Preacher: Pastor Jim Bear Jacobs, Fern Cloud, Edwin Schenk, Kyle Roberts | Series: Native American Theology Panel

This event took place in Church of All Nations Friday evening, February 28, as a panel exploring Native American theology.

The relationship between Christianity and native communities is extremely complicated. On one hand, Christianity as a Western imperial religion has contributed to the subjugation of indigenous communities around the globe. On the other, as Charles Eastman (Ohiyesa) argued over a hundred years ago, indigenous spiritualities may be much closer to the early spirit of Christianity than that which has been passed down through Western civilization. Both of these realities will be explored in this dialogue. We will unpack the imperial categories still embedded within Western theology through a narrating of native history and ongoing experience, while we also explore indigenous spirituality as a lens through which to understand what it means to follow the way of Jesus Christ today. Contra ideologies of conquest, discovery, and now “unlimited growth” in the West, indigenous spiritualities argue that it is against human nature to live selfishly—rather, we are created to live in harmony with others and creation. Amidst the unsustainability of the global market today, this dialogue will explore mutuality and a sustainable way of being as central to the way of Jesus.

Panelists will be Fern Cloud, Jim Bear Jacobs, and Edwin Schenk. The moderator will be Kyle Roberts.

Fern Cloud is an enrolled member of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota Oyate. She is Bdewakantuan and Wahpetuan. Fern presently pastors at the Pejuhutazizi Presbyterian Church on the Upper Sioux Community near Granite Falls, MN. Fern has 34 years of experiential and research experience in the area of being native and Christian. She is a national and international speaker/consultant on this subject.

Jim Bear Jacobs is a member of the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican Nation, an American Indian tribe located in central Wisconsin. He has degrees in Pastoral Studies and Christian Theology and has served various churches as youth minister, adult Christian educator, and director of Men’s Ministries. He is a cultural facilitator in the Twin Cities and works to raise the public’s awareness of American Indian causes and injustices. He is a convener of “Healing Minnesota Stories,” a committee dedicated to creating events of dialogue and education particularly within faith communities.

Edwin Schenk (Lac View Desert Ojibwa/Cheyenne River Sioux) is currently a Master of Arts student at Luther Seminary in Saint Paul, Minnesota. His academic interests focus on conquest narratives in the Old Testament, theological and philosophical ethics, political theory and American Indian intellectual activism. His master’s thesis deals with the literary presentation of Canaanites in the Old Testament. Edwin is a convert to Pentecostal Christianity who has roots in traditional Lakota life.

Kyle Roberts (Ph.D., Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) is Associate Professor of Systematic Theology and Lead Faculty for Christian Thought at Bethel Seminary in St. Paul, MN. Roberts is a Kierkegaard scholar, having published numerous essays on Kierkegaard and modern theology. Roberts has completed his first book on Kierkegaard and postmodernity and is currently working on a co-authored theological commentary on the gospel of Matthew.

Sponsors of the event are Healing Minnesota Stories, Bethel Theological Seminary, Luther Seminary, United Theological Seminary, The Center for Global Reconciliation and Cultural Education at the University of Northwestern, and First Lutheran Youth of First Lutheran Church in Columbia Heights.