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 mutation to pentecostalism generally removes indigenous identity from a place of value, and with this exclusion, removes a aborigine cultural context for politically addressing behaviors that have developed within the Indian community as a result of the political economy in Southeastern Alaska. In the larger processes of political economy and identity in the late twentieth century, the primaeval community is marginal and imp everyplaceished (195), and necessitates the sociable framework for native collective identity projects (5) and symbolic representations of nativism (7). Economy and native identity be inextricably connected, as subsistence living comes under organise threat from the economic opportunities foisted upon Indians and destructive behaviors, including alcohol abuse, physical and sexual abuse, and suicide, are intrinsic to the native life aim of many people. As well-ni gh all Indian converts to rotatory Christianity root their own church experience in an escape from alcohol addiction, religious transformation influences how society redresses socioeconomic realities, and thus political realties (164). To many marginal people, the collective nature of repurchase creates a sociality of hope that offers them relief from the economic realities around them. Converting to another arrangement of hope and faith presents a special appeal among those made marginal by the history of colonial expansion and by the continuing lower and flow of capital penetration (181). By advocating a strategy of collectivity over one 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 work out of Pentecostal religion, overcoming addiction through dedication to the teachings of the church means assailable up on trying to do anything about addicti on yourself(142), and shaking loose of an institutional focuson social or political ramble that addresses non-Christian means of rehabilitation or political change (178). Indian conversions to radical Christianity in Southeastern Alaska are thus not only unearthly changes, but political as well, in two significant ways. First, Pentecostal conversion is political because it transforms the collective structure of human values and trustworthy sociopolitical thought, principally in ones perception of cultural relativism. When the inherent possibility of comparison and equivalence between groups of people is utterly rejected, culture-group members are unjustly denied any basis for defense or justification for their differences in values and practices (154). Moreover, the political participation of church groups in society incessantly react against any political situation in which resource victimisation and cultural revival take place over issues of salvation, and in this opposition , conversion becomes a political act of social separation (173).