This article illustrates how the misconception that “gospel communication” is free from the bias of ones cultural underpinnings can be a dangerous and often destructive assumption. Twiss defines what the underlying and clashing worldview assumptions are and how the ethnocentric impulse distorts the gospel of Jesus Christ; the result is a hegemonic and truncated gospel among the First Nations People of the United States.
This essay gives an overview of how American Federal policy and missionary enterprise led to the devastating negative conditions faced by Native North American people today. Great strides are being taken to correct the neo-colonial, ethnocentric, and hegemonic tendencies in the American church. We will do well to heed George Hunter’s exhortation for a return to an earlier period where there was indeed an indigenous movement.