Journeying together to the holy Centre

Christian Body Condemns Israeli Attacks

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 19:33:08 GMT

Israel's & Trump's Costly Wars Denounced

The dove of peace - sign of the Spirit of peace and love - is still searching for places to land while dodging the drones, bombs, missiles, and bullets of warring humans. Where is the olive branch? (Genesis 8:6-12; see also Genesis 9:8-17)

Editor's Note: Christian churches of the Western world have not done all they could to foster justice and peace to west Asia - the Middle East. European guilt about the antisemitism which infested so much of church life in Europe and European-based faith communities, has blunted prophetic mandates to witness to truth, justice, and peace borne of liberation. With few exceptions like Ireland and Spain, governments have taken the fraudulent narratives the Israeli/USA lobbies distribute as truth, even as these allies pursue economic, political, and military expansionist plans. Palestinians and neighbouring peoples , like Lebanese. Iranians, and Syrians are paying the unfathomable price of this aggression and colonialism.

Happily some Christian bodies are seeing the light of truth. The World Communion of Reformed Churches, of which the United Church of Canada is a member, is being moved by the divine Spirit to witness prophetically to God's truth and justice. Hear what this Christian body declared, on 8 April 2026, in God's name about the current slaughter and evil being perpetrated in west Asia.

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The World Communion of Reformed Churches (WCRC)

condemns the destructive Israeli air strikes that hit Beirut and various parts of Lebanon on 8 April 2026, standing together with the worldwide ecumenical community in condemning this attack on civilians.

Just hours after a two-week US-Iran ceasefire was announced on April 8, Israel launched its heaviest wave of bombing on Lebanon, killing more than 250 people in what became the bloodiest day of the nearly six-week-old war. The US and Israel have since disputed the scope of the deal, with President Trump calling Lebanon “a separate skirmish” and Prime Minister Netanyahu declaring the ceasefire “does not bind Israel in Lebanon.”

In less than ten minutes, the Israeli military struck over 100 locations across Beirut and the surrounding regions. The Lebanese health ministry reports that these strikes have killed at least 254 people and wounded over 800 others, making it the single deadliest day for Lebanon since the beginning of the US-Israel War on Iran and the region. The targets were residential neighborhoods—homes, civilian infrastructure, and the very fabric of daily life.

But we must speak not only of this day. We must speak of the pattern.

For the past three years, the world has watched the destruction of Gaza. We have witnessed the killing of tens of thousands, the displacement of nearly two million, the starvation of children, and the systematic erasure of the conditions for life itself. And yet, the machinery of global commerce has continued to turn.

We cannot allow this to be the norm.

We reject this normalization of mass death in the region and in our world. We reject the idea that we can consume images of bombed apartment buildings and wounded children as background noise to our daily lives. The bombing of Beirut does not merely inflict physical destruction; it deepens the enmity and division that denies the reconciling work of Christ. We reject any theology or political strategy that uses overwhelming military force to enforce separation and hatred, thereby obstructing the visible unity of humanity for which Christ prayed.

What we have witnessed over the past month is a grotesque manipulation of diplomacy: a ceasefire was announced between the US and Iran, yet immediately afterward, the bombs fell on Lebanon. This is not peacemaking; it is a betrayal.

The Belhar confession calls us to reject any “ideology and false doctrine” that uses the language of security to legitimate the indiscriminate killing of civilians. And in the words of the Belhar Declaration,# “God, in a world full of injustice and enmity, is in a special way the God of the destitute, the poor and the wronged”.

Therefore, the church must stand against injustice. The 254 dead are not statistics or mere numbers; they are the “wronged” with whom God stands. The 800 wounded are the “destitute” to whom we are bound. Consequently, we must witness “against all the powerful and privileged who selfishly seek their own interests and thus control and harm others” .

The Reformed tradition has always insisted that the Word of God is not a distant abstraction but a living critique of every power that claims absolute loyalty.* The Reformed family has long stood for the cause of justice, peace, and the integrity of creation. In this hour, we reaffirm that no religious or political claim justifies the obliteration of neighbourhoods and the killing of hundreds in a single day.

We pray for the wounded, we mourn the dead, and we raise our voice until the bombing stops.

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* Refer to Wikipedia for: the Theological Declaration of Barmen (1934) countering Nazi claims in Hitler's Germany .

# Refer to Wikipedia for: the Belhar Confession as a statement of belief during apartheid South Africa (1982).

All or None

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 14:26:03 GMT

Christians, Jews, and Muslims support Justice, Love, and Peace

Editor's note: In this sermon, Ottawa resident Diana Ralph, a co-founder and active member of Independent Jewish Voices (Canada) calls all people of faith to unite in living their convictions of love, justice and peace, especially as they relate to the genocidal war the state of Israel with complicit active and passive allies, is inflicting on the indigenous peoples and state of Palestine.

The sermon was preached on this year's Palm Sunday at Glebe-St. James United Church, Ottawa. It is published here with the generous permission of Diana Ralph. I am grateful for the thoughtful observations and courageous truth this bridge builder so ably and frequently demonstrates. I hope her witness will move others to the urgent cause of just peace and liberation for all in Palestine. H.O.

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All or None: Christians, Jews, & Muslims Support Justice, Love & Peace

Thank you for this warm welcome. I am pleased to join you all today. As a devout Jew, I want to reflect on our shared spiritual values and to recommit to our holy purpose of building a more loving, peaceful world.

Christians, Muslims, and Jews all believe that because we were created in God’s image, we each carry a divine soul. We all strive to understand and model our lives to reflect God’s demands of us and to be accountable to our covenants.

This is a particularly holy time for Christians, Muslims, and Jews. As you know, Christians are now in the Lenten season. Muslims finished celebrating Ramadan on March 19. And Jews are preparing for Passover to start on the evening of April 1. How are these holidays relevant for our peoples today, at this time of war and genocide?

Let’s start with Christianity . The Lenten season is a time of deep soul-searching, when Christians honour and imitate the 40 days following Jesus’s baptism by engaging in fasting and self-denial. I’d like to highlight two aspects of Jesus’s life. First, Jesus was Palestinian. He was indigenous to the region. Like the Palestinian people today, Jesus organized to resist brutal imperial oppression of His people.

And secondly, Jesus was a devout Jew. His teachings exemplify the core Jewish values of “rachamim” (mercy), “chesed” (compassion), “ahavah” (God’s love), peace (“shalom”) and “emet” (justice). Jews are commanded to view all people as B’tzelem Elohim (made in God’s image) and therefore to welcome and embrace the stranger. By the time Jesus lived, Jewish law (Halakha) had prohibited any form of death penalty, including stoning.

For centuries, Christians downplayed these aspects of His life. Artists often portrayed Jesus as blond and blue-eyed, and, as in today’s reading, the Gospels often differentiate between Jesus and other Jews. During Lent, Medieval European Christian leaders used false claims that “the Jews” killed Christ to justify launching violent pogroms against Jews, killing many and expelling whole communities. In the name of defending and spreading the loving Christian faith, Christian leaders have also committed many other genocides not just against Jews, but also against Muslims, pagans, and Indigenous peoples around the globe. Christian antisemitism led directly to the Holocaust. It is now again on the rise. The Christian evangelical movement powerfully promotes Israel’s current genocide against Palestinians.

What about Islam ? Ramadan is the month which celebrates when the Quran was revealed to Muhammad. Like Christians during Lent, the world’s two billion Muslims observe Ramadan by fasting, prayer, self-reflection, charity, and mutual support. Mohammed respected Christians and Jews as People of the Book and he considered Jesus and Moses prophets.

We have been led to equate Islam with violence and terrorism. But Islam, like Christianity and Judaism, is all about love and peace. The word “Islam” means the voluntary, total submission, and obedience to the will of God. And the word “jihad” primarily refers to the spiritual struggle against sin within oneself.

During the 700 years of the Ottoman empire, Muslim rulers welcomed Jewish survivors of Christian oppression and collaborated with Christians and Jews to create profound spiritual, cultural, and scientific achievements. Under Ottoman rule, Palestinian Muslims, Jews, and Christians had always lived in harmony. During the Holocaust, Muslim countries, including Palestine, gave refuge to Jews.

And now to Judaism . Passover is the Jewish holiday which celebrates the Exodus, our liberation from slavery. It is the core story defining Judaism. Each year, the Torah (what Christians call the Old Testament) requires Jews to re-tell the stirring mythical Exodus tale. We revere Moses, who, like Jesus, worked to free not only his own, but all people.

Here’s the Exodus story: After Hebrew people were enslaved for centuries in Mizrahim (Egypt), God commands Moses to demand that the Pharaoh “let my people go.” The Pharaoh refuses and further oppresses the slaves. But with God’s support, ultimately a “mixed multitude” (not just the Hebrews) escape. Pharoah’s army chases them to the edge of the Reed Sea, where they are trapped. But one man, Nahshon trusts in God and dares to jump into the swirling water. His faith prompts God to miraculously divide the sea, and the multitude cross to safely as Pharoah’s army drowns.

Throughout the Torah, God repeatedly refers to the Passover story to order us to reject all forms of oppression. For example, Exodus 22:20 says: “You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 22:20). This tale also has inspired many other liberation movements.

I believe we are now witnessing a real Exodus struggle . This time, it is the Israeli state which occupies the Pharaoh’s role, and the Palestinians, who are forced to live like the Hebrew slaves. Israel’s founders had always planned to appropriate all the land from the river to the sea and to expel or subjugate Palestinians. For over 75 years, Israel has ethnically cleansed and imposed increasingly brutal political, economic, and military control over the Palestinian people.

Since October 7, 2023, Israel has directly killed over 75,000 people in Gaza. The British medical journal, Lancet estimates that the real death toll is higher than 186, 000, if we count the many more who lie crushed under bombed buildings or dead of starvation, cold, and disease. Israel has destroyed virtually all of Gaza’s homes, hospitals, universities, and essential infrastructure. It intentionally starves the survivors, blocking almost all humanitarian aid from entering Gaza. It is also rapidly expanding its ethnic cleansing of the West Bank. And now Israel (with US and Canadian support) has launched an unprovoked war on Iran which threatens to destabilize the entire world.

Of course, all of this violates core Jewish values. Realizing this has shocked many Jews who had equated Israel with Judaism. Like many Jews, I grew up viewing Israel as a democratic “light unto the nations,” and, in the wake of the Holocaust, believing Jews deserve and need a state to protect us against antisemitism. Many of us were unaware of how oppressively Israel has treated Palestinian people. Some thought the Palestinians were inherently violent terrorists and that Israel has had no choice but to defend itself. And some bought the claim that Hamas is the enemy and that if it can be destroyed, we will finally have peace. But these are all lies.

I, along with many other Jews, have had to face the fact that Israel’s policies and actions violate everything we value about Judaism. As I mentioned, before Israel was founded, all three faiths lived in harmony in Palestine. Israel was founded and continues to act as a colonial settler nation, funded and militarily backed by British, US, and Canadian antisemitic politicians for their own geopolitical interests in the oil-rich Middle East.

Oppression enslaves not only the victims, but also their oppressors, dehumanizing them and keeping them constantly afraid of retribution. Like the ancient Hebrew people, the Palestinians have always resisted their enslavement. And like the mythical Egyptians of Exodus, Israeli Jews are ensnared in a trap of escalating fear and violence. Israel is built on a preoccupation with “security”. Far from promoting love, peace, or justice, it has engaged in seven major wars with neighbouring countries since it was founded. It has flouted international law and supported oppressive regimes. Its economy depends on exporting weapons and spy equipment which have been “field-tested” on Palestinians. It has become a pariah state.

And far from making Jews safe, Israel is now the least safe place in the world for us. The October 7 massacre was a horrific, but predictable outcome of Israel’s tightening noose around Gaza. The ensuing violence has left over 2,000 Israelis dead, over 12,000 wounded, and over 200,000 displaced. The economy is shattered, the government is in disarray, and bombs are raining down on terrified Israeli civilians, with no end in sight. Because Israel claims to act on behalf of the world’s Jews, its oppression is also fueling antisemitic attacks on synagogues and Jews here in Canada and everywhere else.

So, what is the path to peace there? What do we even mean by “peace”? Is peace merely the absence of resistance? Israel has tried to impose “peace” by outlawing and punishing all forms of Palestinian resistance. It segregates, discriminates against, displaces, assassinates, imprisons, tortures, shoots and bombs Palestinians. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and B’Tselem (the Israeli human rights organization) argue that Israel has become an apartheid state, worse even than South Africa. All this has failed to produce peace.

There will be no “peace” without ending the oppression. Christians often tell me that they are reluctant to get involved in a conflict between Muslims and Jews. But this is not about religion. The real conflict is between justice and injustice, compassion and oppression . Jesus and Moses both put their lives on the line to oppose oppression. At this holy time, we too can and should risk acting for justice and real peace.

What keeps you from speaking out? Are you afraid of being called antisemitic? Of course, we all oppose real hatred and discrimination against Jews. But criticizing Israeli oppression is not antisemitic. Many Jews, like me, also get attacked for being critical of Israel. When you speak out, you may be called antisemitic. But please don’t fall for this bullying tactic.

The enemy is not Jews or Muslims or Hamas or you or me. I believe, the enemy is capitalism, a godless, vicious, greedy system, that fuels war, divides and hurts us all, and which is making our precious Earth uninhabitable.

Let us recall the words of the prophet Isaiah. Rejecting words without meaningful action, he called on us “to unlock the fetters of wickedness, and untie the cords of the yoke to let the oppressed go free; to break off every yoke.” (Isaiah 58:6ff) So, for Lent this year, I’ll invite you to give up your fears and to risk standing up for justice. We all have a stake in resisting Israel’s genocide, because it violates everything our three faiths cherish, and because it threatens to drag us into a World War III Armageddon.

The United Church has been at the vanguard of this struggle since the 1960s and early '70s, when Rev. A.C. Forrest published The Unholy Land. He faced massive attacks from pro-Israel lobby groups. But that didn’t stop him. ( https://www.justpeaceadvocates.ca/the-unholy-land-by-rev-dr-a-c-forrest/ )

Since 2006, I have worked with United Church leaders who stand in solidarity with Palestinians. In October 2024, the United Church General Council took a major step forward, adopting a Principle-Based Approach to Israel-Palestine which includes support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement and which rejects “Israel's apartheid system of laws and legal procedures towards the Palestinian people”.

Last year, the United Church issued another courageous statement along with other ecumenical partners urging “the Canadian Government to support a ceasefire and a negotiated resolution to this violence.” And this month, March 2026, the United Church joined the World Council of Churches in launching a month-long campaign entitled “From Condemnation to Consequences” which calls on us all to take concrete steps to end Israel’s illegal occupation and promote peace. I look forward to supporting Glebe St. James Church in finding ways you can do this.

I’ll close by offering an excerpt from the 2002 poem “Red Sea” by Aurora Levins Morales , a Puerto Rican Jewish poet which I read at all my Passover seders. It is particularly relevant this year:

This Passover, who reclines?
Only the dead, their cupped hands filling slowly
with the red wine of war. We are not free.

The blood on the doorposts does not protect anyone.
They say that other country over there
dim blue in the twilight
farther than the orange stars exploding over our roofs
is called peace.…
Back then, one man's faith opened the way.
He stepped in, we were released, our enemies drowned.
This time we're tied at the ankles.
We cannot cross until we carry each other,
all of us refugees, all of us prophets.
No more taking turns on history's wheel,
trying to collect old debts no-one can pay.
The sea will not open that way.
This time that country
is what we promise each other,
our rage pressed cheek to cheek
until tears flood the space between,
until there are no enemies left,
because this time no one will be left to drown
and all of us must be chosen.
This time it's all of us or none.

Loopholes Chosen

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 16:18:10 GMT

Loopholes Affirmed

Picasso's Guernica partial. A cry for war's end and liberated peace

Blinkers and Noise Protection in Use

Would that the Palestinian cries for truth, justice, peace, and liberation were heard as clearly as Picasso did when Guernica was annihilated by Nazi bombers in 1937. His famous painting extolled nothing, but exposed and judged the brutality and inhumanity of war.

I don't know what it will take for Western nations to take seriously the endless bombing that Israel, provisioned by USA and other nations including Canada, has been inflicting upon Palestine. Nor only bombing, of course. The tyranny and terror being imposed on Palestinians of all ages is unimaginably innovative in its evil ways.

But this has hardly troubled the Western nations, including Canada. Oh yes, we've uttered stern warnings about this cruelty or that injustice, this murder or that hostage-taking into abusive prisons, this block of humanitarian necessities or that assassination of medical personnel, journalists, and children. Hollow words. Deaf to cries for help. Blind to the suffering. No substantial action.

Parliament Speaks

Well, yesterday the Parliament of Canada demonstrated its ongoing willingness to be patient with the Israeli-American assault on Palestine. It voted down on secoond reading Jenny Kwan's private member's Bill C-233 the No More Loopholes Act . Every MP was compelled to stand up for the recorded vote and testify for or against.

The Conservative and Bloc Quebecois MPs all voted against the Bill. Significantly 30 Liberal MPs refused to follow the Carney government lead with half abstaining and the other half voting for the Bill. All NDP and Green MPs backed Kwan initiative.

The Arms Trade

Canada is a signatory to the 2014 Arms Trade Treaty - a peace initiative of the United Nation. It aims to stop weapons and components from being traded to nations breaking international laws by committing humanitarian crimes. Canadian legislation complements this treaty but affects only about 40% of the armaments actually exported.

The "loop hole" is that the USA buys more than half of exported Canadian-made weapons and components, but they cross the border without permit or review of their destination under a general permit. Mind you, USA doesn't allow Canada to buy weapons without scrutiny about their end use. Only USA among Western allies gets Canada's free ride enabling the USA to pass any weapons or components on to Israel or any other proxy.

Arms created in Canada serve our defensive and peace keeping needs and those of other nations. But we want to sell more - it is good for our economy. So our biggest customer is the USA. Without review or scruples, we close our eyes to the proven fact that these tools of war are going to Usrael and its genocidal offensive against Palestinians. That's what the vote on Bill C-233 tried to stop.

The fact is Canada okays moral blinkers and is tone deaf to Palestinian cries about what these tools of death and destruction of humans and their habitations accomplish. We are complicit in the death and suffering caused by Israel's military in Middle East countries, especially Palestine.

Nuremberg Trials

After World War II the victorious Allies decided that war crimes needed to be prosecuted. They created a new court in Nuremberg, Germany to try the criminals who had carried out the Holocaust and other crimes against humanity. They aimed to prevent this unfathomably evil genocidal crime from happening again.

Alas, their virtuous purpose was thwarted by human power mongering and territorial greed at the cost of inhabitants. The settler colonial syndrome seemed bred into the bones of Western imperialists nations.

Genocide is a favourite means to achieve the end. In too many other countries it still happens, e.g. Sudan, Rwanda, Rohingya/Myanmar, and currently most visibly in Palestine. Palestinians in general, even children, have been equated with Hamas militants and therefore are targets of the Israeli war machine.

Identified have been 75,000+ dead but many more are still under the rubble, 125,000+ have been injured or maimed for life, and 80% of the homes and facilities are in ruins. And in the illegally Occupied Territories Israeli settlers, backed by Israeli military, rain terror on residents on ancestral lands.

Given the global demonstrations advocating for ceasefire and justice in Palestine - humanity's voice is calling for this tyranny to end. But most of our Parliamentarians have not yet arrived at this conclusion; or were they "whipped" to vote no? One day before the vote, Arms Embargo Now lobbyists, including me on behalf of The United Church of Canada as a signatory to the AEN movement, hoped that many MPs would embrace the legislation that might help to stop this Israeli-USA assault and murder. Alas, it was not to be.

Why?

Is this just a void of moral awareness or ignorance about the horror in Palestine? Is it too risky for an MP to vote their conscience against the party leader's stance ? Is there so little political understanding about settler colonialism's immoral assumption that white western nations espoused a high purpose of subjugating indigenous peoples, like Palestinians, so that they might eventually learn to assimilate with white, European, capitalist settler nations? Or is it that we are still too frightened of the bully in the White House that we'd prefer to watch people being killed by our Canadian-made weapons rather than risk poking the bear? Or is it that our military is so integrated with the USA military colossus that distancing is unwelcome and resisted? Or was the Bill so badly written that supporting it as is was impossible (but suggested amendments were welcomed but not offered and besides, improving the Bill is the purpose of second reading votes to send the bill to committee.)

Whatever makes the Conservative, Bloc, and Liberal parties' leaders decide to impose moral and ethical blinkers on our no-voting MPs? Effectively they rendered all Canadians complicit in this "never again" crime of transferring arms via USA to a combatant known to be committing crimes against humanity and genocide against indigenous Palestinians.

No excuse can satisfy the requirement of all faiths to "Love your neighbour, (close & distant) as yourself" or to " Do unto others as you want them to do to you!"

The Parliament of Canada, led by the Liberal government of Prime Minister Mark Carney may have avoided "poking the bear". But if Canada is ever on the receiving end of gross and deadly injustice by a foreign force, can we expect that neighbours might care about and for us? Can we expect the international organizations to protect our sovereignty and safety from land and resource grabbing imperialists? Can we really expect others to observe international laws and conventions, when we don't have the ethical courage or will to uphold law and order, to advocate for respect and decency in God's one human family?

Canada continues our peculiar way of undermining the international frameworks of law and order as we speak out of both sides of our mouth, but put blinkers and ear protectors on legislators when they are called to act morally with integrity.

Yesterday's vote in Parliament reveals our nation's and Western nations urgent need for a moral compass leaning toward justice! I welcome the vibrant presence of many younger generation advocates for truth and justice. I hope and pray that as the next generation of leadership they can continue their courageous public witness and get elected in future elections to restore hope and the quest for just and liberating peace.

Neither Theocracy nor Warfare

Wed, 04 Mar 2026 14:35:32 GMT

Neither Theocracy nor Warfare Nurture Just Peace

Dove of Peace

photo thanks to Muhammad Shamroon Malik

Iran Attacked by Israel and USA

After many years of cajoling, berating, admonishing, and finally ingratiating himself to the ever needy Donald Trump, Netanyahu has succeeded in convincing the Commander-in-Chief to launch the USA's military arsenal against Israel's persistent adversary, Iran. The dove of peace continues to fly seeking a secure home.

Tired of "negotiations" - i.e. demands and threats for not following orders, i.e. being uncooperative, Trump made up his mind to activate the armada. Was it to distract from the Epstein swamp? To take attention away from the ICE horror? To distance himself from the "Board of Peace" debacle and the genocidal horror of Gaza/Palestine?

So the two nuclear power allies, always ready to expand their domains, launched their weapons on the equally objectionable Iranian theocracy led by Supreme leader Khameini, now assassinated. The Security Council of the United Nations wasn't consulted; other allies were not informed; and Article 2 of the UN Charter was simply violated by this illegal war.

Western allies didn't like the launch, but as usual put their blinkers on and implied that Iran was the villain. Cited as the villain's co-conspirators were Hezbolah, Yemen's Houtis, and, of course, Hamas, the convenient label Israel uses to condemn all Palestinians as "terrorists".

Canada's Response

Our Prime Minister continued that blinker tradition when he quickly issued his formal statement affirming the USA / Israel assault on Iran and condemning the victim of aggression. His statement can be found here: https://www.pm.gc.ca/en/news/statements/2026/02/28/statement-prime-minister-carney-and-minister-anand-situation-middle-east

Mr. Carney states: "Canada’s position remains clear: the Islamic Republic of Iran is the principal source of instability and terror throughout the Middle East, has one of the world’s worst human rights records, and must never be allowed to obtain or develop nuclear weapons."

Without in any sense affirming the governance of the brutal Iranian theocracy, Western nations including Canada can be counted on to keep their blinkers on when it comes to Israel's terror and human rights violations. The Palestinian victims are readily condemned or simply neglected.

Western allies hardly notice or refer to Israel's 100 year history of massacres conducted to wrest Palestinian ancestral lands from their owners; the 75,000+ identified death and countless more under the rubble; the 100,000 + injured and maimed Palestinians; the weaponization of food and medical services; the intentional murder of journalists to stifle truth; anti-Palestinian racism, apartheid, and finally, genocide. And aggressive aspirations to creat the Greater Israel across boundaries of neighbouring states. All these crimes blow through human rights and international law, but are seldom acknowledged by blinkered governments, including Canada.

Both Israel and the United States, like Russia's war on Ukraine, have aggressively undermined the International Laws, Treaties, and Conventions which aimed to bring law & order, justice and peace to a war weary world. But we don't mention their disdain for these solemn agreements.

When I read Prime Minister Carney's statement, I immediately launched a response. It was not complimentary. I now know that Mr. Carney also must have reacted to his own statement, because he has diluted some of the substance in his official statement. But now we don't know what our Prime Minister really believes - an inherited liberal symptom of speaking out of both sides of the mouth.

Responding to the Prime Minister

Here was my immediate response to his official statement of February 28th, copied to leaders of other political parties and several key MPs:

Dear Prime Minister Carney

Again the Trump regime has taken the United States of America into warfare on the urging of the state of Israel against the Islamic Republic of Iran. We are told, and your statement on the matter mentions, that this is a "pre-emptive" attack on Iran and that "Israel has a right to defend itself" and therefore the government of Canada will not condemn and denounce this unprovoked attack on Iran.

