Arapaho tribe tells pastor to leave reservation after she trashes their sacred traditions
Sarah Lucas condemned Northern Arapaho ceremonies as “idol worship”—then portrayed herself as a persecuted Christian when tribal members pushed back
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In a now-deleted sermon (that still lives online because the internet never forgets), Pastor Sarah Lucas of “Foundations For Nations Church”—which is located within the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming—told her congregation that they needed to reject tribal traditions because all they needed was Jesus. She specifically targeted Sun Dance, the tribe’s “most sacred ceremony.”
“A pipe cannot hear your prayers,” she insisted.
After a clip of the sermon was shared online, it sparked outrage among Northern Arapaho Tribal members who now want the church to get the hell out of there.
While the sermon is no longer on the church’s YouTube channel, a clip went viral after it was posted by actor Christian Wassana:
Are we fighting the spiritual temperature in the atmosphere? Where it says tear down the altars, tear down the idols? And this nation gathered this week and they prayed… and they prayed to pipes and prayed to their ancestors, believing that this is the way for their freedom, to get free from addiction, for people to be healed from their sickness. This is what this culture did this week.
And we went on as church as normal. But here’s the thing: I feel like we’re to pray this morning before moving on. I feel like we’re to pray for our nation this morning, and we’re going to pray for our indigenous nation, our tribe this week, as they’re coming out of this, because we know that Jesus is enough. He’s enough. It’s not Jesus plus. It’s Jesus everything. He’s everything.
And, and I asked Stephanie, um, to come on up here. We’re gonna use her as a point of contact, but she is a born-again Christian, walked out this relationship with the Lord through generational Christianity in their household. And I’m gonna ask my Crow brother to come up because he’s walked away from this as well, to say Jesus is enough. And they understand… the price… when they say that publicly, the persecution that can come with them publicly. But they know that this is it. Jesus is the chain breaker. He is the only God that we should be praying to.
A pipe cannot hear your prayers. It’s just a piece of material, right?
And… this is a cycle they’re caught up in. This is all they’ve ever known. And the Lord is saying “Tear down the idols, tear down the altars, the idol worship.”
To put that in even simpler terms, Lucas was saying that Christians understand reality better than the Indigenous people in their community, and it’s their responsibility to eradicate tribal culture in favor of religious indoctrination. They’re too dumb to understand what Jesus taught, so we need to help educate them! It’s the sort of Christian arrogance you typically hear from teenagers on mission trips to other countries.
Wassana responded:
… It feels like history repeating itself, with attempts to erase and discredit our traditional way of life. Our lodges and ceremonies existed long before any church came to this land. Our ceremonies and way of life are a way of healing, identity, and connection for our people. Everyone has the right to practice their own faith. But claiming that one path is the only path while belittling and condemning ours is deeply disheartening. Respect should go both ways. Our traditions deserve the same dignity and respect as any other faith.
He added that what Lucas said was kind of like walking into a church and mocking the cross.
Belittling and condemning other traditions by insisting your path is the only correct path, of course, is a hallmark of religion—and evangelical Christianity in particular. What makes this unusual, however, is that Lucas isn’t some outsider who can play ignorant about the dynamics in her community. She fully acknowledges how this sort of rhetoric will come across when she says in her sermon that dismissing tribal ceremonies will risk “persecution.” She does it anyway, though, because she has no respect for the Northern Arapaho people.
It’s why, days after the sermon was delivered, more than 100 tribe members peacefully protested outside the church. (Reporter Vince Tropea has incredible pictures and video.) Many of the protesters are Christian themselves, but they insisted there was no conflict between tribal traditions and their religious beliefs—something other churches in the community fully embraced:
“…They don’t know our prayers, they don’t know how powerful our prayers are when we come together, and we pray out of our hearts to the Creator,” Debbie Lonebear added to [chairman of the Northern Arapaho Business Council Keenan Groesbeck’s] words. “The Creator is the same. It’s the same as who they worship. Anywhere we go, it’s the Creator that we talk to. …So, no apology accepted. They said what they said. They’ve done the damage. They need to go.”
Local indigenous rights advocate Big Wind Carpenter said that traditional native beliefs and Christianity don’t have to be “mutually exclusive,” and highlighted the work they have seen done at the St. Stephen’s Mission.
