The Post-Colonial Imperative of Interreligious Dialogue : Translating the missio Dei through Nicholas Black Elk’s Multireligious Participation

The Post-Colonial Imperative of Interreligious Dialogue : Translating the missio Dei through Nicholas Black Elk’s Multireligious Participation

By Hubbard, Joe. (2021) -- "This conversation around the nature of “mission,” the church’s role in it –as well as the role of the “missionary” and the role of the “missionized” –emerges from the complicated context of my own journey. It emerges from a conviction that our Indigenous communities are not the object of our charity, or even our mission. They are our teachers and partners in God’s life of transformation and reconciliation. This conversation is rooted in a sense that mission is not something the church does. Mission is something the church is. As Darrell Guder describes, “it has taken us decades to realize that mission is not just a program of the church. It defines the church as God’s sent people.” Ultimately, then, “mission is the result of God’s initiative, rooted in God’s purpose to restore and heal creation. ‘Mission’ means ‘sending’ and it is the central biblical theme describing the purpose of God’s action in human history.” This is a conversation grounded in the recognition that, if my tradition, the Episcopal Church,is serious about reimagining itself in light of the mission of Christ – to more fully embody the missio Dei – we must learn what it means to be a community grounded in and sent by God’s outpouring life of contestation and restoration from the very peoples we once sought to evangelize. We must listen and learn how to engage the missio Dei through the mode of interreligious dialogue." -- Introduction pp.3-4.
"Steven Charleston, an Episcopal Bishop and member of the Choctaw Nation, joins Taylor in recognizing that God was present and active amongst God’s peoples long before Christian missionaries arrived, but for Charleston the Indigenous peoples of North America have “their own original covenant relationship with the Creator and their own original understanding of God prior to the birth of Christ.” Comparing Indigenous nations to the tribes of Israel, he observes, “God was here, on this continent among this people, in covenant, in relationship, in life.” Indeed the “Old Testament of Native America,” as Charleston calls it, “tells of the active, living, revealing presence of God in relation to Native People through generations of Native life and experience ... It is the living memory, the living tradition of a people’s special encounter with the Creator of life.” This divine encounter and revelation among Indigenous peoples of North America does not discount the encounters and revelations of God among any other peoples but enriches them. The encounters and revelations in these lived traditions, or other “testaments,” according to Charleston, enrich one another as they are in conversation with other traditions and testaments, discerning where and how God is present and at work in and through God’s peoples, “broaden[ing] our dialogue about the connections between old testaments” and even broadening our appreciation of the reach of the life and work of God." -- pp. 10-11.

Hubbard, Joe

Virginia Theological Seminary

May 13, 2021

Copyright © 2021 by Joseph L. Hubbard, Jr. All rights reserved

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An Honor’s Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the Department of Christian History, Witness, and Theology in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master’s in Divinity.