In effect, Canada is yet again granting Israel and the USA impunity to do whatever they wish to impose their way on Iran (and, of course, Venezuela, Cuba, and potentially Denmark/Greenland, and, I believe, Canada, if we were to cut off energy (oil and electricity supplies to the USA.)

The short-sighted and embarrassing stance of the government of Canada contributes nothing to the maintenance of international law and order symbolised by the United Nations and its various agencies advocating for justice and peace in global affairs. Instead, Canada contributes and hastens the breakdown of international order by its unwillingness to speak against the renewed system of "might makes right" which the Great Powers and, in this particular case, the United States and its west Asian vassal state Israel, are imposing on the world.

It seems that the government is not able or willing to take seriously your eloquent Davos speech when it comes to international affairs. Instead we bow to the expansionist and death-dealing policies of Israel buttressed by USA arms and political cover. The Charter of the United Nations does not provide for pre-emptive strikes to impose these countries' will and agenda on Iran or any other sovereign state. Their combined efforts have caused death and destruction in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and supremely in Palestine/Gaza where 75,000 identified dead, thousands under the rubble, hundreds of thousands of injured and maimed, and where starvation and Israel's other anti-humanitarian strategies have killed thousands more.

The fact is that Israel with USA complicity is committing genocide against the Palestinian people and state - seeking to erase Palestine is the goal so that Israel can claim all Palestine and much more as their racist supremecist homeland state. Recent comments by Israeli officials like opposition leader Yair Lapid and by USA ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee do not hide their support of a "Greater Israel" - far beyond current boundaries and not just the current implementation schemes of annexation of the illegally occupied territories - West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Canada's West Asian / Palestine policy - now including the USA & Israel attack on Iran - is short sighted and unjust, and not in harmony with international frameworks, treaties,declarations, and the Charter of the UN.

If we continue on this trajectory then we too will only just be contributing more to the disorder of Earth. I call on the government to re-think its apparent policy of appeasement to USA and Israeli expansionist policies and actions, and to work with the middle powers of the world toward more just and liberating ways that foster self-determination, human values, and means of enforcing the framework of laws and covenants that contribute to just peace.

Canada can and must do better to foster and maintain peaceful relations between the nations and their peoples. In the face of the evil of warfare, we are being called to this higher purpose..

Sincerely,

A H Harry Oussoren

Palestine History Tapestry

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 19:39:59 GMT

An artistic display of Palestinian heritage and struggle

Above: Palestinian Wedding (embroiderers: Mothers' Embroidery Group, Al Deheishe Bethlehem, Palestine; below: Palestinian henna party (Embroiderer: Ruba Al Behery (Bir Seb'a), Gaza. Two of the 100 tapestries in the exhibition.

Top: Faris O'deh, Standing Alone (Embroiderer: Nawal Ibrahim al Ahmed [Tabariyeh], Ain al-Hilweh, Lebanon .

" The Palestine History Tapestry (PHT) uses Palestinian women's embroidery skills to illustrate the land and people of Palestine from Neolithic times to the present."

The Mississauga Valley Textile Museum (MVTM) in Almonte, Ontario is exhbiting this remarkable collection of hand embroidered (cross-stitching) tapestries demonstrating the history and experience of the indigenous people of Palestine.

The tapestries are part of a proposal by a former UNWRA* worker, Jan Chalmers, in 2012 and quickly adopted by the Palestine History Tapestry Project. Later the Project merged with the Palestine Museum US. The PHT is led by Jehan Alfarra and Ibrahim Muhtadi.

The Project's first phase was completed on the 70th anniversary of The Nakba (the Catastrophe) - the mass displacement of 700,000 Palestinians during the creation of the State of Israel through United Nations Resolution 181 (29 November, 1947). The Tapestry project was launched on 11 December 2018, the anniversary of the UN General Assembly's Resolution 194, 4 November 1948) affirming the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes or receive compensation for their loss.

Members of the Focus on Palestine Group of First United Church Westboro, Ottawa, attended the official opening of the exhibition on February 14th. The Group had contributed financially to sponsor the exhibition. Through this fine display of art both the resilience ( sumud) and righteous resistance of the Palestinian people for truth, justice, and liberation are witnessed.

Almonte is just 45 minutes north and west of Ottawa. If you are in the eastern Ontario region between now and April 19th, the MVT Museum, housed in one of Almonte's historic woolen mills, will welcome you and provide a time of tapestry story telling that reveals the heritage and hope of Palestinians. The town of Almonte has its own history worth exploring and welcomes tourists to walk alongside Ontario's Mississippi River sparkling waters.

Visit MVTM's website for more information: mvtm.ca.

Phone: 613 256 3754. Location: PO Box 374, 3 Rosamond Street East, Almonte, ON K0A 1A0

Harry Oussoren

February 16, 2026

Yearning for Spirit - Part 2

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 15:46:00 GMT

Amid the Chaos - Anticipating Spirit - Part 2

he Seven Spirits of Wisdom by James Jacko of Manitoulin Island. Learning and living ways of the Spirit. (G. Huws' collection)

Yearning for Spirit – Part 2

In Part 1 of this series, Biblical and theological reflections were woven together with the ecclesiological realities related to the horror in Palestine. (here is the link:

https://www.minister.ca/seeking-spirit.)

The Boiling Pot

Regrettably, after writing Part 1, the political world-pot just kept boiling over. The obvious, malignant pot-boiling factor: Donald J Trump. The USA president continues to consume most of the news oxygen with his myriad, narcissism-inspired agendas: the missed Nobel Peace prize,

Denmark/Greenland, European Union, Venezuelan kidnapping, the 51 ^st state, Ukraine & Russia, Minneapolis’ ICE invasion and murderous occupation, the dream of a dictatorial end to elections, trade tariff wars, embargo on trade to Cuba and “sanctioned” others , the Board of Peace without real Palestinian input while Israel's ongoing genocide continues in Palestine.

( ” For a mind-boggling, more complete list of Trumpian escapades in 2025, see The Globe & Mail, Sat., Jan. 17, Opinion pp. 1, 5&6, “ One Year Down”… “America: Executive power is now exercised through narcissistic logic.”)

After this first year of his 2 ^nd presidency, Trump is dishing up not only his background of failed initiatives, but also four years of conspiratorial planning at Mar-a-Lago. Realizing that major change would have to happen in year one of the current presidential term before the mid-term elections (and possible impeachment), Trump assembled details and strategies from January 20, 2021 for execution on the same day in 2025 and byond. Was this the reason why so many classified documents had to be taken into his Mar-a-Lago palace gates after Biden occupied the Oval Office?

As an advocate for truth, justice, liberation, and peace, I find the chaos overwhelming. I’ve been feeling like a fledgling being pummeled by a unscrupulous champion’s upper-cuts and blows in the boxing ring. It is difficult to identify an effective place, let alone a safe one, in the ring of life to catch breath for the next volley. But maybe that is the point. We need to make ourselves less available and vulnerable to the mania and insanity threatening to overwhelm us. We need to open ourselves to community, to the sacred, to the Gospel.

Local Global Worship

On a recent Sunday, in joint worship, we celebrated another year of partnership with the Anglican parish whose facility Ottawa's First United Church, shares. It was our particular local way to commemorate together the world-wide Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. The liturgy was provided by the World Council of Churches and largely prepared by the Armenian Apostolic Orthodox Church, a member denomination of the WCC. We knew ourselves to be part of the global worshipping faith community seeking justice and peace.

We heard the prophetic Word calling us “…to loosen the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free… (Is. 58:6-11) . We prayed: “God of peace, our world is troubled. The daily news is full of stories of war, injustice, poverty, abuse of power. Give wisdom to our leaders, and stir us to work for justice and peace….” We sang: “Build a safer refuge, not a larger jail; where the weak find shelter, mercy will not fail….” And we parted with an ear-worm song: “Draw together at one table all the human family; shape a circle ever wider and a people ever free.” Convictions and vision to embrace, to inspire.

On the way home I grappled with the question: how? How to transform "embrace and to inspire" into action to make a difference. Not for all the world’s troublesome issues, obviously, but for claiming the vision especially for Palestine and its suffering peoples. Contemplating how the homeless Palestinians might survive – food, water, shelter, warmth, safety, courage, resilience – their immediate needs being so dangerously obstructed and ruthlessly denied by Israeli decisions (like blocking 37 international humanitarian organizations from being Good Samaritans for brutalized, starving Palestinians!). How to denounce Israel’s strategies designed more to kill babies, children, and the elderly - adding to the 71,660+ already buried and the 121,419 (as of Jan. 26) injured and maimed. Ethnic cleansing.

It is too much! So, where do I go with my rage?

Close my door and shutter the windows to it all? Find a sauna or other solitary corner as sanctuary?

Bottle it up inside me and hope it doesn’t cause a personal volcano? Project my anger on more accessible or benign others? Flee to the isolation of the cottage? Perhaps like the figures in the Jacko painting (above) find a sweat lodge as an effective place for introspection and clearing vision?

Rest for Your Soul

“Come to me, all you that are weary and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:29-30)

We do have reason to expect in repose - whether in sweat lodge, in meditation, in communal worship, in shared advocacy, or other personal way - to be enriched by gifts of the Spirit. Doubtless it is more achievable for me in a peaceful, healthy setting than for the peoples in obliterated Palestine. Wondrously, the resilient voices of Palestinians witness persistently to the abiding power and healing ways of the Spirit, even as the brutal ways and means of injustice and death threaten them.

I cannot stop praying: for the Spirit to transform my rage into non-violent resistance for the well-being of Palestinians; praying for Palestinians to experience the liberating gifts of the Spirit; praying for the people of Israel to experience the Spirit’s transformation opening ways to peaceful co-existence.

The Gospel Yoke

Given the realities of a world plagued by immoral and powerful Imperialists, I must accept the yoke and continue to listen and look with ears and eyes wide open, to see and recognize the gift of blessed opportunities to advocate for liberation and justice, and for truth to name the evils that keep Palestinians in subjugation and servitude. As friend Ruth Evans RIP at 94 years of age proclaimed when honoured in 2024 with the honourary doctorate from Victoria University for her long witness for justice, “When you see injustice in the world, Do Not Turn Away.”

I won’t, Ruth.

Happily, I won’t be doing it alone. My faith community home is committed to the truth and justice commitments of the Christian faith and it nurtures me to bear the “yoke”. Several energetic groups within the congregation focus on justice and one group finds ways to connect with neighbouring partners to advocate for Palestine liberation. Being part of a national peer group provides me opportunities to strategize at the macro level and communicate for the liberating cause. And browsing on informed social media and in published books expands the boundaries of knowledge and informs my actions and writing the Pilgrim Praxis blog posts and social media platforms' posts.

Bearing this “yoke” is no cause for pride or self-righteousness. When I see what Israel and the USA are inflicting on Gazans and the entire nation of Palestine, there is reason only to lament, rage, and resist peacefully. Given the vicissitudes of aging, as long as I can, the “yoke” will be in place.

I persist because I trust that the Holy One will be true to the promises of SHALOM/SALAAM/REAL PEACE, when “All will be well.”

Harry Oussoren

P.S.I hope that on Nakba Day (May 15 ) there might be many faith communities gathered to commemorate the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians massacred, maimed, wounded, and grieving as their ancestral home of Palestine was being and still is being stolen from them. I will mourn the death and harm done to so many, calling on the Spirit of Christ for healing, transformation, and liberation.

Seeking Spirit

Fri, 16 Jan 2026 19:21:28 GMT

Yearning for Spirit Gifts

T he painting above, entitled “Ceremony of the Seven Spirits of Wisdom,” is by James Jacko of Ojibwe First Nation, living in Wikwemikong on Manitoulin Island, Canada. The seven spiritual gifts are: respect (Buffalo), love (Eagle), courage (Bear), honesty (Sabe), wisdom (Beaver) , humility (Wolf), Turtle (truth). Yearning for the Spirit's gifts is at the heart of being human and is shared by most religious traditions, (G.M.Huws' collection.)

Introduction

The horror the State of Israel is inflicting on Palestinians and the State of Palestine has been going on for a century. The last two-plus years revealed unimaginable, but readily visible total depravity as Israel intentionally seeks to implement the declared Zionist goals of erasing Palestinians and Palestine from the Middle East map in order to create a Jewish-controlled homeland, i.e. apartheid.

The world knows the horrors. As witnesses of this ongoing Nakba (catastrophe), I and others are appalled, weary and disgusted. The immoral, evil creators of this abyss in Palestine reject all efforts for justice and real peace. No matter how vigorously the horror is challenged, Israeli Zionist ideologues, their terrorist forces, and allies refuse to listen and remain embedded in this death-dealing enterprise. Palestinian children and adults bear the brunt of the evil.

In what follows in two instalments, I list some of the factors that weigh on me as I observe the sore abuse of God’s human family in this particular theatre of violence and perverted legality. I am not forgetting the many other international scenes of conflict and inhumanity. The accumulated evil allows no faithful person committed to justice and liberation to avoid the heart-wrenching calls to prophetic testimony and peaceful resistance - in both specific and general circumstances.

The call is to action, but also and especially, to spiritual battling with the principalities and powers of evil which surround us, as individuals and organizations, governments and nations allow depravity and evil to direct their ways. A spiritual renewal is urgently called for. Individuals and collectivities like faith communities, humanitarian organizations, and nations must respond. The grip of the demonic must be exorcised to harvest the fruits from the encounter with Spirit. (cf. Isaiah 11:2; Galatians 5:22-23).

I, and doubtless many others, yearn for the Spirit's gifts to transform, to heal, and to recover and nurture human fullness in me, in advocates for truth and justice, in Palestinians as they bear their suffering and strengthen their resistance, in Zionist Israelis to end their terrorizing occupation of Palestine Exorcising evil and healing humanity in Creation is the Gospel goal.

Disclaimer: I refuse the falsehood of conflating criticism of the State of Israel's actions with "antisemitism." The multi-generational impact of the Holocaust must never be underestimated. But the Shoah evil provides no justification for Zionism's ideology to wage genocidal war on Palestine. Nor is it possible to justify perverted Zionist ideology and war on Palestinians using biblical narratives. God is love and love deplores, rejects, resists, and condemns hatred and violence..

I am grateful to Jews who observe and advocate for what they have learned from their faith heritage. I celebrate the courage with which they have promoted truth, justice, and peace for indigenous Palestinians. I believe and lament that the heinous crimes of the State of Israel and its terrorizing military vis a vis Palestine have contributed substantially to the global growth of the crime of antisemitism and undermined the integrity of the Jewish faith in particular. I deeply regret this abominable state of affairs and seek a new, more just way ahead for God’s entire diverse human family where all may experience justice and abundance of life. Harry Oussoren

Each point which follows deserves books, not just a paragraph or two. Even my short list is too long for one Pilgrim Praxis post. So here is half of a summary of key factors. They weigh down upon me as a world citizen rooted in Christian faith convictions and committed to truth, justice, and liberation. The other half of my testimony will arrive in the next installment.

As I persist in writing about this intractable issue, I live with the hope that the people of Palestine will be finally be liberated to thrive in their Palestinian homeland, and

Israelis will be relieved of their fear and freed to share in God’s shalom – also in Palestine with Palestinian neighbours.

Factors

1. Biblical: Scriptures - Jewish, Christian, Muslim - witness to the core relationship God has with God’s human family and all Creation.

In the first book of the Bible, Genesis, the biblical story tellers root Earth's human family in God’s creative and redemptive action. “Then God said: “Let us make humankind in our image according to our likeness….” (Genesis 1:27).

In Chapter 9, God repents of the great flood and swears “never again to destroy every living as I have done….” As a sign of this repentance resolution God provides the rainbow marking “the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations.” (v.12 ff.)

In Chapter 12, Abram (and Sarai) move to the land of the Canaanites and receive the promise “To your offspring (seed) I will give this land.” Then in Chapter 15, because the aging couple had no offspring, Sarai gives to Abram her Egyptian slave girl Hagar “as a wife”. (16:3). Ishmael is the first "seed" in the Abrahamic family. In Chapter 21, Sarah does conceive by the 100 year-old Abraham! Isaac was born. Now two wives each with a son creates friction in the patriarchal family, but God recognizes that Ishmael too “is your (Abraham’s) offspring… and God was with the boy (Ishmael).” (21:20)

This short narrative calls believers to honour and celebrate the divinely instituted common heritage of “the Abrahamic” faiths: Judaism, Christianity, Islam and to love the extended family in gratitude for God's faithfulness.

The story of the Exodus from Egypt’s bondage witnesses to a gift that reminds the faithful that God is indefatigably committed to human liberation from subjugation. Add to this the witness of Hebrew prophets calling the unfaithful back to grateful living coherent with God’s covenant with the people and the Torah commandments. The Apocalypse (Revelation) in several mystical images prophetically envisions an end time when all nations will gather in the holy places where Christ returns and God dwells to judge and conquer evil.

People of faith cannot fail to trust that God will triumph over evil to restore all of Creation. It is not for humans to "determine" God's time and place. In the meantime, the entire human family, including its Abrahamic/Sarah/Hagar branch, is called to faithful living side-by-side in Creation and to renounce all that destroys Shalom/Salam/Peace.

2. Moral / Ethical: In my lifetime I have seldom been a spectator of the kind of utter destructive depravity by humans against other humans we see today. In the past two years I grieve to have observed and been affected by unmitigated evil in Palestine. To be sure, I had learned about various examples of murderous necrophilia in the history of the world. A few names tell the tales: genocide in Armenia and SW Africa, Holodomor in Ukraine, Holocaust in Europe, tribal wars in Sudan and D.R.Congo, nuclear death in Hiroshima & Nagasaki, "pacification" in Viet Nam, etc.

But the genocide in Palestine imposes on me a sordid history of the land where my faith heritage was birthed. As a person of faith I seek by faith the transformation of this place as a source of blessing for all the world. The gifts of the "Holy Land" which is Palestine include truth, justice, peace, and life in its fulness. The current horrors make clear that the human family needs a better understanding of the divine intention for the global human family. we all need to embrace and cultivate the Spirit's gifts.

To effect this, the Holy One provides humanity Torah – divine laws centred in the Ten Commandments as the guideposts for living faithfully. At its core is the command to “have no other gods before me” than the God of love. (Exodus 20:2). Making idols of whatever variety and type is a narcissistic human enterprise. Bowing down to them, worshiping them is blasphemy, This is foundational. The other commandments follow this single thread: no other Gods! Divinizing land, endless work, disrespecting parents, demonizing and killing humans, breaching covenant relations as in adultery and sexual abuse, stealing, bearing false witness, dispossessing others of their possessions – all blaspheme the Holy One and breach the Covenant with the Holy One.

In other parts of the scriptures, self-giving and often courageous generosity is at the core. Caring for the alien, loving the neighbour as self, and doing to others what you want done to you - this and more emphasizes the commonality of compassion and care that are intended to grace the whole human family.

The apartheid culture, Israel's Zionist legislative supremacy and violent subjugation afflicting Palestinians, is the antithesis of faith-based ethics and violates the Divine intention for the human family and Torah. The genocide which Israel’s Zionist ideology promotes is a clear negation of all that the Jewish and Christian heritages profess. Ethics and morality are obliterated.. Netanyahu’s mendacious claim that the Israeli military is the most moral military is contradicted by thousands of Palestinians under the rubble and in mass graves. His lie blasphemes the Holy One.

3. Faith Communities (ecclesiology): Dipping into the history of the Christian Church can be challenging and too often disappointing. I can, however, attest to both personal as well as institutional achievements that reflect the Spirit’s presence and influence. Over the 20 centuries, reform movements challenged institutional church failings and sought to recover the roots of Jesus' Way (e.g. St. Francis of Assisi). Their efforts in the Spirit were to move people of faith toward greater fidelity and love of neighbour, including Creation.

In our time, Christians and other faith-and justice-based people have linked with courageous observant Jews to resist the negation of faith-ways and to denounce the evil of the State of Israel's ongoing war on Palestine and Palestinians.

Unhappily, undermining the Way of Jesus is very much part of the institutional church's infidelity. Instances include: after the fourth century, the Church increasingly in contradiction to Jesus' Way, chose as its governance model the imperial culture and triumphalism of the Holy Roman Empire. Among the consequences were dominating hierarchy and misogynist patriarchy.

In the post-Reformation era, we witnessed the consequences of colonialism mandated and launched by papal authority ("Doctrine of Discovery") and largely embraced by European churches and nations. This resulted in the brutal subjugation of indigenous peoples on virtually all continents and the dispossession of their lands and resources.

Israel has chosen settler colonialism as its model for violently dominating all of Palestine. (Canada has a long way to go to rid itself of its settler colonial arrangement as prescribed in the Indian Act.)

Any serious and truthful Christian will confess that throughout the Christian era in Europe antisemitism was a curse and evil which resulted in profound hatred, brutal discrimination, and anti-human behaviour and inter-generational trauma. Systemic antisemitism culminated finally in the Nazi era's Holocaust and six-million-plus deaths.

One result of this criminal behaviour has been Euro-based churches' awakening to their guilt in this racist relationship. Only after World War 2 did churches (and nations) seriously acknowledge and seek to mitigate the impact of this sin. In the process, they accepted the Zionist dream - too often as a solution for the antisemitism still too current in their own cultures and communities.

The imprimatur of the British government's Balfour declaration and subsequent United Nations resolutions establish Israel seemed like a suitable solution for providing a "home" for European Jews, while keeping them away from European and North American societies. The objections of some courageous Christian witnesses against this less obvious antisemitism were rejected. In rejecting the objections and refusing to attend to indigenous voices, churches contributed to the betrayal of the valid rights and interests of Palestinians.

Various forms of Christian Zionism found specious ways of justifying or living with Zionist policies and sought to mute voices of truth tellers describing the militant agenda of the Israeli Zionist colonial regime. First-hand reports of Israel's brutal subjugation of Palestinians published in the United Church's Observer magazine by its editor Al Forrest, were attacked with threats by Zionist propagandists. The Church failed both Forrest and the Palestinian people by approving an agreement to appease Israeli lobbyists and limit the church's freedom for prophetic witness.

I confess that I was not adequately paying attention Palestine's lot. Like other Christians, I have every reason to confess. I also wonder why the Canadian Council of Churches and its member denominations were not heard denouncing the injustice inflicted on Palestinians. Whatever cautions or pressures prevented this Christian body from responding to urgent repeated calls for prophetic witness need to be exposed. This failure raises questions about the actual purpose of the CCC as a national Christian voice in the global human family..

The Western churches' relative silence during this unbroken Nakba - Catastrophe did nothing to impede Israel and USA from murdering and maiming hundreds of thousands and driving countless Palestinians in refugee camps and open air prisons. Palestine's infrastructure and culture is destroyed, lands and property stolen, Israeli military dominance backed by USA threatens to inflame the entire Middle East; international law and order is undermined and unraveling. The frequent experience-based warnings and urgent pleas of Palestinian Christians nave failed to move Western churches and few nations into significant collective action for Palestine's liberation..

Could listening to the Spirit finally turn the tide - contribute to a new Palestine where all who live there know themselves beloved and blessed as neighbours? Certainly the Trump/Netanyahu "Peace Plan" will do nothing to achieve that! But maybe....

.....more to come in second installment next week.

Greetings that Count

Wed, 24 Dec 2025 13:35:57 GMT

Holy Seasons' Greetings - Two Texts

Part 1.

Hanukkah and Christmas Wishes

On Monday the 22nd, Hanukkah ended and yesterday the Menorah and the Hanukkah greeting on the little table in our apartment lobby was being prepared for safe storage. On the other side of the lobby stood a Christmas tree seasonally decorated. A "Merry Christmas" greeting could not be missed.

In our Ottawa apartment building, The Barclay, there is welcome diversity - about 95 households live here. We know there are other Christians celebrating the birth of Jesus; and we know observing Jews often mark hall doorframes with a mezuzah containing a scroll with scriptural verses. Whether Muslim make their home here is not verified but the diversity in our population makes it easy to assume it. And there are doubtless residents who identify with other religions and no organized religion at all. The Barclay is a remarkably peaceful place and community - a model of healthy diversity.

I like to think that the Creator intended diversity and put it to the global human family to live in peace with one another. Almost every religion that is worth observing has something like the Golden Rule - look at the similar message of various global religions on the poster above. [poster credit: Scarboro Missions Toronto)

So with the visual symbols in our apartment lobby, let me wish for the Creator's entire human family all the blessings of joy, love, abundance, prosperity, wholeness and health, truth and the Shalom/Salaam/Peace/Mir/Friede/Paix the Creator intends in this holy season and for the New Year ahead of us. I hope Jewish friends celebrated a wonderful Hanukkah and that Christian family and friends have a Merry Christmas.

I pray that the transcendent Spirit who endows each and all with the seeds of goodness and health may awaken in us all a fervent desire and vibrant energy for that peace which passes all understanding, all rationalizations, all hatreds, all vengeance, all injustice, all 'getting even', all criminal behaviour.....

That does, I comprehend, defy probability and maybe even possibility. But unless humans nurture those seeds of goodness and goodwill we will descend into "Sloughs of Despond" and swamps of narcissistic self-interest, which already are all too well represented in our world. Global leaders like Trump, Putin, Netanyahu, Xi Jinping, and other miniature versions lust for imperial and personal power, while gun-toting murderers and demonizing others seek to diminish the sisters and brothers in the global family..

