Christine Jamieson

Now the apostles and the believers who were in Judea heard that the Gentiles had also accepted the word of God. So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him, saying, “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?” Then Peter began to explain it to them, step by step, saying, “I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision. There was something like a large sheet coming down from heaven, being lowered by its four corners; and it came close to me. As I looked at it closely I saw four-footed animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air. I also heard a voice saying to me, ‘Get up, Peter; kill and eat.’  But I replied, ‘By no means, Lord; for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’  But a second time the voice answered from heaven, ‘What God has made clean, you must not call profane.’  This happened three times; then everything was pulled up again to heaven. At that very moment three men, sent to me from Caesarea, arrived at the house where we were.

The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us. These six brothers also accompanied me, and we entered the man’s house.13 He told us how he had seen the angel standing in his house and saying, ‘Send to Joppa and bring Simon, who is called Peter;14 he will give you a message by which you and your entire household will be saved.’ 15 And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at the beginning.16 And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ 17 If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?” 18 When they heard this, they were silenced. And they praised God, saying, “Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.” (Acts 11:1-18)

The account of Peter’s meeting with Gentiles who heard and encountered the Gospel sheds light on the important distinction between on the one hand, hearing the teachings of Jesus Christ and on the other, how those words were received and expressed. One might think of the Gospel as a seed sown in the soil of varied cultures, which received that seed differently in diverse contexts. It is the same Gospel. Yet, when received by diverse peoples, it grows and develops in unique ways. The distinctive fruit of the seed sown (witnessed in the concrete living of the community) adds to a depth of ways of understanding, of communicating, and of living out the New Testament message.

In the third chapter titled “Meaning” of Bernard Lonergan’s book, Method in Theology, he explores different “embodiments” or “carriers” of meaning.(2) He identifies six carriers of meaning; intersubjectivity, intersubjective meaning, art, symbols, linguistic meaning, and incarnate meaning.

The limits of this paper prevent me from providing explanations of these six carriers of meaning, yet there are two that allow us to make sense of the different expressions that emerge from the encounter with Jesus and his teachings: art and incarnate meaning. Art is the carrier of what Lonergan calls “elemental” meaning. Art is the expression of a prior encounter that so inspires the artist (painter, poet, etc.) that the artist is impelled to communicate the encounter in a manner unique to the artist and their culture.

A remarkable example of this phenomenon is contemporary Indigenous Australian artist, Shirley Purdie, who was awarded the 2007 Blake prize for religious art. Her winning piece was an Indigenous depiction of the “Stations of the Cross,” a series of images traditionally portraying the “Passion of Christ,” the steps from Jesus’ condemnation to death to his crucifixion and being placed in the tomb.

There are many significant features of Purdie’s work of art that reveals an Indigenous experience of the Passion of Christ, and an Indigenous expression of that experience of elemental meaning. I will highlight two. Shirley Purdie chose to depict these stages of Jesus’ last day in a manner that diverged from traditional depictions which use stone, wood, or metal. Purdie chose the land on which she is situated, (Warmun, a community in the northwest of Australia) as the source for her depiction of the Stations.

She used the medium of ochre paint, which is derived from the land upon which Purdie and her people (Gija) are located. Ochres are primary natural pigments and minerals found in the soil. It is significant for Purdie to use pigment from her people’s land as the land is inseparable with their spirituality. This inseparability of physical place with spirituality is true for Indigenous peoples around the world.(3)

The second feature that reveals an Indigenous artistic expression of elemental meaning is the work’s focus toward the ground or the earth rather than the standard Western focus in depictions of the Stations of the Cross, toward the sky. For Purdie, the Creator Spirit is found in the land. Jesus is walking the passion with Purdie and her people, on their land. Her depiction clearly brings one to that understanding. For Purdie, Jesus is walking with her people, on their land, through suffering toward healing. Purdie’s portrayal of the Stations is a unique Indigenous expression of elemental meaning.

The second carrier of meaning that has some significance here is incarnate meaning. Lonergan expresses it as “Cor ad cor loquitur,”(4) which means heart speaking to heart. It is the meaning of a person’s life encountered through heart speaking to heart.

Rev. Dr. Raymond Aldred, status Cree from Swan River Band, Treaty 8 and Director of Indigenous Studies at the Vancouver School of Theology, often speaks, publicly, of an encounter with the person of Jesus that transformed his life.(5) In his late teenage years, he was faced with addiction to drugs and alcohol and despite many attempts to quit, he could not. He decided to pray to have the strength to overcome these challenges and through prayer, he was able to change, he was able to stop taking drugs and alcohol. For Aldred, “something happened,” something that made a difference in his life. That encounter was the beginning of a journey for Aldred that led to his embracing Christianity from his Cree worldview.

