Sacred return
In Denver, a ‘stunning, remarkable ceremonial moment’
Text by Rebecca Jones I Photos by Dale Horkey
t was a sacred event in a sacred space, and those who were there leſt convinced that they’d been
joined by countless unseen others to watch history come full circle. Te Lutherans in the group spoke
of the Danish immigrants who pur- chased a small plot of land in central Denver more than 100 years ago and consecrated it for worship and the shaping of a community. Te Amer- ican Indians spoke of ancestors, summoned from the four directions in the sacred pipe ceremony. Both spoke of the pain and brokenness that has marked so much of the his- tory between indigenous people and those whose ancestors immigrated to this land. But the two cultures came
together March 28 to recognize the value both place on sacred space and to acknowledge the role it plays in our connection to the divine and each other. Legally speaking, what happened was a transfer of ownership of
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property from the Rocky Mountain Synod to the Four Winds American Indian Council. Spiritually speak- ing, what happened was much more profound. It was, in the words of George Tinker, founder and elder of Four Winds, a “stunning and remarkable ceremonial moment.”
Purchased by Danes Te property in question—at the corner of Fiſth Avenue and Bannock Street in a part of Denver that until recently verged on the seedy—was purchased by Danish immigrants in 1912 for $2,150. On it they built a sturdy brick church: Bethany Danish Lutheran. For the next 60 years the building housed this com- munity of faith, where generations of Lutherans came to be baptized, married, nurtured in the faith and inspired by the holy. But by 1973 membership had
dwindled to the point of no return. Te congregation was dissolved, with ownership of the building and
Shannon Francis (standing), president of the Four Winds American Indian Council, speaks as American Indian and Lutheran ancestors are invoked during a ceremony at which the Rocky Mountain Synod, based in Denver, handed over a historic church to the council.
neighboring parsonage turned over to the American Lutheran Church, an ELCA predecessor. In 1988 it passed to the Rocky Mountain Synod. Te building didn’t sit empty.
From 1973 to 1986 it housed Lutheran Social Services of Colo- rado. In 1986 an Episcopal/Lutheran community, Living Waters Indian Ministry, moved in and called Tin- ker as its pastor. “Tink,” as he is widely known,
was a Lutheran pastor who had earned a master of divinity degree from Pacific Lutheran Teological Seminary and a doctorate in bibli- cal studies at Graduate Teological Union, both in Berkeley, Calif. Te son of an Osage Nation father, he joined the faculty of the Iliff School of Teology in Denver in 1985. Today, as the Clifford Baldridge
Professor of American Indian Cultures and Religious Traditions at Iliff, he has opened the eyes of thousands of students to the atrocities committed against native people and the church’s complicity in them.
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