Native Lives Matter

Wilhelm Löhe (1808-1872) and the Mission to Native People

Abstract

The article is based on the festive lecture held on the occasion of Reformation Day on October 31, 2020, in the Evangelical Lutheran Church Parish of St. Michael in Fürth in Germany. The Franconian Lutheran pastor Wilhelm Löhe, born in Fürth, was the founding father of the diaconal institutions in Neuendettelsau and the missionary work, first of all in North America. The congregation in Fürth had initiated a debate on how to deal with the memorial relief on the churchyard that depicts Löhe’s emissaries and Native Americans. It bears the signature saying that the missionaries are “preaching the gospel to the Indians (sic!)” The author asks how to deal with the ambivalent colonial-missionary heritage and proposes a reformatory postcolonial re-reading of mission as receiving. Therefore, she invites the celebration of the Reformation festival in honor of Native Americans and to receive an ecological, cross-theological, and anti-racist mission for life from them. The lives of native people matter to God.