Native Times profiles Tink's latest book

Today's web edition of the Native Times has an article that profiles Tink's latest book Spirit and Resistance.

Osage author examines the impact of religion on Native American culture
What role does Christianity play?

10/15/2004
In the newly released Spirit and Resistance: Political Theology and American Indian Liberation theologian George Tinker writes from a Native American perspective, probing American Indian culture, its vast religious and cultural legacy, and its ambiguous relationship to the tradition—historic Christianity—that colonized and converted it.

After five hundred years of conquest and social destruction, he says, any useful reflection must come to terms with the political state of Indian affairs and the political hopes and visions for recovering the health and well-being of Indian communities. Does Christian theology have a positive role to play?

Tinker's work offers an overview of contemporary Native American culture and its perilous state. Critical of recent liberal and New Age co-opting of Native spiritual practices, Tinker also offers a critical corrective to liberation theology. He shows how Native insights into the Sacred Other and sacred space helpfully reconfigure traditional ideas of God, Jesus' notion of the reign of God, and our relation to the earth. From this basis he offers novel proposals about cultural survival and identity, sustainability, and the endangered health of Native Americans. full article