New Testament Reading—Matthew 7: 1-12
In his classic work The Souls of Black Folk, the famous black scholar W.E.B. DuBois wrote of a black predicament he called “double-consciousness.” He described it as “this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.” He further explained that double-consciousness was a sense of two-ness that comes from being both American and black, from having “two warring souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder."
In the writings of Betsey Chamberlain, one can also discern the predicament of double-consciousness in another form. Chamberlain is the first known American Indian fiction writer. Born in 1797, her ancestry was both white and American Indian. Her writings contain a mix of perspectives. They range from those that protest the racist treatment of Indians by white settlers to those that actually perpetuate racist stereotypes of Indians as savages. They range from those that express patriotic sentiments to those that are sharply critical of the United States government. In a short story called “The Fire-Side Scene,” she writes a satire about a group of white children who gather around their Uncle David near a fire to hear him tell tales. Excitedly, they ask him to tell the one about burning the Miami Indians. As the story proceeds, it points out the hypocrisy of what was then considered a Christian nation massacring Indians.
The hypocrisy of Christianity is a repeated theme in Chamberlain writings. Chamberlain herself was a Christian, and she had what might also be called a form of double-consciousness with regard to being both Indian and Christian. How was she to come to terms with being a Christian given the religion’s history of oppressing Indians? Similar questions have been asked by black Christians, LGBT Christians, and Christians from just about any group that has suffered at the hands of Christian oppressors.
Chamberlain takes at least a partial step toward coming to terms with this conflicting situation in a story entitled “The Indian Pledge.” In the story, a Christian farmer name Ichabod is visited one day by an unnamed Indian dressed in hunting attire. The Indian is in desperate need of food and water. Ichabod repeatedly refuses to help the Indian and calls him a “heathen, Indian dog.” The author indicates that his response hardly seems to be that of a model Christian. Ichabod’s wife, Mary, however, is different. Behind her husband’s back, she comes to the aid of the Indian. In thanksgiving, the Indian prays to Cantantowwit, an Indian God. He then pledges not to seek revenge upon Ichabod for his cruel and heartless words. Before leaving, he gives Mary a long feather with special instructions for it.
A harvest season then comes and goes, and Ichabod prepares for a hunting trip with his friends. The night before he leaves a sense of fear comes over him as he thinks of what might happen should he encounter the Indian he mistreated. The next day before he departs Mary gives him a cap with a feather sown into it. Ichabod tries to remove it, but Mary whispers in his ear and with an agitated quiver, he gives his consent. On his hunting trip, Ichabod then becomes separated from his friends. He becomes lost and disoriented as to which way to go. Finally, in a desperate state, he comes across an Indian who provides him with food and shelter.
In the morning, the Indian leads him back to his home, but just before they arrive, the Indian turns before Ichabod and confronts him. He asks him if he remembers meeting him previously. Ichabod does not. The Indian says, "Five moons ago when I was faint and weary, you called me an Indian dog, and drove me from your door. I might now be revenged; but Cantantowwit bids me tell you to go home. Hereafter, when you see an Indian in need of kindness, do to him as you have been done by. Farewell." Chamberlain then closes the story writing that Ichabod went home purified in heart, having learned a lesson of Christianity from an untutored Indian. In essence, Chamberlain addresses the dilemma of being both Indian and Christian by imagining Christians learning how to be better Christians from the very Indians they despise.
In reflecting further on Chamberlain’s story, a couple of truths occurred to me. First, in order to follow the Golden Rule, in order to treat others as we wish to be treated ourselves, we need to get to a place where we can actually hear their story and imagine what it would be like to be in their shoes. One of the keys to getting to such a place is to be mindful of our own biased judgments. Ichabod couldn’t see the Indian as someone who had the very same needs he would have if he were lost. Instead, he just saw a heathen, Indian dog.
