From Volume 2, Number 1, Summer 1995

...for the healing of the land

Where does one begin with the healing of the land? It is an odd mission statement for a ministry focused on the renewal and restoration of Celtic spirituality in Christian life. Perhaps Greenpeace or  the Sierra Club are more appropriate venues for this mission statement. After all, they are sizeable organizations with high profiles and proven track records. A small ministry with such a focus as ours seems a  ridiculous redundancy as an advocate for ecological restoration.

There is no doubt that our land, America, needs healing. When the Bible speaks of a land, however, it does not confine itself to the ecological systems of a geographical area. The people of a land are  as much a part of the land as the flora and fauna. In those terms, America is still a place needing to be healed. Holy Scripture makes no separation between the people and the land. The woundedness of the people  causes the land to bleed. The woundedness of the land, caused by the abuse or neglect of its people, exacerbates the woundedness of the people.

The Celtic knot, that beautiful interweaving design that speaks of the interconnectedness of all creation, represents a view of reality that must be recaptured. Our sins, both individual and  corporate, cause the woven cord of God's created order to unravel. Celtic Christian spirituality is, with God's grace, a way to live in the balance and harmony that was God's original intent. However, much that has  been done to the earth and its inhabitants must be undone before the Celtic way can be more than just faint individual attempts to swim against the stream.

That process of undoing what has been done is the ancient Christian process of repentance, reconciliation and restoration. The one obvious example of how that would work in the healing of the land we  live in would be in carrying out this process with native American peoples, commonly known as American Indians. I am not speaking of the sin of conquest and physical warfare at this point. All peoples are stained  with that sin and no nation can claim innocence. However, one sin committed against the native Americans which could be seen as an area for the healing of the land was committed not by the soldiers, but by the  missionaries. In presenting the Gospel to the native peoples of America, our ancestors warned them that to embrace the Gospel meant to reject all elements of their native religion. The Gospel had to be received in  European clothing or it could not be received at all.

The process of the healing of the land would involve three steps. First, the Church must repent of its smothering of the Gospel in the cultural trappings of Europe. Secondly, we must admit to the  native American peoples that we were wrong to deny them the opportunity to "baptize" their ancient religion in the light of the Good News of Jesus. Third, we must humbly ask them to go back and do the very thing we  denied them while we stand aside. It may seem idealistic, and from the point of view of Christian orthodoxy, very risky. However, it is already going on, not, I am ashamed to say, in the mainline churches. All too  often the spiritual relativism of modern mainline churches prefers to embrace an unconverted native American spirituality rather than follow the Celtic combination of an unwavering proclamation of the Gospel and the  appreciation of a peoples' spiritual heritage. This process of healing is being carried out by evangelicals, pentecostals and fundamentalists, those sectors of the Christian community so often despised by the  mainstream of our culture. Already white Christian leaders are meeting with their native American counterparts, confessing their sins, seeking reconciliation and restoration. We have recently seen an example of this  activity in the Southern Baptist Convention's recent apology to the African American community for their role in the sins of slavery and racism. Plans underway by various evangelical groups include pilgrimages of  repentance, retracing the old slave routes from Africa to America, the path of the crusaders to Jerusalem and other similar journeys.

Of course, such acts of repentance, reconciliation and restoration may seem no more than a small bandage on a gaping wound. Yet the Christian leaders involved believe that when Christians participate  in such Godly work, it has an effect in the heavenly realms which in turn is expressed in changes in the natural world. This leads me to the final Celtic analogy. The Celts understood that the wall between heaven  and earth is permeable and very thin in certain places (such as Bethel, the site of Jacob's dream). St. Paul tells us that "... the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the  creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the  glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we  wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies." What we do in these acts of restoration will profoundly affect our earth, just as our sins have profoundly affected the earth. In such a work as this, the influence  of the St. Aidan Trust is not a matter of our numbers or our resources, only our courage and our faithfulness.