Aldred speaks of others who have had similar encounters that changed their lives or gave them the strength to move forward. The encounter, and in Indigenous worldviews, this new and important “relation,” among their other relations, made a difference in their lives, it gave their life meaning. Like Shirley Purdie, Aldred expresses his experience of the incarnate meaning of Jesus, through the reception of the Gospel message in the soil of his Indigenous worldview. Rod Pattenden, in his article, “Seeing Otherwise: Touching Sacred Things,” articulates the encounter between the Gospel message and Indigenous peoples:

Rather than these boundaries being places of dilution of once-pure cultures, this imagery indicates a place of creative reconstruction, where, in this case, a displaced community is re-imagining itself to be at the very heart of religious narratives for healing and renewal. For Western audiences it offers the potential for new insight into the traditional narratives as it plunges the transcendent tendencies of the tradition into the mud of the earth. Transcendence in aboriginal culture has to do with the surface of the land as a skin through which the dreaming stories are made present.(6)

In many contexts, the encounter between Indigenous peoples and Christianity emerged as an active participation in a uniquely contextual way. Of course, there is resistance to the Gospel, and in some contexts a coherent resistance by traditionalists that is cogent and theologically sound. Yet – and despite the at times brutal manner Christian faith was communicated and the ways it was blindly and arrogantly conflated by almost all European Christians with their particular culture – some Indigenous people experienced in their own ways and on their own terms a lifegiving encounter with Jesus and his message. Indigenous artist, Shirley Purdie, and Cree theologian, Raymond Aldred, are concrete examples of a positive impact of that encounter, of a value Indigenous peoples say has been added to their lives. Yet, the key point of this paper is that the soil receiving the seed was already rich.

Long before Christian missionaries arrived in North America, Indigenous peoples thrived on their land. They lived a good life, in community with a profound understanding of the interrelatedness of all things. Spiritual life was not merely one aspect of many different dimensions of being human, rather, the spiritual included the physical, the intellectual, and the emotional.

For Indigenous peoples, spirituality was the apex of human living. The spiritual life of Indigenous peoples existed and developed for thousands of years before European missionaries arrived. The multitude of different Indigenous nations, that existed when Europeans came and settled in what later became the country of Canada, lived and expressed differently their understanding of creation, the Creator, and the Creato’s gifts.

While there are more than 630 First Nation communities in Canada, which represent more than 50 Nations and 50 Indigenous languages, each with its separate culture and spiritual way of life, there are commonalities among the various traditions. Most traditions have a “creation” story, a rich tradition with strong social structures, a spiritual worldview, and a deep sense of connection with all of existence.

The Land Owns Us

Indigenous peoples recognize the spiritual “status” not just of human beings, but of all creation: the earth, the water, fish, plants, animals, trees, birds, the winds, the sun, the moon, and the stars. In this vision, there is an equal, horizontal, rather than hierarchical, spiritual status for all creatures. Rather than only human beings expressing the image of God, all of creation images the Creator. Rather than “owning” the Land, a common belief of Indigenous groups is that the Land owns us. Indigenous peoples honour these truths and their deep respect for the harmony of all the Creator’s creation directs their understanding of how they will “walk” on this earth.

There are many Indigenous ceremonies that cause concern among non-Indigenous Christians and create tension within Christian Indigenous people and their communities. Yet, following what we have learned from Peter’s encounter with the “Gentiles,” it becomes clear that different cultural traditions and contexts will celebrate and worship Jesus and the Christian message in a multitude of different ways.

For many years now, biblical scholars have pointed out the wide historical and cultural gap between the Jewish movement around Jesus, and the faith that much later became known as Christianity. That faith changed as it became predominantly non-Jewish, and again changed and acculturated as it spread around the world, including to the people of what was to become Europe. Those nations made the faith their own, adopting and adapting language, symbols, festivals and expressions for the faith that were familiar to them.

In short, Christianity has always been “enculturated.” This is part of what the passage from Acts is pointing toward.(7) Not to recognize the validity of different and various expressions of the Christian faith is a “spiritual imperialism” not unlike the social, political, and economic imperialism that has haunted Indigenous peoples for so long. One may consider Indigenous ceremonies such as the sweat lodge, the smudging ceremony, and the pipe ceremonies. Each of these expressions of Indigenous spiritualty, among Indigenous Christians, continues to have important significance after encountering Christianity.