Our scripture for today follows a similar kind of logic. It comes near the end of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Before Jesus talks about the Golden Rule, one of his concluding points in the sermon, he first talks about the dangers of judgment and hypocrisy. In essence, he says that you won’t deal fairly with others if you aren’t willing to pass the same judgments upon yourself that you are willing to pass upon your neighbor. In other words, you won’t deal fairly with your neighbor’s faults if you’ve got a big log in your eye.
A second thing I learned from Chamberlain’s story is that those of us who are privileged because of such things as our race, gender, or sexual orientation sometimes need to consciously strive for a kind of double-consciousness. For Chamberlain, double-consciousness came with the territory. It was simply a part of being an Indian who was both Christian and a U.S. citizen. When she heard about the massacre of the Miami Indians, she couldn’t just shake it off like a report from some far removed, distant land. Those were her people. She was one of them. Those of us who are not Indian, on the other hand, need to sometimes make an extra effort to imagine what it means to be Indian, to live in a country that has conquered and brutalized your people.
I am guessing that for many of us our exposure to American Indian issues is rather limited not by any real fault of our own. There is generally very little coverage of Indian issues in the mainstream media. If I had to take a guess, I would say that the three images that come to mind the most with regard to American Indians are sports mascots, warriors wearing loin clothes, and casinos. That’s a lethal mix. The first image degrades and mocks Indians and Indian culture. The second image is outdated at best. And, the third has little to do with the reality many Indians face. Lakota writer Tim Giago wrote an interesting article a year ago when he discussed how newspapers had recently reported that a windfall of $25 billion in profits had been reaped by Indian casinos. Giago says:
"What they did not say is that on reservations such as the Navajo, Rosebud, Pine Ridge, Crow Creek, Blackfeet and Crow, unemployment is as high as 50 to 80 percent. That the average income is less than $5,000 annually. That the average life span is about 55 years of age. That the infant mortality rate is 3 times the national average. That on some reservations the diabetes ep
idemic claims 50 percent of the total reservation population. That many homes are without electricity or indoor plumbing. That there is such a need for housing that some of the available homes house as many as three families."
Giago’s article goes on to share something about which I had never heard. He writes of how the Sioux, one of the poorest tribes in United States, has $863 million in a federal trust as result of the Black Hills being taken from them illegally, and yet the tribe has refused to accept a single penny of it. They don’t want to sell the land that was taken from them. They believe that “one does not sell one’s mother,” mother earth. For the Sioux, this is a long held spiritual and cultural belief. In response to his article about this, Giago got a lot of letters from Indians expressing their pride over this refusal by the Sioux. In contrast, he didn’t receive any responses from whites. He speculated “that this may be one concept they find strange or maybe it is just something beyond their realm of comprehension. To be poor and not accept money, according to many, is not the American way.”
Perhaps, our challenge as non-Indians is to develop the kind of double-consciousness that would allow us to hear and understand stories such as this one. It might sometimes take a bit of an effort. It might mean looking beyond surface images and mainstream stereotypes. It might mean treating commonly accepted notions with skepticism, and then searching for the truth in places other than the 6 o’clock news. When we do such things, we will not only gain a broader understanding of the world, we might just become better Christians.
Some years ago a famous Sioux physician told the following story:
"A missionary once undertook to instruct a group of Indians in the truths of his holy religion. He told them of the creation of the earth in six days, and of the fall of our first parents by eating an apple.The courteous savages listened attentively, and, after thanking him, one related in his turn a very ancient tradition concerning the origin of maize. But the missionary plainly showed his disgust and disbelief, indignantly saying: 'What I delivered to you were sacred truths, but this that you tell me is mere fable and falsehood!' 'My Brother,' gravely replied the offended Indian. 'It seems that you have not been well grounded in the rules of civility. You saw that we, who practice these rules, believed your stories; why, then, do you refuse to credit ours?'"
Taking heed of these words, let us live as Christians in the spirit of open and generous civility. Amen.