Rescuing the Gospel from the Cowboys

September 21, 2015
Twiss (One Church, Many Tribes), in his last work before his death in 2013, shares stories from his research into how Christians have attempted to assimilate or destroy Native American cultural identity. He explores how Euro-Americans have disparaged Native rituals from earliest contact to the present day, and resisted Native American voices much more strongly than other non-European contributors to religious discussions. Moving beyond critique, Twiss also provides a way forward for Native American followers of Jesus by arguing for contextualizationâthe careful inclusion of non-Eurocentric practicesâin order to allow Christianity to meet the needs of Native believers. Twiss shows how this process was present in early Christian writings but was lost during the era of colonization. His focus on the history and spread of contextualization over the last few decades becomes a bit too much of a listing of groups and events, but it speaks to his interest in the theory and practice of diffusion (with reference to Malcolm Gladwell's writing on how ideas spread). Also, some of the stories he shares are composite and incomplete. Nonetheless, the work provides useful insights for all Christians engaging in cross-cultural mission work, and offers strong hope for a multicultural future of the church.