As for me, I believe in community which does and will help me hold onto the faith and conviction that "doing to others what I want for me" is the way to truth and love. I will continue to rage and resist when the powerful and wealthy (people and nations) seek to rob and massacre the weakest and poorest of the family, to take their lands and homes, to actively destroy the international framework of laws and conventions that build a peaceable world. Not because I hate them, but because their self-love (narcissism) demeans their own and others' human spirit. They undermine the well-being of God's family and destroy humanity. Their evil is an affront to the Holy One in whose image they were created.

I will continue to support organizations and communities that advocate and care - for people, for the environment, for self-determination, for just sharing the wealth of Creation, for honouring the Creator, for helping "strangers" and "enemies" learn to co-exist and adopt to ways of justice..

For me, all of that and more is wrapped into the "Merry Christmas" wish rooted in the story of Luke's Gospel chapters 1 & 2 and beyond, and, I trust, it is part of the Jewish greeting for a Happy Hanukkah and the lighting of the Menorah candles. It is in every prayer for just Peace:

Creator, let it be so for your entire human family! and for your Creation groaning for new beginnings. AMEN

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Part 2: I commend this urgent greeting and truthful witness to your prayerful attention. Harry

Christmas Message — 2025

from the Patriarchs and Heads of the Churches in Jerusalem.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses [Greek: martyrōn], let us also lay

aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is

set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith . . . (Hebrews 12:1–2a)

During these continuing times of hardship and strife throughout our region, We, the Patriarchs and

Heads of the Churches in Jerusalem, remain resolute in proclaiming and affirming to both our

communities and the faithful around the world the message of hope revealed in Christ’s Incarnation and Holy Nativity in Bethlehem more than two millennia ago.

For in similarly difficult times, an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared to shepherds of that region,

beseeching them to cast aside their fears. “For behold,” said the angel, “I bring you good news of a

great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who

is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:10) .

It was in kneeling before the manger in that sacred cave that the shepherds first witnessed God’s

gracious gift of love. They beheld “ Immanuel,” “God-with-us” (Matthew 1:23, Isaiah 7:14) —a divine

Savior who “emptied himself, taking on the form of a slave, being born in human likeness” (Philippians

2:7).

In his great compassion for us, the Almighty deigned to take on our flesh and blood: to live among us

and feel our pain; to later preach a message of repentance and God’s redemption for all people; and to

serve the downtrodden and afflicted before finally offering up his life on our behalf, that we might be

raised with him to new life through faith in God’s gracious act of love (Romans 6:4; Ephesians 2:6) .

While this year we rejoice that a ceasefire has allowed many of our communities to more publicly

celebrate the joys of Christmas, we nevertheless pay heed to the Prophet Jeremiah’s warning against

those saying “‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace” (Jeremiah 6:14) . For we are fully aware that,

despite a declared cessation of hostilities, hundreds have continued to be killed or suffer grievous injury. Many more have experienced violent assaults against themselves, their properties, and their freedoms— not only in the Holy Land, but also in neighboring countries.

We, the Patriarchs and Heads of the Churches in Jerusalem, following in the example of our Lord in

His Incarnation, continue to stand in solidarity with all those who are suffering and downcast, and we

call upon Christians and others of goodwill around the world to persevere in praying and advocating

for a true and just peace in the homeland of our Lord’s birth—and, indeed, throughout the earth.

For those facing these afflictions, we recall from the Epistle to the Hebrews how many of the faithful

over the centuries stood firm in faith through extreme hardships (Hebrews 11) and how Christ himself

serves as the wellspring of our devotion to God (Hebrews 12:1–2a, above) .

We therefore encourage you to look to Him for your spiritual strength, even as the larger Body of Christ seeks to relieve your suffering and to strengthen you in your resolve to persevere in the Lord’s work.

It is with these many sentiments that we extend our Christmas greetings to our congregations and to

Christians around the world, wishing you and your loved ones the joy and peace that comes from

encountering the boundless love of God made more fully manifest in the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ

in Bethlehem.

—The Patriarchs and Heads of the Churches in Jerusalem

Kairos Palestine Advocacy Appeal

Tue, 09 Dec 2025 16:37:35 GMT

The Kairos Palestine - Christmas Advocacy Appeal 2025

Pexel Hilal - with appreciation

Dear Readers : This post is dedicated to the People and Nation of Palestine and their call for solidarity and advocacy from all people of goodwill celebrating the indefatigable love of God revealed in the birth and life and death of Jesus, our Friend and Companion on life's Way to just peace and liberation.

I commend to you this urgent and heartfelt faithful witness of our siblings in faith in Palestine.

A H Harry Oussoren

Ottawa

(Artwork by Steve Erspamer in the original was not reproduced in this post. For the original version copy this link to your browser: https://www.kairospalestine.ps/images/Kairos_Christmas_2025_Appeal.pdf

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Kairos Palestine – Christmas [Solidarity] Appeal 2025

A Cry for Truth, Justice, and Costly Solidarity

30 November 2025

Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet; justice and peace will kiss each other. Psalm 85:10

Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ,

This Advent season and Christmas, as the Church gathers around the light of Jesus Christ, we write to you from a land overshadowed by death, siege and profound injustice. Across historic Palestine, our people, Christians and Muslims alike, live under a system of occupation, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, settler colonialism and now genocide. These are not mere figures of speech; they are the daily realities of children, parents, refugees, the elderly and entire communities whose cries echo through our churches, our streets and our prayers.

It is our fervent hope that you will read and then respond to our appeal. Share it widely. Read portions each week in worship. Distribute our cry through social media in whatever creative ways you discern.

A Land in Agony

Gaza

In Gaza , relentless bombing, the destruction of homes, schools, universities and hospitals, the killing of entire families, and the ongoing siege have produced one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes of our time. Thousands remain displaced, wounded, or buried under rubble. Water, medicine, electricity, and safe shelter are almost nonexistent. Children have known nothing but war, fear, trauma and starvation.

The West Bank and Jerusalem

In the West Bank and Jerusalem, daily life is suffocated by checkpoints, settler violence, military raids, home demolitions and land confiscation. Families are separated, farmers cut off from their fields, and entire communities live under constant harassment and the threat of forced displacement. Our churches, schools and community institutions are targeted by policies designed to empty the land of its indigenous people.

Yet we remain

Our presence here is not passive endurance. It is a living witness. We are the “living stones” of the land of the Incarnation, the Cross and the Resurrection. Protecting the Christian presence— and the Palestinian presence in general—is not the longing for an earlier time but a spiritual, moral and human responsibility.

“Kairos Palestine II: Faith in a Time of Genocide”

In 2009, we issued the first Kairos Palestine document, a cry of faith, hope, and love rooted in nonviolent resistance and prophetic witness. Sixteen years later, the situation has plunged into a deeper, darker valley. Kairos Palestine II was born in the rubble of Gaza, in refugee camps, at checkpoints, and in grieving homes. It is both lament and proclamation, mourning what has been destroyed and affirming the mission to resist oppression, uphold life and proclaim justice. Kairos II insists that faith cannot be neutral. Faith demands truth-telling, courageous action, and solidarity that costs something.

Our Call to Our Community in Palestine

As Palestinians, our responsibility is to:

Stand firm on our land, resisting erasure, annexation, displacement, apartheid and genocide through creative and nonviolent means.
Prepare a renewed collective vision for liberation grounded in unity, justice and human dignity.
Protect the vulnerable, care for our environment, and cultivate social resilience as expressions of love for our homeland.
Promote full equality and leadership opportunities for Palestinian women, affirming their essential role in shaping our future.

As Palestinian Christians, we are also called to:

Nurture a strong Christian presence in the Holy Land, rooted in hope, service and steadfast faith.
Strengthen relationships between clergy and laity, fostering courage and prophetic discipleship.
Accompany and support our youth, through education, creativity, sports, culture, and civic engagement, so that their hope remains anchored in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Our Appeal to the Global Church: Recognize, Name, Act

This Christmas, we appeal to you, our sisters and brothers across the world, to join us in truthful, costly and transformative solidarity.

Your prayers are needed, but prayer alone is not enough.

Your solidarity is essential, but symbolic gestures are not enough.

Your actions are urgent, because silence or passivity in the face of genocide is complicity.

I. Five Things International Advocates Must Do

1. Name the Reality Truthfully

Do not call this a “conflict.” Name it for what it is: genocide, settler colonialism and apartheid.

Neutral language perpetuates injustice. Equating oppressor and oppressed is moral evasion.

Speaking the truth is a moral, theological, and human duty.

2. Advocate for Accountability and International Law

Press governments, churches and institutions to:

Hold Israel accountable under international law.
Impose sanctions, boycotts and arms embargoes.
Support prosecution of war crimes.
Demand reparations and the right of return.

Reject approaches that spiritualize or depoliticize oppression. Faith requires concrete engagement in the struggle for justice. Peace without justice, dignity and freedom is not the peace of Christ.

3. Reject Theologies that Justify Oppression

Christian Zionism and all theologies that suggest that racism, supremacy, and/or genocide are the will of God must be rejected.

Dialogue with Jewish communities committed to justice is essential, but dialogue that normalizes oppression is not.

Dialogue without justice is empty and harmful.

4. Practice Costly Solidarity

Solidarity must be public, courageous and willing to bear consequences.

Visit us. Witness our reality Amplify our voices. Strengthen our communities.

Silence, delay or cautious diplomacy while people are being killed is a betrayal of faith and humanity.

5. Support Creative, Nonviolent Resistance

Support and participate in movements like the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, as well as other nonviolent strategies grounded in love, justice and principled resistance.

III. Five Concrete Actions the World Can Take Now

1. End Complicity: Divest and Boycott

Urge churches and other faith communities, universities, NGOs, unions and pension funds to divest from companies profiting from occupation and support BDS as a moral, nonviolent tool.

2. Advocate for Sanctions and Political Pressure

Demand suspension of military aid, economic sanctions, diplomatic pressure, and recognition of Palestinian statehood and the ongoing genocide.

3. Support and Protect Palestinian Communities

Partner directly with Palestinian churches, schools, hospitals and civil society organizations. Send delegations, not for tourism but to witness truth and report it faithfully.

4. Amplify Palestinian Voices

Center Palestinian theologians, pastors, scholars, activists and victims in your advocacy. Share Kairos Palestine documents widely in churches, universities, seminaries and public forums. Urge media to include Palestinian voices in their reporting and editorial content.

5. Challenge Theologies of Domination

Confront Christian Zionism, repent of institutional complicity, and adopt justice-based theologies rooted in the liberating message of the Gospel.

Our Call: This Christmas, Choose Action

This Christmas, your solidarity is not charity, it is discipleship.

It is not pity, it is partnership.

Standing with us is standing with Christ crucified among the oppressed.

By:

Visiting our communities,
Supporting our schools and churches,
Speaking truth publicly,
Advocating in your parliaments and pulpits,
Demanding sanctions and accountability, and
Amplifying Palestinian narratives—

you help resurrect hope amid the rubble and participate in the work of liberation.

A Prayer of Hope

This prayer of Patriarch Emeritus Michel Sabbah holds our deepest longing:

God says: peace, life, freedom, justice, and equality. Therefore, we say: we stay. And since God is the Lord of life and death, we will remain. No human decision, however tyrannical, can supersede God’s will. We pray to God to establish His peace and justice in our land and in our hearts, and to keep us in His peace.

Stand with Us. Pray with Us. Act with Our People.

This Christmas, let us choose life over death, truth over silence, justice over fear, and solidarity over complicity.

Let the light of Christ shine through your actions, your advocacy, and your unwavering commitment to justice.

Kairos Palestine

November 2025

Kairos Palestine Vision

We look toward the day when we shall live free in our land, together with all the inhabitants of the earth, in true peace and reconciliation—founded upon justice and equality for all God’s creation, where ‘mercy and truth meet, and righteous and righteousness and peace kiss each other (Psalm 85:10).’

Pause, Pray, Disrupt

Tue, 25 Nov 2025 20:33:05 GMT

Faithful Advocacy for the Liberation of Palestine

Political and military plans and actions imposed by Israel and its allies, esp. USA, on indigenous Palestinians and the State of Palestine do not result in truth, justice, or peace. They produce more suffering by means of bombing and shooting of children and their parents, the denial of food and clean water and other necessities of life, the destruction of homes, schools, hospitals, churches and other essential infrastructure for fully human existence.

In fact, although the Palestinian people are the targets for all this, any plans for ceasefire and reparations omit the involvement of Palestinians - as if they exist as targets for killing or homeless people for displacement. There is no room in the Israeli plan for Palestinian self-determination and fundamental human rights. There is no will to honour Palestinian rights to life in their ancestral lands - they are ethnically cleansed out, they are displaced to alien settings, they are massacred without mercy, they are starved to death. No place for self-determination, let along "right of return."

Given this intractable reality, and given the laments and cries for solidarity of Palestinians, faithful people remember to rely on spiritual practices drawing on the divine Spirit to transform individuals, collectivities, institutions, and nations - and to be transformed themselves.

As a step in that direction, a solidarity team for Palestine invites you to participate in vigil practices (initiated in October by a team led by UCC Moderator Kim Heath), in a three-session Advent vigil entitled "Pause, Pray, Disrupt".

In 30 minutes, each vigil will include silence, prayer, song, readings of scripture and wisdom, and collective sharing for further action. You are invited. The link to register is on the poster in the QR code or use this link https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82996346261 or by typing the following link in your browser: bit.ly/4o74Byi .

Advent blessings,

A H Harry Oussoren

for the planning group

PS: The vigil sessions will be recorded and the link sent out same day to registrants. You may find them helpful as you plan Advent vigils or conversations in local groups or faith communities.

After Ceasefire: 2

Thu, 20 Nov 2025 21:02:48 GMT

After the "Ceasefire" #2

Watermelon Resistance

If you can't fly the Palestinian flag show the slice of watermelon - it has all the Palestinian flag colours: green, white, red, black. In 1967, Ben Gvir, then (and now) brutal and amoral cabinet minister in the Israeli government, outlawed the Palestinian flag as part of Israel's illegal and murderous occupation of Palestinian territory. For him, the flag challenged Israel's "homeland" claim and takeover of Palestinians ancestral lands.

But as is always the case, oppressed people resist. They find ways to snub the occupier and express both their right to resist even military occupation and to retain their self-determination - often at high cost.

Watermelons are common fruit grown in Palestine so it has became a visual symbol of Palestinian resistance to the Israel merciless yoke of military subjugation. The watermelon slice inspires Palestinians and their advocates to resilient and persistent efforts in the quest for self-determination and justice. .

When my partner and I join in the regular Ottawa demonstrations calling for the liberation of Palestinians, we often carry the big watermelon slice in the picture above as a sign of our solidarity. (The "slice" is actually a pinata available at the local Dollarama store. It has started many-a conversation about its meaning and its message. A teaching AND resistance device!) In the Ottawa demonstrations and parades the Palestinian flags lead the way to advocate for justice and liberation. They haven't been outlawed - in spite of Israeli lobby l efforts.

Of course, visual symbols can be found in many places with different meanings. A blue jay doesn't conjure up only a big bird, but also a super baseball team! And a cross carries spiritual meaning well beyond the wood or metal it is made of. But in occupied territories flags call people to resist.

Another Symbol of Resistance

I was born in The Netherlands near the end of the Second World War. The Nazi army quickly conquered the country in May 1940 and installed its puppet regime led by Hitler's Commissar Seys-Inquart. The Dutch Queen and government fled to London, England (while the Crown Princess Juliana and her family, found safety in Ottawa). To maintain contact with her people, Queen Wilhelmina used "Radio Oranje" to share news and resistance messages. The head of the House of Orange-Nassau was calling to hearten her people and to inform the local resistance movement.

For the Dutch "orange" has special meaning. "Oranje boven" (orange on top) had long been an exclamation of pride and unity in The Netherlands rooted in the key role the House of Orange played in achieving self-determination and liberation for the country. For the Nazis, of course, it was reason to arrest and punish because it was deemed to be undermining and resisting their oppression as occupiers of land. Listening to Radio Oranje became a capital crime meriting summary execution.

Suppressing Resistance

Occupying military forces - whether in The Netherlands then or the Israeli occupation forces in Palestine now - will go to great lengths to suppress resistance. Keeping the truth of their crimes hidden and their control intact is the supreme goal. They want the truth of their subjugation covered with layers of mis- and dis-information to "pacify", to make the occupied and disempowered people docile. Symbols like watermelon slices and orange banners just awaken the quest for truth and the urge to rebel.

We have learned how high a priority it is for the Israeli occupiers to keep truth suppressed. To achieve this they have forbidden media outlets and personnel from entering Gaza. Western media have been, as a result, relying on Israeli press releases as if they are accurate representations of events. They, of course, are not! Israeli media have done an exceptionally effective job of convincing the Israeli population that the Palestinian threat is existential, but the reality of their genocidal assault and annihilating ethnic cleansing in Palestine is kept from their compatriots.

Journalists whether of Al-Jazeera or other Palestinian journalists are key targets to prevent the facts from being reported to the larger world. Over 275 of them have been murdered by the Israeli military in technology assisted pinpoint targeting. Canadian armaments have contributed to this callous murder of communicators and all the other murdered Palestinians.

Truth, we all know, is the earliest victim of conquering governments. We've seen it in Russia, in Sudan, and Israel. Subjugated people know that the occupiers' messages are lies and disinformation, but watermelons and orange banners become for them silent witnesses to a larger truth inspiring them to effect their liberation.

Happily, the Dutch have not stopped shouting "Oranje Boven!" as a friendly exclamation and, when you look at a flag staff in The Netherlands, you will often also find an orange banner fluttering above the red, white, and blue national flag - Oranje Boven!

When will the Palestinian people be able to simply eat their watermelons as a gift of the land and fly their flag as a sign of their liberation and self-determination. Getting rid of Israeli military, political/legal, social, and economic control will be necessary. It is certainly not built into the so-called "Peace Plan". Israel's weapons provided by western allies will still kill and reduce rubble to dust .

Today, as it has been for decades, the watermelon must continue as witness to the inspiration and resilience of the people and State of Palestine. Liberation from the curse of Israeli military terrorism is still far from near. But people of faith know that liberation is both the plan and the long-promised gift of the Holy One. From the sea to the river the people shall be free - Christians, Muslims, Jews, Druze, humanists, atheists, etc. Even those whose faith is tied now to subjugating and demonizing others will be liberated from their evil.

The 20 Point Plan which Trump and his co-conspirators in the Western world seem to want to impose on the Palestinian people and state is a putrid, self-interested version of what the Holy One intends and demands for the entire human family, including God's beloved peoples in Palestine.

After the Ceasefire: #3 ....

After Ceasefire - What?

Thu, 16 Oct 2025 21:57:22 GMT

Will this Ceasefire Open the Road to Just Peace?

On the wall in front of Canada's Parliament, October 10, 2025

18,500+ Palestinian children' murdered in the assault on Gaza by Israeli military are posted. 100,000+ people maimed and injured since October 8th, 2023 are remembered - the climax of a century of Israeli settler colonial occupation, repression, and violence to clear and steal the land of Palestine. Will the Shalom / Peace / Salaam of the Holy One ever take root in Palestine?

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Part 1: Assessing and Acting

Desperate hope is associated with the “Peace Plan” announced by the Trump administration and signed in Qatar by the Israeli cabinet, and by a variety of world leaders including Canada's Mark Carney.

The clearest sign of the “Plan’s” effect is the release of 2000 Palestinian hostages and prisoners (150 of which Israel has now exiled from their home in Palestine), and the release of the 20 living and 28 deceased hostages held in Gaza. Both releases evoked great rejoicing (though Israel forbade celebrating in the Occupied Territories.) Any release of captives evokes tears of joy and enthusiastic family celebrations . They also remind us that more than 10,000 Palestinians, including far too many children, remain in Israeli captivity.

Another sign is the long line up of trucks at the Rafah border-crossing finally being allowed to move into Gaza to end the famine of food and other necessities of which Palestinians have been deprived for months. This inhumane and criminal blockade and weaponization of essentials for life has cost the lives of far too many. And even now Israel continues to block food trucks to punish Palestinians whenever it chooses.

The silence of the artillery and bombs launched against huddled Palestinians in tents and other makeshift “homes” is a big sign. Alas, it is not a complete silence. But even after the “ceasefire” bombs have been dropped and Westbank killings continue. Life in what remains of Gazan streets is safer.

People say that the 20-point “Plan” is a sign of peace. Trump even likes to make people believe that “his Plan” (conceived largely during the Biden administration, we’re told) brings to an end a 3000 year-long “war” between Jews and Palestinians. That’s a pompous bit of self-congratulatory wishful thinking which won’t stand up to real history. It may last only as long as DJT’s wandering mind pays attention to Palestine. BTW real history records that before Zionist ideology began to steer Jewish history, many Jews and Arabs lived in peaceful co-existence in Palestine and the Middle East.

The “Plan” is loaded with purposeful intentions, but the “signs” already reveal the fragility of most points. Israel may have signed the “Plan” but its actions after signing testify to its penchant for boundless independent, self-serving action. Honouring agreements and international laws, including the Charter of the United Nations which birthed Israel in 1948, ranks as a very low priority for the Netanyahu regime.

The major weakness of the “Plan” is its failure to address Israel’s domination and control in the Middle East, in general, and Palestine, in particular. It calls for the “de-radicalizing and disarming of Hamas” but says nothing about the limitless terror that Israel has rained on Palestine and its fragmented people. The relentless stream of weapons sent to Israel from USA, the European Union, UK, and Canada clearly helped the horror to continue. Not even Israel’s ("secret") nuclear weapons have ever been cited as a violation of international agreements. Israel regards itself and is treated as the fully armed innocent, while the evidence points to powerful criminality.

What the “Plan” appears to say is that Israel’s ambitions for Greater Palestine can continue to be pursued. Israel will not, says point 16 of the “Plan”, annex or occupy Gaza, but nothing in the “Plan” challenges Israel’s ambitious actions to annex the Westbank and East Jerusalem. In the “Plan” Gaza is the outlier but seemingly unconnected to the illegally Occupied Territories. The Plan may delay Israel’s own "Plan Dalet" to “divide and conquer” Palestine, but Israel has not renounced the notion of claiming the entire Palestine landmass.

Politicians will continue, we hope, to give flesh to the skeletal peace “Plan”. Perhaps they will be able to achieve a few more of its aspirations. But observers and activists on the ground need to continue their intensive advocacy for truth, justice, and the liberation of the people and State of Palestine. Allowing political leaders consciously or not to return Palestine to the pre-October 7 ^th status or to continue Israel’s occupation and subjugation is intolerable.

I believe there are important goals to pursue given this "Plan". People of faith need to continue to pray, discern, learn and act for the liberation of Palestine and the well-being of all who live in the Middle East. Not to do so would devalue the high-cost sacrifices Palestinians have borne for the past 100 years and the catastrophe of the past two years.

Faith communities – unilateral and inter-faith, and humanitarian organizations like Amnesty International – must reinforce their witness for the well-being of the people and State of Palestine and work for peaceful co-existence with Israelis.

The advocacy campaigns of the past two years must be continued and strengthened: ceasefire, embargo of weapons, humanitarian supplies, release of prisoners. These are simply basic “first-aids” for the people of Palestine living in disaster zones.

Israel must be made to feel the world pressure for truth, justice, and real peace. BDS (boycott, divest, sanction) measures and the anti-apartheid campaign must be strengthened. Israel must understand that it can no longer be a rogue and pariah state which flouts at international law and shelters under the USA wings for impunity. An ethno-religious racist anti-Palestinian Zionist state can no longer be allowed to “ethnically cleanse” Palestine of its non-Jewish indigenous peoples. Neither international law nor biblical/religious truth permit it.

Among the countless tasks before faith-based and goodwill advocates, some priorities stand out:

1. Medical care – mental and physical, in suitable facilities, must be restored and strengthened to deal with the grief and mental distress suffered by Palestinians, and the treatment and rehabilitation of the more than 100,000 injured, maimed, burned, and de-limbed must be prioritized in cooperation with appropriate partners, e.g. MSF, international hospital partnerships, Save the Children, etc.

2. Education – For two years education for all ages has been curtailed. Schools, colleges, universities, etc. were intentionally destroyed and leading professionals in many fields esp. medicine and journalism were targets for Israeli snipers and bombs. Special leadership development programs must be instituted. Anti-racism programs to counter both anti-Palestinianism and anti-Judaism must be enhanced and popularized.

3. Raising funds for restoration and repair. The Western nations and churches have much to confess in their treatment of both Palestinians and Jews. Virtually all Christian churches are in our era in the process of selling or transforming countless properties. A significant portion of the revenues should be dedicated to the global task of remediating the disastrous effects of settler colonization. Western states must contribute large amounts to compensate for the huge profits made from “war” production and sales.

4. Investigation of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The Nurnberg Trials after World War II were intended to ensure that “never again” would such racially based genocide be allowed to happen. The Gaza horror dispelled that notion. Granting impunity to the criminals who ordered and facilitated the Gaza horrors will do nothing to stop another genocide. The International Criminal Court must be encouraged to investigate intensively and extensively so that when the time is right, prosecutions and trials can begin for all charged. (Hamas leaders alleged to have committed war crimes have been assassinated by Israel operatives.)

