God Is Red

A book by the Standing Rock Sioux scholar and activist, first published in 1973, amid the Native American activism of the period, and reissued in 1994 with the subtitle A Native View of Religion. Deloria compares Christianity with the religions of Native American peoples and argues that the deepest difference is between time and space. Christianity, he says, is centred on history: a sequence of events, a universal message and a future salvation. Tribal religions are centred on place: on particular lands, sacred sites and the community that lives there. From this contrast he examines creation stories, the meaning of history, death, the individual and the group, and the relation of humans to nature. He criticises Christianity's role in conquest and its failure to produce just societies, and argues that a spatial, land-based religion offers better ways of relating to the earth. Critics have noted that he generalises across very different tribal traditions.

It is a foundational work of Native American thought and religious criticism, and its contrast between time-centred and place-centred religion remains a useful lens on faith, land and ecology.