Description: "L. Daniel Hawk seeks to bring an awareness of the narratives and beliefs that were constructed and then played out in settlers' displacement of Indigenous peoples, from the early American colonial period to the present. He asks, how are white American Christians to pursue justice while at the same time benefiting by a structure that has been constructed by and for people like them? In short, the task must entail dismantling the settler structure and its hierarchies of power, exposing and rejecting the settler narrative's denials and fictions of innocence. Christian settlers constructed the structure and false narratives, and Christian settler descendants must join others in dismantling them. Scripture provides both a resource for configuring the work and an arena for facilitating hard conversations"-- Provided by publisher.
Brief description:
L. Daniel Hawk (PhD, Emory University) is professor of Old Testament and Hebrew at Ashland Theological Seminary in Ashland, Ohio. Aspects of his work on biblical narrative take a postcolonial turn in books such as Joshua in 3-D: A Commentary on Biblical Conquest and Manifest Destiny and as coeditor of Evangelical Postcolonial Conversations.
Review Quotes:
"A necessary and prophetic text for those interested in the unsettling yet essential work of reconciliation between settlers and Indigenous people. L. Daniel Hawk is a compelling storyteller, myth buster, Bible expositor, and bridge builder. Hawk's book brings the 'receipts' of colonization--receipts of settler violence, broken treaties, missionary missteps, and stolen land. If the church is courageous enough to take Hawk's stories seriously, it may yet restore the integrity of its presumed destiny to manifest good news, living in right relationship with Indigenous people and the Creator."
--T. Christopher Hoklotubbe, director of graduate studies at NAIITS: An Indigenous Learning Community and coauthor, with H. Daniel Zacharias, of Reading the Bible on Turtle Island