Christianity and Its Effects On The Keetoowah Society
Redbird Smith's son Stokes objected to his father's known reverence for (but not worship of) Jesus and the posthumous adoption of Jesus into the Keetoowah Society in 1936. Stokes Smith rejected this position in 1955. This was documented in The Burning Phoenix (1993) by Allogan Slagle, historian of the United Keetoowah Band:
- "A very weird thing happened, politically speaking, in 1955. It had to do with Jesus Christ's membership. The Nighthawks at the Redbird Smith Stomp Grounds were in civil strife. Stokes Smith, Redbird's youngest, was Chief. Before Redbird died, he told his people to incorporate the worship of Christ into Nighthawk religion. In 1936, the Keetoowah Society amended its constitution to recognize Christ. While Stokes had acquiesced and signed the measure, he and other elders were unhappy."
"William Lee Smith, current Nighthawk Chief at Stokes Smith's Grounds, says his father, Stokes, took the fire, wampum and pipe, and left the original grounds, but left part of the fire.
- "The Redbird Grounds people then joined the UKB, realizing they could worship Christ and be Keetoowahs, and have the advantages of political recognition all at the same time, and God would not mind. Thereafter, Stokes' followers refused to recognize either the UKB or his other relatives at Redbird's, although Redbird is still an object of veneration. (Leeds 1992: 60)"'
Read more about this topic: Original Keetoowah Society
Famous quotes containing the words christianity, effects and/or society:
“Wherever there are walls I shall inscribe this eternal accusation against Christianity upon them—I can write in letters which make even the blind see ... I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct for revenge for which no expedient is sufficiently poisonous, secret, subterranean, petty—I call it the one immortal blemish of mankind....”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Perspective, as its inventor remarked, is a beautiful thing. What horrors of damp huts, where human beings languish, may not become picturesque through aerial distance! What hymning of cancerous vices may we not languish over as sublimest art in the safe remoteness of a strange language and artificial phrase! Yet we keep a repugnance to rheumatism and other painful effects when presented in our personal experience.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“Whenever the society is dissolved, it is certain the government of that society cannot remain ... that being as impossible, as for the frame of a house to subsist when the materials of it are scattered and dissipated by a whirlwind, or jumbled into a confused heap by an earthquake.”
—John Locke (1632–1704)