Orthodox Alaska: A Theology of Mission

Sayo Ajiboye
DMin Overture I
May 2007
Orthodox Alaska: A Theology of Mission
By Michael Oleksa
252 pages

How can two world views live in harmony and seek to represent one wholesome perspective? This difficult thesis was what Orthodox Alaska asset out to show. It is a story that goes far back into the Pre-Christian past of the Alaskan people but is linked with the development of Orthodox Christianity in Russia; it was formed in the crucible of Valaam Mission which started in 1784 and it shows that how we do theology is critical to how faith spread and is acceptable across eons.
The assumption of the Orthodox Church is that Christianity must be incarnated into the community. The logos must become an acculturated reality and indigenous personality must be sanctified by a global faith. Christ must be all in all and God must be seen at work in every person and situation of the community and in his creation at large.

Orthodox missionaries uniquely valued the “works of God” that preceded their coming to the Aleuts. Cosmic archetypes that govern the daily lives of the people found Christian parallels and mythologies and legends such as that on creation were easily assimilated. The missionary endeavor sought a wholesome faith. It stood with the people in their travails against the encroaching forces of commerce. Orthodox Church was unique in working with the people to fight economic exploitation and eek the preservation of the culture of the people.

Oleksa shows how Orthodox Christianity became truly indigenous and chose to be expressed through local mediums and mores. Oleksa shows how secularism is tearing apart what missionary agents sort to protect. The homogenization of peoples, the loss of local languages and cultures due to misconceived modernizing intents. These intents could be in form of the attempt of the government officials in the nineteenth century to “civilize the native (Christian!) population and destroy native cultures or it could be in form of the twentieth century dependency systems that requires homogenization of a people before they can be given access; all of these has the result of destroying the essence of what the people are and the orthodox Church according to Oleska stood against them.

Oleksa’s missiology and theology was presented through history. Modern Christian history has been very unkind in its interpretation of African Cultural values. The most challenging aspect – however – is the tendency of the Average evangelical leader to accept an uncritical interpretation of African culture as moderated by European missionary/colonialist. Most of sub Saharan Africa did not benefit from a sensitive treatment of their stories and it has carried on till today. Even alluding to the possibility of a “redemptive analogy” in the African Evangelical Christian Church will most probably cause the people to lead me out unto a high cliff like the crowd at the Synagogue in Nazareth did to Jesus.

Yet in the African story are a lot of these analogies. My own Yoruba tradition of South Western Nigeria gives me many of such analogies. We will easily agree with Oleska’s summary of the Orthodox position that “Nature is not God but it reveals Him” and that “matter is not the opposite but the Icon of the spirit” and further that “the cosmos participates in the Prototype without exhausting Him.” These are uniquely pre-Christian Yoruba thoughts but do I dare however to face the church and talk about these realities? Oduduwa the father of the Yoruba people is a redemptive archetype, Moremi, Oluorogbo and the whole Ela story is so similar to the deeds of Christ as to beg strong comparison, our ancient religious poems the Ifa Corpuscles and the stories of the God have such strong redemptive realities embedded in them that one wonders – why didn’t Oleska’s crowd come first to Africa? Why was it Presbyterian and Roman Catholic White fathers? To understand theology from a platform of clear anthropology, to respect a people’s story before judging its content, -to refuse the “label and trash” syndrome that surrounded the Western Mission Agents general tendency to interact with African stories would have been so redemptive in itself. It seems however that we are a hundred and fifty years late.