Episcopal Bishop Steven Charleston, a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, said he once struggled to reconcile his Christian faith with the culture of his Native American roots — a challenge with which some Native Hawaiians and other indigenous people can identify.
Charleston said in a recent interview that Christianity’s "universal concepts of love and other teachings are acceptable to everyone on the planet. We can’t let Jesus be put in a culture box and held prisoner or made hostage to any group of people. Any human being from any race or tradition can hear the voice of Jesus and recognize themselves in what he’s saying."
Charleston, who was in Hawaii last weekend to give a series of talks at the Episcopal Church of the Holy Nativity in Aina Haina, is an advocate for indigenous people and a proponent for spiritual renewal in the Episcopal Church.
A seminary educator and administrator who has worked in several states, Charleston comes from a long line of pastors; his grandfather and great-grandfather were Presbyterians who preached and sang in Choctaw.
"My (Native American) traditions are the Old Testament of my people. My Christianity grew up from the very soil of North America," he said. "I want a world to come into being where we don’t see religion as something that divides us, but that unites us, even though our own understanding and practice of it is different."
Charleston acknowledged that indigenous people whose ancestors were conquered by Western colonialists and have witnessed the denigration of their cultures might still have difficulty in accepting the European or "white man’s" religion, adding, "Christianity has been misused.
"The assumption that Christianity is the white man’s religion is an assumption based on colonialism, not on fact. Indigenous people should not be fooled into thinking Christianity is the possession of any one race. Its (Christianity’s) message is universal and liberating. It is as much a possession of native people’s than it is for anyone.
"When native people feel a history of injustices has to be addressed, they have every right to raise that issue. But they need to do it without violence and with the hope of reconciliation.
"The key is we need to make sure Christianity arises within the context of the culture that accepts it, a legitimate expression of those cultures, not grafted on or added on as an extra show," Charleston said.
In his essay "The Old Testament of Native America," published in 1990 in "Lift Every Voice," Charleston wrote, "It is the right of Native People to claim fulfillment of Christ in their own way and in their own language. I am not looking simply to paint the statues brown and keep the Western cultural prejudices intact."
Charleston helped found the international Anglican Indigenous Network. He attended its first official meeting in 1992 at St. John’s by-the-Sea Episcopal Church in Kahaluu.
Its mission statement reads in part, "We are committed to the Anglican tradition while affirming our traditional spirituality. … We believe that God is leading the church to a turning point in its history and that the full partnership of indigenous peoples is essential."
Bishop Robert L. Fitzpatrick, head of the Episcopal Diocese of Hawaii, said his denomination was the only one invited to the islands by the monarchy, in 1862 by King Kamehameha IV and Queen Emma. It was accepted by most of the alii, or royalty, including Queen Liliuokalani after her overthrow in 1893, he said.
"We need to recognize that the overthrow was illegal and immoral" and "ask for forgiveness," Fitzpatrick said. Acknowledging what has been done to many indigenous people around the world has been a part of the struggling maturation of the Episcopal Church, along with the realization that there is much to learn from native cultures, he added.
From its inception the Hawaiian language, hula and other native customs were incorporated into local Episcopalian services as the diocese recognized that "Hawaiian-ness should permeate everything we do," Fitzpatrick said.
In the last decade, deeper core values have been adopted from Hawaiian culture, including the concepts of "pono, how to live right; malama, to care for the world around you; and mana, seeing the holy in everything about us," he said.
Fitzpatrick has been working to increase the diocese’s Native Hawaiian clergy — many of whom have retired — and membership. Most of the 35 active clergy statewide are of European ancestry, though about 10 Native Hawaiians are becoming ordained or plan to start their education, Fitzpatrick said. Malcolm Chun, a deacon at Holy Nativity Church in Aina Haina, will become the only Native Hawaiian priest in the diocese when he is ordained June 10, Fitzpatrick said.
