What is Progressive Christianity? (from the Handbook for the Companions of Christ)

           Progressive Christianity is the Christianity of NOW of today of your life right now. It is not an attempt to reconstruct the way of the “original Church,” nor is it the attempt to reconstruct the “religion of Jesus.” Rather, Progressive Christianity is how we follow the teachings and principles of Jesus and his followers every day. It is not obsessed with the forms of our religion over time. It is concerned with the essence, the principles, the tools of our tradition and how they can be used today, right now, in your everyday life.

            The first mission of Progressive Christianity, and the first focus of the Society of Christ, is to learn to see beyond the form into the essence. We aim to see the essence, to embrace it, to experience it, and to develop and maintain an ongoing relationship with it. If we get caught up in the form, in the images of our tradition, we build a wall between us the essence, which is the Truth of our tradition. This is idolatry. Throughout history, we have done this with the Bible, with the Church, with our ideas of GOD, and even with Jesus, our teacher. Rather than understanding that each of these things are tools pointing to a Truth beyond these tools, a Truth beyond concept, a Truth that we can embrace and experience, a Truth that we can have an ongoing, direct relationship with. In mistaking the form for the essence, we have put our faith in ourselves and the ideas of our tradition, rather than putting our faith in the real, incomprehensible, but imminently relatable GOD. This is idolatry.

            We must learn to find GOD in all things. First in ourselves and our lives, in those people and things closest to us, in those things we like as well as what we do not like. We must learn to see GOD in our treasure and in our trash. We must learn to find GOD in our allies and in our enemies. This is the essence of the Way of Jesus. This is the great Truth of the Path of Christ, the elimination of our idols, of our misconceptions. This is why we must surrender to GOD, but to GOD beyond our concepts, to GOD beyond our ability to comprehend. If we make the mistake of surrendering to a concept of GOD, we do little more than reinforce the walls that hinder our ability to see and experience reality, Life. It is only after we have surrendered everything that we will begin to see Truth and Life beyond the limitations we have imposed on it. It is only after we have smashed our idols that we will be able to see GOD.

            This is what Soceitas Christi is about. We smash our idols through the surrender of our certainty. We learn to accept ourselves and others without condemnation. We learn to use the tools of Jesus, our teacher, and the tradition that has been constructed around him. We learn to let go of our need to impose our view or our will on others. We learn to understand the freedom in Christ as the freedom from our illusions. We learn to embrace salvation as a process of learning to embrace and live our lives in fullness. And we learn to cultivate an ongoing, personal, and ever evolving relationship with GOD beyond the idols of conception.

COMANCHE SOCIETY AND THE RESERVATION

At first it was just a place where the American military might leave them alone where they could maintain trade relations with the Texans where they could rest for a while before going back out on raid in Texas. However, by the 1870s, more and more Anglos had moved into Texas, making raids problematic. The government had successfully suppressed the horse and cattle trade between the New Mexican traders and the Comanche. A major upsurge in Anglo bison hunting devastated the bison herds, effectively eliminating the Comanche’s primary means of sustenance and supplementary income. Things were changing for the People, but most of the Numunu, the Comanche, understood that very soon, they would have to change as well.[1]

In 1866, the US government carved 2,968,893 acres from the land ceded by the Choctaws and Chickasaws and used it as a reserve for the Comanche. The government promised semiannual annuity payments and biweekly rations distributed among the People,[2] and it was these promises that finally enticed the Comanche to settle on the reservation.[3] Once on the reservation, nearly all of the necessary resources for survival were under Anglo control, and the People had until 1901, when the reservation would be divided into allotments, to change their way of living from nomadic hunting to sedentary farming and ranching and their way of relating from communal to individualist.[4]

The Comanche economic adaptation to reservation life was less difficult than the necessary social adaptations. Although change was an aspect of Comanche ways of being, the struggle on the reservation was between the Anglo attempts to manipulate and force the assimilation of the People into Anglo ways and the Comanche determination to retain a sense of their own identity as a People.[5] This kind of social manipulation was not something the People had dealt with before.