“I think that there’s a lot of people who would consider themselves both traditional and Christians. I don’t think that those ideas are mutually exclusive,” Carpenter commented. “This land was given to churches. You have seen St. Stephen’s Mission, and I think it’s a prime example of how a group can come in and actually respect those people’s ways. St. Stephen’s Church has never treated us like that, has never said it’s one way or the other, that it’s black or white. They have actually accepted a lot of our traditions. Sweats have been held at St. Stephen’s plenty of times.”
In addition to the protests, someone put a sign outside the church’s food pantry reading “Colonization is a plague.”
To be clear, they can’t just kick the church off the tribal land because it actually sits on private property within the reservation. But they sure as hell can make her life uncomfortable. During one protest on July 7, organizer Chris Friday urged people “Don’t go to their food bank. Don’t go to their events. Don’t let your children go.”
Members from the two sides ended up meeting in person to see if they could resolve their conflicts, but, to no one’s surprise, that didn’t go well. Friday later said Lucas offered no apologies for what she said.
That led tribal leaders to ask Lucas to leave the reservation. She wasn’t wanted there. They arguably do not have the legal authority to kick her out but they essentially told her she wasn’t welcome in their community. Lucas insisted she wasn’t going anywhere.
“You could take everything from me but you can’t take my God,” said Lucas. “I’m willing to be martyred for the faith. I’ve counted the cost.”
She’s not a martyr. She’s just an arrogant preacher who assumes she knows better than everyone around her and would rather destroy the entire community than live in a society where not everyone shares her views.
This isn’t anything new. The history of Christians interacting with Indigenous tribes is littered with stories of the former abusing the latter, as Wassana pointed out:
Christian Wassana, an enrolled Cheyenne Arapaho of Oklahoma who played Martin Kills Many on “Yellowstone,” told Cowboy State Daily in a Wednesday interview that tribal members are still wrestling with troubling treatments by past, Christian-affiliated missions, such as the boarding schools that forbade the children from speaking their native languages.
…
Indian boarding schools proliferated in the nation a century ago, many run by religious groups and funded with federal money.
Historical accounts tell of tribal leaders who wanted their kids to gain an education, a federal government that wanted to assimilate the kids and religious leaders who wanted to convert them.
It’s that history that Lucas seems blissfully unaware of, even after coaxing from other Christians with their own tribal backgrounds.
This past week, the church sent out a message to supporters asking for money to take this battle to court so they can continue trashing tribal traditions in a church within the reservation. But as far as I can tell, there’s been no formal demand that the church leaves its premises. The tribes literally don’t have the power to kick them out. They simply let her know how offensive her comments were and asked her to go… which she refused to do. So demanding money for a court battle that doesn’t exist is just another level of Christian arrogance here.
It’s also worth pointing out another connection that I haven’t seen in articles about this situation: Lucas has the blessing of Christian Nationalist preacher Andrew Wommack, who has made no secret of his desire to take over local communities. She attended Wommack’s Charis Bible College and Wommack even helped raise the money for the church to be built within the reservation land.
That connection makes this conflict even more disturbing because this isn’t just about one pastor saying something offensive, then pretending it was everyone else’s fault for calling her out on it. It’s part of a larger evangelical project that treats communities as territories to be conquered. She doesn’t see the Northern Arapaho people as fellow community members. She sees them as targets. She has no respect for their traditions while demanding they respect hers.
That’s history repeating itself. After all, we know what Christians have done to Indigenous tribes and we know the message they’ve always sent: Your ancestors were wrong, your ceremonies are evil, and your culture must be destroyed.
That’s why the pushback isn’t “persecution.” It’s just another instance of (actually) persecuted people fighting back against their oppressors. They’re not demanding that Christians abandon their faith—many of them are Christians. They’re just asking for mutual respect from someone who refuses to give any. Someone so arrogant she’s already fundraising off of their outrage.
Kudos to the Northern Arapaho people for making it clear that their land isn’t a laboratory for Wommack’s Christian Nationalist ambitions.
The Christian preacher who cannot provide a shred of objective evidence to support her own claims, arrogantly dismisses the spiritual traditions of native Americans. And there, boys and girls, is a microcosm of American history. Bible believing Christians slaughtered the native peoples by the tens of thousands and felt entirely justified in doing so.
Of course she made herself the victim. Totally did not see that coming 🙄