Native Ministry presentation

Yesterday I made a presentation to students at Wycliffe College, which was billed "Native Ministries". Basically, I spoke of there being 4 major streams of faith present in "Anglican" Cree communities around James Bay.

These 4 streams are:
1) Christian traditionalists -these are Anglican folk who are working to rediscover and live out Cree spiritual traditions, and to do so as firm followers of Jesus Christ, whom they accept as the only-begotten son of God. They participate in pow wows, sweat lodges, traditional drum groups and other Cree spiritual ceremonies. These folk would rejoice to see smudging and traditional drums as a regular part of Anglican worship in their communities. But right now that is not possible. In some communities such things happen at funerals and family services(wake services), but often the traditional ceremonies can only take place outside of the church building. Often the Christian traditionalists function completely outside of the church, except for rites of hatching, matching and despatching. But there are also Christian traditionalists who are active Anglicans - it is just that their practice of traditional ceremonies takes place, at least for the most part, completely apart from institutional church life.

2) Pluralist traditionalists -these are folk who participate in and practice traditional ceremonies, and who identify Christianity as being "the white man's way". They may come to the Anglican church for rites of hatching, matching and despatching. Outwardly, they appear to be the same as the Christian traditionalists. But what makes them different is that they view Jesus as the same as Weesagetchuk, the trickster in Cree traditional stories. The Christian tradionalists seek a Cree Jesus, and may see Jesus as Cree, but the Jesus of the Christian traditionalists is Jesus the only begotten Son of God. The pluralist traditionalists see all religions as being essentially the same, and see Jesus as appearing in many different forms in all of the different religions of the world.

3) Anglican onlys -these folk will stick to Anglican worship only, and avoid all traditional ceremonies. They may view all traditional ceremonies as heathen, pagan, and even associate them with serving the devil. (Which is why the traditional ceremonies generally cannot take place in the church.) This was the version of Christian faith given to the James Bay Cree by the first Anglican missionaries in James Bay. (Recently, in the National Anglican Church archives here in Toronto, I have been able to take some time to read letters and Church Missionary Society reports of the first Bishop of Moosonee, John Horden, and the first Archdeacon of the Diocese, Thomas Vincent. It is quite plain from these papers that in their view, all traditional ceremonies were completely forbidden to anyone who would follow Christ.)

4) Pentecostal -I include in this stream of faith baptists and other evangelical groups. I use the term "Pentecostal" to illustrate that for many Cree elders all of these groups are lumped together as "Pentecostal". In some communities there are several of these groups. In the early days of the Pentecostal movement in James Bay, many of those in this stream did not regard the Anglicans as being Christians. And they rejected all traditional ceremonies as being evil.

People in the James Bay Cree communities may be firmly in one of these streams of faith, in none of them, or may move between them. Most of the time today people from these 4 streams of faith live together, work together, and do even worship together without animosity.

In some communities there is one of these streams of faith that is dominant - generally it is either the Anglican only or the Pentecostal stream. Government funding today largely favors the pluralist traditionalists. At one time all government funding which supported a particular one of these faith streams went to the Anglican onlys.

Living out the apology of our church for its involvement in residential schools, and our evangelical mission, leads me to believe that we should seek to highlight the Christian traditionalist stream. It could be argued that living out the Indigenous Covenant of the Anglican Church of Canada is to walk in this stream. But there are Cree folk in the other 3 streams who also are authentically Cree and Christian; they also need to be honoured and respected.