Vine Deloria’s God Is Red has been a worldview changing book for me, helping me to see see my Christian faith through the eyes a people group that Europeans nearly wiped out in the the name of manifest destiny. Deloria presents a searing indictment and a structured takedown on Christendom as a flawed historical religion and worldview. While I disagree that the heart of Christianity is flawed, I agree to a large degree with Deloria that Christianity has lost its way and creates many problems for the world in its current state.

Chapter 5: Thinking in Time and Space
Contrasts the difference between the domestic ideology of time of Westerners, and the domestic ideology of space that Natives American Indians hold with their lands as having the highest possible meaning, and immigrants hold that their history of moving across that land over time is a story of progress, and this has been the destiny of the people of Europe. As a result of the clashing ideologies, once colonized the American Indian tribal religions were considered irrelevant because they didn’t fall into the categories of religion defined with time-based concepts and doctrines.

Chapter 6: The Problem of Creation
While both religions agree on the role and activity of a creator, Christians see creation as a linear event whereas tribal religions are more concerned with the interrelatedness of all things than with the beginning and end of time. One of the problematic views that many Christians hold is the idea that man receives domination over creation to “subdue the earth.” This view has used to justify treating earth as a mere object for economic exploitation.
The task of tribal religion is “to determine the proper relationship that the people of the tribe must have with other living things.” Deloria quotes Walking Buffalo, a Stoney Indian from Canada: “Did you know that trees talk? Well they do. They talk to each other, and they’ll talk to you if they listen. Trouble is, white people don’t listen. They never learned to listen to the Indians, so I don’t suppose they’ll listen to other voices in nature. But I have learned a lot from trees; sometimes about the weather, sometimes about animals, sometimes about the Great Spirit.” Tribal religions understand that we are dealing with “complexity of relationships in which no particular object is given primacy over any other object or entity.”

Chapter 7: The Concept of History
Recording history has never been a priority of tribal religions, whereas Christianity has always placed a major emphasis on history. “Where, if not from Christianity, did Western man get his ideas of divine right to conquest, of manifest destiny, of himself as the vanguard of true civilization, if not from Christianity? Having tied itself to history and maintained that its god controlled that history, Christianity must accept the consequences of its past. Secular history is now out of control and is becoming a rather demoniac, disruptive force among the nations of men, and that is part and parcel of the Christian religion."

Chapter 11: Human Personality
This chapter starts off by contrasting how Christians believe that becoming a Christian involves a radical change in the human being’s constitution, whereas Indian tribal religions do not necessarily involve a change in the person but “encompass within the tribal cultural context man of the behavioral patterns spoken about by Christians.” This chapter then moves into talking about what effect in practical terms Christian living has on individuals and societies. Deloria states “The response of many Christians to the reminder that their religion has failed to bring peace on earth, or even a semblance of it, has been that the people who committed the numerous sins filling the pages of Western and world history were not really Christians. If we eliminate those perpetrators of criminal activity from the Western world, we are left with a very small percentage of people who were really Christians. Why did these people remain silent while the various abuses were being committed in the name of their religion."

Chapter 15: The Aboriginal World and Christian History
In this chapter Deloria details the trauma resulting in some of the early Christian beliefs of mankind growing out of a literal Garden of Eden and populating the world. “What were devout thinkers to make of the existence of millions of people living on lands larger than Europe? What was their status with respect to Christianity — the one true religion? Did God have a purpose for these people? Could Jesus return until all of these nations had been preached the gospel? What was the responsibility of God’s chosen nations in the face of this revelation of the tremendous scope of mankind?” He goes on to say that for Christianity to survive we have to let go of our narrow interpretation of history and our binding of God to a particular mode of operation and sequence of appearance.

Chapter 16: Religion today
In the final chapter, Deloria explains that opposing tribal concepts to Christianity does not necessarily mean that tribal concepts are correct because Christianity is wrong. Instead, Christianity should consider ideas found in Native American tribal religions because in the current state Christianity has failed in many areas that still need alternative answers. Deloria’s call is that Christians should be open to learning from land based religions as the future of humankind depends on those who will understand the integrations of lands and people.

Reading God is Red as a Christian wasn’t easy, but I found a lot of value in the harsh criticism. It was a reminder and an education for me how the history of Christianity includes a lot of megalomania, bigotry, nationalism, and many other sins common to every man. Unless Christians can be honest about our history and our blind spots, we may be clumsy at best and harmful and destructive at worst in the message of love we try to share.

Certainly an interesting read, albeit a little biased and romantic.

Vine Deloria describes the state of religion in the United States as it pertains to both caucasian history and beliefs and native history and beliefs. He describes the way that the Christian religion has failed the earth and is now failing people and the ways in which tribal religions are better able to help people live good and fulfilling lives in harmony with each other and with the planet. Some highlights include: a rationalization of the 'ancient astronauts' theory, a log of how natives have been treated ever since the Europeans showed up, and an overall effective discussion of the difference in paradigm between native/traditional religions of the world, and large modernized religions such as Christianity.

This book certainly had its flaws, the most annoying being horrendous editing. As a third edition, this really should have been proofread at some point, right? It is chock full of typos, really obvious ones, and sentences that no matter how many times I read, I couldn't understand what they meant (i.e. extremely poor grammar/sentence structure).

That said, this book really gave me a lot to think about. Deloria often draws conclusions or makes comparisons that I wouldn't, and I often felt that he's doing more comparing to Christianity than explaining Native American religion, but I guess that's important in order for a reader like me to be able to see the difference in paradigm. It's definitely not an unbiased analysis though (not sure one can exist...) so it has to be read carefully. I think Deloria's goal isn't so much to explain what we think of as "religion" - for Christians (many) and for non-religious American folks (nearly all), religion is one little piece of ourselves/our lives. For Native Americans, it's all tied up in culture and daily life. Rather than being worldwide and prescriptive, or personal and individual, it's tribal/community based and it's culture/politics, everything. It's what they actually do and why.

The author doesn't think Christianity can be this - I think it could. Though I agree with him that it will take a lot. Conservative Christians are heading off the deep end and liberal Christians are dropping like flies as they get disenchanted by the craziness and don't want any association with it. But even Christianity has roots - roots that Deloria goes into - and these are just as valid as the roots of Native American tribal relgions and I don't think they're based on ancient astronauts. I think some people see this book as an attack because it isn't the new-agey description of Native American religious practices they expected. Some chapters are an attack, but that's not why. Deloria does an excellent job of stepping back and saying, hey wait, we can't explain our beliefs without you first letting go of your paradigm for religion and understanding that ours functions in a fundamentally different way.

Themes: Native Americans, religion, Christianity, the land/North American continent, history, philosophy, culture, politics

Overall, I absolutely adored this. However, I find the title misleading. I was expecting a Native view on religion, but it is more of the Native (or A Native's) view on Christianity. I am not a Christian and therefore enjoyed most of what Deloria Jr had to say on the issues with Christianity and its inherent dominance of the world. For me, this was not the easiest read because the author has a eloquent, rant-like type of writing where it can be difficult to follow what he was saying. Also, the last 100 pages felt repetitive and were therefore a bit dull to read, but I am glad that I read this. A lot of what his issues are very relevant today and I was sad to find out that he had passed several years ago. However, I plan to read some more of his writings and other related works and am excited to expand my mind a bit more about the subject.

This book blew my mind so much. It's articulate, complex while still being approachable, and challenged me to examine my understanding of religion, its functions, and the rhetoric we use around discussion Christianity. I seriously recommend this book to absolutely everyone.