Between 1875 and 1879, the People retained a sense of their former social structure. Gathered together as residential bands, they were led by one or two older men and grouped in nomadic camps that would travel the length of the reservation. In 1879, in an attempt to fragment the residential bands and further Comanche assimilation, the government changed the process of ration distribution. Whereas before, the rations were allotted to the head of the residential bands, now these rations would be distributed according to heads of families, which undermined the authority of the headmen of the residential bands. This process of “segregation” continued with the move of the government agency from Fort Sill to Anadarko. This move required a forty-mile trek for each family to obtain their biweekly rations, which was a journey made easier in small units rather than in large encampments. The authority of the residential headman was undermined even further with the Anglo agent choosing the head of each of each family unit. The agent would suggest to these men that they should take their family and establish a permanent home.[6]

            The band was the main method of social organization and the gradual fragmentation of Comanche bands into family units was one of the goals of the federal Indian policy. As fragmentation continued, the Comanche needed to find new ways of organizing and reinforcing their cohesiveness as a People. They also found themselves in virtually constant contact with the larger Anglo society. The traditional dances and ceremonies became occasions where Anglos could gawk at the People. The close proximity of outsiders and the boundaries of the reservation greatly restricted the traditional methods of gaining and maintaining spiritual power. These traditional practices slowly fell into disuse. It was under these conditions that peyote came in to wide usage. [7]

            Medicine people had used peyote for many years. It was thought to give a person access to spiritual power in a similar fashion as the vision quest or the sun dance. Peyote meetings were held at night, out of the view of anyone not participating or supporting the ritual. The use of peyote in this way also had the social benefit that it used the same symbolism and worldview as traditional ceremonies. In many ways, the wide spread embrace of peyote was the logical next step in the evolution of Comanche social and spiritual practices.[8]

            Spiritual power had always been a necessary aspect of Comanche leadership. The peyote meetings allowed spiritual power, and thus, social influence to be accumulated. Someone who had strong visions was believed to have reliable judgment. In the relaxed hours after the ceremony but before the sunrise, both politics and business could be conducted and influence established or maintained. By the 1890s, peyote use became so widespread that the local agent commented that only distance and the lack of transportation kept an Indian from attending the meetings.[9]

            In 1900 the Comanche began the process of choosing their allotments. They typically tried to choose locations close to a reliable water supply and friends and family. The allotment process also opened up reservation lands to Anglo homesteaders. After the initial choices of allotments the rest were disseminated through lottery. Those who ended up being a part of the lottery found themselves surrounded by the more than 30,000 Anglo homesteaders.[10]

                The government post allotment policies were designed to force assimilation on the Comanche to remold the People into the Anglo image to force a move from tribal identity to individualist identity.[11] These policies did not take into account the deep-seated prejudices the People had to contend with. The boarding school was one of the primary assimilation was forced on the Comanche. The boarding schools were essentially vocational schools that conformed to Anglo cultural norms. The boys were taught such things as shoe repair and blacksmithing, while the girls were taught sewing and cooking. It is ironic that, even for those who completed their education at the boarding school, most of them could not find work because they could not find Anglos who were willing to hire them. The boarding schools were also designed to force Indian children to use English as their primary language. They were forbidden to speak their native language on threat of corporal punishment.[12]

            Due to the post-allotment changes, a gap began to grow between Comanche interaction and relation with each other. Drums could no longer echo across enough distance to call the People to peyote meetings. They did not encounter each other on a daily basis, nor did they cross paths on the Plains. The People continued to gather in encampments throughout the next decades, but these gatherings were only twice a year, at Christmas and New Year and during the summer months. Complicating the situation further, over the next three decades, the majority of Comanche sold or lost their allotments and were essentially landless.[13]

            Factions had grown among the People on and around reservation lands. These factions were as much a product of the older, reservation generation as they were the Anglo policies. This older generation remembered the traditional dances and what they meant. They restricted access to full participation to a very limited number of young people. The same thing occurred with the peyote gatherings. A young person could not become a full member until their late 30s or 40s. This drove many of the young people to the Christian gatherings that could serve a similar social purpose. Even the encampments started to become segregated, with the traditionalists gathering out on the open land and the Christians gathering on church property.[14]

            By the 1930s the factions had grown even more segregated. Many of the old people had died before they could fully transmit the meanings of the traditional dances, the social dances, and the peyote rituals to the young people. The younger people who began to take over leadership roles were often raised in the boarding schools or as a Christian, or were simply ignorant of the traditional meanings of the practices. These new leaders created meaning where they could. Christian symbols became reinterpreted for use in the peyote meetings and were imposed on the dance gatherings. Even so, there grew division between those who were “peyote people” and others who were “powwow people.” The “church people” were those who fully embraced the Anglo version of Christianity in the region. They rejected both factions. This resulted in three basic public factions, or ways of being Comanche, in the region. These public factions, however, did not often extend into the People’s private lives. Family members and friends could be members of different factions. The public gathering were designed more to provide a social structure to post allotment life rather than exert an exclusive claim on tradition or Comanche identity.[15]