Part 2: After Ceasefire – more in the next Pilgrim Praxis blog post.....

Theocracy threatens democracy

Fri, 19 Sep 2025 13:36:30 GMT

Democracy is threatened by leaders assuming divine authority, totalitarian and anti-human ideologies.

Ed. note: It has been six years since this (now somewhat edited) post was published on this Pilgrim Praxis blog. More than ever its core message needs reinforcing. Democracy is gravely threatened by self-divinizing political leaders. Common people, especially minorities, are paying the huge price for this hubris.

(image source: Pexels / Mike Bird, with thanks. )

Definitions

Theocracy: Government of a state by the immediate direction or administration of God; hence, government or political rule by priests or clergy as representatives of God.
Theocrasy: A fusion of divinities of different religions in the thought of worshipers; a mixture of the worship of different gods.... (Webster's New International Dictionary unabridged. 1957.)

Gospel:
"In those days, Caesar Augustus published a decree ordering a census of the whole Roman world. ... The angel said to [the shepherds] ... Today in David's city, a saviour - the Messiah - as been born to you. Let this be a sign to you: you'll find an infant wrapped in a simple cloth, lying in a manger. Suddenly, there was a multitude of the heavenly host with the angel, praising God and saying, "Glory to God in high heaven! And on Earth, peace to those on whom God's favour rests." ( Luke 2. Inclusive Bible translation)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ ~

Christian Witness or....
Christians of every age and generation have long needed to weigh whether the faith to which they bear witness is fundamentally rooted in the Scriptures and is faithful to the discipleship heritage of previous generations, or whether their faith is or has been corrupted by other theologies, cultural ideologies, and unfaithful practices.

In the twentieth century, Christianity and companions of Jesus Christ in Germany were sorely tested by National Socialist (Nazi) government dominated by Adolf Hitler. The inherited German, predominantly Christian, culture underwent a rapid social and theological transformation driven by Nazi ideas and power.

The Nazi salute of the Third Reich was a sign of this transformation. The Nazi salute, "Sieg Heil!" or "Heil Hitler!" became an imposed cultural practice which more than hinted at theological contamination. "Sieg" is the imperative for verb "to triumph"; "heil" translates into English with various words like whole, healed, restored, salvation or redemption. The association of the name of the dictator with this salute, as in "Heil! Hitler" and the religious-fervour it awakened in Nazi gatherings and in the culture generally went a long way to raise the social custom to a form of idolatrous worship. Just as the Roman emperor of the first Common Era centuries expected subjects to worshipfully bend the knee, so the Nazi state required the raised-arm salute.

History tells us that the salute and the ideology it reflected resulted in nothing like "Heil" but everything like hell.

In the 1930s in Germany, the National Socialists (Nazis) were very aware of the power of religion - the Christian religion - which had for more than a millenium shaped German culture.

The 1933 German Reich Concordat with the Vatican was the attempt to safeguard peace between the Nazi state and Roman Catholics. The Concordat achieved its Nazi goal. By 1937 the state effectively strait-jacketed the hierarchical Church to "religious matters" only.

Protestants, divided as they were in Lutheran, Reformed, and "United" (Evangelische Kirche der Union) church confessions with 28 regional church bodies, were a more complicated challenge. To break through the maze and to gain control of the Protestant churches, the Nazi government decided to "de-confessionalize" and Germanize the Protestant church bodies into one Reich Church. The imposition of Ludwig Mueller as the national Bishop sought to guarantee Nazi control of the Church.

Ecclesiologically and theologically, the Nazis sought to cut off the Protestant Church bodies from their life-giving roots and self-definition in order to transform it into the German Church as a subordinate aspect of the totalitarian Nazi state. The Nazi takeover was perceived to be a fundamental threat to the integrity of the Christian Church in Germany and was therefore fervently resisted by many Protestants.

Barmen 1934
In response, representatives of the various church bodies - pastors, lay members, and theologians - were chosen to come together in an emergency synod in May 1934 in the community of Barmen in the city of Wuppertal to shape a "common message for the need and temptation of the Church in our day."

The message created was addressed to Protestant Christians who were encouraged to test the veracity of the Barmen message by the Scriptures and by the witness of the ancestors of faith. "Try the spirits whether they are of God!"

This "Confessional Synod" re-affirmed the theological basis of Articles 1 and 2 (1) of the constitution of the German Evangelical [Protestant] Church ( Evangelische Kirche Deutschlands EKD ) as recognized by the Reich Government on July 14, 1933:

"Article 1: The inviolable foundation of the EKD is the gospel of Jesus Christ as it is attested for us in Holy Scripture and brought to light again in the Confessions of the Reformation. The full powers that the Church needs for its mission are hereby determined and limited.
Article 2 (1). The EKD is divided into member Churches. (Landeskirchen)."

In negating the Nazis' totalitarian intention for the "Reichskirche," the Synod birthed a schism. The Church divided those who upheld the primacy of the canonical scriptures and the faith heritage (Confessing Christians) from the alien, heretical, and contaminating doctrines and ecclesiology that "German Christians" wanted to impose.

The Theological Declaration of Barmen (May 1934) contained six key doctrinal principles which the Confessing Church leaders held to be fundamental: ( quoted in part from The Proposed Book of Confessions, Office of the General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church in the USA. 1966. pp. 171-174.)

"In view of the errors of the "German Christians" of the present Reich Church government which are devastating the Church and are also thereby breaking up the unity of the EKD, we confess the following evangelical truths:

"...Jesus Christ, as he is attested for us in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God which we have to hear and which we have to trust and obey in life and in death." (John 14:6; John 10:1,9)
"We reject the false doctrine, as though the Church could and would have to acknowledge as source of its proclamation, apart from and besides this one Word of God, still other events and powers, figures and truths, as God's revelation."

"...We reject the false doctrine, as though there were areas of our life in which we would not belong to Jesus Christ, but to other lords - areas in which we would not need justification and sanctification through him." (1 Cor. 1:30)

"....We reject the false doctrine, as though the Church were permitted to abandon the form of its message and order to its own pleasure or to changes in prevailing ideological and political conviction." (Eph. 4:15, 16)

"....We reject the false doctrine, as though the Church, apart from this ministry [of servanthood - Matt.20:25, 26], could or were permitted to give to itself, or allow to be given to it, special leaders vested with ruling powers."

"....We reject the false doctrine, as though the State, over and beyond its special commission, should and could become the single and totalitarian order of human life, thus fulfilling the Church's vocation as well. We reject the false doctrine, as though the Church, over and beyond its special commission, should and could appropriate the characteristics, the tasks, and the dignity of the State, thus itself becoming an organ of the State."

"....We reject the false doctrine, as though the Church in human arrogance could place the Word and work of the Lord in the service of any arbitrarily chosen desires, purposes, and plans."

The central issue here is the question: to whom is the Church - Christians - ultimately accountable and loyal? Nazi leaders demanded ultimate loyalty and obedience to their version of the German State personified in its dictator Hitler, for the German Church as they "reformed" it, and for their race-based Aryan interpretation of "truth" and "witness."

Especially dangerous and objectionable was the claim of supremacy for people of the Aryan race as a cornerstone of the new faith convictions. This claim would provide the basis for subordinating, demonizing, and exterminating people of other races deemed to be of lesser and sub-human races. The murder of Jews, Roma people, homosexuals, and many others were justified by these teachings propounded in Hitler's Mein Kampf .

Weaving together Aryan mythology and Judaeo-Christian teachings as a nationalist or civil religion enabled people to accept and justify the criminal behaviour of the Nazi state and its leaders. Through the Reichskirche, Hitler was seeking divine validation for his territorial expansionism, his murder of groups of people who did not meet his Aryan race qualifications, and the subjugation and liquidation of any and all who resisted Nazi totalitarianism.

The Barmen Christians absolutely rejected the notions that the reign of God was being realized in the creation of the German Reich and that the religion the Nazis were seeking to impose had any validity for those who identified themselves as "Christians". The revelation of God in Jesus Christ stood firmly as a fundamental contradiction to the false and evil claims, convictions, and actions propounded by the Nazis and to denouncing the notion that the Fuehrer Adolf Hitler was the "heil" bringer to the German nation and to the world subjected to the superior Nordic Aryan people.

Barmen's witness was a call for Nazis to root and branch repentance: turning away from the armed violence to bring about the new reality in Germany and beyond, choosing instead peaceful ways of creating a new society; away from the murderous racism, antisemitism, homophobia, and discriminatory anthropologies, which totally contradicted the biblical witness of all women and men created in the image of God; and away from the suppression of walking in the Way of Jesus Christ as the divine Word of God. "We are bound together by the confession of the One Lord of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church."

The work of the Barmen leaders of the Confessing Church has had longer term impact. It has served as an authoritative resource and inspiration to successive generations of Christians, calling all Christians to faithfulness to Christ's Gospel in the challenging contexts they find themselves.

Other Contexts

In South Africa, Christians used Barmen as a lens to see clearly the heretical basis of the apartheid system of the Afrikaner state and its religious collaborators in churches like South Africa's Dutch Reformed Church. The Declaration was studied and adapted to the South African context and informed the discernment of the anti-apartheid Christians.

They recognized that the Way of Christ was being contaminated and perverted by dominant racist and xenophobic teachings serving to justify the oppression of the majority Black African and "coloured" Asian racial communities. No amount of heretical "theological" rationalization and casuistry could justify the evil oppression and inhuman subordination of these majorities by the dominant white minority. [In 1984, the General Council of the United Church of Canada declared the theological rationale for apartheid a heresy.]

With intense international pressure - including ecclesiastical condemnation, coordinated disinvestment, boycotts, and sanctions, along with internal resistance, the regime fell. As a result, structural racism was demolished, and democracy had a chance to evolve and develop freed from the apartheid's fracturing constraints.

It is remarkable that In Canada, the Barmen Declaration appears not to have informed the Churches about their relationships with the Indigenous peoples of Canada. In the latter half of the 20th century, Canadian Christians wrestled with the deeply flawed colonial system to which they had contributed and assented. Sensing that this assent was rooted in a complex weaving of presumed supremacy of Christian theology - especially resurrection theology, European cultural superiority, and deeply entrenched racism, Christian leaders began to reconsider the churches' role in this imperialist system. The major churches, excluding the Roman Catholic, were led to express official apologies for aspects of this devastating hubris-based domination and commitments to seek new, more just ways of relating with Canada's indigenous peoples.

Why do theocracy and theocrasy merit discussion in our time?

Rise of Populism
The rise of populist leaders in various nations is awakening for many people memories of the thirties when National Socialism's teachings and actions wrought their evil. Autocratic leaders like Rodrigo Duterte, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jing Pin, Jair Bolsonaro, Nicolas Maduro, Victor Orban, Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu, etc., cast their destructive spell over democratic processes of their lands, too often as they anoint themselves or as they are validated by national religious leaders! All people of faith and especially faithful Christians aware of their theological heritage and history have reason to be concerned.

Nationalist leaders claim higher wisdom, dismiss human rights standards, spew hatred and promote fear, use force, spread falsehoods, fracture cultural communities, demonize groups of people, fail to honour rule of law, oppress "others" and rationalize their incarceration or even murder, threaten Creation, claim supremacy while moving towards totalitarian approaches to government - these are men who take to themselves far more power than is justified either by law or by accepted human understanding. It may not exactly equate with theocracy but it is akin to "playing God."

Christians base their expectations of human leadership on the witness of scripture and on the fruits of the Spirit which result from that leadership. The Luke 2 segment quoted above proclaims that the divine is revealed not by the haughty and the presumed powerful, but by the love-borne child whom the angels proclaimed and the shepherds embraced. This child is the revelation of the heart of God and in the Bethlehem manger lies the stark contradiction and challenge to the presumptions of the oppressive Roman Emperor and his blood-thirsty King Herod .

Christians understand that the way of faithfulness is revealed not in arrogant hubris, but in the strong and gentle humility of the birth and life of Jesus Christ, brother to all in the one human family of God. No one is outside of the grace this Beloved Child of God brought to the world. The self-giving ways of Jesus, his command to love God and neighbour as self, his commitment to the marginalized and the oppressed by seeking justice and wholeness for all, his challenge to the arrogant and those unwilling to love the other, his honouring of women and children, his welcoming of diverse others, his unity with the Holy One - these Spirit-filled qualities and actions are the Way of blessing to which all people of faith are called. "Treat others as you yourself want to be treated!"

Do the current crop of nationalist, populist leaders' actions foster peace, justice, equity? Do they respect the divine image of God which is inherent in each and every human beings? Do they nurture compassion and well-being through their actions? Do they acknowledge their own limitations and their personal need for forgiveness and grace? Do they employ gifts and talents, not for their own interest, but for the well-being of all people? Do they live respectfully in Creation and honour the creatures with whom humans are called to share the earth? Do they foster God's shalom reign on earth?

These and many other questions are appropriately put to all leaders, but especially to leaders entrusted with power to govern over others in the human family. It seems increasingly however that national populations are being duped into supporting populist leaders driven by hubris claiming to have visionary simple and effective, but often immoral or amoral, solutions to the perceived problems of the nations.

Trump and American Christians
In the United States of America, the blending of Bible and nationalism is creating a religious amalgam called American Christianity. Fundamentalist groups seem ready to baptize Donald Trump as a political leader divinely mandated to save the nation from its alleged evil, progressive ways!

Jim Bakker, a convicted and disgraced tele-evangelist has again taken to the airwaves. This time his pitch supports the current President of the United States as the divinely chosen one to lead the nation through turbulent times to salvation. Bakker and others liken Donald Trump to King Cyrus, the monarch of Persia whom the Hebrew prophet Isaiah foresaw as God's Chosen One endowed with God's Spirit to deliver the Jewish people from exile in Babylon and as restoring the Jerusalem temple foundations. (Is. 44:28; 45:1ff; 48:16)

So Bakker is offering his viewers a solid gold-plated coin, engraved with the overlapping heads of both Cyrus and Trump, as a "point of contact" with God. The coin's purpose is to help believers pray for the continuation and success of the Trump presidency to bring salvation to the United States of America. Only $45 gets you the coin!

No mention is made of the well-documented and increasingly obvious significant failings of the USA's 45th President. Would parents of young children really want to have their children know that they pray to the Holy One for the continuing "success" of a president who allegedly is "endowed with God's Spirit," but radiates fear, hatred, and immorality in his words and deeds? His hate-filled abuse and ferocious attacks on many people - especially people of colour, women, and LGBTQ2 people - have set an unenviable record for the Office of the President and contradict the core of faith the Scriptures reveal about Jesus and the loving heart of God.

The American Christian right appears to have reached an amoral consensus that it is more important to be blind to Trump sins and pathological ways than to forgo the chance to establish their right-wing, mainly white male dominance, especially in social agendas related to sexual orientation, reproductive rights, women's rights, gun control, etc. This version of fostering salvation, viz. "making America great again" has nothing to do with God's purpose of bring healing and wholeness to the world and the human family but everything to do with a distorted nationalist view buttressed by dubious interpretations of scripture.

American Christians are also focusing on the Servant Songs in the book of the prophet Isaiah (42:1-4; 49:1-6; 50:4-11; and especially, 52:13-53:12) as a way of interpreting the Trump presidency. Given the strong and persistent critique of the "deal maker" by all but hardcore Republicans and allied right wing sources, some fundamentalists are imagining Trump as a contemporary version of the Suffering Servant, who is " despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised , and we esteemed him not. ... He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities, ... and with his stripes we are healed." (53:4f. KJV)

To claim Christian identity with a false interpretation of the Suffering Servant theme is heretical mockery of scriptures and the Christian Gospel. Trump, notwithstanding what American fundamentalist Christians have no shame to preach, is no suffering servant endowed with the divine Spirit as lived by Jesus Christ the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Jesus' prayer "that all may be one" is forsaken for the claim that only "our" national superior understanding is the way to which all must yield and bend the knee.

This attempt to identify Trump as divinely chosen for the redemption of the USA is heresy which all churches and faithful Christians must challenge, just as the Confessing Christians of Germany challenged and witnessed against the German Christians' attempt to identify Hitler as bearer of salvation for Germany. Such theocrasy easily slides into murderous theocracy.

In the end, it is the Gospel of the child in the manger and the self-giving Way of the Beloved One of God - Jesus Christ - that the faithful are called to accompany, to proclaim, and to live as the Spirit's urgent antidote to fundamentalist American Christians' ill-begotten theocratic claims about the presidency of Donald J. Trump.

"Glory to God in high heaven! And on earth, peace to those on whom God's favour rests."

Witness to Human Care

Mon, 01 Sep 2025 18:50:38 GMT

Will the little children eventually lead the human family to peace??

Editor's Note: On August 30th, 2025 at Parliament Hill, health care workers in the Ottawa region welcomed several hundred advocates for justice, peace, and liberation in Palestine to a vigil to meditate and reflect on Israel's continuing assault on children and families in Palestine's Gaza and Westbank. Surrounded by the advocates, children were doing what children are born to do: drawing, playing, talking, being, with parental guidance.

Across the Parliament Hill lawn stood a small tent with a gathering of people. There, Tamils were witnessing against genocide in Sri Lanka.

The scourges of racial hatred and settler dominating colonialism is killing hundreds of thousands of humans - with innocent children and parents most vulnerable - in Ukraine, in D.R. Congo, in Yemen, South Sudan, Myanmar, and God knows where else. Too many governments and civil organizations especially in Western governments and even faith-based organizations have remained silent, or issued tepid hollow wordy statements - virtually declaring these horrors "normal" fare for daily living. This negligence must end!

Happily the streets of a great many cities resound with voices of individual demonstrators calling for Palestine to be "free from the River to the Sea" - a slogan by which people of faith and justice mean liberation for all inhabitants of the region, freed for life in its fulness. That means for the Indigenous Palestinians, but also for Israelis who need freedom from the lies and assurances that peace can be created by continuing the apartheid domination and warfare Zionists began 100 years before.

Peace based on mutual respect and foundational justice are the only ways forward. Governments empowering the United Nations and the International legal framework are key vehicles in that direction for ending the annihilation of beloved children and adults of God's ONE human family .

I am profoundly grateful to Diana Ralph for her ongoing courageous testimony (here with her permission to publish), her faithful witness and inspiring actions for just peace at the Vigil for Gaza's Children organized by regional Health Care Workers on Saturday, August 30th, 2025. Please note the opportunities for "What Can I Do?" below Diana Ralph's text.

Diana Ralph is a devout Jew, a founder of Independent Jewish Voices, and a former medical social worker

and therapist. Dianaralph43@gmail.com.

A H Harry Oussoren

Editor. ahharryo370@gmail.com

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Diana Ralph's testimony:

Thank you to all those who organized this important vigil and to all of you for standing

here for humanity and justice for the children of Gaza.

As a devout Jew, I have three messages for you:

1. Judaism values life, justice, compassion, honesty, and generosity. We treasure all

children as pure, beautiful and inherently worthy of being nurtured and protected.

2. What Israel has been doing to the children of Gaza and to all Palestinians since

1948 violates everything I cherish about Judaism. Zionism is NOT Judaism. From its

inception, Israel has been a violent, racist, settler colonial apartheid state which

oppresses Palestinian people. And now, it is perpetrating genocide.

3. Blaming Jews for Israel’s crimes is antisemitic. Jews, like all other people, don’t

deserve to be blamed or attacked. But criticizing Israel’s crimes is NOT

antisemitic. Opposing and stopping these crimes is a moral obligation for everyone,

and especially for Jews.

[On the Jewish calendar] this is the month of Elul, when Jews prepare for the High Holidays. It is a time when we Jews take communal responsibility before God for the wrongs we collectively have

committed. We apologize, beg forgiveness, do what we can to repair the damage we

have caused, and commit to return to an ethical path. Many Jews oppose what Israel is

doing. But to the extent that we have ever colluded with and benefited from Israel’s

behaviour, we Jews have a special moral responsibility to oppose and apologize for

Israel’s crimes. Similarly, as a Canadian, I also have a responsibility to apologize for my

government so uncritically supporting Israel’s crimes.

So, with deep contrition and remorse, I chant a Vidui, a confession to God, to you, and

to the children of Gaza and their parents for the sins that the Israeli government is

committing in our name:

Since 2007, we have held over 2 million Gazan people under siege, most of them

already Nakba refugees, denying them life’s essentials, and waging ongoing military

attacks on them.

We have imprisoned and tortured many thousands of Palestinians, including children,

without charge or due process.

We have destroyed their homes, schools, hospitals, water treatment plants, trees, and

food sources.

Since 2023, we have starved, wounded, bombed, traumatized and killed all of Gaza’s

children and their parents. We have literally committed ecocide, destroying the very land

itself.

We have tried to justify these crimes by demonizing innocent civilians, including infants

and small children, as “Hamas terrorists”.

We have called those who speak out for justice for Palestinian " antisemitic" to silence,

discredit, and criminalize them.

We have imprisoned and killed journalists, students, and activists who tried to expose

these crimes.

For all these crimes and sins, I along with many other Canadian Jews deeply apologize.

We stand in solidarity with Palestinians and commit to do whatever we can to stop

Israel’s genocidal atrocities and to repair the damage done in our name.

I will close with a prayer we Jews recite on Yom Kippur, our holiest day. The words

mean: For all these sins, God of forgiveness, please forgive us, pardon us, and help us

atone!

Ve’al kulam eloha selihot selah lanu. Mehal lanu. Kaper lanu.

Thank you.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

What Can I Do?

Sign petitions to tell the Government of Canada to take action ( google the organizations )

Doctors without Borders
Amnesty International
CJPME (Canadian for Justice and Peace in the Middle East).

2. Donate to Organizations Helping on the Ground

Palestinian Children's Relief Foundation
Doctors without Borders
International Development & Relief Fund
United Church of Canada partners: https://united-church.ca/donate-provide-crucial-aid-refugees-within-and-outside-gaza

3. Write your local MP, the Leaders of the several Federal political parties and the Prime Minister

P.M Mark Carney: pm@pm.gc.ca or, better yet, send a letter or note: Rt.Hon. Mark Carney, Prime Minister of Canada, Office of the PM, 80 Wellington St., House of Commons, Ottawa K1A 0A2 (no stamp required)

4. Learn

from Book, Films, Opinion Pieces, educational events, conferences, workshops, etc.
Distinguish between truth-telling sources and the voluminous propaganda from Israeli government and its lobbyists like CIJA (Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs);
look beyond major media and choose on-site reporting, e.g. from: The Guardian, Al-Jazeera
Read: Jewish scholars:
Ilan Pappe's "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine" 978 1 85168 555 4; or his "Ten Myths about Israel" 978 1 80429 704 9
Peter Beinart's "Being Jewish after the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning" ISBN 978 0 593 80389 9

5. Pray (this paraphrase of the Beatitudes in Matthew's Gospel (5:1-10) or your own prayer)

Bless, O Holy One, all who mourn, so that they may be comforted in their immense loss; bless all who hunger and thirst for justice, so that they may be filled with joy; bless the merciful and compassionate as they model your goodness; bless the peacemakers, for they are your special children; and bless and strengthen those who witness to your truth, for they announce the freedom that comes with your reign.

Seniors Affordable Housing

Thu, 31 Jul 2025 20:29:17 GMT

New Residents Welcome at Albright Gardens, Beamsville, ON

A new home (for bees) at Albright Gardens Retirement Community

Albright Gardens Retirement Community (AGRC) welcomed a new community of residents to the 25

acre property owned by The United Church of Canada Property Trust (UCC). A buzzing hive of busy bees now graces the lawn along Hixon Street. It’s evidence of environmental awareness.

Whether it is intended to provide extra pollinators for Niagara’s many vineyards is not entirely clear. The bees will help flowers bloom in the residents’ garden plots. AGRC's human residents are also pleased the bees have come to support the growth of the grape crop on the other side of Hixon Street. The Niagara Peninsula, one might say, is a beehive of wineries.

The Gardens' beehive is a symbol of the hope that AGRC may one day become an affordable housing community for many more residents to enjoy this spectacular setting. KindredWorks.ca is the UCC’s vehicle for re-development consulting and planning.

An Affordable Housing Community

In the first half of the twentieth century the site was a producing farm. That all changed in the 1950s when the Rev. Raymund Albright decided to donate the family farm to the UCC.

Albright was very conscious of UCC ministry personnel who had lived in manses and served on low church salaries and, upon retirement, received even lower pensions. So, his aim was to transform the farm into a little paradise for retired personnel to enjoy in their “golden years.”

Wonderfully, Elsie Watt of St. Andrew’s UC, Toronto, shared the vision and donated $100,000 to build

the first 12!! frame units on Watt Circle. In the next decade or two, more property was bought so that

additional brick homes could be built. Now there are 41 two-bedroom units, some with

basements, plus a “Friendship Centre”, which provides community gathering space and houses the

Community Support Services of Niagara’s Beamsville office.

