indigenous orthodox christian mission

8/13/2019 Indigenous Orthodox Christian Mission

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Post-Colonial Approaches to Mission is about as contemporary of an issue as

any facing the Orthodox Church today. With only four votes in opposition from English

colonies: the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand, in 2007 the General Assembly

of the United Nations adopted the International Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous

Peoples (UNDRIP), however in 2010 the UNDRIP was adopted by the U.S. Obama

Administration, the same year the esteemed Allan Nevis Prize for US Historical

Scholarship was awarded by The Society of American Historians to the Native Hawaiian

Dr. Noelani Goodyear for her dissertation expounding on the literature generated by the

first encounters of indigenous Hawaiians and Europeans. In 2011 Sarah Vowells

Unfamiliar Fishespopularized Colonialism as Incremental Imperialism as a New York

Times Bestseller subject. Indigenous North American communities have recently been

at the forefront of the antifracking movement, opposing the use of controversial drilling

techniques for natural gas extraction that pollute ground water supplies. Headline space

in the 2013-2014 Overseas Ministries Study Center (OMSC) Study Program is given to

a seminar to be held this weekend entitled Indigenous Initiatives in Mission, with an

explanation of how using indigenous languages and local resources in ministry counters

neocolonial missionary impacts and creation of dependency. Though we think of Fr.

Michael Oleksas documentation of Native Alaskan Orthodoxy as a model of success,

we must beware of lazy tokenism here since many of the symptoms of cultural genocide

we associate with Native Americans are among our Alaskan brothers and sisters. We

are often ignorant of the suffering of indigenous communities that remain where we live.

Though all are threatened by extinction, some American indigenous nations have

realized a surprising level of success in their language revitalization efforts, thanks in

PAST 7321 (Veronas) Contemporary Issue Facing the Church: Indigenous Mission Michael Odegaard


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part to heroic volunteer and professional efforts of faculties of Indigenous Language

Revitalization and Language Planning at several western North American universities

led by the University of Hawai"i, Northern Arizona University, University of Minnesota,

and the University of Victoria. Albert Schultzs Voices of Eden: A History of Hawaiian

Language Studies(1994, University of Hawai"i Press) identifies an important

reconciliatory role that churches may play in this language revitalization process. When

in 2005 I was asked by the then Dean of Sts. Constantine & Helen Cathedral of the

Pacific the Rev. Dr. Fr. Nicholas Gamvas to translate the Divine Liturgy into the

Hawaiian language so that he could serve the local Honolulu Native Hawaiian

community there once per month, I began to realize my own responsibility in

indigenizing Orthodox Christian worship in the Hawaiian context. Hawai"i is an American

state that has two official languages, English and Hawaiian, so considering Metropolitan

Phillip of the American Antiochian Archdioces teaching on Fidelitythat includes a

chapter on Fidelity to Place which is relevant to Orthodox mission, an ethic of

indigenous language missionary purpose is now growing in the American Orthodox

churches. Orthodox Christians are becoming aware of this most marginalized cohort of

American society and have responded through domestic mission efforts in concert with

YOCAMA and the Native American Orthodox Christian Fellowship.

Orthodox missiology is informed by the distinction between enculturationof the

Gospel contextually (to preserve indigenous culture) and acculturation, or genocidal

forced assimilation. American Calvinist-inspired missionary schools in the American

West sought to prepare indigenous persons for Manifest Destiny through genocidal

English-only education. Similarly and for the same ends, but also due to the legislated



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banning of Hawaiian language from public education and governance after the

overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom, in Hawai"i the number of Hawaiian-speaking

persons gradually decreased during the period from the 1830s to the 1950s. Hawaiian

was essentially displaced by English on six of seven inhabited islands due to Social

Darwinistic racial attitudes and linguistic apartheid regulatory policies tied to the States

planned economic development. Informed today by three generations of genocide

theorists, including Raphael Lemkin and Robert Jaulin, revitalization efforts in Hawai "i

are now systematic in scope.

Aware of the cultural impacts of unregulated free market enterprise, the 1960s

and 70s witnessed resistance to the effects an English-speaking economy represented

to Canadas French language community as a force to assimilate the French-speaking

people. The resulting Quebeois sovereignty movement was resolved by recognition of

Quebecois linguistic rights, and the adoption of the Canada Official Languages Act that

guarantees respect for linguistic minorities. Now a generation later, Canada has grown

from a country where English predominated to one that is proud of its two official

languages, with support for bilingualism at an all time high. It was also during the 1970s

era of civil rights movements that the spiritual values of traditional Hawaiian ecology

were discovered by Americans, and these cultural values even found a professional

voice in governances environmental regulatory mission.

