{"id":664,"date":"2012-04-27T13:36:27","date_gmt":"2012-04-27T20:36:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/gc2012\/?p=664"},"modified":"2012-04-27T15:14:50","modified_gmt":"2012-04-27T22:14:50","slug":"from-plow-to-repentance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/from-plow-to-repentance\/","title":{"rendered":"From Plow to Repentance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>The Rev. James H. Wilbur . The image on the right\u00a0shows a reed-mat covered tepee in a grassy field near Yakima, Washington.\u00a0This image is available from the United States\u00a0<a title=\"Library of Congress\" href=\"http:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/Library_of_Congress\">Library of Congress<\/a>&#8216;s Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/hdl.loc.gov\/loc.pnp\/cph.3b45839\" rel=\"nofollow\">cph.3b45839<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Having served on the Yakama Reservation for thirteen years, my interest is peaked with this evenings worship service.\u00a0 The service will lead the church into a consideration of its relationship with indigenous peoples.\u00a0 The Rev. Dr. George E. Tinker will give a word titled <em>&#8220;No Apologies. Just Repent. Seriously.&#8221;\u00a0<\/em> An important word for the church today because apologies have become trite and outmoded because they lend themselves to statements without action.\u00a0 Apologies allow the apologizer to feel good about him or herself without entering into a relationship calling for change.<\/p>\n<p>Listening to Dr. Tinker matters because the church has lived, accepted, and apologized for its past with American Indians without engaging its past in a manner that calls for a new mindset and a new structure within the church itself.\u00a0 Why might this be important?<\/p>\n<p>In 1860, Rev. James H. Wilbur came to the Yakama Reservation as pastor and Indian agent.\u00a0 During his tenure, he ruled the landscape with a heavy hand modeling and claiming the standard of \u201cThe Plow and the Bible.\u201d\u00a0 Wilbur\u2019s goal was to civilize and Christianize the Yakama by having them work as <em>white men<\/em> and become redeemed by accepting Methodist Christianity.\u00a0 During his years as Indian agent, Wilbur removed children from their families, placed them in the Fort Simcoe agency and began to generationally remove Yakama culture\u2014food, religion, dance, art, clothing, hair length, traditional names, and family and community structure\u2014from their identity.\u00a0 Wilbur\u2019s actions changed people\u2019s lives, historically and presently.<\/p>\n<p>Wilbur\u2019s is a story few within the church know and even fewer talk about.\u00a0 Yet this is the church\u2019s story.\u00a0 Until the story is known, accepted, put \u201cout in the open,\u201d all that can be done is to make apologies.\u00a0 Perhaps, this evening, with Rev. Tinker\u2019s guidance, we will begin to move beyond apologies and enter into the hard work of action and change by taking our first steps toward repentance.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Rev. James H. Wilbur . The image on the right\u00a0shows a reed-mat covered tepee in a grassy field near Yakima, Washington.\u00a0This image is available from the United States\u00a0Library of Congress&#8216;s Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID\u00a0cph.3b45839. Having served on the Yakama Reservation for thirteen years, my interest is peaked with this evenings [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":692,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[69],"class_list":{"0":"post-664","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-conversation","8":"tag-repentance"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/wilbur.jpg?fit=592%2C379&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2l75j-aI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=664"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":670,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664\/revisions\/670"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}