Retiring in Albright Gardens

In line with their generous vision, Albright and Watt aimed to make it possible to live well even on modest incomes in the Gardens of Beamsville. Currently, sky-rocketing rents in Canada’s urban area claim more than the suggested 30% of income for housing. Many ministry personnel, especially those starting ordered ministry in mid-life or later, will not have been able to grow sufficient pension credits or housing equity.

The AGRC rents currently range from $900 to $1250 per month – roughly 70% of market prices,

depending on size and amenities of the unit leased. As a retirement community, applicants must be 55+ years of age, capable of living independently, retiring or retired from UCC employment, and normally members of the UCC Pension Plan. As a ministry of the UCC, the AGRC is an Affirming Community and celebrates the ethnic diversity of God's global human family.

Some residents have lived in the Gardens for more than 25 years. Others have been there but a year or two. Their reports are clear: AGRC is a friendly place, where cultivating community is cherished

because it means there is help when help is needed; but freedom is cultivated so that residents can

pursue their personal interests and projects in peace and comfort. The testimony of some residents can be heard and seen on the AGRC website: https://albrightgardens.ca.

Amenities Include

- A garden setting with lawns and trees that the landscapers trim and prune, and, in winter, clear snow and ice.

- Canada's Bruce Trail passes through the south end of the property. A Memorial Trail at the north end is for pleasant walks and honours previous residents.

- The site's vista overlooks Beamsville and Lake Ontario as far as Toronto. Niagara Falls is just 45 minutes away.

- The beautiful Escarpment, horticultural attractions, and wineries of the Niagara Peninsula beckon.

- Health and medical services are readily available in nearby St. Catharines, to the east, and Hamilton

to the west.

- Bus, train, and plane transportation is readily accessible.

- The Community Support Services of Niagara is ready to provide help when independent living becomes challenging.

- Albright Centre is a long-term care facility – a welcome neighbour on the adjacent property, planning for an additional extended-care facility.

- A Tenants' Association gives voice to residents’ concerns, organizes social occasions and

excursion outings, and liaises with the Owner /or/ Agent.

- An experienced Property Manager understands the special aspects of this residential community and works to ensure that homes and grounds are safe, comfortable, secure, and welcoming.

Visit

Come to Beamsville and drive around the site. You’ll be impressed and pleased to discover this special place. Take QEW, exit "Ontario Street Beamsville", take Mountain Road up the Escarpment, turn left on Edelheim Road, and there you are. Visit some other charming villages of Niagara when there.

Visit the website for a map and other information: : https://albrightgardens.ca

For More Information or to Add Your Name to the Wait List contact:

Shabri Properties Ltd.

Rental Housing Administrator: Leila Thompson

LeilaT@shabriproperties.com. Tel. 905 684 6333 or 1 289 362 1105 ext. 232.

Nobel Peace for Truth

Thu, 10 Jul 2025 19:57:09 GMT

Courageous Truth Telling Deserves Nobel Peace Prize

Francesca Albanese

Image Source: National Public Radio, with thanks.

The world of nations is well served by courageous United Nations personnel who speak truth so that the quest for justice and finally lasting peace may liberate the oppressed and the oppressors of the world.

Francesca Albanese is the UN's special rapporteur re Palestine and for her distinguished efforts she has just been sanctioned by the Secretary of State of the United States Marco Rubio for her steadfast reporting on the state of affairs in Palestine. Demonizing truth-tellers is the vile habit of dictators - biblically and politically.

Because her reports refuse to take the ready-made State of Israel and USA version of dis-information about the situation in Palestine, its author is being intimidated and punished for speaking truth.

For most people, the reputations of neither Marco Rubio nor DJ Trump inspires confidence in any of their statements. Neither has demonstrated a capacity for understanding the complexities of their roles, nor have they shown themselves to be purveyors of truth and factual evidence to warrant trust in their witness. (Netanyahu may nominate Trump for the Nobel peace prize, but both are known for their mendacity and their disregard of laws and human beings.)

Madame Albanese, on the other hand, has provided convincing and definitive evidence to buttress all her judgements about the apartheid and genocide which Israel, with armaments supplied by USA and other Western co-conspirators, is perpetrating. She has struggled faithfully to let international law, objectivity, and truth be known world-wide.

The evidence is daunting but the point in this post is to thank and honour Francesca Albanese for her persistent, evidence based, factual reporting of the horror oppressing the Palestinian people and the erasure of so much Palestinian life and culture. In seeking to honour her, we are, at the same time honouring the United Nations as an essential international organization for the heavy task of fostering peace and justice in the world of nations.

If you value the truth and faithfulness which Francesca Albanese brings to her justice and peace building role, please, consider recommending to the Norwegian Nobel Peace Prize Committee that Francesca Albanese be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2026 . The deadline for nominations is January 31, 2026 - but don't wait till then to write. You'll probably get a response saying there is a formal process for valid nominators, but a groundswell of informal nominators would send a message.

Write your recommendation for 2026 to: postmaster@nobelpeaceprize.org .

[The deadline for the 2025 Peace prize was January 31, 2025. There are 338 candidates for this year, of whom 244 are individuals and 94 organizations. The 2025 laureate's name will be announced on October 10th and the prize presented on December 10, 2025.]

Blessings,

Harry Oussoren

Action for Palestinian Liberation

Wed, 25 Jun 2025 22:06:03 GMT

Every small and big witness for justice & peace in Palestine counts!

Picture with thanks to: Mary Sanderson & to other advocates, often including Stephen Lewis, gather weekly for Palestinian liberation at Kingston Rd. & Victoria Pk Ave in Toronto . Albert Einstein says on poster :

It would be my greatest sadness to see Zionist (Jews) do to the Palestinians Arabs much of what Nazis did to Jews."

The Call to "Do" Something to End the Horror in Palestine

Observing what is happening in Gaza, Palestine, and the Middle East is just not good enough for most people who yearn for a world where justice and peace are married with respect, self-determination, and being at home - the norms for God's one human family. Many of us are moved to rage, despair, lament, collaboration, and action when it comes to the State of Israel's historic and current military warfare to exterminate Palestinians and to erase Palestinian presence from their ancestral lands so that Israel's Zionist plan can be fulfilled. Now that more than 60,000 Palestinians have been annihilated and another 100,000 have been wounded and maimed and all Palestinians are burdened by the depths of grief and despair, it is time for many of us to not only pray and reflect, but also to act.

"What Can I Do?" was the title of a workshop the Focus on Palestine group of First United Church, Ottawa sponsored. About 40 participants gathered in the church hall to respond to the question. As they arrived, they were treated to Palestinian finger food and flavoured drinks. When all were seated in a large semi-circle, people were asked to state their name and how they were feeling in light of the horror in Palestine. The dominant mood that characterized the responses was sad, angry, despairing, frustrated, disempowered, - most sharing in the minor key!

Participants were then asked to take markers and go to six large sheets of newsprint each headed with categories: Learn; Church Life; Advocacy; Economic Pressure; Community Action; Other (e.g. legal, donate, culture, connect/go). The task: write down one or more of the things you have already DONE in response to the horror in Palestine. The sheets were quickly filled. (You will find the results below.)

The next step was to hear the testimony of several people who had been part of significant action in advocating for liberation.

Then in groups of three, participants were next asked to reflect on what they had heard and seen on the newsprint. The buzz-groups were followed by general discussion, including a report on a recent Justice for Palestine conference several participants had attended at St. Paul University, Ottawa at the end of May. Here is Heather Douglas' account of that conference:

“'A Cry for Repentance: Settler Colonialism, Palestine and the Western Church' was the theme. We were honoured to share in meaningful, engaging and sobering sessions with Palestinian Christian leaders, advocates, academics, activists and church leaders from across Canada and the globe. They challenged, encouraged and spurred us onwards as we collectively lamented, grieved and learned from the wise, experienced and faithfully perseverant presenters and attendees. We left heartened by the connections and reminded of the gravity - and call of our faith - to seek steadfastly and humbly to walk in solidarity with our Palestinian neighbours and siblings ."

Before concluding the workshop, all were asked once again to say in a word or two how they were feeling in light of the workshop. The tone said it all - the sharing was in the major key. Encouraged, informed, strengthened - by the sharing and the community of support - and empowered and inspired to take more action to foster justice, peace, and liberation for Palestinians and their land. We were all pleasantly surprised and blessed. The Spirit of gentleness, goodness, fairness, and caring had moved among us..

What Participants in the Workshop Have Already Done:

What follows is a curated list of the actions participants listed on the newsprint sheets and some added from subsequent conversations. Our hope in publishing these actions is that it may encourage and inspire more communal efforts to strengthen their advocacy for the end of the horror and the emergence of justice, peace, and liberation for the Palestinian people.

What Participants in the Workshop Have Already Done :

The categories are helpful, but overlap. Community actions become advocacy. And individual actions become Community Actions. Etc.

1. LEARN

Subscribe to News and Info sources – all formats (e.g. Al Jazeera, Maple, Guardian, Saturday G&M,)

Conferences

Webinars (e.g. organized by Centre for Justice & Piece in Middle East [CJPME])

Documentaries and videos

Podcasts

Social media – follow Gaza folks

Read books (Octopus Books, Ottawa has curated lists)

Theatre Films

Speakers (e.g. Queer Solidarity with Palestine Panel)

Take courses (e.g. online, Peter Larsen in Ottawa)

Talk to Palestinians and Israelis

Educational Tours – go in person

Tatreeze Circle (women embroidering as space for learning, story telling, cultural preservation)

2. CHURCH LIFE

Organize and attend meetings of Focus on Palestine at First United

Submitted participatory actions (solidarity) in the Friday File at Kitchisippi United

Meetings at Parkdale United

Make announcements at church

Circulate petition for sending to MP at church

Making negative connections with some readings in the Hebrew scriptures /

Preached on O.T. and related to Gaza

Helped organize information evenings at church

Got church to host speaker from Bethlehem Bible College, Palestine

Emailed ministers to request action and followed up

Regular fundraisers for Gaza

Wear Palestine Pins

Sold Zatoun products in the social hour

Crafts and Children’s programs, kites

Prayers

Vigils.

Congregational Leadership and governance – approach Regional Executive Minister

Wrote various letters to Moderator and General Secretary & Executive of General Council

Introduced Apartheid-Free Communities

Attended religious services elsewhere (with other faith groups, e.g. at university encampment)

Fosna: Friends of Sabeel North America; Canadian Friends of Sabeel

3. ADVOCATE

Call and email MP and PM and Min of Foreign Affairs (use weekly call list, circulated June 9 ^th letter to all Ottawa MPs)

Meet with my MP

Sign petitions and letters (including e-commons, CJPME)

Email CBC – News, ombudsman, reporters and programs – also laud good media

Joined CJPME media team (upcoming Lobby Corps)

Create and share letters and petitions

Spoke at City Council meetings for Defend Dissent, and email Councillors / Mayor

Join demonstrations and marches

Expound on Palestine with others (union / professional association / workplace / university)

Talk about Palestine in my classes

Connected workplace with Anti-Palestinian Racism training

Sign / Flag in front of my house

Library: to purchase Palestinian books

SENT books to MP and MoFA: A Short History of Israel-Palestine by Pappé (postage free)

Spoke with MP and Rev. Robert Oliphant (as Parliamentary Secretary for Global Affairs

Invite people to meet my Palestinian friend

Start “Peace Café” meetings

Called / emailed School Board OCDSB

Emailed Alma Maters

4. ECONOMIC PRESSURE

BOYCOTT ... e.g. Chapters Indigo, Scotia Bank / Teva

(noted on poster: Shoppers, AirBnB, settlement products, Starbucks)

Use apps: Boycat, No Thanks

Complained to store staff about Israeli Products

Divested my RRSP

Support Divestment – students and faculty at universities / my own association

BUY PALESTINIAN – from Palestine, and support local Palestinian businesses

Buy Palestinian olives, olive oil, delicacies

5. COMMUNITY ACTIONS

Marches, protests (Parliament, university, streets, university encampment

Organize and participate in Ceasefire Pilgrimage

Joined Palestinian Employee Network (National) at work

Organizing and attending meetings at church

Prayer vigil

Support Palestinians living in Ottawa

Be visible and heard... show up and speak out

- Wear a symbol (clothing, bag, pin, umbrella, watermelon slice )

- Talk with family, friends and colleagues

6. OTHER

DONATE: e.g. Charities in Gaza / Palestine, Newcomer Gaza families Ottawa (money or transportation, goods); PCRF Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund, UNRWA, UNICEF, UNHCR, WCK. People and organizations working in Palestine

Supported LEGAL challenges. ... Support Legal Centre for Palestine / Community Legal Fund 4 Palestine

CREATE: “Gaza for Good” / hosted a garage sale

RELATING: Meet, love and support Palestinian friends

Lots of conversation with a friend who is a Zionist

PRAYER – individual, group, vigil

CULTURE - music, Palestinian film festival, food, dance, tatreeze

CONNECT... other faith communities – attend their events, support their work;

Independent Jewish Voices – support, connect, learn, encourage, appreciate

GO... Visited Palestine and Israel, brought back perspectives to gov’t decision-makers /

ECUMENICAL partners in other denominations;

Sabeel visits / Internship with Palestinian NGO in Ramallah

We have many colleagues and they encourage us all to courageous acts for truth, justice, peace and liberation in Palestine.

Blessings,

The Focus on Palestine Group at First UC, Ottawa :

Sandra Ballantyne, Ibrahim Daibes, Nira Dookeran, Heather Douglas, Paul Durber, Glenys Huws, Harry Oussoren, Judi Varga-Toth.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Another Inspiring Street Witness to Stop the Killing in Palestine (with thanks for sharing):

Michelle Landsberg, celebrated author, spouse of Stephen Lewis & mother of Avi Lewis, writes in the Toronto Star:

On June 6, with the help of volunteers, we lugged the 50 signs to the corner and were stunned when 300 black-clad women came pouring onto the street to stand with us. We lined the curb around the corner from Yonge and along Bloor St. all the way to Park Road. The honks and cheers from passing trucks and cars told us how many others are as shocked by the genocide as we are. And we’ll be doing it again and again, until the killing stops. Not in our name, not now or ever, not to anyone. We will not let threats and abuse choke our humanity into silence. We cannot and will not be silently complicit anymore.

Project: Esther's Goal?

Fri, 13 Jun 2025 00:47:53 GMT

Justice & Peace in Palestine Are NOT the Goal of Project: Esther!

A Persian Court's Game of Chess

Pexel photo 84070.jpeg by Saeid Anvar - with thanks

The U.S.- based National Heritage Foundation (NHS) is pursuing an extensive plan, it claims, to wipe out antisemitism in the USA. The plan is called Project Esther: A National Strategy to Combat Antisemitism. Its summary, as expressed on its website, follows:

America’s virulently anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, and anti-American “pro-Palestinian movement” is part of a global Hamas Support Network (HSN) that is trying to compel the U.S. government to abandon its long-standing support for Israel. Supported by activists and funders dedicated to the destruction of capitalism and democracy, the HSN benefits from the support and training of America’s overseas enemies and seeks to achieve its goals by taking advantage of our open society, corrupting our education system, leveraging the American media, coopting the federal government, and relying on the American Jewish community’s complacency. The National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism intends to enlist all willing and able partners in a coordinated effort to combat the scourge of antisemitism in the United States.

[Disclaimer for the record: Neither I nor any group of advocates for justice in Palestine with which I’ve been associated are or have been funded by any organization or a foreign nation! The frequently repeated lies of both the NHF and the Israeli lobby do not add up to truth. We are motivated by truth and non-violent change. The truth is freely obtained in books written by Israeli scholars and faithfully observing Jews, in statements by Palestine’s wounded and grieving people, by the reports of diverse international humanitarian organizations, the United Nations, and the International Courts.

We feel called, however, by a “higher, divine Power.” Creator provides norms for restoring healthy relating as intended in the Torah’s Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes (etc.), and creates, redeems, and sustains truth and justice. The Holy One persistently seeks redemptively to “mend” creation and foster abundant living for the whole human family and all Creation. Our motives are rooted in divine truth and justice which call for solidarity with and respect for the oppressed, marginalized, and all the “othered” and demonized peoples, and non-violent truthful resistance to self-possessed powerful and armed oppressors.]

The Racist Bias against Palestine/ians

NHF’s vitriolic and insulting summary damns the whole pro-Palestinian movement non-violently seeking justice and peace for the peoples of Palestine and condemns as "antisemitism" anything that criticizes the State of Israel and Zionism. NHF conflates antisemitism with anti-Americanism, anti-democracy and anti-capitalism, with an insidious reference to a “global Hamas Support Network” – evidence missing.

The NHF strategy to deny the right to protest or even to empathize with the Palestinians’ lot is all too reminiscent of McCarthy era vilification by which the label “communist” was stuck on anyone the Senator didn’t agree with. The Hamas label is routinely applied to all subjugated Palestinians, just as when the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) was deemed a "terrorist" organization for its efforts to resist Israel's oppression.

Statistically the Israeli military is much more deserving of the "terrorist" label than any Palestinian resistance movement. In the last 100 years, Israel has been waging war on Palestinians to achieve ethnic cleansing and land theft. Massacres of Palestinians in villages and towns, imprisonment and detention of children and adults have been going on since the 1920s.

But because the USA, supported by willing allies, exercises its “Great Power” veto in the Security Council, the State of Israel has had a virtual impunity shield for its continuing criminal war on Palestinians. Even this year on May 28 ^th, , the USA again exercised its Security Council veto as the only opponent of a ceasefire and exchange of detainees/hostages. Against the rest of the world, the USA gave Israel yet another green light to murder, destroy, and exterminate with impunity.

NHF is mounting a patently obvious effort in North America to ensure that growing criticism of the State of Israel’s genocidal, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and colonizing actions in Palestine are stifled and suppressed, so that Israel can continue its criminal warfare. Labelling virtually all criticism as "antisemitic" awakens guilt for historic anti-Judaism. The current “bubble” legislative action in many cities - including our Ottawa - preventing demonstrations near houses of worship and other “sensitive” space is part of the strategy.

The NHF Project: Esther campaign, along with Trump’s flagrant violations of law and ethics, are signs of growing fascism in the USA and in western societies like Canada. The USA veto in the Security Council and America’s immense provision of war material and money for Israel are key obstacles to law and order, peace and justice in Palestine. The complicity of USA allies, including Canada, fortifies the Israeli lobby.

The NHF and the IHRA*

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) core definition of "antisemitism" is the ambiguous tool the NHS Esther Project is using freely “to combat antisemitism." It states:

" Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities." *

As many commentators and scholars have noted, this core definition and its guidelines leave the door wide open qualifying almost any critique of the State of Israel and its policies and actions as "antisemitic." This label is the key weapon. The intended result of the label is to trigger a variety of unjust, oppressive, illegal reactions against truth-tellers and human rights advocates as they work to resist the illegal, immoral, and criminal actions of the State of Israel acting against Palestinians and their land. Either keep silent about Israel's crimes or you will experience the weaponized spear of antisemitism. For the NHF there is no room for friendship with Jews, while opposing Israel's genocidal war on Palestine. (see Chris Hedges piece on “Trump’s useful idiots”: h ttps://open.substack.com/pub/chrishedges/p/trumps-useful-idiots?r=3kndst&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email )

Why the Name "Esther"?

The Esther Project is named after the principal character in the biblical book of Esther. The narrative focuses on the Jewish people. It makes no reference to God – the only book of the Bible to do so. It is a highly political biblical tale inviting moral evaluation. (Book of Esther, Chapter 1-10)

The summary : King Ahasuerus of Persia dismisses his first wife because she refused to “dance” for the kings’ drinking guests. Esther a beautiful Jewish woman is chosen to be his new consort. She is portrayed as a courageous champion of her people in the court of her royal spouse.

Meanwhile, the king's Prime Minister, Haman, an enemy of Jews, connives to convince the king to issue an edict that would ethnically cleanse an unnamed “certain people scattered and separated among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom; their laws are different from those of every other people and they do not keep the king’s laws, so that it is not appropriate for the king to tolerate them." The unnamed "people" are the Jews.

At great risk to her life, Esther appeals to the king and is successful in describing the plot. Her intervention changes the king’s mind. For his conspiracy, Haman is hanged. Mordecai, Esther’s uncle, is chosen to succeed Haman. He gains power and, with his followers, “struck down all their enemies with the sword, slaughtering, and destroying them and did as he pleased to those who hated them.” Haman’s ten sons and 500 other conspirators are executed. The evil conspiracy is defeated. The Jewish minority of the kingdom are saved. It is a cause for celebration both then and now. The Jewish feast of Purim remembers the Queen’s courage and the joyful liberation of her people.

Unfortunately, the story does not end here. The edict is the problem. Once signed and sealed by the king and proclaimed, a royal edict cannot be rescinded. This edict to wipe out that exceptional minority from the kingdom must be implemented. So, the politically savvy king grants his new Prime Minister Mordecai and his allies royal leave to carry out the edict in their own way.

The result: As a first phase, "all the Jews struck down all their enemies with the sword, slaughtering, and destroying them, and did as they pleased to those who hated them ... in the citadel [they] killed and destroyed five hundred people." And then in the provinces, Jews are empowered to assemble and to “defend their lives, to destroy, to kill, and to annihilate any armed force of any people or province that might attack them, with their children and women, and to plunder their goods…” The result: the Jewish forces “killed seventy-five thousand of those who hated them.” (Esther 9: 5 -17)

The Morality of the Story

No wonder the scribes who authored the book of Esther hesitated to name the Holy One in this blood-soaked story. Yes, there was good reason to celebrate and be thankful. The people were saved from the threat of death. But their the gratitude became transformed into a blood bath for their neighbours - 75,000 plus. And by this vengeance they broke the Covenant with God and disobeyed the Torah's core commandments: do not blaspheme the God, who created you, and do not kill your neighbour, who is also a beloved member of the family. No faithful scribe could possibly put God into the centre of this story of mass murder - the annihilation of God's children.

Ominously the biblical narrative seems to augur modern history. Jews, oppressed for centuries and annihilated by the millions by the powerful Nazis, are finally liberated in 1945. The allied world rejoiced in the victory that achieved the end of the Holocaust.

But today before our eyes we see that the joy of liberation has been transformed into hatred and the genocide of a people who, ironically, had no hand in Europe's Holocaust. Instead, the same allies, who were the source and fountain of the long history of antisemitism devise a scheme that will draw Jews away from European countries and into Palestine, where an Indigenous people have lived peaceably for centuries on ancestral lands. They had lived at peace with remnants of Jewish communities.

But Zionism wields the sword of vengeance fed by the lust of covetousness to steal the land and ethnically cleanse it of its Palestinian Christians and Muslims and other indigenous people. And now racist prejudice, guilt, and geopolitics transforms these same liberating allies into accomplices in the anti-Palestinian plot for the State of Israel’s Zionist plan to be fulfilled.

Gaza becomes the world’s largest open air concentration camp and many more than 75,000 have already been killed like fish in a barrel, while the illegally-held Occupied Territories and East Jerusalem are steadily being taken over by violent Israeli settlers backed by Israel’s fully-armed, but observing military.

Jewish scholar Peter Beinart, professor at the City University of New York, reflects on the Esther Project and the biblical story: “For most of our history, when Jews had little capacity to impose our will via the sword, the conclusion of the book of Esther was a harmless and even understandable fantasy. … But the ending reads differently when Jews wield life-and-death power of millions over Palestinians who lack even a passport. Today, these blood-soaked verses [of the Esther story] should unsettle us.” (Peter Beinart, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza , NYC, Alfred A Knopf, 2025. P.12)

Project: Esther states that its intention is to combat antisemitism. The story of Esther and her people is an appalling example for achieving this goal. The Project appears simply as the means to stifle and silence voices seeking justice and liberation for Palestine, while the Israeli terrorist machine continues the racist extermination of Palestinians regarded as enemies.

There is a theological basis for both my unsettledness and rage. I seek truth, justice, peace, and end of the century-long cycles of bloody war and costly lawful resistance. Justice and peace for all.

For Christians, this seeking leads into scripture. As friends and companions of Jesus, Christians have to take seriously the scrolled scriptures of his day and the communion with the Spirit of God as his sermon in Nazareth attests: The Spirit of Adonai is upon me, because (God) has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour. (Isaiah 61:1ff; Luke 4:16- 19; also Matthew 13:54-58; Mark 6:1-6) . This is core Judaeo-Christian theology.

There is room in God’s world for neither antisemitic nor anti-Palestinian racism. The Ten Commandments and the entire Torah, the Beatitudes, the Way of Jesus, the prophetic witness - all reveal a God who despises phony "isms", false religion, racial hatred, and deification of nation states. God hates evil especially when blasphemely carried out in the Divine name. God commands care for the neighbour, demands respect for the earth as the home of humans and creatures - all this because there is only ONE HUMAN FAMILY – each and all “created in the image of the Holy One.” To kill anyone is to blaspheme and desecrate God.

It is for this reason and the sacredness of human life that I have absolutely no joy but absolute despair in the recent murder of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim, unarmed employees of the Israeli embassy, by a lone shooter on the street in Washington DC, and the ghastly death and injury of citizens by a blazing torch bearer in Boulder, Colorado. These too are acts of blasphemy and desecration. My heart goes out to their families and friends who loved them and had high hopes for their future together.