            As much as the reservation and allotments caused the People to find new ways to secure social and familial structure, World War II required even greater changes. New avenues for economic security were opened up after the War far away from the rural environment of the average Comanche. Transportation was easier to come by, and the jobs offered in the cities were much more lucrative than those available in Indian Country.[16]

            As families and friends scattered, the tight familial bonds started to loosen. For those who left the region, the focus of family obligations tightened to the nuclear family and close friends. The powwow slowly became the main activity used to secure the loose community of the People. As familial bonds have loosened such activities as “adoption” have evolved. Whereas in the past a close family friend and that friend’s family were simply accepted as family and treated as such, ritual has evolved to publicly declare these relationships, and etiquette has evolved for those who seek this recognition all of which is centered on intra-tribal and intertribal powwows.[17]

            The powwow also evolved after WWII. Prior to the war, a powwow was an occasional thing. Regularly scheduled powwows were held yearly, and once in a while, if a serviceman returned after WWI, his family would have a gathering to honor his return. As the number of Comanche servicemen increased during WWII so did the frequency of powwows. In many cases a powwow would be arranged to honor the “going-away” as well as the “coming-home” of a Comanche serviceman. Since there was almost always someone going-away or coming-home, powwows became a weekly occurrence. This practice also tied the powwow securely to the military or warrior societies, something that persists to this day.[18]

            Since many of the People had moved to areas too far away to focus on intra-tribal gatherings, the intertribal powwow came to take prominence. This also had the effect of further loosening the traditional kinship networks and transferred the obligations and privileges of such to new friendship networks. The earlier factions of pre-WWII are still present but in a much diluted form.[19]

            Accounts of Comanche history tend to stop around the beginning of the 20^th century. The People, however, did not stop living as Comanche. They have continued to live lives worthy of the acknowledgment of history, and they continued to develop new and innovative ways of maintaining their identity as Comanche, as Indians, and as Americans. The People did not stop simply because the form of their society changed. They evolved with and through those changes, and they continue today.

Bibliography

Foster, Morris W. Being Comanche: A Social History of an American Indian Community. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1998.

Gwynne, S. C. Empire of the Summer Moon. New York: Scribner, 2011.

Wallace, Ernest and E. Adamson Hoebel. The Comanches Lords of the South Plains. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1986.

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[1] Morris W. Foster, Being Comanche (Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 1998) 75.

[2]  Ernest Wallace and E. Hoebel, The Comanches, Lords of the South Plains (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1986) 311.

[3] Foster, Being Comanche, 75.

[4] Ibid, 80.

[5] Ibid, 86.

[6] Ibid, 87.

[7] Ibid, 92.

[8] Ibid, 93.

[9] Ibid, 94.

[10] Ibid, 101.

[11] S. C. Gwynne, Empire of the Summer Moon (New York, NY: Scribner)310.

[12] Foster, Being Comanche, 107.

[13] Ibid, 118.

[14] Ibid, 119.

[15] Ibid, 127.

[16] Ibid, 142.

[17] Ibid

[18] Ibid, 147.

[19] Ibid

The Ghost Dance and the Prophet

They danced in a circle, holding hands in round dance fashion. The initiates were covered in brown paint infused with “loco weed,” which they had inhaled prior to the dance. The dancers had been promised that their dead loved ones would return at some future date if they joined the movement. They danced with both desperation and hope. After a length of time, some of the dancers began to grunt and shake, foaming at the mouth and falling into trance. Some of them had visions of communing with their loved ones, some had other visions that required complex interpretations, and some faked the whole experience. Hope and desperation congealed into a religious fervor; many of the dancers would become obsessed with the dance and lose interest in anything but the dance. The Ghost Dance changed the people who danced, and this change prompted criticism from many Indians who thought, “the dance didn’t do anyone any good.[1]” The despair remained; the hope unfulfilled. A way of life had ended; the world of the Indian would never be the same.

By 1889 North America was a changed place. The United States had, arguably, dealt with the big issues that caused the Civil War. The West had mostly been conquered. The Indians were exterminated, assimilated, or corralled onto reservations. There was work still to do, but the heavy lifting had been done. A major turning point had been reached, and the nation was free to move forward. This progress, the security for the United States came at the cost of an entire way of being for the original inhabitants of North America.

