Category: Ethnic considerations

“The Indians originally venerated Cortes as a god. They respected strength, they were ruled by very powerful gods, and a man who could overthrow those who would be acknowledged.”

Patrick Marnham
So Far From God: A Journey to Central America — pg. 93

So, starts Rushdoony in his chapter on Power in his book “The American Indian.” The burden of this chapter is to reveal that in terms of worship what the Indian worshiped was “power.” In this context Rush insists the converse was true also in his experience. Because the Indians worshiped power, they likewise despised powerlessness. Along the way Rushdoony labors also to show that this worship of power is something that is now characteristic of American culture.

Rushdoony states the obvious in this chapter that men who will not Worship the God of the Bible, will inevitably worship naked power instead.

“If the omnipotent and all-gracious God of Scripture is not worshipped, men will pursue their adoration of power in other ways.”

Rushdoony notes that the disrespect for powerlessness that the Indians had was exhibited by their disrespect for blacks.

“Owing to this respect for power, there was a corresponding disrespect for powerlessness. The clearest expression of this was their attitude towards blacks…. to them, blacks were inferior and their feelings did not count.”

One wonders if this attitude was really about power so much as it is a mindless ethnocentrism that can be so typical among different people groups.

It is interesting though that RJR contrasts this with the attitude of the white man towards blacks as in telling a story about interaction between Indians and a particular black man RJR concludes,

“He (the black man upon whom a prank had been pulled) soon came to realize that no Indian would regard him as an equal, whereas some white men would and most white men would be reasonably fair to him.”

However after making these kinds of blanket statements Rushdoony turns around and admits that Indians could respect the black man if he was a warrior type,

“In some areas, blacks intermarried with Indians. I am of the opinion that this usually occurred where blacks fought back against enslavement and escaped. Such defiance would have earned Indians’ respect. The Indian attitude was not earned in terms of race or color but of warrior standards….What mattered was a man’s exhibition of the traits of the fighter and the hunter.”

Of course this refers back to the worship of power. According to RJR if any individual revealed power then they might be accepted on some level by the Indian. The best way that I can harmonize RJR here is to say as a general rule the Indian did not respect blacks but exceptions might occur if individuals blacks were to show a warrior spirit that bespoke power.

Rush even connected the peyote cult with the pursuit of power. He notes that the peyote drug creates “gives illusions of power.” At the same time Rush noted that many of the other Tribal members looked down upon the peyote users as being weak, thus showing again the power esteem.

As a brief side-note it is interesting that RJR reports that many of the Indians claimed that the use of peyote was a modern phenomena that was introduced by the country of Mexico.

Getting back to the power theme RJR spends time examining how modern American culture has likewise turned to the cult of power.

“This veneration of power was very notable to me, especially because I saw the characteristic becomem very prominent in the white American culture by the 1960’s. One aspect of it was the rise of ‘groupies,’ girls who eagerly sumbitted sexually to power figures in the popular culture. Popular musicians, athletes, film and television stars have since then been pursued with intensity by women, young and not so young, who feel it is an honor to be used sexually by them. Frankly, nothing I saw among the Indians matched in intensity this power worship that became so prevalent in the United States…. White American culture has far outstripped that of the Indians in its worship of power, with deadly results.”

Clearly, if man will not worship God he will worship that which he believes will give him power. As bad as this is it may be even worse when Christians worship God because of how they think they can bend God’s power to their own selfish use. Too often in the Church today God is worshiped, not because of who He is, but for what He can offer to the worshiper. If it is bad to worship naked power apart from God, how much worse to worship God for how His power can be channeled to serve our own selfish purposes? To often, in the words of Bob Dylan, we think of God as ” just an errand boy to satisfy our wandering desires.”

When are we going to wake up and strengthen the things that remain?

Perhaps a clear sign of Christian maturity is the willingness to worship God when He has determined to be God hidden. There are times in life when God’s providence comes as a severe mercy announcing a seeming powerlessness in some life event. When all seems without the necessary power we would summon will we still be a people who worship God?

In such times we need to remember with Rush,

“God’s being is more than simply power. He is justice, love, grace, law and more.”

May God be pleased to reveal to us the lie that the temptation to worship naked power is.

“One reason for the catastrophe which struck Indian tribes was that now, with the coming of the White man, there were alternative forms of education.”

R. J. Rushdoony
The American Indian — pg. 29

In the chapter on “Education” in RJR’s book we find Rush time and again writing about how damaging the White man’s arrival was to the American Indian and that culture.

