Re: "Call to the Nations" Speech -- The Blind Leading the Blind Discussion Board

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>
>It is a joy for us to host this gathering of Native
>American peoples in our Temple dedicated to the
>pursuit of peace, reconciliation, and healing of the
>spirit. It is certainly appropriate that this sacred
>space should be used for the purpose of bringing
>diverse peoples together, learning from one another,
>and finding the ground on which we can walk side by
>side.
>
They are Really not interested in bringing diversity together, only if you are not of a conservative nature. Those are not really wanted in the church. They are considered to be disruptive.

>I have wrestled, even more than usual, with what I
>might say tonight. I have tried to imagine that I
>could read widely enough to bring myself up to date on
>the many issues you face, somehow become an instant
>expert on Native American spirituality, and brush up
>on matters of culture and history and tradition. But
>I can do none of those things.
>

I see he is trusting in his own wisdom and knowledge here. If he relied on the Lord, there would have been no problem at all in preparing this talk.

>On a personal basis, I can only speak to you from my
>heart as a white, middle class male, born in an urban
>setting in southern Ontario in Canada and nurtured by
>its loving people, raised most of my life in the
>heartland of the United States, and afforded whatever
>opportunities and privileges come with the education
>and moderate income available to most of us in
>suburban America.
>

Brief bio. OK

>On an official basis, I can only speak as one chosen
>from out of my own humble origins to lead this church
>in the present moment, and to speak with whatever
>collective voice those who have entrusted me with this
>responsibility will permit.

He is not supposed to be speaking for the men that have paced him in his position, except that is all he really has. If he were a prophet, he would be speaking for God, not men.

I cannot speak for each
>person within our community, but perhaps I can say
>some words on behalf of our community. Today, in this
>place that is for us both space and symbol, we create
>new community, as we do each time we assemble here.
>And here, under the canopy that spirals toward the
>heavens, we become more than the sum of our individual
>lives. We become an "us", complete with the
>challenges and opportunities inherent in that becoming.
>
Can't he just speak in plain language? What is with all the poetic speech?

>I was raised in the 1950's, a time when the flickering
>pictures on black and white television screens
>depicted my first images of the Indian people. They
>were the war-painted, feather-laden, bow and arrow
>wielding savages who lined the crest of hills
>throughout the American West as the wagon trains moved
>through the valleys. Soon they would swoop down and
>ravage the heroic settlers conquering the vast new
>frontier.
>

>Or they were the domesticated Tontos, affectionately
>attending to the needs of their cowboy sidekick,
>occasionally galloping in to rescue him from rustlers
>or gunslingers, or accompanying him on deeds of
>derring-do. They introduced the less artsy among us
>to sub-titled movies, as the chief talked around the
>campfire with the other leaders of the tribe, the
>words scrawling across the bottom of the screen.
>

>I was educated during the 1960's and early 1970's,
>when cultural awareness began to creep into university
>curriculums. And so we found ourselves taking African
>American history courses, learning about "Chicano"
>communities, and reading Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
>or Black Elk Speaks. It was a time of internal
>conflicts between the remembered images of our
>childhood television shows and this new picture of the
>Native American people, proud and strong, even
>defiant. We began to hear their stories, see the
>meanings inherent within their legends, and experience
>the collective guilt that came from knowing of their
>physical displacement, the rape of their land, and the
>effort to re-educate them so as to cast off the na�ve
>assumptions of their cultures and traditions.
>

And yet that is exactly what the church has been working on for many years, trying to, and in many cases suceeding, to re-educate the people so they will cast off the restoration heritage. I can saY this from personal witness within the church since 1960. I saw it happening, especially in the early 70's and on.

>I began my work and ministry in the 1970's and 1980's,
>divisive times both in American culture and in the
>church. In those days we sought to minister to the
>Indian people because we believed we had a unique
>connection with them. That connection was founded on
>the weavings of sacred writing, myth, and tradition
>within a movement that embraces as part of its
>scriptural canon a book that speaks of the ministry of
>Jesus Christ on the American continent prior to the
>arrival of the Europeans.

Notice he does not say that he embraces the Book of Mormon, Only that the movement at that time did. Also note how he interjected some loaded words there along with sacred writings. He added myth and fable.

The proper use of the Book
>of Mormon as sacred scripture has been under wide
>discussion in the 1970's and beyond, in part because
>of long-standing questions about its historicity and
>in part because of perceived theological inadequacies,
>including matters of race and ethnicity.
>

With little faith, it would be difficult to reconcile the truth of the Book of Mormon against what modern scholars say. I am sorry that he has such little faith that he does not even recognize that there are no inadequacies in it.

