Indigenizing Salvation | Andrea Smith

Andrea Smith

Andrea Smith, director of graduate studies in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of California at Riverside, examines how the history of missions to Indigenous peoples in the United States has been simultaneously the history of Indigenous genocide. She also discusses how this theological abandonment of Native peoples fundamentally structures US law today as well as the contemporary treatment of Native peoples.

The Fuller Missiology Lectures is an annual conference held by the School of Intercultural Studies. Its 2017 theme, “Race, Theology, and Mission,” considered the issue of race through a multicultural lens. Discussions aimed to develop historical, theological, interdisciplinary, and missiological approaches to race that can interrogate conventional thinking about ethnoracialism, colorism, and hierarchicalism (in its various manifestations across gender, economic, and class lines), even while revitalizing Christian witness and practices of racial justice, reconciliation, and peace in the present time.

Listen to a response from Oscar García-Johnson, associate dean for the Center for the Study of Hispanic Church and Community, and a following Q&A:

Andrea Smith and Oscar Garcia Johnson