All posts Is the Bible a ‘tool of oppression?’ CBS Evening News and the Wampanoag language
11/27/2012 9:26:15 AM
By Carmen Fowler LaBerge with Scott Lamb
In case you don’t remember your U.S. history lessons, it was the Wampanoag tribe of Native Americans who taught the Pilgrims of Plymouth how to cultivate corn and other vegetables, making their survival possible.
In a bid to be relevant to Thanksgiving-weekend viewers (or perhaps a subtle slap against the entire colonial Thanksgiving narrative), the CBS Evening News program contained a segment by Seth Doane which highlighted the Wampanoag Language Reclamation Project.
Come to find out, an “endangered language” can have a rebound if enough people begin to speak it again. In the case of the Wampanoag language (also called the Natick, Massachusett and Pokanoket), the language was extinct – no known speakers for at least six generations.
I enjoyed hearing of these efforts to reclaim a language, especially one so intricately connected with Puritan missionary efforts.
Wampanoag language was only spoken until the 17th century. Under the direction and efforts of Puritan John Elliot (1604-1690), otherwise known as “the apostle to the Indians,” the Wampanoag language was set into script. Elliot then used this script to translate the Bible into the Wampanoag language.
This Bible, often called “Elliot’s Bible,” was published at Harvard College in 1663 – around 30 years after the college’s founding.
So, if you ever land on the game show Jeopardy and the answer is “Elliot’s Bible,” you can hit your buzzer and say to Alex Trabek, “What is the first Bible published in North America?”
While that would be correct, Seth Doane’s CBS news segment may prefer you to answer differently:
“What was a Puritan tool for the oppression of Native American Indians?”
Did you catch Doane’s description of the Bible as a “tool of oppression?” Here is a transcript:
Seth Doane: Colonists translated the Bible into Wampanoag in an effort to convert Native Americans into Christianity.
Today, that Bible, along with documents including land agreements with colonizers are used as a sort of Rosetta Stone to decipher what was lost.
Wampanoag elder Joan Tavares Avant: They wanted us to learn the English language, and they wanted to civilize us.
Doane: Tavares Avant says that dealt a blow to a culture where much was passed down orally. It’s interesting that what were, in essence, the tools of oppression, whether it was converting to Christianity … through this translated Bible … those tools are now the tools that are being used to piece this language back together.
We could open this blog up to a full discussion of early colonial United States history. We could talk about who settled North America, where they originated, what good and evil they brought, what their goals and ambitions were, how they did or did not treat the native population with dignity, etc. Such a discussion would continue without end.
If we could, however, skip that larger discussion and instead simply take note that a CBS national correspondent stated – as a matter of fact – that the Bible can be considered a “tool of oppression.” The full context of the sentence would indicate that both the Bible itself and the end-goal of converting people to Christian are to be considered “tools of oppression.”
Finding that statement to be shocking does not mean that you have to attempt a defense of every action taken by every colonist who came in contact with the native population. But, even as we readily acknowledge many genuine “crimes against humanity” that occurred against “New World” inhabitants when they bumped up against “Old World” explorers and settlers, it is nevertheless amazing that Doane can label the Bible and Christianity in such a manner as though there is no credible intellectual or historical pushback possible.
Could Christian missionary-linguists such as John Elliot fathom that historians (to say nothing of television journalists) would label him an agent of oppression for his attempts at bringing the Gospel of Jesus to the Wampanoag? Again, you do not have to agree with every attempt made to make the native population European, but modern pluralism would condemn even the pure-Gospel missionary impulses. They would argue, “Leave them like you found them – religion and all!”
What is our response? Is the Bible a “tool of oppression” in the hands of Christian proselytizers? Resist the urge to simply be offended by Doane’s comment. Search the Scripture and consider how his comment may be the resonating tone of conversation among your own neighbors. And what impact does this way of thinking have on the efforts of Bible translators around the world today?
Wycliffe Bible Traslators is a ministry whose mission is to see the Bible made available in the native language of every people group worldwide. According to their web site, “In 1999, Wycliffe committed to the mission of seeing a Bible translation program started in every language still needing one by the year 2005.” Three years later, in 2008, “Wycliffe USA publicly launched the Last Languages Campaign.”
So, is the Bible, provided to a people in their own language in order that they might read for themselves the Word of God, a gift of unspeakable value or a tool of oppression? The answer to the question depends on what you believe about the Bible itself.
Are you reading the Bible in the original Hebrew and Greek or are you reading a translation in the vernacular common to your tongue? Let us not forget to that providing the Bible to the people in the vernacular was one of the hallmarks of the Protestant Reformation and it was a passion of the Christians who came to the new world seeking religious freedom.
The motivation to limit religious liberty and silence or sideline the Bible may well prove the greater oppression in American today.