Over the last few decades, as an unanticipated result of the success of their

language revitalization movement, Hawaiian culture has demonstrated its resiliance, in

its ability to adapt and evolve, through its blending of traditional and western

technologies and sciences. A glance through a few pages of the companion volume to



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the Hawaiian Dictionary, M!maka Kaiao, A Modern Hawaiian Vocabulary(2003,

University of Hawaii Press) accomplished through the work of the K#mike Hua#lelo

Hawaiian Lexicon Committee of the Aha Punana Leo and the Hale Kuamoo, will easily

confirm this fact, and today speakers of Hawaiian apprehend and interpret complexities

of contemporary urban life in the Hawaiian language. In 1976 the University of Hawai"i

began to offer Bachelors Degrees in Hawaiian Language. In 1978, at Hawai"is first

Constitutional Convention, Hawaiian was established as an official language and its

study to be promoted by the State. In 1984 the "Aha P$nana Leo began the first

Hawaiian immersion school, and two years later, the 1896 ban on Hawaiian language

media was lifted by the State legislature.

In 1990, the Hawaiian immersion schools

finally began to receive public funding.

Now you can bank and watch the news

on television in Hawaiian which today is

used to explain mathematics and physics,

political and social sciences, urban

design, engineering, geography and

medicine, in addition to theology and law.

Various data sources help us assess the size and location of the Hawaiian

language community. Per Wikipedia, the number of Hawaiian-speaking persons as a

growing population, citing conservative estimates of speakers at 2,000 (Lyovin, 1997) to

a high of 24,000+ (US Census, 2010). Organized in 1918 and today the most widely

respected voice of the community, the Association of Hawaiian Civic Clubs recently



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adopted resolutions urging the State to require study of Hawaiian language as a

condition for public school graduation, and a recent survey estimates of the 530,000

persons who self-identify as Native Hawaiian, 10% can speak the language and 90%

want to speak Hawaiian. The University of Hawai"i at Hilo estimated that in 2010 as

many as 12% of Native Hawaiians spoke Hawaiian at home. Based on this estimate,

along with US Census Data maps, not only do all four Hawai "i counties have at least

1,000 speakers of Hawaiian, but eight subdistricts will also have the same: on O"ahu,

the Wai"anae, "Ewa, Kona and Ko"olauloa districts; on Maui, the P$"oli Komohana

district, and on the Island of Hawai"i the Hilo, Kona and Puna districts.



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Five of the above districts have K-12 immersion schools and present the best potential

locations for indigenous mission, those being Ke Kula "o Samuel M. Kamakauand Ke

Kula Kai!puni "o "#nuenuein the K%ne"ohe and Kona districts on O"ahu and Ka "Umeke

Ka"eo, Ke Kula Kai!puni "o N!wah$kalani"%pu"uand Ke Kula Kai!puni "o

"Ehukaimalinorespectively in the Hilo, Puna and Kona districts on the Island of Hawai "i.

Additonally, the Kanu o ka "#inaK-12 Hawaiian language immersion school is in

Waimea between Kona and Hilo districts on the Island of Hawai "i. Only the Hilo district

has two K-12 immersion schools, representing the highest concentration of Hawaiian

speaking people in the state.

Inspired by the conversion story of Henry "&p$kaha"ia, New Englands first

missionaries to Hawai"i arrived in 1819 after the indigenous overthrow of the traditional

kapusystem (though some aspects of the system are recognized today as being

essential to environmental conservation and sustainability). Though missionaries have

been both blamed and praised for the current dire situation indigenous Hawaiians face,

today 80% of Native Hawaiians have a relatioship with Jesus Christ, whether this be in

the context of traditional Nicene faith, pentecostal or Mormon communities. In all

situations, there has been some degree of blending of Hawaiian customs with their

respective faiths.

Hawaiians who are loyal to their traditional Hawaiian sensibilities will naturally

n!n!i ke kumu(look to the source) of their faith in Holy Orthdoxy for its purest and

most correct form; though small, this number is growing in spite of ethnic xenophobia

among the cradle Orthodox. In contrast to the gnosticism that characterizes much of

western Christianity, some of the earthier aspects of incarnational Orthodox worship will



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indigenous orthodox christian mission

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