>Those concerns were directly related to what the
>church has often called its "Mission to the
>Lamanites," the term in the Book of Mormon often
>applied indiscriminately to all Native American
>peoples. While commendable in its spirit, the
>missionary efforts were severely compromised by the
>language of the Book of Mormon itself, where it
>depicts the "Lamanites" as having been cursed because
>of their unfaithfulness and iniquity: "Wherefore, as
>they were white, and exceedingly fair and delightsome,
>the Lord God caused a skin of blackness to come upon
>them that they might not be enticing to my people."
>(II Nephi 4:35)
>
Too bad he never really heard the testimonies of the Native American people that embraced the Book of Mormon as soon as they read it, because they recognized it as their book.

>We cannot mask with theological apologetics or
>cultural acrobatics the inadequate and destructive
>consequences of language such as that. Whatever our
>view of the Book of Mormon may be, we must purge from
>our consciousness any notion that the color of
>people's skin is an indicator of their worthiness, or
>that white skin is "delightsome" while black or brown
>skin is "loathsome." While good people made
>substantial effort to move beyond the folklore and
>language of the book, it was very difficult to form an
>outreach program of ministry around such an
>understanding in a time of increased sensitivity to
>culture and language.
>
And yet, those that really embrace the Book of Mormon have had no problem bringing it to the people it was written for. They come, they show, and it is accepted.

>That effort in the 1970's and 1980's was but an
>extension of a long history of efforts to reach out to
>the Lamanite people and bring them to Christ. In the
>earliest months of the church's organization in 1830
>Oliver Cowdery was called to "go unto the Lamanites,
>and preach my gospel unto them; and inasmuch as they
>receive thy teachings, thou shalt cause my church to
>be established among them." (Doctrine and Covenants
>27:3a-b) The city of Zion was prophesied to be built
>"on the borders by the Lamanites" (Doctrine and
>Covenants 27:3d) and it was promised that "the
>Lamanites shall blossom as the rose" just as "Zion
>shall flourish upon the hills, and rejoice upon the
>mountains." (Doctrine and Covenants 49:5a-b)
>
Interesting that he would refer to a verse that speaks of a literal city, to be built right in that spot, when today they teach communities of Zion wherever you are. It is too bad that Oliver did not do as commanded. He did not go immediately to this land he was commanded to. He took side trips along the way. Had he gone straight to Independence, he would have found three Native Americans looking for their book. They had travelled from what is now the state of Washington, looking for the book. They did not find it, because Oliver had not gone as commanded.

>This co-mingling of images connecting Native Americans
>and Zion, while rife with theological and cultural
>problems, may have the potential to ultimately provide
>us a foundation on which to build. It would be well
>for us to inquire as to what it means for Native
>Americans to "blossom as the rose" and for Zion to
>"flourish upon the hills" in a twenty-first century
>global society. This is the time in which the church
>is called to peacemaking and reconciliation and in
>which we declare ourselves to be the "Community of
>Christ," acknowledging we have much to learn about how
>to do that. It is for us to renew our church's dream
>of Zion and to express it in contemporary terms that
>touch the hearts of people around the world. Perhaps
>we can explore the ways in which Native American
>cultures can contribute to that dream from out of the
>uniquely spiritual heritage which is theirs.
>But before doing so, we must speak truth in search of
>wholeness. Throughout this weekend we have heard
>cries for acknowledgment, sometimes choked out through
>sobbing voices, sometimes expressed with indignation,
>sometimes unspoken but layered into the hurts and
>memories of life experience. It is, in Christian
>parlance, a call for confession, without which there
>cannot be forgiveness, a call for acknowledgement,
>without which there cannot be reconciliation.
>
He needs to clean his own house before he tries to clean the world. You lose a lot of credibility when you cannot even right the wrongs done within the past few decades and yet speak as if you can do so for wrongs committed by the world over centuries.

>I will not deny that such calls often engender
>defensive responses or carefully-crafted replies. It
>is hard to apologize for that which one does not feel
>he or she personally did. It is hard to acknowledge
>one's participation in systemic repression or in sin
>which extends over centuries, and thereby emerges from
>a time when one did not even live. It is also hard to
>speak for everyone, to be a collective voice, because
>soon we will be reminded that "you do not speak for
>me."
>
How hard would it be to acknowledge and apologize for the sins that you were involved in, just in the very recent past? Again I say, clean your own house before you look to the rest of the world.