At the same time, I realize that the evil genocide being lived in Palestine is not unconnected to these particular violent, evil acts in DC and in Boulder, Colorado. Revenge, murder and brutality, genocide against Palestinian civilians - all spill over in torrents that drown out truth, justice, tolerance, respect, peace, and mutual awareness of our kinship. The hatred generated by sin has evil consequences. The perpetrators will be judged and punished. Will the perpetrators of Israel’s racist genocide be prosecuted, judged and punished? If the international justice framework is upheld (as the European Union has just done) then the perpetrators may well face conviction and punishment.

The world’s people of goodwill and justice will have to work hard to counter the tsunami of racial hatred so that a gentler humane, spirited wave of respect and peace may rise in God's human family. The National Heritage Foundation's Project: Esther is not the way to erase antisemitism, it will spawn more.

Oh God, by your Spirit redeem and transform your wonderfully diverse human family, we beseech you in Jesus’ name!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

*See the controversial flawed Canadian Handbook on the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/services/canada-holocaust/antisemitism/handbook-definition-antisemitism.html .

Compare that with the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism at www.JerusalemDeclaration.org , a more faithful attempt to distinguish antisemitism from critical truth.

Call to State and Church

Mon, 26 May 2025 19:25:11 GMT

A Call to the Church for Palestine

The Earth and Suffering People in Palestine Groan for Liberation

La lettre en francais suit l'anglais

May 15, 2025

Rev. Dr. Michael Blair, General Secretary

The General Council

The United Church of Canada

CC. The Right Rev. Dr. Carmen Lansdowne, Moderator of the General Council General Council Executive Members

Friends of the Justice for Palestine Network

Dear Michael Blair:

We, the Justice for Palestine Network (JPN) – members and friends of The United Church of Canada (UCC) – write to you with reference to what Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of the State of Israel, refers to as the current “intensification” of the genocidal war against Palestine and the indigenous Palestinian population.

It is hard to credit that the horrors of the past 20 months can be made worse now and in the coming months. But this is indeed happening, with complete denial of entry of humanitarian aid, food, and water to the trapped population in Gaza which began three months ago, condemning many thousands of human beings to death by starvation, even as the brutal bombing and military attacks directly claim the lives of hundreds of innocent civilians every week.

We write again to ask that you recognize the positive and strengthening effect of you speaking to and about The United Church of Canada as a church called into action by this intensification of crisis. We are asking that you help the whole church to be engaged.

Palestinians, including UCC partner churches, organizations, and individuals have written frequently, passionately about the horrors they face, and the clarity with which they describe the voices and actions needed from us. The cost to them has been colossal and devastating, their suffering unspeakable. Their calls to the churches of the world, absolutely clear. (https://www.kairospalestine.ps/index.php)

We write also in solidarity with the many Israelis and Canadian Jews who abhor the abuse and slaughter of Palestinian people in their ancestral lands.

We write because Western nations, the international community, and their Christian churches have done so little to respond pastorally or prophetically to the call of Palestinians - including Palestinian Christians - to end genocide, dismantle apartheid, cease ethnic cleansing, terminate the illegal occupation, and renounce the near century of oppression in order to apply international law ensuring Palestinian self-determination - liberation. In fact, “Gazan fatigue” has become the harsh technical descriptor of international inaction.

Frequently, with urgency, we have communicated with you, the General Council Executive, and other staff about the need to mobilize the Church to understand the calamitous situation in Palestine and to take effective action in solidarity with Palestinians.

You have responded to us and met with us, and we recognize some decisive stances that have been voiced by you on behalf of the church. As General Secretary, you have corresponded with the then Minister of Foreign Affairs (July 23, 2024) and again, in unequivocal language with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (August 13, 2024) calling the government of Canada to institute sanctions against Israel in compliance with the findings of the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

We have also seen ecumenical leaders organizing public witness events and vigils seeking full justice for Palestinians and for all. And an ecumenical letter has recently been sent by elected leaders of the Anglican, Presbyterian, Evangelical Lutheran, and United Churches, Caritas Development and Peace (Roman Catholic), Canadian Friends, and Kairos Canada, which rejects unequivocally the Israeli/USA scheme to sell Gaza and displace Gazans to far flung places, while continuing the military and settler annexation of the Occupied Territories. (March 5, 2025.)

Yet, when we see the United Church of Canada, its communities of faith, and the wider public being addressed through statements from its leaders, about the future of the church on the occasion of its centennial and in the lead up to the church’s General Council this summer, the content of such address seems so startlingly devoid of vision on the church’s mission in the context of the genocide of Palestinian people, the calls from Palestinian partners, and the ways that this devastation lays bare the expanding of empire and settler colonialism, and the abandonment of peoples.

Relentless and bold attention to this peril would seem, to us, to be at the heart of the faith to which The United Church of Canada bears witness. What is it to claim to be an anti-racist, intercultural church, to have made apologies for complicity in such racist colonial and imperial practices we see now on the rise; what is it to seek justice and resist evil, to proclaim Jesus as judge and hope, without sustained attention on how we are called into response to the plight of Palestinians, now?

Letters from organizations and individual Canadians have thus far not brought about any change in the positions and policies of the Government of Canada, nor to mitigate the evil being carried out in Palestine; in fact, things have worsened. We ourselves, as this Network, wrestled with whether or not to write again to you. And yet, we continue in the persistent hope that it is not futile. As people of faith, we have a responsibility to speak truth to those in positions of power and to continue our efforts, in the sure knowledge that God requires this of us and that there are always new opportunities to act faithfully. We know that for real impact, our letters and advocacy must be accompanied by widespread mobilization of and action by our entire denomination and civil society as a whole.

We believe that today is a new moment of opportunity in this time of crisis. Canadians have called a new government with a new Prime Minister to give leadership in these troubled times. As well, the UCC centennial and the 45 ^th General Council meeting grace our horizons. So, we persist again to urge our Church’s leadership to embrace this opportune moment with decisive actions that mobilize the denomination’s people and resources to resist evil and to seek justice for Palestine.

Motivated by our commitment to God’s persistence in “mending the world” and grounded in the General Council’s Justice Principles to guide our collective action in the approaching time of Pentecost, we place before you two requests.

First, we urgently request that you call on Prime Minister Mark Carney and the relevant ministers and all members of the new Parliament and Cabinet, to contribute to truth, justice and peace in Palestine and Israel through the full application of international law and international humanitarian laws by:

1. Taking any and all legal actions to secure a permanent ceasefire, so that serious peace negotiations can begin and recovery commence.

2. Calling for an end to the blockade of Gaza.

3. Implementing a complete embargo on all military and para-military equipment from and to Israel, directly or indirectly through a third country.

4. Ensuring, with direct Canadian cooperation, that humanitarian necessities – food water, fuel, medical supplies, etc. – be allowed to be transported into Gaza and that they be administered and distributed under United Nations and UNWRA oversight supported by multilateral cooperation.

5. Rejecting the proposals by the USA and Israel that would have Palestinians massively displaced from their territory, and in particular from Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem – this proposal is itself a self-declared continuation of decades of ethnic cleansing.

6. Transforming Canadian foreign policy re Palestine and Israel to conform with the ICJ’s stated obligations for all States and international organizations, including the United Nations (July 19, 2014), as confirmed in the Position Paper of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem and Israel. (18 Oct.2024)

As stated in your letter of 13 August 2024, this foreign policy change would require, among other actions, recalling Canada’s Ambassador to Israel, revoking the credentials of the Israeli Ambassador to Canada, and suspending the Canada-Israel Free Trade Agreement, until such time as trade supporting Israel’s illegal occupation of the Occupied Territories is terminated. Canada must exercise its complete set of responsibilities under international law and cut of all diplomatic and military relations with Israel until Israel is in full compliance.

7. Changing official Canadian policy to draw a line between antisemitism and anti-Zionism and to desist from conflating efforts to end genocide with claims of antisemitism. Antisemitism must be rejected, eliminated, and combatted as an integral part of the ideologies of superiority and oppression, which ideologies include anti-Palestinian racism, anti-Arabism, Islamophobia, anti Indigenous racism, anti-Black racism, and all other forms of racism and structural discrimination that afflict Canadian society.

In that vein, withdraw the flawed Canadian Handbook of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism issued by the government of Canada on November 1, 2024.

For these requests to have any credibility The United Church of Canada will need to take seriously its own obligations to mobilize the prophetic action of its members. It is urgent for the UCC to act now as a whole community of faith committed to the sacredness of life and called to resist evil. These obligations are not only legal, but theological. Scripture clearly reveals that our God cannot abide the horrors happening in Palestine any longer. We are called to act on what we have discerned and learned.

Therefore, building on both past and current efforts to address the government of Canada, and on the clearly articulated Justice Principles guiding our action, and in the context of the renewed public call to the new government and Prime Minister, our second urgent request is for your commitment to speak directly to The United Church of Canada, in terms that make plain our collective need to respond to the calls from Palestine, including those voiced by Palestinian Partner churches. To that end:

1. We urge you to invite, encourage and urge all Communities of Faith, Regional Councils, and all General Council programs – the entire denomination – to integrate this call to common public witness in our liturgical and programmatic action during the season of Pentecost. (A process to provide resources could quickly be put in place through volunteer action. This should include a renewed call for apartheid free and BDS engaged communities.)

2. We pray that the 45 ^th General Council (August 2025 in Calgary) will be moved by the voices of Palestinian siblings in faith and by proposals from Regional Councils and other people of good will for new education and action. Moreover, we pray that proposals submitted and other calls for action will be strongly engaged if the commissioners of the General Council, members/ adherents, and all those present will see those who lead the whole church responding to those voices.

3. We ask you to continue to invite and encourage full UCC participation in ecumenical initiatives such as Call for Repentance: Palestine, Settler Colonialism, and Western Churches conference.

We are not alone. We live in God’s world, and we are called to be the church. We can speak truth. We can challenge government. For too long the calls to faithful action have been ignored or silenced, but we have learned that we can confront those who falsely claim that any critique or opposition to Israel is antisemitic. We answer God’s call. Even now. Especially now!

Sincerely,

The Justice for Palestine Network

Paula Butler, Steve Berube, Lynn Caldwell, Chris Ferguson, Susan Ferguson, Pierre Goldberger, Bern Jagunos, Hal Llewellyn, Maria Morales, Harry Oussoren, Maureen Scott Kabwe, Margie Sumadh

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

La lettre en français suit :

15 Mai 2025

Rev. Dr. Michael Blair, secrétaire général

Conseil général de l’Église Unie du Canada

CC. Rt. Rev. Dr. Carmen Lansdowne, Modératrice du Conseil général

Conseil général Membres exécutifs

Amis du Réseau Justice pour la Palestine

Cher Michael Blair :

Nous, le Réseau Justice pour la Palestine (JPN) - membres et amis de l'Église unie du Canada (UCC) - vous écrivons au sujet de ce que Benjamin Netanyahu, Premier ministre de l'État d'Israël, appelle l'actuelle « intensification » de la guerre génocidaire contre la Palestine et la population palestinienne autochtone.

Il est difficile d'imaginer que les horreurs des 20 derniers mois puissent s'aggraver aujourd'hui et dans les mois à venir. C'est pourtant ce qui se passe, avec le refus total d'autoriser l'entrée de l'aide humanitaire, de la nourriture et de l'eau à la population piégée de Gaza, qui a commencé il y a trois mois, condamnant plusieurs milliers d'êtres humains à mourir de faim, alors même que les bombardements brutaux et les attaques militaires coûtent directement la vie à des centaines de civils innocents chaque semaine.

Nous vous écrivons à nouveau pour vous demander de reconnaître l'effet positif et renforçant du fait que vous vous adressiez à l'Église Unie du Canada et que vous parliez d'elle en tant qu'Église appelée à l'action par l'intensification de la crise. Nous vous demandons d'aider toute l'Église à s'engager.

Les Palestiniens, y compris les églises partenaires de l'UCC, les organisations et les individus ont souvent écrit avec passion sur les horreurs auxquelles ils sont confrontés et sur la clarté avec laquelle ils décrivent les voix et les actions dont nous avons besoin. Le coût pour eux a été colossal et dévastateur, leur souffrance indescriptible. L'appel qu'ils lancent aux Églises du monde entier est absolument clair. (https://www.kairospalestine.ps/index.php)

Nous écrivons également en solidarité avec les nombreux Israéliens et Juifs canadiens qui abhorrent les abus et le massacre du peuple palestinien sur leurs terres ancestrales.

Nous écrivons parce que les nations occidentales, la communauté internationale et leurs églises chrétiennes ont fait si peu pour répondre pastoralement ou prophétiquement à l'appel des Palestiniens - y compris des chrétiens palestiniens - à mettre fin au génocide, à démanteler l'apartheid, à cesser le nettoyage ethnique, à mettre fin à l'occupation illégale et à renoncer à un siècle ou presque d'oppression afin d'appliquer le droit international garantissant l'autodétermination et la libération des Palestiniens. En fait, la « fatigue de Gaza » est devenue la description technique brutale de l'inaction internationale.

Nous avons fréquemment communiqué avec vous, avec l'exécutif du Conseil général et avec d'autres membres du personnel sur la nécessité de mobiliser l'Église pour qu'elle comprenne la situation calamiteuse en Palestine et pour qu'elle prenne des mesures efficaces de solidarité avec les Palestiniens.

Vous nous avez répondu et nous avez rencontrés, et nous reconnaissons certaines positions décisives que vous avez exprimées au nom de l'Église. En tant que secrétaire général, vous avez correspondu avec le ministre des Affaires étrangères de l'époque (23 juillet 2024), puis avec le Premier ministre Trudeau (13 août 2024) appelant le gouvernement du Canada à instituer des sanctions contre Israël conformément aux conclusions de la Cour internationale de justice (CIJ).

Nous avons également vu des dirigeants œcuméniques organiser des manifestations publiques de témoignage et des veillées pour demander une pleine justice pour les Palestiniens et pour tous. Une lettre œcuménique a récemment été envoyée par des dirigeants élus des Églises anglicane, presbytérienne, évangélique luthérienne et unie, de Caritas Développement et Paix (catholique romaine), des Amis canadiens et de Kairos Canada, qui rejette sans équivoque le plan israélien/américain visant à vendre Gaza et à déplacer les habitants de Gaza vers des lieux éloignés, tout en poursuivant l'annexion des territoires occupés par les militaires et les colons. (5 mars 2025. )

Pourtant, lorsque nous voyons l'Église unie du Canada, ses communautés de foi et le grand public être interpellés par des déclarations de ses dirigeants sur l'avenir de l'Église à l'occasion de son centenaire et dans la perspective du Conseil général de l'Église cet été, le contenu de ces discours semble étonnamment dépourvu de vision sur la mission de l'Église dans le contexte du génocide du peuple palestinien, des appels des partenaires palestiniens et de la façon dont cette dévastation met à nu l'expansion de l'empire et du colonialisme de peuplement, ainsi que l'abandon des peuples.

Une attention soutenue et audacieuse à ce péril nous semble être au cœur de la foi dont témoigne l'Église unie du Canada. Qu'est-ce que prétendre être une Église antiraciste et interculturelle, s'excuser d'avoir été complice des pratiques coloniales et impériales racistes que nous voyons aujourd'hui se multiplier ; qu'est-ce que rechercher la justice et résister au mal, proclamer Jésus comme juge et espoir, sans porter une attention soutenue à la façon dont nous sommes appelés à répondre à la situation critique des Palestiniens, aujourd'hui ?

Les lettres d'organisations et de particuliers canadiens n'ont jusqu'à présent entraîné aucun changement dans les positions et les politiques du gouvernement du Canada, ni atténué le mal qui se perpétue en Palestine; en fait, la situation s'est aggravée.

Nous-mêmes, en tant que réseau, nous nous sommes demandé si nous devions ou non vous écrire à nouveau. Et pourtant, nous continuons dans l'espoir persistant que ce n'est pas vain. En tant que personnes de foi, nous avons la responsabilité de dire la vérité à ceux qui détiennent le pouvoir et de poursuivre nos efforts, sachant que Dieu l'exige de nous et qu'il y a toujours de nouvelles occasions d'agir fidèlement. Nous savons que pour avoir un impact réel, nos lettres et notre plaidoyer doivent s'accompagner d'une mobilisation et d'une action de l'ensemble de notre confession et de la société civile dans son ensemble.

Nous pensons qu'aujourd'hui est un nouveau moment d'opportunité en cette période de crise. Les Canadiens ont élu un nouveau gouvernement et un nouveau Premier ministre pour assurer le leadership en ces temps troublés. En outre, le centenaire de l'UCC et la 45e réunion du Conseil général se profilent à l'horizon. C'est pourquoi nous persistons à nouveau à exhorter les dirigeants de notre Église à saisir ce moment opportun par des actions décisives qui mobilisent les personnes et les ressources de la dénomination pour résister au mal et rechercher la justice pour la Palestine.

Motivés par notre engagement envers la persistance de Dieu à « réparer le monde » et fondés sur les principes de justice du Conseil général pour guider notre action collective à l'approche de la Pentecôte, nous vous soumettons deux requêtes.

Premièrement, nous vous demandons de toute urgence d'appeler le Premier ministre Mark Carney et les ministres concernés, ainsi que tous les membres du nouveau Parlement et du nouveau Cabinet, à contribuer à la vérité, à la justice et à la paix en Palestine et en Israël par la pleine application du droit international et des lois humanitaires internationales :

1. Prendre toutes les mesures juridiques nécessaires pour obtenir un cessez-le-feu permanent, afin que des négociations de paix sérieuses puissent être entamées et que le redressement puisse commencer.

2. Demander la fin du blocus de Gaza.

3. Mettre en œuvre un embargo complet sur tous les équipements militaires et paramilitaires en provenance et à destination d'Israël, directement ou indirectement par l'intermédiaire d'un pays tiers.

4. Veiller, avec la coopération directe du Canada, à ce que les produits humanitaires de première nécessité - nourriture, eau, carburant, fournitures médicales, etc. - soient autorisés à être transportés à Gaza et qu'ils soient administrés et distribués sous le contrôle des Nations Unies et de l'UNWRA, avec l'appui d'une coopération multilatérale.

5. Rejeter les propositions des États-Unis et d'Israël visant à déplacer massivement les Palestiniens de leur territoire, et en particulier de Gaza, de la Cisjordanie et de Jérusalem-Est - cette proposition est elle-même une continuation autoproclamée de décennies d'épuration ethnique.

6. Transformer la politique étrangère canadienne à l'égard de la Palestine et d'Israël afin de se conformer aux obligations énoncées par la CIJ pour tous les États et organisations internationales, y compris les Nations Unies (19 juillet 2014), comme le confirme l'exposé de position de la Commission internationale indépendante d'enquête des Nations Unies sur le territoire palestinien occupé, y compris Jérusalem-Est et Israël. (18 oct.2024)

Comme indiqué dans votre lettre du 13 août 2024, ce changement de politique étrangère nécessiterait, entre autres, de rappeler l'ambassadeur du Canada en Israël, de révoquer les lettres de créance de l'ambassadeur d'Israël au Canada et de suspendre l'accord de libre-échange Canada-Israël, jusqu'à ce que le commerce soutenant l'occupation illégale des territoires occupés par Israël prenne fin. Le Canada doit exercer l'ensemble des responsabilités qui lui incombent en vertu du droit international et couper toutes les relations diplomatiques et militaires avec Israël jusqu'à ce que ce dernier respecte pleinement ses obligations.

7. Changer la politique officielle du Canada pour tracer une ligne de démarcation entre l'antisémitisme et l'antisionisme et pour cesser d'amalgamer les efforts visant à mettre fin au génocide avec les allégations d'antisémitisme. L'antisémitisme doit être rejeté, éliminé et combattu en tant que partie intégrante des idéologies de supériorité et d'oppression, qui comprennent le racisme anti-palestinien, l'anti-arabisme, l'islamophobie, le racisme anti-indigène, le racisme anti-noir et toutes les autres formes de racisme et de discrimination structurelle qui affligent la société canadienne.

Dans cette veine, retirer le manuel canadien défectueux de la définition de travail de l'antisémitisme de l'Alliance internationale pour la mémoire de l'Holocauste (IHRA), publié par le gouvernement du Canada le 1er novembre 2024.

Pour que ces demandes soient crédibles, l'Église unie du Canada devra prendre au sérieux ses propres obligations de mobiliser l'action prophétique de ses membres. Il est urgent que l'UCC agisse maintenant en tant que communauté de foi tout entière engagée dans le caractère sacré de la vie et appelée à résister au mal. Ces obligations ne sont pas seulement juridiques, mais aussi théologiques. Les Écritures révèlent clairement que notre Dieu ne peut tolérer plus longtemps les horreurs qui se produisent en Palestine. Nous sommes appelés à agir en fonction de ce que nous avons discerné et appris.

C'est pourquoi, en nous appuyant sur les efforts passés et présents pour nous adresser au gouvernement du Canada, sur les principes de justice clairement articulés qui guident notre action, et dans le contexte de l'appel public renouvelé au nouveau gouvernement et au Premier ministre, notre deuxième demande urgente est que vous vous engagiez à vous adresser directement à l'Église Unie du Canada, en des termes qui mettent en évidence notre besoin collectif de répondre aux appels de la Palestine, y compris ceux qui sont exprimés par les Églises partenaires palestiniennes. À cette fin:

1. Nous vous demandons instamment d'inviter, d'encourager et d'exhorter toutes les communautés de foi, les conseils régionaux et tous les programmes du Conseil général - l'ensemble de la dénomination - à intégrer cet appel à un témoignage public commun dans notre action liturgique et programmatique au cours de la saison de la Pentecôte. (Un processus de mise à disposition de ressources pourrait être rapidement mis en place grâce à l'action de bénévoles. Ceci devrait inclure un appel renouvelé pour des communautés libres de l'apartheid et engagées dans le BDS).

2. Nous prions pour que le 45e Conseil général (août 2025 à Calgary) soit touché par les voix des frères et sœurs palestiniens dans la foi et par les propositions des Conseils régionaux et d'autres personnes de bonne volonté en faveur d'une éducation et d'une action nouvelles. De plus, les propositions soumises et les autres appels à l'action seront fortement engagés si les commissaires du Conseil général, les membres/adhérents et toutes les personnes présentes voient ceux qui dirigent l'ensemble de l'Église répondre à ces voix.

3. Nous vous demandons de continuer à inviter et à encourager la pleine participation de l'UCC à des initiatives œcuméniques telles que l'Appel à la repentance: Palestine, colonialisme de peuplement et conférence des Églises occidentales.

Nous ne sommes pas seuls. Nous vivons dans le monde de Dieu et nous sommes appelés à être l'Église. Nous pouvons dire la vérité. Nous pouvons défier les gouvernements. Pendant trop longtemps, les appels à l'action fidèle ont été ignorés ou réduits au silence, mais nous avons appris que nous pouvons affronter ceux qui prétendent à tort que toute critique ou opposition à Israël est antisémite. Nous répondons à l'appel de Dieu. Même maintenant. Surtout maintenant !

Sincèrement,

Le réseau Justice pour la Palestine

Paula Butler, Steve Berube, Lynn Caldwell, Chris Ferguson, Susan Ferguson, Pierre Goldberger, Bern Jagunos, Hal Llewellyn, Maria Morales, Harry Oussoren, Maureen Scott Kabwe, Margie Sumadh

Liberation Resurrection

Tue, 06 May 2025 21:55:02 GMT

From Occupation & Subjugation to Liberation & Resurrection

Delft Blue Icon Commemorating the Final Liberation of The Netherlands by Canadian Armed Forces - 5 May 1945

At the End of War

The entire Dutch nation celebrated the Liberation of The Netherlands on May 5, 1945. Under the watchful eyes of HRH Prince Bernhard, Lieutenant-General Charles Foulkes, Commander of the First Canadian Corps imposed terms of capitulation on General von Blaskowitz, Commander of the German Forces. The capitulation was signed in Hotel de Wereld in Wageningen.

Suddenly after five years of bloody warfare and tyrannical occupation, the people of The Netherlands were liberated from the oppressive German occupation of their homeland. They were finally free to determine their future without threat.

I was a 9-months-old at the time more concerned about getting mother’s milk than celebrating liberation. But now eighty years later, I was moved to involuntary tears as I watched the grateful appreciation and adulation of crowds of Dutch citizens for the Canadian victory represented by the 22 Canadian veterans still able to testify to that blessed event. The cost of this victory was very high as the rows of grave markers, many with pictures of the men and women interred there, silently attested. 7,600 Canadians died in this campaign to bring the good new of liberation to The Netherlands

In the South

For me and other Zeelanders, the liberation had actually come six-months earlier. On November 7 ^th , 1944, General Daser, the commandant of German troops was arrested and about 2000 German soldiers became POWs in Middelburg, my birthplace. They were guarded by only a small contingent of British soldiers.

It marked the end of the vicious struggle to open the Scheldt River for shipments of war material destined for Antwerp. There the allied forces were preparing for the campaign to free the provinces north of the great rivers (Rhine, Maas, Ijssel, and Eems) where most Dutch people were still under brutal Nazi occupation overseen by Hitler’s commissar Arthur Seyss-Inquart (hanged for his war crimes in Nurnberg in 1946).