When the European missionaries arrived in North America, they brought not only the New Testament teachings, but they also couched the message within a European cultural context and too often mistook their medium for their message. Still, Indigenous peoples of Canada were able to understand and resonate with the value of the teachings of Christ despite the at times oppressive carriers of the message and the undoubted oppressions of the systems the colonizers brought with them.

Today, it is important to recognize the Indigenous reception of the Christian message. That reception is significantly different from the European reception. This must be acknowledged so that Indigenous Christians can live their faith in authenticity. The devasting disruption that came with the Christian missionaries must be acknowledged. The Gospel – that is, the teaching of Jesus – was distorted because the Christian missionaries could not differentiate between the Gospel message and their own cultural expressions of that message.

The European and Canadian missionaries were blind to any difference between the elemental meaning communicated and the variety of expressions of that meaning. We continue to live with the fall-out of first encounter.

The Truth and Reconciliation Report Call to Action #60 clearly names the “spiritual violence” that continues to be committed by non-Indigenous Christians ignorant of the legitimacy, indeed, the enrichment, authenticity, and beauty of the Gospel seed planted and expressed in Indigenous cultures.

“Native Americans will not share their vision of Christ unless they have met, heard or personally experienced him in their lives.”(8) This statement by Achiel Peelman, a Roman Catholic Oblate priest who spent time living with the Cree people in Northern Alberta, expresses an important insight regarding the encounter between Indigenous peoples and Christianity. As we saw with Raymond Aldred, the encounter is not an abstract, intellectual assertion, rather, it is a personal encounter with Jesus, who is brother and saviour.

Mark MacDonald helps us to understand how Scripture is interpreted through an Indigenous lens. His reading of different biblical passages sheds light on the message being communicated. His interpretation points to how Indigenous peoples absorbed Christianity into their culture and way of viewing reality. MacDonald indicates that even in the early years of attempted assimilation, Indigenous peoples encountered the Christian message in a unique manner, removed from its presentation to them through a European lens. One concrete example of this is the passage from the Gospel of John,1:1-5:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

MacDonald’s Indigenous reading of this passage from John’s gospel is the following:

“The Creator has placed within history, within creation, a way of life that will ultimately triumph over evil.”(9) As MacDonald understands this, in the context of Indigenous life and history, the evil that will be overcome is the colonization of peoples. For MacDonald, it is this hope that is the heart of a growing spiritual movement within Indigenous communities.

Thus, Indigenous peoples in their relation to and reception of the Christian message, interpret the teachings of Jesus through the lens of Indigenous experience. This means taking into consideration the spiritual abuse (violence) inflicted upon Indigenous peoples by European missionaries and settler colonizers. A new understanding and practice of Christian mission is needed in light of the abuse and violence.

We saw in the passage from Acts, the ambiguity of how the teachings of Jesus should be spread. In fact, the book of Acts expresses the struggles with understanding the Christian churches’ mission in relation to a diversity of cultures. What becomes clear in consideration of the history of Christian mission to a multitude of different cultures, is that “God is revealed to many peoples in many ways . . . and that salvation is possible in many ways.”(10)

Christine Jamieson is Associate Professor in the Department of Theological Studies at Concordia University in Montreal.

(1) I would like to thank Matthew R. Anderson for his helpful feedback to this paper.

(2) Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990).

(3) Rod Pattenden, “Seeing Otherwise: Touching Sacred Things,” Indigenous Australia and the Unfinished Business of Theology: Cross-Cultural Engagement, ed. Jione Havea (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2017).

(4) Lonergan, Method in Theology, 73.

(5) Story used with permission from Dr. Aldred.

(6) Pattenden, “Seeing Otherwise,” 21.

(7) For a valuable example of this work, see Matthew R. Anderson, “Strangers on the Land: What ‘Settler-Aware’ Biblical Studies Learns from Indigenous Methodologies,” Critical Theology: Engaging Church, Culture, and Society 1.2 (2019): 10-14.

(8) Achiel Peelman, “The Native American Christ,” The Myriad Christ: Plurality and the Quest for Unity in Contemporary Christology, eds. T. Merrigan and J. Haers (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2000) 318.

(9) This is a quote from a presentation that Former Archbishop Mark MacDonald gave at a conference at Concordia University in 2014.

(10) MacDonald, Concordia presentation.