>All of this is hard, but still we must seek to give
>voice to that which causes division between us, to
>remove the barriers that keep us from being brothers
>and sisters. Our scriptural tradition reminds us of
>the importance of self-knowledge before judgement, as
>we read in Matthew: "Or how can you say to your
>neighbor, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,'
>while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite,
>first take the log out of your own eye, and then you
>will see clearly to take the speck out of your
>neighbor's eye." (Matthew 7:4-5 NRSV)
>
He needs to heed this advice himself. Start by rescinding the illegal silencings done in the 80's and 90's and sure to continue once more.

>The church is the body of Christ, which exists solely
>for the purpose of extending into the present time the
>ministries of Jesus. The church was charged with
>continuing the message which was embodied in the life
>of Jesus as he walked the earth. We become his body,
>called to live as he would live, do as he would do.
>The popular culture has simplistically adopted the
>phrase, "What would Jesus do?" and put WWJD on
>bracelets and t-shirts. Historical critics quickly
>explained that we cannot really know what Jesus would
>do, because this passage or that event is questionable
>in terms of its authenticity. And in the midst of the
>over-simplification and the over-complication people
>twist in the wind, awaiting a word of hope from those
>who would be the body of Christ.
>
Where exactly does Grant stand here? He speaks of the body of Christ, but which Christ does he speak of? The man that lived and died and taught us good lesson? That Christ?

>We must be reminded that the central message of the
>Christian faith is that Jesus died for sins he did not
>commit. The journey to the cross was a lonely one and
>Jesus cried out in anguish for understanding, even for
>his own understanding. But he went to the cross that
>we might have life and life eternal. And now we are
>his body. What would Jesus do?
>
Jesus did not cry out for His own understanding. Jesus knew every event and the purpose for every event. This is humanizing Jesus Christ.

>The story of Native peoples has been chronicled with
>eloquence and passion this weekend. It is a story of
>a deeply spiritual tradition that carries within it
>many, if not all, of the principles long ago embraced
>by the Christian faith. If expressed in a variety of
>cultural forms, invoking a spirit world not well
>understood by those of us with European roots, it
>still embraces the heart and soul of the ministry of
>Jesus. All cultures reflect their values imperfectly,
>and so it is with Native Americans. We do not speak
>of the perfect embodiment of values but of the
>inherent meanings that are at the core of who we are.
>But the legacy of history is undeniable. A people who
>believed we are one with the land were exploited by
>those who believed land is property to be bought and
>sold. A people who believed that animals are
>relatives who teach us much about ourselves watched as
>the buffalo were slaughtered and left to rot on the
>prairies. A people who believed that the trees and
>the plants are the gifts of the earth to be used with
>thanksgiving witnessed the defoliation of forests and
>the strip mining of lands set aside for nurture. A
>people who believed that space is sacred and that it
>is visited by ancestors and becomes a source of
>spiritual knowledge experienced the desecration of
>sacred places and the loss of ancestral meaning.
>

They came to this belief because of their lost heritage, that of the Book of Mormon.

>And now the legacy is seen in the tragic demographics
>of contemporary life. Native Americans have the
>second lowest life expectancy of any population in
>this hemisphere. One-third live below the poverty
>level, deaths linked to alcoholism are over five times
>the national rate, teen suicide is 70% higher than the
>U.S. population, and unemployment exceeds 50% on
>reservations. The cycle of poverty, lack of
>education, drug and alcohol dependency, and bitterness
>about past and present realities create a people
>living on the margins, and seemingly unable to escape.
>As products of our own people and culture, we must
>acknowledge our culpability in the vast mosaic of
>abuse, violence, disinterest, and insensitivity that
>has marked the experience of Native peoples in
>America. We are inheritors of a history that was
>exploitive and destructive to Native peoples, and
>thereby exploitive and destructive to the souls of all
>of us. We have benefited indirectly from choices made
>by previous generations that now weigh heavily on the
>shoulders of our brothers and sisters among Native
>Americans. We still participate in choices that allow
>the repression and neglect to continue.
>

>As a church called to be the community of Christ, we
>must acknowledge our own failure to respect and honor
>the culture and lives of Native peoples. We were
>well-meaning in our efforts to share the gospel of
>Jesus Christ, but we had not seen the log in our own
>eye. In doing so, we were grievously ethnocentric,
>seeking to drape the central message of the gospel of
>Jesus Christ with culturally-driven assumptions that
>did not recognize the spirit of God already at work
>among Native peoples. We did not mean to hurt, but we
>did. We were sometimes blinded by our fears and our
>ignorance. We remain products of our respective pasts
>and to the extent it is humanly possible we express
>our sorrow and regret that we were not more sensitive
>to the enormous contribution Native people can make to
>the fulfillment of our visions and dreams.
>
Apologies once more, and yet somehow he misses the point. These people are here because God brought them here. This is their inheritance. This is their land, and the Book of Mormon is their book.

TO BE CONTINUED

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