Is Christian Conversion a Poltical Act for the American Indian? :: Essays Papers

Is Christian Conversion a Poltical Act for the American Indian? In Southeastern Alaska, Indian conversion to Pentecostalism generally removes indigenous identity operator from a place of value, and with this exclusion, removes a autochthonous cultural context for policy-makingly addressing behaviors that have developed within the Indian community as a result of the political economy in Southeastern Alaska. In the large processes of political economy and identity in the late twentieth century, the native community is marginal and impoverished (195), and necessitates the social framework for native embodied identity projects (5) and symbolic representations of nativism (7). Economy and native identity ar inextricably connected, as subsistence living comes under direct threat from the economic opportunities foisted upon Indians and foul behaviors, including alcoholic beverage abuse, physical and sexual abuse, and suicide, are intrinsic to the native carriage experience of many pe ople. As virtually all Indian converts to source Christianity root their own church experience in an melt down from alcohol addiction, religious conversion influences how society redresses socioeconomic realities, and thus political realties (164). To many marginal people, the incarnate nature of salvation creates a sociality of hope that offers them reliever from the economic realities around them. Converting to another system of hope and faith presents a special appeal among those made marginal by the history of colonial expansion and by the continuing ebb and flow of capital shrewdness (181). By advocating a strategy of collectivity over matchless rooted in difference(182), church converts reflect a desire to convert into a new economic life of the American middle class and escape their own economic realities (178). In the pr executeice of Pentecostal religion, overcoming addiction by dint of dedication to the teachings of the church means giving up on arduous to do anyt hing about addiction yourself(142), and shaking loose of an institutional focuson social or political order that addresses non-Christian means of rehabilitation or political change (178). Indian conversions to radical Christianity in Southeastern Alaska are thus not only spiritual changes, but political as well, in two significant ways. First, Pentecostal conversion is political because it transforms the collective structure of human values and accepted sociopolitical thought, principally in ones perception of cultural relativism. When the entire possibility of comparison and comparison between groups of people is utterly rejected, culture-group members are unjustly denied any background for defense or justification for their differences in values and practices (154). Moreover, the political troth of church groups in society invariably react against any political situation in which resource development and cultural revival understand place over issues of salvation, and in this o pposition, conversion becomes a political act of social separation (173).