Occupation and subjugation is savage. For us in the south of The Netherlands it was oppressive and traumatic enough. The Nazis regarded Dutch people as virtual Aryans – i.e. of the superior race – their goal for our country was to command and control our lives. Any challenge to their iron-clad rule was regarded as a threat to German security and supremacy. It was brutally put down. Collective punishments became the normal response to acts of disobedience or sabotage by resistance forces. Shipping people off to Camp Westerbork for transfer to German factories or concentration/death camps was routine punishment. Blowing up homes and institutions was deemed a useful means to suppress rebellion.

Keeping the locals uninformed about life beyond the borders was key. Glowing press reports about German triumphs aimed to keep the Dutch subservient even as Allied forces were landing on Europe's western coasts. But propaganda was easily recognized for the lie it was. Typical for oppressors generally, confiscating radios and other communications equipment and, especially, blocking journalists from reporting truth was a high priority.

My father, one of the local pastors in Middelburg, decided to risk getting real news from BBC radio. He was, of course, not alone. So in the rafters of the church next door, he hid a radio tuned to the BBC allowing him to hear both Radio Orange, the voice of Queen Wilhelmina and her government exiled in England, and the World Service of the BBC. The radio was connected by secret means to the intercom in our manse home. It was a brazen act that could have cost him his life if discovered. The fact that two Nazi officers were actually quartered in our home made it doubly dangerous. But the information about Allied actions and developments flowed usefully from Dad’s ear to key local resistance leaders.

To immobilize the occupation armed forces, the Allies, at the suggestion of Lt.-General Guy Simonds commanding the 1 ^st Canadian Army, bombarded the western dikes protecting the villages and farms of our island. This strategic destruction allowed salty North Sea waters to flood most of Walcheren. Hundreds were drowned, but thousands of villagers were able to flee in boats to “high” ground – often around churches. A farm family of ten occupied a room in our church and their cows and chickens grazed on the manse lawn for a year. No schools were able to operate so my eldest brother learned how to milk cows and slaughter cattle, observe the birth of calves, and, later, heckled German POWs (de Moffen) doing menial labour in the city. At 11 years of age he grew up fast!

But in the North

In the big cities north of the great rivers, life was even more difficult and costly. The Allies’ failure to take Arnhem was demoralizing for the Dutch yearning for freedom and gave a boost to German morale. The occupiers were becoming more vicious as it became clear that the Allied forces were gaining ground. The Commissar threatened to blow up the dikes that hold back the North Sea from drowning the big cities.

Dutch railway workers – 30,000 of them - went on strike, on request of the Dutch government in exile, to sabotage German efforts to put down resistance. Trains stopped transporting machinery and material pillaged from Dutch work sites for German industry and military. Food and fuel supplies were unable to reach the cities. Gas to cook and light homes was cut off. Food became so scarce that people ate tulip bulbs and other garden plants to survive. The obstinate resistance of the Dutch was not thwarted. German punishments however were brutal.

“In the month of April 1945 there were in the western part of the country more than 4 million people living on the brink of starvation. … A rough estimate by one of the leaders of the American Food Transports reported 200,000 cases of famine oedema or dropsy.”* By the time of capitulation, more than 20,000 Hollanders starved or froze to death. The food drops by Allied airplanes came too late to save them, but brought salvation for many others.+

Now There Is Palestine

As I observed the CBC broadcast to remember and celebrate at the Groesbeek and Holten Canadian cemeteries and as I gathered with other Dutch-Canadians at Ottawa’s Beechwood Cemetery to pay tribute to the Canadian soldiers who liberated the Netherlands in 1945, my heart and mind were transported to Palestine.

I wondered why the same allies of the Western world were not equally as concerned about the slaughter, oppression, torture, starvation, ethnic cleansing, apartheid which Israel is imposing with hardly any restraints on the people of Palestine. All the marks of settler colonial subjugation which the Germans had inflicted on The Netherlands and its people are now all too evident in Palestine.

Thankfully the allies stopped the death march for the Dutch.

In Palestine, the Haganah paramilitary forces were created on June 15, 1920 during the British Mandate for Palestine. Since then the Irgun Force was created and then the Israeli Defense (sic) Force has been the terrorizing military arm of the State of Israel. Ethnically cleansing Palestine and its indigenous peoples (Christian and Muslim and Jewish Palestinians) who lived in relative peace over two millennia and more was their goal. The “cleansing” has been by forcible removal into refugee locations; by massacres; by harassing and traumatizing residents to make them give up their living and property; by imprisoning thousands; and now by simply devastating and blowing up any livable areas, all institutions, and depriving people of the necessities of life - food, water, medical help. Humanitarian aid is weaponized.

Typical of all oppressors, Israel’s propaganda machine and its diaspora lobbyists has churned out falsehoods and misinformation to brainwash Israeli citizens into fearing and hating Palestinians, to poison Western minds, and to influence legislators - including Canadians. The death toll of more than 200 journalists killed by Israel in the current Gaza assault is a sign of the political Zionists fear of the TRUTH.

And now, the indicted leader of this growing war crime and genocide, Netanyahu, has called up more of the military reserves in order to “intensify” the destruction, the clearing (of the rubble), the killing of children and their parents. All this while basking in the impunity and abundance of armaments provided by the USA with the passive acceptance of Western nations.

Where are the righteous and virtuous allies today? Are they blinded by the form of vile, racist antisemitism that diminishes the humanity of Palestinians and other Arabs and marks them as enemies? Whatever its form, antisemitism is evil – whether it is anti-Jews or anti-Palestinians or generally anti-Arabs. It must end if the planet is to sustain the one human family.

Militarily, Zionist Israel will never achieve its goal. All the 100 years of war has done is create more resistance and resilience in Palestinians and more fear for Israelis wanting to live in Shalom. The fear and hate will only end when Israelis and Palestinians are helped to meet with mutual respect and with a shared desire for justice and peace – for Palestinians and for Israelis.

I believe that the USA, UK, and France have been compromised as colonial powers with conflicts of interest with Israel, unable to appreciate how Israel’s colonialism has poisoned possibilities for equitable relations within Palestine. I also believe that the Western Christian churches, with few exceptions, have succumbed to the heresy of Christian Zionism – either passive or super-active – and to the heresy of apartheid which degrades humanity and rejects the Divine commandment to love the neighbour wherever you may find them. These are unworthy heresies that are holding the faithful back from prophetic witness and peace-making.

I believe that countries like Canada, Belgium, South Africa may be able to bring their post-colonial and confederal experiences of diversity in unity to negotiating tables to help Palestinians and Israelis find alternatives to the emptiness and the sin of war. I hope our new Liberal Prime Minister, Mark Carney, and his government will cultivate a multi-lateral force for international justice and peace.

As a Christian, I believe in Resurrection from the Dead – not that the 60,000+ dead Palestinians or the 2000 Israelis who have died in the current horror will rise to live again! But I believe that the costly and deadly ways of Israeli political Zionism with today’s Palestinian people can end and rise to embrace new ways that pave the Way to Truth, justice, peace, and hope.

This is one key meaning of “Christ is Risen!” for me and other Christians. May the Spirit of the living Christ transform hearts and minds to make it happen.

Notes:

*Holland and the Canadians. Liberation of Holland 50 ^th Anniversary Commemorative Edition. 1995 edition. P. 19

+I’m grateful to Johanna M Selles, author of “The Hunger Winter” (Eugene, Oregon, Resource Publications, 2025. ISBN 979 8 3852 3979 5.) for her engaging novel describing something of the everyday experience of life during this time of occupation and subjugation in Leiden, The Netherlands.

[Post re-edited 7 May 2025]

An Easter greeting from Palestine Christians:

Friday to Easter

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 00:34:58 GMT

What Will Christians Do This Friday?

Image from Dictionary.com with thanks.

Are we going to be silent during our Good Friday services across Canada? Act like this isn’t something we fund as a country?

When we talk about how Jesus was betrayed in Jerusalem—are we going to be polite? Is that what Jesus asked us to do? Or has he asked us to speak up for the oppressed—especially on the day he was oppressed, suffered, and died because we betrayed him?

How are Christians around the world going to explain our silence?

Canada has a chance not to follow the path of the United States. We have the chance to stop these explosives and weapons from being sent to Israel—ones that drop on hundreds of thousands of innocents who are suffering and dying.

Did we learn nothing from the 1930s in Germany? Will we stay silent? What is Good Friday going to look like in every church? How will we reflect on what Jesus would do if he were here today?

As a Christian Palestinian, descended from 25 generations of Christian Palestinian priests in Jerusalem, this whole week is deeply, deeply full of grief.

For someone whose partner for ten years was Jewish and Israeli—and who refused to serve in the army because they knew that army was an occupying force—I know what it is to love my Jewish Israeli friends. We marched together this past Saturday in Ottawa, where we all said: Never again. For ANYONE .

And yet—here we are again. German Christians were polite too, as their neighbors were dragged away. They turned their faces.
We cannot be silent. Or helpless. Or quiet. Or polite. Jesus would flip the tables.

Jesus was betrayed and crucified.
Christian Palestinians have felt a deep and ongoing betrayal for over 100 years—from British colonization to the promise of “a land without a people for a people without a land.”

Empire will have you believe you are helpless. Empire will sow fear and division. Just as it did during Jesus’ time—when he was betrayed and denied.

And yet—despite the grief—I still find hope in the resurrection. I pray that the resurrection of humanity is the second coming of Christ. That our collective resilience, resistance, and love become the reflection of what Jesus wanted that second coming to be.

I refuse to accept what my MP’s office told me—that the end times are here, and so Palestinians must suffer.

What about Palestinian Christians? What about humanity? What about the words Jesus spoke?

Jesus suffered deeply on that cross. And the crowd yelled:

Crucify him…
Deport him...
Imprison him...
Bomb him...

It’s all the same.

Yet from the ashes, hope rises. We are each called to search our souls and speak—not sleep. Not turn our heads. Not deny. But to come together as one. To speak. To love. And to take action on that love by demanding an arms embargo—on the very weapons that blow people up.

Just like they blew up my father’s home in 1948, when he was 14.

This can happen anywhere, to anyone.
International law is crumbling in our silence and fear.

Jesus was a Palestinian Jew. And he asked us to stay awake. To stand up for justice.

Now is the time:
Easter is the resurrection.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~

Ed. Note: Samia Odeh is a Palestinian Christian, music director at Wall St. United Church, and lives in Brockville, Ontario. Thank you, Samia, for this reflection calling us all to faithful action.

Scripture and Sermons

Wed, 16 Apr 2025 14:42:32 GMT

Lectionary Intersecting with Life

Hen & Chicks picture facilitated by Mark Havel of Cross of Grace Lutheran Church, New Palestine, Indiana, USA. Photographer unknown. Thanks for sharing.

About Hens and Parades

It has amazed me gratefully that the lectionary frequently turns up scripture texts that are exactly what the preacher needs to speak truth and Good News to a current situation. This year’s lectionary journey through Luke's Gospel provided two such occasions.

Here are the texts and their parallels in the other Gospels:

1. Luke 13:31-35 (// Matthew 23:37-39. “The Lament over Jerusalem”

2. Luke 19:29-39 (//Matthew 21:1-11; Mark 11:1-11; John 12:12-19. “Jesus’ Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem”

It's not a detailed exegesis of these two Gospel stories I'll provide. That’s not the point of this reflection. The point is that for me Gospel stories can be surprisingly timely gifts of truth for faithful discipleship and for sensing the presence of God in particular contexts

First pericope: Hens

“At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to [Jesus], “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you. He said to them: “Go and tell that fox for me, ‘Listen I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. … Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”

I am conscious that in the Western world and especially in the USA and Israel “killing and stoning” prophets and messengers of truth is a thriving industry. It has become dangerous to call for liberation and justice for Palestinians, even to describe their suffering. The desire of too much of the political elite is to silence the prophets and imprison or banish even the most humble messengers of justice and peace.

Israel's lobbyists have done a thorough job of promoting the widely debunked IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) definition of antisemitism—a definition that explicitly includes criticism of Israel. It stifles free speech and academic freedom , promotes anti-Palestinian racism , and narrowly defines Jewish identity as inherently Zionist.

Antisemitism is deemed to be the root of all criticism of the State of Israel and its war on Palestine. And because such criticism makes some Jewish people uncomfortable, therefore the critics must be antisemites.

There are two problems with this diagnosis. First, Arabs, many of whom are Palestinians, are semites too. And the reality is steadily coming into focus that Arabs/Palestinians have become major targets of antisemitism, specifically virulent anti-Palestinianism and anti-Arabism. All can readily agree that antisemitism – properly defined – is an evil. It is, however, negative racist generalizations about both Jews/Israelis and Palestinian/Arabs that must be suppressed. Neither form of antisemitism is acceptable and must be held in contempt. But neither family of semites is above being held to account for its crimes against humanity and its breach of international laws and conventions.

Second, if any criticism of the State of Israel is antisemitism that must be stopped, does that mean that the deadly war Israel is waging against Palestinians and taking over their ancestral lands and annihilating all that is included in Palestinian culture is above criticism? Do international laws no longer apply to Israel’s crimes that the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court and diverse international human rights organization have described as genocide, apartheid, displacement of refugees, depriving refugees of the necessities of life, illegal occupation, and much more? Criminal actions against Palestinians cannot be tolerated any more than antisemitic behaviour against Jews and Palestinians/Arabs. There can be no hierarchy of evils. Evil is evil.

In this segment of scripture, Luke reports that some progressive Pharisees -Jewish leaders – sympathetic to Jesus alert him to the danger of the Roman governor Herod Antipas the governor for Rome. Jesus knew of the wily and devious Herod and called him “the fox” – the fox that kills the innocent hen and chicks for supper. The fox knows that Jesus’ persistently good works and his indefatigable compassion for the marginalized astound and excite the crowd. If Herod can’t disperse the multitude, then he’d use force to teach them a cruel lesson. When Palestinians crowds gather to peacefully protest illegal occupation, the Israeli fox has routinely responded with tear gas, bullets, and collective punishment.

Too many Western nation legislators influenced by the powerful Israeli lobby, are anxious to share in dispersing the crowds, silencing the prophets, and imprisoning the messengers so that today’s carnage in Palestine can proceed with impunity.

But Jesus’ Way is to gather people and embrace them with courageous compassion and fierce love for the hope-filled crowd. The love that he shares is like that of the hen spreading its wings over the chicks to protect them.

That is an apt metaphor for the divine grace. In relation to the horror in Palestine, that grace is now manifested as courageous students advocate for a ceasefire, as lawyers uphold the right of return, as citizens call for an embargo on weapons. It is filmmakers showing what Israel’s illegal military occupation of the Westbank traumatizes Palestinians, especially children. It is people of faith demonstrating to protest and demand politicians to stop providing murderous weapons of war to Israeli terrorist forces. It is international courts declaring judgements on the illegal occupier of Palestinian territories. Where people call for truth, justice, and peace in Palestine, there the divine hen is spreading its wings over the oppressed family.

These and many other courageous and creative human actions are the winged grace of God spread over oppressed and suffering people. This is the Way of Jesus, of course, taught to him by the Tanakh – the Hebrew scriptures, his Bible. The false national idolatrous god of fury, violence, lies, destruction, and dispossession may rule in Palestine for now, but the Holy One forbids it to last. The Covenant rooted in liberation and the Commandments (Torah) enhancing life in community will be restored "on the third day".

Second pericope: Parades

“Then they brought the colt to Jesus; and after throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. As he rode along, people kept spreading their cloaks on the road. As he was now approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, saying, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord [Adonai]! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest heaven.” Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.” He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout

out.”

Again, in this passage, cautious progressive Pharisees raise their concern with Jesus about the unruly crowd and the danger of a Roman armed response. But Jesus is not inclined to muzzle the crowd. The reign of God is being welcomed – even in Rome’s time of armed subjugation and oppression.

Just last Saturday, I gathered with a couple of thousand others on Ottawa’s Parliament Hill. We assembled there because we wanted to call for the government of Canada to stop the horrors: stop the flow of arms to Israel, ensure that humanitarian necessities are allowed into Gaza.

We proclaimed our conviction that liberation and healing will come to the children and parents who have survived the ferocious unprecedented bombing, the countless wounded will be treated, the grieving multitudes who have lost 60,000 + of their compatriots and family members will be consoled, and to all Palestinians now in danger of being forcibly removed from their ancestral land and displaced to who knows where will stay in their ancestral lands. We proclaimed that the 100 years' war against Palestine must come to an end with shared use of the land with justice and peace.

I realized that that huge crowd, of which I was part, was but a small part of the wings of God, our fiercely loving heavenly hen, spreading protection and safety over her subjugated human family. And that in hundreds – thousands? – of other towns and cities around the world other advocates of justice and peace were the beating heart of our Hen’s ubiquitous caring with wings reaching out in love to the traumatized Palestinian people in Gaza, the Occupied Territories, Jerusalem.

God’s unstoppable heart was and is yearning for justice to replace criminality, food to stave off death by famine, medical necessities to treat the wounds. Peaceful demonstrations and testimony are the Hen’s wings for safety, mending, and living.

Thank God for the witness of scripture to illuminate for us the Ways and work of Jesus. As faithful people act with the light of the scriptures, our one global family is blessed by Good News activists, by the courageous witness of prophets like the rapporteurs of the United Nations, by judges in International courts, by wise ones who discern in others the gifts of the Spirit to nurture peace, and by the heroes who don’t fear to challenge amoral and criminal politicians and military leaders.

May all that work be completed on that “third day” when the graves open for new life to burst forth. Easter blessings for all.

All or None - Reflections on Palestine

Tue, 25 Mar 2025 15:58:50 GMT

Turbulence Threatens, but Faith Frees for Action

When Israel stood facing the Sea of Reeds, and the command was given to move forward, each of the tribes hesitated, saying, “We do not want to be the first to jump into that sea.” Nahshon, leader of the tribe of Judah, saw what was happening—and jumped into the sea. At that moment Moses was standing and praying. G‑d said to him, “My beloved ones are drowning in the stormy seas, and you are standing and praying?” Moses replied, “Master of the world, what am I to do?" Said G‑d, “You lift your staff and spread your hand over the seas, which will split, and my people will come into the sea upon dry land.” And so it was. Following Nahshon’s lead, the Israelites entered the sea and were saved. The Midrash and Talmud on Exodus 14:15. (Wikipedia: Nachshon) (Image: My/Ruvim)

All or None

A reflection on Foundations of Abrahamic Faiths and Palestine

by Diana Ralph*

I am pleased and honoured to be you all here in Parkdale United Church, Ottawa. Today, I want to reflect on genocide, justice, and the spiritual foundations of our Abrahamic faiths. Jews, Christians, and Muslims all believe that because we were created in God’s image, we each carry a divine soul. We all strive to understand and model our lives to reflect God’s holy love. This requires soul searching and being accountable to our covenants.

But because of fears, misinformation, and feelings of self-righteous victimhood, despite our best intentions, we sometimes go astray. Earlier, we read Psalm 63, which, movingly expresses our thirst for connection with God. But it also includes this vengeful hope:

They who seek my life will be destroyed; they will go down to the depths of the earth. They will be given over to the sword and become food for jackals.

This murderous urge underlies all genocides.

I want to invite us to reflect on where we individually and collectively have gone astray to help us recommit to our holy purpose of building a more loving world. Today, Christians, Muslims, and Jews are each celebrating or preparing to celebrate important holidays.

As you know, this is the Lenten season, a time of deep soul-searching, when Christians honour and imitate the 40 days following Christ’s baptism when He fasted in the desert and wrestled with temptation, before beginning his public ministry. Lent ends on Holy Thursday, when, at the Last Supper, the Gospels say, Judas betrayed Jesus, leading to his arrest and crucifixion.

Jesus consistently advocated for love and compassion, like the 1st Century Jewish teacher that he was. But for centuries, during Lent, European Christian leaders used false claims that “the Jews” killed Christ, to launch violent pogroms against Jews, killing and expelling whole communities. In the name of defending and spreading the loving Christian faith, Christian leaders have also committed many other genocides not just against Jews, but also Muslims, pagans, and Indigenous peoples around the globe. Christian antisemitism led directly to the Holocaust, and it is now again on the rise.

What about Islam? We are now also in the middle of Ramadan, which this year runs from February 28 to March 29. Ramadan is the month when the Quran was revealed to Muhammad. Like Christians during Lent, the world’s two billion Muslims observe Ramadan by fasting, prayer, self-reflection, charity, and mutual support. Mohammed respected Christians and Jews as People of the Book and he considered Moses and Jesus prophets.

We in the West have been led to equate Islam with violence and terrorism. Since 9/11, Islamophobia has replaced Communism as the propaganda tool to divide and distract us, with disastrous impacts on Muslims here and globally. But overwhelmingly, Islam, like Christianity and Judaism, is about love and peace. In a few specific instances,

Muslims have also committed genocides, for example, between 1876 and 1914, Ottoman Turks slaughtered up to 1.2 million Armenians. But these are the exception. During the 700 years of the Ottoman empire, Muslim rulers welcomed Jewish survivors of Christian oppression. And during the Holocaust, Muslim countries, including Palestine, gave refuge to Jews.

For Jews, today, March 23 sits between Purim and Passover, two holidays which celebrate the liberation of Jews from oppression. Both are based on myths without any historical foundation.

Purim, which we celebrated last week, recounts the tale of Esther, a young Jewish woman who risked her life to successfully prevent a genocide of Jews by a Persian king. As the story ends, the Jews of Shushan launch a vengeful attack on the Persians killing 75,000 people. Written in the 4th century BCE, this revenge fantasy was a harmless bit of wish fulfillment, given the heavy antisemitism that powerless Jews faced over the centuries. But now that Israel has become a powerful nation, with strong Western backing, it has become toxic.

I mention the Esther story because the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing Christian think tank closely affiliated with Donald Trump, has launched Project Esther to attack as antisemitic anyone critical of Israel’s assault on Palestinians. It is a McCarthyistic campaign to demonize and criminalize Palestinian and pro-Palestinian politicians, teachers, students, journalists, human rights activists, and government employees.

It tries to pressure governments to define as “antisemitic” anything critical of current Israeli policies, to prohibit teaching about the Nakba and Israeli oppression, and to designate as “terrorist” organizations that express sympathy for Palestinians.

Passover, the Jewish holiday which celebrates the Exodus, the liberation from slavery, will begin on April 12. It is the core story defining Judaism. Each year, the Torah requires Jews to re-tell the stirring Exodus tale. After centuries of enslavement in Mizrahim (Egypt), Moses demands that the Pharaoh “let my people go.” The Pharaoh refuses and further oppresses the slaves. But with God’s support, ultimately all the slaves—what the Bible refers to as a “mixed multitude”--not just Israelites—escape. Pharoah’s army chases them to the edge of the Red Sea, where they are trapped. But one man, Nahshon trusts in God and dares to jump into the swirling water. His faith prompts God to miraculously divide the sea, and the multitude cross to safely as Pharoah’s army drowns.

Throughout the Torah (what Christians call the Old Testament), God repeatedly orders us to remember we were slaves and, therefore, that we must stand up against all forms of oppression. This tale also has inspired many other liberation movements.

I believe we are now witnessing a real Exodus struggle. This time, it is the Israeli state supported by the US and Canada, which stands in for the Pharaoh. Israel’s founders have always planned to appropriate all the land from the river to the sea and to expel or subjugate non-Jews.

For over 75 years, Israel has subjected Palestinian people to increasingly brutal political, economic, and military control. And, at enormous cost, the Palestinian people and their allies have always resisted.

Oppression enslaves not only the victims, but also their oppressors, dehumanizing them and keeping them constantly afraid of retribution from those they oppress. That is what has happened to Israeli Jews. The entire country is built on a preoccupation with “security” which requires brutal political, economic, and military control over Palestinian people, and fear of so-called “antisemitism” which it defines as any criticism of oppressive Israeli policies.

Far from making Jews safe, Israel is the least safe place in the world for Jews. The October 7th massacre was a horrific, but predictable outcome of Israel’s tightening noose around Gaza. The ensuing violence has left at least 1,700 Israelis dead, almost 6,000 wounded, over 120,000 displaced, the economy shattered, the government in disarray, and bombs raining down on terrified Israeli civilians, with no end in sight.

So, what is the path to peace there? What do we even mean by “peace”? Is peace merely the absence of resistance? Israel has tried to impose “peace” by outlawing and imposing collective punishment on all forms of Palestinian resistance. It assassinates, imprisons, tortures, wounds and kills non-violent demonstrators and children, and destroys their homes. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and B’Tselem (the Israeli human rights organization) have shown that Israel has indeed become an apartheid state, worse even than South Africa.

Now in both Gaza and the West Bank (where Hamas does not rule), Israel is committing genocidal war on Palestinians. It has intentionally starved and displaced almost all the people of Gaza and destroyed their hospitals, universities, homes and infrastructure. The official death toll is over 61,000 people including 18,000 children. Many more lie crushed under bombed buildings or dead of starvation, cold, and disease.

The British medical journal, Lancet estimates that the real death toll is more than 186, 000. This violates core Jewish values. And it will not bring peace. Palestinians resisted long before Israel helped to create Hamas in 1987 to undermine the PLO. And this atrocity will only spur more resistance.

