Hearing Lessons from Sand Creek

Confronting the sins of our past often brings illumination as well as pain. Given the current fractured state of The United Methodist Church, it’s a shame then that an immensely insightful report on an American tragedy comes before the 2016 General Conference so late in its agenda. I refer to a 30-minute presentation on the involvement of prominent 19th century Methodists in the massacre of some 200 Cheyenne and Arapaho people in 1864.

The Sand Creek Massacre report is scheduled for 5:40 p.m. on Wednesday, May 18; in other words, at the end of a long day just two days before General Conference concludes. Historically this is a time at General Conference when nerves are frazzled, bodies and minds are exhausted, politics is at its most frantic, and delegates and observers just want to go home. After reading the report in the Advance Daily Christian Advocate and interviewing its historian-author, Dr. Gary L. Roberts for SEEK, UM Insight’s podcast, I’m convinced the proceedings of this General Conference would be far improved if delegates had the opportunity to heed the lessons of our history before they make some history of their own.

The particulars of the Sand Creek Massacre are horrifying. To take from a preface written by Bishop Elaine J. W. Stanovsky (Mountain Sky Episcopal Area):

On Nov. 29, 1864, “the United States Calvary savagely attacked Cheyenne and Arapaho people who they knew were camped peacefully along the Big Sandy River in the Colorado Territory.” Led by a Methodist elder-turned-soldier, the Rev. John Chivington, and urged on by a Methodist co-founder of Northwestern University, Colorado Territory Gov. John Evans, the soldiers killed some 200 people, mostly women and children.

“Despite a public outcry and a congressional investigation declaring the battle a ‘massacre,’ the church defended [Chivington’s and Evans’] actions and never punished them,” wrote Bishop Stanovsky.

Aside from a collective responsibility to make amends for the church's failure to atone for the Sand Creek Massacre, I think The United Methodist Church needs to look at the historic event as though looking into a mirror. In short:

Our propensity to justify spiritual and emotional violence against those we deem to be “the other” makes us no better than those who slaughtered the Cheyenne and Arapaho peoples some 150 years ago.

It’s easy to recognize the parallels from Sand Creek to our current day:

  • In their leadership, Evans and Chivington operated out of mindset that saw all Native peoples as inferior to white Americans. This view was promulgated by stereotypes depicting all Indians as savages with disgusting, “unchristian” practices. Similar degrading stereotypes are regularly applied to individuals and groups today within and outside the church, causing emotional and sometimes even physical harm.
  • Because the Cheyenne and Arapaho people were seen as inferior, any form of violence against them was justified in the name of fulfilling America’s “manifest destiny” to conquer the American continent. In addition, Evans’ and Chivington’s leadership was tainted by their insistence that America was a “Christian” nation specially favored by God. Who among United Methodists hasn’t laid claim to God’s sanction for their actions?
  • Like most white Americans of their time, Evans and Chivington refused to hear Native peoples’ questions and confusion about white Christians’ failure to live out what they preached. In other words, Evans and Chivington “had no ears,” a metaphor that some Native Americans use to describe those who will not listen.

Most of all, I’m struck by what Dr. Roberts documents in his introduction: That white people, convinced of the superiority of their racial, religious, cultural and national missions, refused to understand Native peoples’ concept of “more than one way of seeing.” For example, where indigenous Americans saw time as a cycle that reflects new ripples of past experiences, immigrant Americans saw time as a line that ceaselessly progresses, where the past is devalued and discarded. A contemporary version of this tragic conflict will be seen at the 2016 General Conference in those delegates who criticize the report as something that happened so long ago we needn’t be concerned about it anymore. This attitude contrasts sharply with Cheyenne and Arapaho peoples who still feel the agony of their massacred kinfolk.

What will be most telling for many of us will be how many delegates and observers absent themselves from the plenary hall as the Sand Creek Massacre report is presented late in the day. Those present in Portland might want to watch for who and how many leave before the Sand Creek report begins. That could say a lot about where the political will lies for other items to come before the church-wide legislative assembly.

If I were a General Conference delegate, I think I’d ask for the Sand Creek report to be moved up in the agenda – if not to the very beginning of the 2016 session, then at least to the beginning of the second week when legislation will be voted upon. We need to hear Sand Creek’s lessons! We have so demonized “the other” and inflicted so much damage on each other that that we’re finding it almost impossible to hear and see what will make our common good, let alone enact it. I’m convinced that the Sand Creek Massacre report has the potential to help us develop “ears” for hearing all voices and “eyes” for seeing in more than one way. We desperately need these skills if we are to become a truly global church for the 21st century.

Learning and practicing the lessons of the Sand Creek Massacre would be one way to begin collaborating with our Native American brothers and sisters on building a church and a world that lives out God’s love as Jesus taught.

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Massacre at Sand Creek: How Methodists Were Involved in an American Tragedy by Dr. Gary L. Roberts is available in book form from Cokesbury. I heartily endorse its purchase for any church library.

United Methodist Insight Editor & Founder Cynthia B. Astle has observed and written about General Conferences since 1988. She will report on the 2016 General Conference from Portland, Ore. May 10-20.