Book review
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Igloo Dwellers were my Church by John Sperry Published by Bayeux Arts Inc. Calgary. Price £15.00 ISBN 1-896209-58-0 |
Jack Sperry lived in the tiny Northern Community of Coppermine, some 100 miles north of the Arctic Circle, in the Canadian Arctic for 20 years. As a missionary he covered over 3000 miles every year by dog-team and sled visiting the people in Igloos all over the Central Arctic bringing the Good News of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to one of the last primitive peoples of the world. Before he left he saw the nomadic people, who had been born and lived in igloos and tents scattered over a vast area, settled in communities. They had owned almost nothing that was not made of animal products or stone but came to possess rifles, skidoos, houses, power boats, nylon fishing nets, centrally heated houses, TV and Nintendo. They had been an incredibly competent and independent people making a living in a desert of sea, ice and rock. The well meant efforts of government intervention gradually made many of them dependent on government handouts, subsidies and allowances, with most of their hard won survival skills lost.
The whole story of these amazing people accepting the gospel is fully recorded in Jack Sperry's book which, while based on his own life and ministry, also covers with deep insight and compassion the story of the battle to accept huge changes by a people wholly unequipped to face modern technology and new social patterns in their own situation. It also surveys the impact of wider industrial, military and climatic changes in the world, and the appalling impact of drugs and alcohol. He writes with great modesty of the sheer physical demands he faced and the pressure on his own family living through the period, and with deep love and awareness of the people he lived with and worked beside for so long. The story is very comprehensive, illustrated by Jack Sperry's own photographs and by many from his predecessor at Coppermine, Harold Webster. The pictures themselves are a treasury of the history of the Copper Eskimo people and of Christian mission.
This book is inspiring in its note of praise to so great a God. It is realistic in its statement of the problems of today in the far north and it is faithful to the goodness of God who sent him to the Inuit and who kept him, his family and his congregation. As one of his successors at Coppermine living in the situation he describes towards the end of his book I wish I had had the benefit of so complete and accurate analysis of the Inuit response to such massive change in so short a time. Both as a history of mission and an analysis of cultural change this is an important book to read. Its implications, although set in a tiny remote community on the edge of the world, have a great deal to teach all who seek to present Christ in a rapidly changing world, as well as to people responsible for development policy in the West on the collateral effects of their decisions on the world we share with such a range of contrasting and diverse people.
Michael MacLachlan
Buying the book:
Copies of Bishop Sperry's book Igloo Dwellers were my Church can be obtained from:
Defoe Books, 8 Halford Close, Whetstone, Leicester LE8 6EX.
The price is £17 (including p&p)
Tele/Fax: 0116 275 0342
Mobile: 07710 459285
E-mail: defoebooks@webleicester.co.uk