribe. "Our spirituality brought us this far because racism is still here in the church. We need to sensitize, educate and try to change the behavior and attitude of the United Methodist Church with our spirituality because our ancestors were carried by the spiritual life, the spiritual way and the spiritual culture to bring us this far."
While native people and tribes view spirituality differently, task force members said the United Methodist Church has stereotyped Native Americans by lumping them together and stating that they view spirituality in one way.
"We are all different, but the church puts us into the same bowl," Deere said.
During the meeting, several members took umbrage at the number of gurus and so-called experts who are commercializing and profiting from elements of native spirituality.
"Too many in the nation are trying to do Native American spirituality for us," said the Rev. Kenneth Locklear, executive director of the Southeastern Jurisdictional Agency for Native American Ministries in Lake Junaluska, N.C. "There is a movement out there and people became aware of some spiritual things associated with us, and people who have no idea about it read books and said, 'We can make money off of this.'
"If anybody should be defining it or promoting it, we should; not just the NACP but all Indians should be involved in the process," said Locklear, a member of the Lumbee tribe.
As a way to draw a wide number of people into the process of defining spirituality, the NACP's spirituality committee requested that the Office of Research of the churchwide General Council on Ministries, in cooperation United Methodist Communications, develop and implement a survey of native people. The survey, which would cover people inside and outside the church, would identify how native people view spirituality and what cultural expressions they use.
"We need to have people to understand who native people are because so much has been taken from us," said the Rev. Marv Abrams, a Seneca and pastor of Native American United Methodist Church of Southern California in Anaheim. "Other cultures have taken our spiritual elements, practices and symbols and say that all Indians do the same thing."
Noting that native spirituality has historical ties to Christianity, the NACP's spirituality committee affirmed that American Indians have always had an awareness of a higher being, a creator.
"We had our burning bush with God," Locklear said. "We know this because of our orally handed-down stories."
The committee compared the Bible's creation stories to native people's creation stories. "We realize that each of our stories are different but they contain elements or gold threads of how the world came to be," said Patricia "Dee Dee" Odden, a member of the Aleut-Yup'ik tribe in Willow, Alaska. "The conclusions tell how the world and humans came to be."
During the business session, the task force elected officers: the Rev. David Wilson (Choctaw), Oklahoma City, chairman; Patricia "Dee Dee" Odden (Aleut-Yup'ik), Willow, Alaska, vice chairwoman; Daphine Strickland (Lumbee/Cheraw), Jamestown, N.C., secretary; and the Rev. Carla Sineway (Saginaw Chippewa), Mt. Pleasant, Mich., finance chairwoman. Dennis Demmert, (Tlingit) Juneau, Alaska, was selected as parliamentarian.
In other action, the NACP: · Requested the GCOM Office of Research collect data about native populations in Albuquerque, N.M., Green Bay, Wis., Raleigh, N.C., Denver, Portland, Ore., Detroit, Philadelphia and the High Plains to determine the feasibility of developing native ministries in those areas. The plan wants to develop 10 new churches, fellowships or ministries in the 2001-2004 quadrennium. · Approved a $25,000 grant to begin a new church in the Raleigh, N.C., area. · Approved a $25,000 grant to begin a new urban ministry in Albuquerque. · Decided to develop a resource directory of Native Americans with expertise in different areas of ministry. · Decided to concentrate efforts on getting equitable salaries and compensation for native pastors to retain native clergy in native ministries. · Decided to plan a lay speaking school for spring 2002 that will focus on youth and reservation ministries.
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