To enter the reservation was to admit defeat and become a ward of the conquering nation. Peoples, whose very existence was built on an essential freedom of person, were now virtually imprisoned on land they didn’t want and were required to adopt ways of life that, in many ways, embodied the opposite of everything they valued. The despair of these Peoples was profound. They were not only defeated, but fallen. Like many other Peoples before them throughout history, in such a time of despair and hopelessness, religion arose to provide a new direction, a new foundation for hope, and a new focus for life.

The Prophet was an impressive man. He belonged to the “rabbit robe people,” the Paiute, and would often wear the namesake robe of his people. He stood around six feet tall, wore “white man’s clothes,” with a broad brimmed hat secured to his head with a beaded ribbon tied beneath his chin and his hair cut at chin length in the fashion of his people.  His low hairline came to within an inch of thick, bushy eyebrows. He had low cheekbones, a dimple in his left cheek, and a strong jawline. He had piercing eyes and a deep, slow speaking voice. His carriage was straight, calm, and dignified. He could command the attention of his listeners by the sheer force of his personality, and his message of hope and morality spoke directly to the desperation of a conquered and confused people. [2]

            On January 1, 1889, while chopping wood in the Pine Grove Mountains, Wovoka heard a great noise. He put his ax down and started walking towards the source of the noise and fainted. He entered a feverish delirium where he received several visions and messages for the Indian Peoples. He was taken to heaven where he talked with God. While in heaven, he saw “all the dead people,” including his own mother-in-law who was still alive at the time. He also saw all the tibo?o (white people) who had died. He saw that all of them, including the taibo?o, were healthy, happy, well fed, and young. He was then given puha (power) over the elements through five special songs, and he was told that from hereon out he would share the presidency with Benjamin Harrison. President Harrison would preside over the East while Wovoka would preside over the West.[3]

            Wovoka was told to go to the Indian Peoples and tell than that they could no longer lie, steal, or make war. He was told to tell them that they had to get along with all other Indian Peoples and that they had to get along with, and even work for, the white people. He was given a dance that the people were to perform for three or five nights in a row. He was told that those who strictly followed his teachings would have a reward awaiting them in heaven; they would be forever young and live with their loved one in heaven where they would be cared for and not want for anything.[4]

            Wovoka awoke from his feverish delirium during a solar eclipse. His people believed that he had prevented the end of the universe, that he had saved the sun when he awoke. He related his visions and began to teach his path, which he called “the Friendship Dance of the Indian Race,” or just nanigukwa (dance in a circle). It was only later that others would come to call it the Ghost Dance Religion.[5]

                Wovoka built his reputation on his ability to make it rain and heal the sick. The five songs he received in his vision were for different weather needs. The first was used to create mist or cloud, the second was used to create snowfall, the third was used for rain showers, the fourth was for a hard rain or a storm, and the fifth was to be used to make the weather clear. Many Paiutes attributed the ending of the drought of 1888 to Wovoka’s power. A man named James Josephus, who lived on the Walker River Reservation, became a follower of Wovoka after the Prophet accurately claimed that the drought would end three days later.[6]

            Wovoka’s reputation as a “Rain Maker” quickly grew. Even the Walker Lake Bulletin, and the Lyon County Times took notice, calling him a “Messiah” and reporting that the most severe storms of the season occurred after a working by Wovoka. The Walker Lake Bulletin also reported that when “the Indians had enough… again they sought the Messiah and asked him to let up. And lo and behold, the clouds rolled by, and soon the papers began blowing about the fine climate.[7]”

            As his reputation spread, Wovoka received written requests for his intervention in issues of weather as well as for spiritual guidance and for healing. The way he ended his responses to these correspondences indicates how central his role as Rain Maker was to his reputation. “We have lots of rain here and my people are all very well and happy.[8]” Wovoka would often send red paint with his replies. The correspondents were to apply the paint in a special way before a storm. Then they were instructed to stand out in the rain and let the falling water wash the paint from their bodies.[9]

