Can "White" People Be Saved?: Triangulating Race, Theology, and Mission (Missiological Engagements Book 12)

by Willie James Jennings

The pedagogical goal of missionaries and others was not simply to bring New World peoples into the reality of salvation, but it was fundamental to that salvation to change their ways of seeing the world so that they too would see themselves rightly as centered selves who project meaning onto the world and who may bring nature to its full purpose and use. This crucial educational hope was to disabuse Native peoples of any idea that lands and animals, landscapes and seasons carried any communicative or animate density, and therefore any ethical or moral direction in how to live in the world. Instead, they offered peoples a relationship with the world that was basically one dimensional—we interpret and manipulate the world as we see fit, taking from it what we need, and caring for it within the logics of making it more productive for us; that is, we draw the world to its proper fulfillment. This is crudely put, but it captures the trajectory of how humanity’s imperial position as stewards of the creation was most often interpreted in colonial contexts.