"The problem of a Western worldview displays itself: the way of life demonstrated by Western peoples leads to alienation from the earth, hostility toward others, and estrangement from all of creation. It creates a false bubble, called Western civilization, which the West feels will protect them from calamity. This false hope is built on age-old philosophical ideas handed down from Greece, Rome, England, and other Western nation-states." - Randy S. Woodley ; Indigenous Theology and the Western Worldview, p. 98
"`Nature' was transformed in the european pean mind from a self-organizing, living system to a mere raw material for human exploitation, needing management and control."" - Vandana Shiva ; Quoted by George E. Tinker in Spirit and Resistance: Political Theology and American Indian Liberation
"Two factors are most striking about evangelical solutions to racial problems. First, they are profoundly individualistic and interpersonal: become a Christian, love your individual neighbors, establish a cross-race friendship, give individuals the right to pursue jobs and individual justice without discrimination by other individuals, and ask forgiveness of individuals one has wronged. Second, although several evangelicals discuss the personal sacrifice necessary to form friendships across race, their solutions do not require financial or cultural sacrifice. They do not advocate or support changes that might cause extensive discomfort or change their economic and cultural lives. In short, they maintain what is for them the noncostly status quo." - Michael O. Emmerson and Christian Smith ; Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America, p. 38
"This situation reasonably requires that a Native American theology begin with this context as political reality and move quickly to press for a new vision of health and well-being (what some might call salvation) for the people. Thus, an American Indian theology must be a theology of liberation. It must be overtly political." - Spirit and Resistance: Political Theology and American Indian Liberation ; George E. Tinker
"Our liberation, our healing, depends on our not allowing someone else to remember or dream on our behalf." - Spirit and Resistance: Political Theology and American Indian Liberation ; George E. Tinker
"The liberation of euro-american peoples must be rooted in some sort of systemic confession and repentance with respect to their relationship with the native peoples of this continent." - Spirit and Resistance: Political Theology and American Indian Liberation ; George E. Tinker
"So, you must count the cost. If you want change, you must ask yourself if making change is worth it to you. Are the lives of Indigenous peoples or the cultural, religious, ethnic, racial, or gendered other worth it to you? Is the integrity of the gospel worth it to you? How about your own integrity?" - Randy S. Woodley ; Indigenous Theology and the Western Worldview, p. 106
"The downward spiral from the system managers to the truth-tellers goes something like this: ignore and/or deny the concerns, feign acceptance of the concerns, pacify with good words and good intentions, blame the messenger, gather support for blame, reject the messenger completely through ostracizing them or removing them." - Randy S. Woodley ; Indigenous Theology and the Western Worldview, p. 106
"The characteristics of an American Indigenous worldview are much different: physically and morally holistic, a very tangible spirituality, egalitarian, peace seeking, cooperative, purposeful and meaningful work, a natural interconnectedness to all creation, hospitality, and generosity." - Randy S. Woodley ; Indigenous Theology and the Western Worldview, p. 98
"The Western worldview is physically dualistic, morally dualistic, essentially spiritual, religiously intolerant, individualistic, extrinsically categorical, hierarchical, competitive, greed based, utopian, White supremacist, anthropocentric, triumphalist, and patriarchal." - Randy S. Woodley ; Indigenous Theology and the Western Worldview, p. 98
"I ask a serious question: What can turn the same people who call themselves by Christ’s name into a people who will kill, steal, and destroy people, land, and nature with genocidal passion?" - Randy S. Woodley ; Indigenous Theology and the Western Worldview, p. 98
“Shalom is the end of coercion. Shalom is the end of fragmentation. Shalom is the freedom to rejoice. Shalom is the courage to live an integrated life in a community of coherence. These are not simply neat values to be added on, but they are massive protests against the central values by which our world operates. The world depends on coercion. The world depends on fragmented loyalties. The world as presently ordered depends on these very conditions, against which the gospel protects and to which it provides alternatives.” - Walter Brueggemann, quoted by Randy S. Woodley ; Indigenous Theology and the Western Worldview, p. 95
“On earth, as it is in heaven” - Randy S. Woodley ; Matthew 6:10; Quoted in Indigenous Theology and the Western Worldview, p. 70
“Our religion does not teach me to concern myself with the life that shall be after this, but it does teach me to be concerned with what my everyday life should be.” - Randy S. Woodley ; Indigenous Theology and the Western Worldview, p. 69
"An honest, shalom-based salvation or healing is not ethereal but very much earthbound. We should be suspicious of salvation theologies that hold a future in heaven as more important to us than our time on earth is now." - Randy S. Woodley ; Indigenous Theology and the Western Worldview, p. 69
"Narratives around place naturally compel us to define our social location in the story. A nonlocal theology, a more abstract theology, makes it easier to ignore social location and place." - Randy S. Woodley ; Indigenous Theology and the Western Worldview, p. 67
"Indigenous worldviews might say that we understand narrative has truth, and facts are, well, not so important as truth." - Randy S. Woodley ; Indigenous Theology and the Western Worldview, p. 47
"There was a whole lot of in-between that I was missing, and one of the things I was missing was that I was treating people as objects of my agenda. I had no concern for their person compared to my concern for their 'soul.'” - Randy S. Woodley ; Indigenous Theology and the Western Worldview, p. 45
"You can be a Christian and follow Jesus, but it’s very difficult." - Randy S. Woodley ; Indigenous Theology and the Western Worldview, p. 45
"I’m not sure that Christianity is compatible with Indigenous values, but I’m pretty certain that following Jesus seems to be. If you’re more interested in following Jesus than following Christianity, I don’t think there’s a conflict." - Randy S. Woodley ; Indigenous Theology and the Western Worldview, p. 44
"I would argue to the contrary that Indian people certainly did understand the human emotions and motivations of greed, but had powerful and complex social mechanisms for systemically suppressing them in the interest of a communal sense of wholeness and well-being." - George E. Tinker ; Spirit and Resistance: Political Theology and American Indian Liberation
"As Indian people begin to identify the social dysfunction of Indian communities, it is becoming clearer to us that the healing of Indian communities is Indian business, to be conducted by Indian people and Indian community organizations in a way that is consistent with Indian cultures and values." - Spirit and Resistance: Political Theology and American Indian Liberation ; George E. Tinker
"Ideologies of 'civilization' and 'development' have been the consistent liberal euro-american and european remedies to the genocide, chaos, and dysfunction wrought by the european invasions of indigenous societies ongoing for more than 500 years." - Spirit and Resistance: Political Theology and American Indian Liberation ; George E. Tinker
"Thus, an Indian theology must begin with the present-day social disintegration experienced by every Indian community, and begin to name the causes for the disintegration." - George E. Tinker ; Spirit and Resistance: Political Theology and American Indian Liberation