“The White man’s arrival complicated education. It introduced an alternate lifestyle with many material advantages, including liquor…. One of the most devastating effects of the white man’s influence was that Indian children no longer grew into a set mold…. At an early age they (children) could work for the white men and be free of their people”

The constant returning to this theme by Rush reminds us that no civilization in history has been able to manage, for a sustained period of time, the presence of numerous different people groups, religions, and worldviews seeking to form one unified culture. A Diversity that has vast differentiation between people groups, religions, and worldvies is not a strength to social orders. Rushdoony reminds us repeatedly that the Indian was better served by remaining Indian. Of course Rushdoony insisted that the regenerated Indian builds a stronger social order and culture then the non-regenerated Indian but even then the Redeemed Indian culture will remain uniquely “Indian.”

As Rush continues to tell the story of the Indian and his Education, Rushdoony brings to the fore that the Indian idea of education was a education where the Grandparents instructed the children in the ways of the past.

“… that was education. It meant passing on the wisdom of the past and present to the future. These men saw the white man’s world as full of marvels. The radios were of interest to them and the white man’s guns and knives were wonderful. But for them the life link was gone. Their grandchildren were not linked to them but to the White man, and foolishly so.”

Clearly the American Indian, at least as represented by Rushdoony, had no interest in becoming white. Just as, doubtlessly, the white man had no interest in becoming American Indian. The Gospel of Jesus Christ can ameliorate the hostility that can arise from these people group distinctions as those distinctions are marked by the sinful dispositions of each. Further the Gospel will work so that differing Redeemed people groups work in harmony, but the Gospel can no more undo ethnicity any more than it can undo gender. Christ has come to save all the Nations and create a Spiritual Unity among them, but Christ did not come to erase the nations in favor of some New World Order amalgamation. Rushdoony’s book, by repeatedly noting and honoring these ethnic distinctions underscores this truth.

Rushdoony also criticized the American Indians for their faults. In this chapter he writes how the American Indian turned to his “whiskey religion.”

“The older men, who themselves often had problems with alcoholism, called drunkenness and alcoholism ‘the whiskey religion.’ I had never heard the term before. It was used by these older Indians very seriously, but some of the younger men used it as a joke. What the older men meant by it, they explained, was that what Christians looked for in Christ, Indians often found in a bottle. For them it was peace, and answer to problems, empowerment, escape, and more. There was another factor, too, as they saw it. Whiskey changed a man, like Jesus did, but in another direction. A bottle of whiskey was for them a religious solution.”

Further RJR notes the weakness of the American Indians in their refusal to frustrate their children through child rearing discipline.

“The saddest fact of my own experience with the Indians was the indifference of the children to the parents. The children were never chastised….frustrating the child seemed to them a white man’s cruelty…. Never to face frustration is no preparation for life. Not surprisingly, by the age of ten, alcoholism was common place; by thirteen or fourteen, fornication too. Self denial was an alien idea, and an inability to accept frustration was commonplace in recent years this had the highest suicide rate in the United States, a fact closely related to the nurture of children there.”

Rushdoony in this chapter is even handed in articulating the faults of both Whites and Indians as distinct people groups and in the doing so Rush demonstrates that while all men in all people groups are sinners not all people groups have the same predilections in terms of how that sinful peccadilloes manifest themselves. Different people groups have different besetting sins to which they are going to be more inclined. Similarly, upon Redemption, we can expect different people groups to have different strengths in terms of sanctification.

In the end though Rushdoony’s passion was for the American Indian to come to know Christ. In this Chapter he mentions pagan Anthropologists who came to study the Indian and whose only concern was to confirm a preconceived agenda.

“From my perspective, there was another problem with the anthropologists. Their framework of reference was evolution. They viewed Indian culture in terms of myth, not in terms of taking an interest in a people whom God created and who needed Jesus Christ to attain their true potential. The anthropologist’s impersonal approach bred an instinctive hostility. The Indian is a person, not a scientific specimen. The anthropologist’s laboratory approach irritated the Indians. As a result, even when they gave correct answers to the scientist’s questions, the meaning and flavor of their lives was missed. To the Indians those questions sounded artifact oriented, not concerned with people.”

Note here how Rushdoony sees the Indian as a distinct “people whom God created,” and who, as a distinct people, could only find their true potential by being attached to the Lord Jesus Christ. For Rush, all people groups, as people groups, became more genuine as to their ethnicity and culture only upon being united to Christ. Christ does not strip men of their ethnic identity upon Redemption. Christ, in Redemption, makes our ethnic identity more genuine even as only in Christ do humans find their genuine humanity, even as only in Christ both Men and Women find their genuine Femininity and Masculinity. Being united to Christ doesn’t erase our corporeal markers. Being united to Christ brings those God given corporeal markers into subjection to Christ that they may be increasingly what God intended them to be.