I said a while ago that I would talk a little more on the stuff I have been learning in class. The most interesting part to me is the spirituality of the Andean peoples, especially where and how Christianity fits in. It is very interesting to see how after almost 500 years of Catholic evangelization to these people their "traditional" religion really is a mix of Catholic and older Aymara or Quechua practices. And to these people there does not seem to be any contradiction. Although most social scientists and church leaders alike agree that even today the autoctonous religious expressions take precedence over the Catholic. It is interesting, complicated, and brings up a lot of questions for the Church which I have mentioned before that have been my primery concern here. How can a person be 100% Aymara or Thai or Navaho or French or Basque and be 100% Christian? The early church wrestled with this too, trying to make the Gentile believers live by the Mosaic law.

One Aymara woman I have read about said this: "It is useless to ask an Aymara person if he or she is really a Christian, because what you are really asking is 'is she a Christian like us foreigners'; in reality the Aymara themselves will have to develop their own criteria in order to judge their faithfulness to the message of Christ."

Those words probably grate on our sensitive American Christian ears and can be dangerous, but they need to be heard and contemplated. Is not our own religious expression of our faith a product of our European heritage? Have not many of our theologians and pastors made mistakes on the way? Why then should they not have the right to make mistakes and make their theology? Why do we have to "save" them from making mistakes and just say hey, do church like us and you will be real Christians?

Like I have said before, the Aymara and Quechua people hardly talk about their "religion," they live it. If you asked them what their religion or their worldvision was, they would probably give you a blank stare. In this world Christianity and their own traditional religiosity have been so mixed up they can't be separated. Another person we read said this:
"The Aymara world is an entirely religious culture; all of the elements that exist in their ceremonial practices demonstrate a profound Christian faith. . . . The concept or exact definition of religion and Christianity is not clear in the consciousness of the individual, but the manifestations of his or her faith, their actions, works, practices, etc., are in every way religious and Christian.

This is something that we may not be comfortable talking about, maybe it is heresy, but they are issues that we must wrestle with here in order to understand our faith.

Recently in the past 15-20 years, and more so now that an indigenous president has been elected, many indigenous Andean people have been reevaluating, and revaluing, their traditional religion. There has been a recognition of the fact that their religion or spirituality is a legitimate expression of a legitimate culture and wordview. Cultural plurality and tolerance has arrived and helped them a lot, but as Christians we know that not all religious expressions are on the same level, not all get you to the same place. Anyways, so you have a little bit of an idea of their spiritual reality, I wanted to describe a little to you:
The rituals of the Aymara and Quechua peoples are first a manifestation of their faith- in life, the possibility of a good harvest, the harmony of all that exists, and in a God that directs all of the creation. Their rites are also a conversation, a continuous communion, with nature and the superior beings that inhabit nature as well. Their rites are also a way for them to maintain or restore the harmony with the universe. They have been described as politheists, animists, or just pagans, but interestingly if you really dig deep into their religious view of the world, they would not say they worship the spirits or ancestors. Instead they revere or honor them. In their world everything is in a balance, so if mother earth or the mountain or the river give to me, I have to give back to then to keep the balance. That is what their ceremonies represent, especially the agricultural rites, not really a "worship" of them in our sense of the word, and certainly not really "gods" like we consider them. There is not even a word for God in their language.
However, the Andean people have accepted that there is one God, the creator and savior of the universe. They believe this with all their heart. The confusion for the missionary comes in when they continue practicing their old religious rites alongside their Christian faith. So the question is, are they really Christians, or have they ever really been evangelized? We have to recognize that these other spiritual beings are still a reality in the Aymara and Quechua experience. So what do we do with them? We can´t brush it off as superstition, because it is not. I have seen these powers with my own eyes and have heard many other stories from countless people. They are real. Are they good? Are they evil? Can Pachamama or the Achachilas and Mallkus(mountain spirits) really just be the Andean interpretation of how God has revealed Himself through creation to these people? Does the sythesis that the Aymaras have made between their ancestral religion and Christianity represent a distortion of Christianity, or is it posible to interpret and value this synthesis as enriching the Christian tradition? They have been formulating this Christian expression of theirs for 500 years now. Is it posible to interpret Christianly the nucleus of the Aymara or Quechua religion (which is the worldview that really shapes their agricultural and other rites today) or the beliefs about the spirits to which these rites are directed? I am not going to try to answer those questions, but please leave comments about what you think. I would like to start a conversation.

I can say that there are many things in the Andean worldview and tradition, even in their spirituality, that I admire a lot and think they are closer to the Kingdom in some aspects than our white North American church. The beauty of their tradition is that they consider all things as mutually interconnected and related; that everything has to do with everything and nothing is individual or isolated. Their understanding and respect for their environment and the balance that is necesary is something we must learn from if we are going to survive. "The land doens´t just produce all by itself" is an expression I have often heard. It means that the production of the earth depends, on one hand, on the practical, technical, and religious efforts of humans directed towards the establishment, conservation, and/or retoration of nature's equilibrium, and on the other hand, it is the answer of nature itself and the forces that reside there. Their ethic and morals are admirable and their commul life is amazing. All this they pursue in search of the Vida Buena, the "Good Life," which is just like the idea of Shalom in our Bible.

The cultural, and theological, superiority of Western Christianity has only been able to see Andean religion as inferior and an obstacle to "true evangelization" and for this reason has not been able to stop and listen to her and be enriched by her. The Aymaras and Quechuas on the other hand, accepted Christianity and integrated it into their lives, first by force, but later they chose it. Even now in these days that they are reevaluating their own religion, they see how key the Church is to their own culture now.

I am not advocating for complete religious relativism. I do not think I can reach the Kingdom of God by sacrificing to Pachamama. Christ is still the answer. Out of all the good we can, and should, take from them, the one thing they are missing is grace. Their religion is totally based on works. The balance of the universe is based on if they keep the mutual exchange and balance between their world and the spirits. I just think we need to wrestle with this more. We too easily just rely on our own version of Christianiy as if it were the only version and we evangelize the same way. So how can my neighbor be 100% Quechua and 100% Christian? Do they have to look like me to be a Christian? What elements of other religions can we accept and which others must we reject? We have to remember that there is Truth present everywhere. Our job is to reveal that Truth to the people in the light of Christ. One author I read suggests that their traditional religion is like their own Old Testament and now we are to work with them to move into the New. I don't know. I hope some of this makes sense to some of you and I hope you leave comments to because I want to talk about it and hopefully we can start to work through some of this together. I don't know if there are answers to some fo these questions, but we can rest in the assurance that Christ is our savior and in the end grace will prevail.