            It was not only the Indians that believed in Wovoka’s puha. People from all over the Walker River area, both white and Paiute would call on Wovoka to use his power over the elements. In 1889, torrential rains had been so heavy that they soaked through piles of firewood. One white family asked Wovoka to use his power to do something about it. He ordered everyone available to pile up their wet wood, and then he asked for a black eagle plume.[10] Once the wood had been piled, “He sticks that eagle plume up there [in mid-air] as high as he could reach. He took it [his hand] [down] and that eagle plume stayed up there. Then he knelt down and waited a little while and then, maybe he hit two rocks together, I don’t know what he did, anyway, a spark came and that wood began to burn. All that wet wood and everything.[11]” Wovoka then told the people to take fire from the burning wood to light the fires in their homes. He claimed that everything that was wet and unusable would dry out and become usable again.[12]

            Wovoka was not the first Indian prophet, nor was he the first to inspire a religious movement. Po’pay, who led the 1680 Pueblo Rebellion in New Mexico, taught that the people needed to return to the old ways in order to escape Spanish rule. There was also The Prophet, who acted as the spiritual force behind Tecumseh’s War in the early part of the 19^th century. There was even a puha tenahpu (Comanche medicine man) named Eschiti, who, in 1874, claimed to have had visions that foretold that if the Comanche performed a Sun Dance, they would be liberated from Anglo-domination. This led to the Indian defeat at the Second Battle of Adobe Walls, which undermined Eschiti’s claims and helped to inoculate the Comanche from the influence of the Ghost Dance Religion. [13] Wovoka may not have been the first Indian prophet, but he was the first to spread a message of peace and cooperation.

            The spread of Wovoka’s message began when the Utes sent a delegation to see him shortly after the first Ghost Dance in January of 1889. That summer, the Shoshones and Arapahos sent five delegates to meet the Prophet. In November the Northern Cheyenne, Arapahos, the Lakota, and the Bannocks and Shoshones sent more delegates to meet the Prophet and learn the Ghost Dance. This group of delegates included Sitting Bull and Kicking Bear.[14] In 1890 more delegations of Lakota, Cheyenne, Arapahos, Shoshone, and Mohave journeyed to visit Wovoka and learn the Ghost Dance. These visits to learn the Ghost Dance and meet and learn from the Prophet continued past 1906.[15]

            Wovoka’s message was one of peace. The followers of this path were not to steal, not to make war, they were to work together with their Indian brothers and sisters, and to work with and under the Whites. The tone of the movement slowly began to change as reservation promises were not met, and those who were supposed to take care of the People worked to take advantage of the People, and the United States government continued to act with war-like aggression against the Indians.[16]

            The turning point came in October of 1890 when the new Indian agent for the Pine Ridge Reservation became nervous about this new religious movement that was taking hold on the reservation. The Indians of Pine Ridge understood that tensions were rising and began to wear the Medicine Shirts that were supposed to stop bullets. The new agent called for troops to stop the Ghost Dance claiming that the reservation was growing out of control. The government sent soldiers to both Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations.[17] When the troops arrived, almost two thousand Indians fled Rosebud for Pine Ridge. Kicking Bear and Short Bull, both Ghost Dance missionaries, took several hundred Indians from Pine Ridge combined with those from Rosebud and fled into the Badlands, north of Pine Ridge reservation. Around this time Sitting Bull was killed and then on December 28, the massacre at Wounded Knee occurred. The Indians were well and truly defeated. The promises of the Ghost Dance religion had failed, and the free Indian was a memory.[18]

            The Ghost Dance religion was over, but the influence of the Prophet continued. He received delegations and visitors.[19] Reports of the effectiveness of his puha, and requests for talismans and tokens continued. He was paid for these services as well as for photographs of him, and even for shaking his hand.[20] Faith in the Prophet and his power continued even after his death in 1931. Several faithful followers could not believe that he had died and thought that he was simply waiting for an opportunity to appear alive and demonstrate his power once again.[21]

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            1. Thomas W. Kavanagh, Comanche Ethnography (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2008) 194.

            2. Michael Hittman, Wavoka and the Ghost Dance, (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1990) 108.

            3. Ibid, 63

            4. Ibid, 64

                5. Ibid, 63

            6. Ibid, 67

            7. Ibid, 68

            8. Ibid, 70

            9. Ibid

                10. Ibid, 71

                11. Ibid

            12. Ibid

            13. Morris W. Foster, Being Comanche (Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 1998) 77.

                14. Hittman, Wovoka, 89

            15. Ibid, 90

            16. James R. Walker, Lakota Belief and Ritual (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1991) 141.

                17. Paul H. Carlson, The Plains Indians (College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 1998) 180.

            18. Ibid

            19. Hittman, Wovoka, 90.

            20. Ibid, 136.

            21. Ibid, 359.