This thought-provoking work describes the oppression suffered by American Indians since the arrival of European colonists, who brought a different worldview across the ocean and attempted to convert the native population to the religion they brought with them. The methodology, language, and understandings of the Christian beliefs of the colonists--and of the majority society since the colonial period--largely failed to Christianize the native population. Different conceptual frameworks and different understandings of terms made (and make) Christian doctrine unappealing and at times incomprehensible to American Indians.
In this book, "Tink" Tinker focuses in particular on differing understandings of Jesus Christ and of the land, and the centrality of both to the "theology of sovreignity" and the challenges communities of faith face, particularly indigenous comminites, in a postcolonial world.