Is a “two-state solution” the way to peace? This hypothetical Palestinian “state” would be like South Africa’s Bantustans—isolated, segregated islands, within a highly militarized, all powerful Israeli state. It is an unjust and unfeasible dream. Even if it could be achieved, it would not produce “peace.” There will be no “peace” without ending the oppression.

Fatima Maarouff recently wrote: “In light of a genocide--and a state that can cut off water, electricity, food, and fuel--don’t suggest to any Palestinian a two-state solution. The two-state solution has not worked in the last 76 years. What we have seen is more and more land grabs and displacement and murders and now genocide.” She implores us instead to “support our human rights, our right to exist, and [to show] that our lives and deaths matter.” She reminds us: “Our freedom doesn’t mean the oppression of another group. In fact, a true freedom for Palestine will be the collective liberation of all.”

Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University student arrested and illegally deported last week echoed this sentiment in a statement he dictated from jail. He said: “I have always believed that my duty is not only to liberate myself from the oppressor, but also to liberate my oppressors from their hatred and fear.”

Christians often tell me that they are reluctant to get involved in this conflict between Muslims and Jews. But this is not about religion. The real conflict is between justice and injustice . Before Israel was founded, all three faiths lived in harmony in Palestine. In fact, many Palestinians are Christian.

Israel would not exist without the strong support of Western powers. British, US, and Canadian antisemitic politicians funded and militarily backed the Zionist project for their own geopolitical interests, in part to get the Jews out of their countries and in part to set up Jews as their colonial agents in the oil-rich Middle East. After World War II, when many peoples were freeing themselves from colonial rule, Israel was founded as a colonial settler nation. It now sells its weapons and spy technology, field tested on Palestinians in Gaza, to maintain dictatorial regimes around the globe.

The US and Canada unconditionally support Israel to flout international law, and they send Israel billions of dollars for weapons to kill Palestinians. Now Trump threatens to evict or kill all Palestinians and to turn Gaza into a US-owned resort. So, of course, you can and should get involved.

So, what keeps you from speaking out? Perhaps you are afraid of being called antisemitic? None of us wants to be oppressive. But the pro-Israel lobby has weaponized the term “antisemitism” to keep you afraid of getting involved. Standing in support of Palestinian liberation is not antisemitic. Many Jews, like me, also get attacked for being critical of Israel. When you speak out, you may indeed be accused of being antisemitic. But please don’t fall for this bullying divisive tactic. The enemy is not Jews or Muslims or Hamas or you or me. I believe, the enemy is capitalism, a vicious, greedy system, that fuels war, divides and hurts us all, and is making our precious Earth uninhabitable.

We all have a stake in resisting Israel’s fascist genocide, because it is the right thing to do, because it violates everything our three faiths cherish, and because it is threatening us all and potentially dragging us into a World War III Armageddon.

Let us recall the words of the prophet Isaiah. Rejecting fasts without substantive action, he said: “This is the fast I desire: " To unlock the fetters of wickedness, and untie the cords of the yoke to let the oppressed go free; to break off every yoke.” So, for Lent this year, I’d invite you to give up your fears and to risk standing up for justice.

Since the 1960s, when Rev. A.C. Forrest published The Unholy Land*, the United Church has been at the vanguard of this struggle. For advocating for justice, he and the United Church have faced massive attacks from pro-Israel lobby groups. But that didn’t stop them. Last October, the United Church General Council took a major step forward, adopting a Principle-Based Approach to Israel-Palestine which includes support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement and which rejects “Israel's apartheid system of laws and legal procedures towards the Palestinian people”.

This month, the United Church issued another courageous statement along with other ecumenical partners urging “the Canadian Government to support a ceasefire and a negotiated resolution to this violence,” It also calls on Canada to comply with international humanitarian law and to take “leadership in calling for a corridor to provide humanitarian relief to Gaza.” Over lunch, we can discuss how to support the BDS movement and other actions you can take.

I’ll close by offering an excerpt from the 2002 poem “Red Sea,” by Aurora Levins Morales, a Puerto Rican Jewish poet, which I read at all my Passover seders. It is particularly relevant this year:

This Passover, who reclines?
Only the dead, their cupped hands filling slowly
with the red wine of war. We are not free.

The blood on the doorposts does not protect anyone.
They say that other country over there
dim blue in the twilight
farther than the orange stars exploding over our roofs
is called peace.…
Back then, one man's faith opened the way.
He stepped in, we were released, our enemies drowned.
This time we're tied at the ankles.
We cannot cross until we carry each other,
all of us refugees, all of us prophets.
No more taking turns on history's wheel,
trying to collect old debts no-one can pay.
The sea will not open that way.

This time that country
is what we promise each other,
our rage pressed cheek to cheek
until tears flood the space between,
until there are no enemies left,
because this time no one will be left to drown
and all of us must be chosen.
This time it's all of us or none.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

+ https://www.justpeaceadvocates.ca/the-unholy-land-by-rev-dr-a-c-forrest/

* Diana Ralph lives in Ottawa, taught at Carleton University, co-founded Independent Jewish Voices Canada, and is a strong Jewish advocate for truth, justice and peace. She preached this sermon at Parkdale United Church on March 23, 2025 and graciously responded to my request to publish it on the Pilgrim Praxis blog.

With sincere thanks, Harry Oussoren

Cdn Churches & Palestine

Fri, 07 Mar 2025 20:15:36 GMT

Palestine's Horror Continues and Expands - More Faith Advocates Needed for Truth, Justice, Peace & Liberation

Ed. Note: Again I'm republishing a public document - this one provided by eight Canadian Church leaders and executives of Church-related organizations. It is a principle-based document calling for justice and peace, for responsible action by international leaders and by our own Canadian government, and for active advocacy by the membership of the several Churches and related bodies. I and others advocating for just peace in Palestine can be grateful for this truthful witness and see it as exemplary leadership supporting and enabling church members, congregations, and regional authorities to persist in advocating for truth, justice, peace, and liberation in Palestine.

But I do wish there were more Christian denominations - Eastern Orthodox, Pentecostal, Roman Catholic Conference of Bishops, Christian Science, Reformed, etc. represented in this statement.

As well, I wish there were other faith traditions' voices present as well. It would be so much more powerful if Canada's diverse array of faith traditions raised their voices together in the face of the horror happening in Palestine. Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Zoroastrians, Baha'i, Traditional Canadian Indigenous, Unitarian, Independent Jewish Voices, etc. could really make this a heroic statement which those with authority and power would dismiss at their peril.

Such a statement would be an exemplary implementation of the United Church's "Mending the World" document (2003) which calls for "whole world ecumenism" and for all "people of goodwill" to work and speak together to address the pain and suffering, the injustice and oppressions, the conflicts and the wars which the Holy One wants ended with truth, justice, liberation and peace.

In the 1970s, the United Church formally recognized the growing and urgent need for respectful inter-faith conversation, cooperation, and collaboration by creating an inter-faith portfolio in its national staff. It recognized that the ubiquitous Spirit was alive and well, "dwelling in us and others" of the human family. The aim was to bring greater understanding and appreciation for the wisdom and truth ("gifts of the Spirit) which all religious heritages offer to humanity and to bring an end to the human and environmental degradations which are the scourge of life on earth.

It's time this aim gains shared priority in the human family and in faith organizations. We cannot just watch idly while God rages as the USA-armed Israeli military kills60,000 Palestinians, when a million Congolese are massacred, when Russia blows up countless Ukrainians, when Haitian gangs kill at will, when Chinese oppress Tibetans and Uyghurs, when Myanmar subjugates Rohingyas, when colonizers and greed-driven power-mongers impose their will and ways on vulnerable groupings.

It is time for more voices of faith to shout, rail, scream, protest, speak, and bear faithful witness to resist evil and call for the transformation of life on Earth ("as it is in heaven.") Could this statement launch such a truly ecumenical (whole world) interfaith movement??? Harry Oussoren

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Ecumenical Statement of solidarity with Palestinian and Israeli partners – March 5, 2025

"Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of

their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people." Isaiah 10:1-2

We, the undersigned Canadian churches and church-related organizations, stand united with Palestinian and Israeli partners in calling for the international community to hold Israel and Hamas accountable for their violations of international law.

Appalled by the Trump Administration’s statements supporting ethnic cleansing and further forced displacement in Gaza, we call on members of our churches and all Canadians to act in support of the human rights and dignity of Palestinians, and in opposition to continuing violations of their legal, civil and human rights by the Israeli government and its allies.

We have been advocating for the safe release of all captives and lament the violence. All lives are sacred and deserving of respect, dignity and safety. We echo the UN Secretary General's condemnation of the disrespect shown by Hamas towards the remains of deceased Israeli hostages returned to their families. Created in the image of God, the bodies of the deceased should be respected.

Canada must take immediate actions to address Israel’s repeated violations of international law, in

accordance with its own obligations under the same, as it has done in the context of Russia’s occupation of the Crimea region of Ukraine. We call on Canada to impose political, economic and diplomatic consequences in all its dealings with the Israeli government going forward as a result of Israel’s documented genocidal acts* against Palestinians in Gaza, its illegal annexation of East Jerusalem and planned annexation of the West Bank, its ongoing violations of Palestinian rights and dignity, and its persistent refusal to comply with international law.

Our calls are grounded in and informed by long term partnerships with churches, development and human rights organizations in Palestine and Israel. These partners risk their lives daily to hold onto the goal of peace with dignity and justice for all Palestinians and all Israelis.

Across Canada, KAIROS and member churches bring together more than four million people from our communities. Almost a year ago (in May 2024) we mobilized churches throughout Canada and brought church leaders to Ottawa during the Gaza Ceasefire pilgrimage with clear calls to Canadian officials for an enduring and sustained ceasefire, immediate flow of life saving humanitarian assistance, release of all captives, an end to all arms transfers to Israel and ending occupation so a just peace can begin.

We welcomed the news of a ceasefire in Gaza and continue to pray for it to be permanent and respected. And yet, the prospects for Palestinian self-determination and an end to occupation—conditions required for an enduring and just peace—are systematically and brutally denied before our eyes. International law and human rights continue to be brazenly violated, allowing impunity to prevail.

We cannot remain silent.

With deep concern, dismay, and indeed outrage, we strenuously object to the proposal made by the President of the United States of America (USA) regarding the future of Gaza on February 4, 2025. President Trump’s threats to “take over the Gaza Strip” and “own it,” even using US troops to do so, must be vociferously rejected and condemned by all people of conscience, in the strongest terms.

As these headlines make the news, Israel’s illegal annexation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank continues unabated and unchallenged by the international community. We are gravely concerned about this situation of expanding violence, forced displacements, and arbitrary killings and arrests in the West Bank. We fear that Israel is using the ceasefire and “temporary pause” in fighting in Gaza to expand its plans for annexation of the West Bank. Partners have warned about the “Gazafication” of the West Bank. And yet, there is a disconnect in reporting on Gaza and the West Bank as the unjust situation in the West Bank is rarely mentioned.

We affirm the February 14th statement of the Patriarchs and Heads of Churches of Jerusalem. We further echo the sentiments of the World Council of Churches’ statement on the future of Gaza, which clearly communicates that President Trump’s proposal is tantamount to full-scale ethnic cleansing and neo-colonization of the homeland of the two million Palestinians of Gaza. It violates every applicable principle of international humanitarian and human rights law, flouts decades of efforts by the international community – including by the USA – for a just and sustainable peace for the peoples of the region, and would, if implemented, constitute multiple international crimes of the most serious kind. The standing of the United States of America as a responsible member of the international community has been severely compromised by the proposal.

We call on the Government of Canada to join many other nations in publicly opposing this idea at every opportunity. We call on Canada to pressure the US President to immediately retract this proposal, and to respect international law and equal human dignity and rights of the people of Gaza. The USA and Israel’s colonial agenda must be wholly rejected and opposed.

As churches, through awareness-raising and advocacy, we commit to challenging theologies and political ideologies that sustain and support racist and colonial government policies and practices. We commit ourselves to addressing our own policies and theologies that prevent us from engaging in costly solidarity with Palestinian siblings bearing the brunt of inhumane political, economic and military actions.

Words are not enough. We call on church members to continue to pray and act for peace. We urge church members to share their concerns for human rights, international law, and a just peace in the Middle East with their elected leaders and with those seeking public office.

We call on member churches, church constituents and all Canadians to amplify the calls of churches, faith leaders, civil society organizations and partners in the region for just peace, human dignity and international law, with strength and with urgency.+

Endnotes:

*.documentation includes: International Criminal Court (ICC) - Summary of the Order of 26, January 2024; Amnesty International Report concludes Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, December, 2024

+. Some of these calls can be found here: https://www.kairoscanada.org/just-peace-in-the-middle-east-ecumenical-hub

Signed by:

The Rev. Susan C Johnson , National Bishop, Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada

Archbishop Anne Germond , Acting Primate Archbishop and Archbishop Chris Harper , National Indigenous Anglican Archbishop, Anglican Church of Canada

The Rev. Dr. Patricia Dutcher Walls , Moderator of the 2024 General Assembly, The Presbyterian Church in Canada

Ro Fife , Clerk, Canadian Friends Service Committee (Quakers)

Leah Reesor-Keller , MA, Transitional Executive Director, KAIROS: Canadian Ecumenical Justice Initiatives

Luke Stocking , Interim Executive Director, Development and Peace – Caritas Canada

The Rt. Rev. Dr. Carmen Lansdowne , Moderator, The United Church of Canada

Oh Canada!

Tue, 04 Feb 2025 03:07:38 GMT

Our Future Self-Determined

This Pilgrim Praxis post is unusual in its emphasis on the nation within which we make “our home on [and] native land”.

God knows it is not perfect – we, settler society, in the name of the Crown as sovereign, robbed the Indigenous Peoples – First Nation, Inuit, and Metis – of their land and waters – Turtle Island - and installed an apartheid system with “Indian Act” legislation. We have plundered the lands and seas for their wealth with nary a care for the impact on the planet. We have distributed the common wealth in ways that fail to demonstrate our commitment to justice and equity for all who dwell here. We need to confess this and more before we extoll some of the virtues of Canada.

But virtues Canada does have. We have learned that sharing creates a better society. We share as we cherish the universal health care system – imperfect, but a sign of commitment to “loving our neighbours” and demonstrating concern for their well-being. We commit to justice as we are governed by the rule and enforcement of laws with a history of strengthening justice through non-partisan courts. We cherish the diversity of peoples as a sign of our conviction that the Creator loves and affirms the varied gifts, qualities, ethnicities, and ways of being of the ONE global human family, increasingly represented in the Canadian branch of that family.

We celebrate the varied faiths and human values that are represented as part of the Canadian mosaic. We honour those who have risked and lost life itself to protect fundamental human values and international rules-based order – essential for the journey to justice-based peace and reconciliation. We are grateful for the Creator’s trust in us to be responsible and fair stewards of this beautiful and blessed portion of Earth – from sea to sea to sea. And so much more…

We live in a time when too many nations believe they are entitled to expansionist and imperial fantasy fulfillment. In every continent there are unjust and, too often, bloody campaigns to enlarge the scope and control of economic interests, quasi-religious entities, and colonizing nations. Russia’s predation of Ukraine, and Israel’s 100 years of war to take over Palestine from its Indigenous Peoples stand out now.+

Canada is currently discovering that its neighbour, the United States of America, with whom peace has reigned since Confederation 1867, is now a threat to our sovereignty, economy, and identity. The unrepentant convicted fraud felon President and his erratic and hyper-rich underlings empowered by the votes of Republicans are relying on imposed trade tariffs to effect political, economic, and resource gains from Canada. The USA has shown itself to be an unreliable neighbour partner to Canada - in fact it has become a danger to the well-being of our country.

The topper to this mendacious hegemonic mania includes the notion that Canada should become the 51st state of the Union.* This would be the fulfillment of the “Manifest Destiny” heresy which has swirled in USA circles since its Revolutionary War. It would make Canada a trailer among the tail feathers of the American Eagle.

It seems to surprise too many Americans that this is not a welcome prospect for the overwhelming majority of Canadians. I can assure them all that it is an abhorrent, impious, impertinent, and repulsive idea which Canadians will not countenance and resist with all means and resources.

To make this clear, I and many others have just signed the Pledge for Canada initiated by the Action Network’s invitation to Canadians to reflect on the current challenges Canada faces and what we can all do to respond to the risks and to contribute to building a more resilient Canada. Buying Canadian and boycotting American products is a good place to start. Calling on legislators to remove inter-provincial barriers could enhance Canadian businesses and reduce retails costs by as much as 20%

Please consider a further encouraging step, sign on to the Pledge for Canada if you agree that the principles set out represent a useful starting point for encouraging the solidarity we need and for urging our leaders to work together to develop a whole of Canada approach. Click here:

https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/pledge-for-canada-petition?source=email&

On a more theological level, I keep hoping that the seed gifts of the Spirit of Holiness and Gentleness implanted in every child of the Holy One, will be enlivened and matured to energize all, who love God above all and neighbour as self, to begin to “do to others as we would have them do to us.”

It’s time for a more justice-based and peace-filled world, with all material and verbal weapons of war transformed into ploughshares and gracious words of gratitude contributing to reconciliation in the one human family and with Creation.

+https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/02/the-world-at-war-the-flashpoints-that-the-west-ignores?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

* https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/03/donald-trump-american-exceptionalism-guantanamo-bay-imperialism-billionaires?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Othe r

UNWRA Palestinian Support

Tue, 28 Jan 2025 19:34:09 GMT

Transform Ford's Rebate into Humanitarian Relief for Palestinians

Let your rebate dollars "wing their flight" to Gaza's Aid

Dear friends:

For people in Ontario, Premier Ford has provided an opportunity to contribute to the humanitarian relief and protection that United Nations Relief and Works Agency has provided for decades. Efforts to discredit the Agency have failed the evidence test, hence the State of Israel's attempt to outlaw UNRWA's life-saving work in Israeli-controlled areas.

Below is an invitation to consider, if able, the possibility of donating all or part of this "windfall" rebate to respond to the boundless needs generated by Israel's genocidal warfare. Saving lives precedes even the urgent quest for truth, justice and peace. Here is a way to be a "first responder" to Palestinians' suffering and distress. See also a UN Security Council video re Israel's attempt:

https://aje.io/hxdg40

Harry Oussoren

Ottawa

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Good day everyone,

Members of the Focus on Palestine team are sending this special request, to consider and to follow through as you are able.

With thanks,

Sandra Ballantyne

In the coming days, Premier Doug Ford will be sending each Ontarian a $200 pre-election rebate that in total will cost the provincial treasury three billion dollars, a sum that could have been usefully directed to housing, health, or other areas of need.

If your financial situation allows, the Focus on Palestine group of First United Church Ottawa is appealing to you to be compassionate, think globally, and donate your $200 where it is urgently needed: to UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East.

UNRWA provides essential food aid, employment, healthcare and education to more than six million Palestinian refugees, two million of whom have been devastated by the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

UNRWA, and the very existence of Palestinians as a nation are the target of intense delegitimization and smear campaigns by the government of Israel, the United States and by many of those who believed the baseless Israeli accusations and withdrew support from UNRWA last year. While Israel is ending its agreements with UNRWA, this is expected to only affect the West Bank and Jerusalem. UNWRA will continue to respond to the immense, urgent need for humanitarian aid in Gaza.

This week when asked by Al-Jazeera “what are your most urgent needs?” the Director General of the Ministry of Health in Gaza replied with one word “EVERYTHING.”

Let’s do the right thing and give them something. All it takes is four simple steps:

1- Visit UNRWA.org

2- Learn about what UNRWA does,

3- Donate Doug Ford’s $200 rebate to the Gaza Emergency Appeal , and

4. Share this request with your network.

Blessings!

Israeli Lobbying

Mon, 20 Jan 2025 23:04:50 GMT

Reflecting on Lobbying and More

Three Important Contributions to the Truthful History of Palestine by Israeli Scholar Ilan Pappe

News about Palestine

Getting factual news about Israel’s war on Gaza and Palestinians does not happen easily. Israel has banned foreign journalists from the concentration camp called Gaza so our news is almost totally limited to what the government of Israel is willing to release. Experience shows that information is not reliable, confirming the maxim the the first casualty of war is TRUTH. Getting truthful information about the current war on Palestine doesn't seem to be a high priority for Western media.

That doesn’t mean that there are no journalists reporting from Gaza itself. Israel has done its best to prevent such journalists from reporting the genocide in Gaza by killing at least 200 of them. But some courageous reporters persist in witnessing to truth. If you want to read a current set of reports from five remaining, courageous Palestinian reporters, visit: https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/five-journalists-in-gaza-reflect . Al Jazeera news seem better equipped to present a more balanced new report.

The active suppression of truth is not limited to Israels’ currently widening war theatres. If you want to read a carefully researched report on how the political Zionist Lobby has dominated and intimidated international and national media, western governments and legislators, and other potential critics in a mission to suppress truth, then buy or borrow the 575-page tome “Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic” by Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, currently based at the University of Exeter in the UK. (London, One World Publications, 2024. ISBN 978 0 86154 402 8. CAD$50.)

For me, it has been quite an eye-opener to learn how well the Lobby has ensured that its narrative becomes the “received news”, especially in the Western world. I always considered myself to be fairly well informed about current events. One of my majors in the UBC Arts faculty was world history, especially European and American. But I had no idea of the extent to which facts and truth about the rise of political Zionism and the emergence of the State of Israel were suppressed and distorted.

Oppression of Jews

I certainly did learn that in Western Christianity the oppression of Jews was an ongoing reality. Racist prejudice in which almost all Europeans were immersed was a fact of life. This evil culminated in Hitler’s highly organized Nazi Holocaust. Anyone denying these colossal crimes is either insane or totally ignorant. Acknowledging these truths through confession and repentance has set many free.

Confession and repentance are also called for from the Allied victors of World War II. The United Kingdom, the USA, Canada and others received urgent pleas to find safe space and place in their nations for refugee Jews, especially from eastern Europe. They declined and it cost the lives of many Jews. Eventually Palestine became the convenient "solution to the Jewish problem" for these complicit Western nations.

So as a repentant and reformed Christian Canadian, I innocently (or ignorantly) accepted the "solution" and sought ways of building bridges with neighbouring Jews and Jewish communities in conflict, as a means of moving closer to much needed reconciliation. You might say that I became a soft or mild Christian Zionist content with the "solution" which many Jews welcomed but Palestinians rightly abhored.

The Larger Narrative

As I’ve indicated in a previous Pilgrim Praxis post, my eyes had, however, been blinkered and failed to perceive that there was more to the narrative. In particular, I failed to recognize the evolution of the overall political Zionist vision which aimed for a Jews-only homeland/nation in Palestine. I didn't think through what this really meant for the indigenous Palestinians forced to give up land, home, and freedom. I was even more ignorant of the geo-political agendas of Western nations, especially the USA, vis a vis Arabs and their nations in general and the role that Israel could play in taming the Middle East.

I had failed to recognize that the State of Israel, was no “little nation” threatened by an Arab colossus.

It was backed up by virtually limitless USA arms and money, along with United Kingdom and French support, Research shows that early Israeli leadership was confident about their ability to eradicate the opposing Arab-nations' forces, ill-equipped and badly trained as they were. Palestinian residents, who carried the unrecognized and costly burden of these convenient policies, presented little threat given their long experience of being politically dominated and kept in check within the Ottoman Empire and during British mandatory rule after World War I .

For decades, the Zionist narrative and the "demonization" of Palestinians and their leaders grew. In the various Western centres of power, especially Washington and London Islamophobia waxed. In part this might have been compensation for unacknowledged gentile shame and guilt over past prejudice against Jews, the marginalization of Jews in the “Christian” European culture, and then the Holocaust.

Allowing Palestine - which politicians like the UK's Prime Minister Lloyd George conveniently regarded as vacant land ( terra nullius ) - to be taken over for the Jewish homeland/state was deemed a peaceable solution. In fact, less than 10% of the Palestinian population in those early days were Jews and hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees fled for their lives seeking safety when in 1948 the great powers through the United Nations birthed Israel as a nation state.

The majority population – Palestinians – were never fully consulted and had little influence in the decision-making. As is the case in most “settler colonial” conquest processes, the people who had the most to lose and who suffered the most through colonization, were not taken seriously by presumptuous international politicians. A costly error causing much blood to flow.

Canada Too!

Canada knows well about the dynamics of "settler colonialism". )n the way to Confederation in 1867, Indigenous peoples – First Nations, Metis, Inuit – had no voice in the negotiations, and by 1876 we had the apartheid Indian Act. In the early 1980s again, when Pierre E Trudeau strove to return the Constitution “home” to Canada, Indigenous leaders resisted by raising their voices to guard their legal and treaty rights, but Trudeau threatened to remove them totally from the Constitution, thereby guaranteeing none of their rights. Happily Trudeau failed and Section 35 was the result - a key to the Indigenous rights door.*

Settler colonialism assumes that settlers have a transcendent (theological, ideological, political) right to be dominant. Indigenous peoples, on the other hand, are regarded as subordinate, primitive, negligeable, racially inferior. When they resist, they are demonized as “communists”, “terrorists”, “savages”, "inhuman", "monsters" by the colonizers.

Ironically, it is, in reality, the dominating settlers who are the “demons.” They arrive assuming superiority and the right to terrorize and control by military, economic and social dominance, to impose laws and culture on indigenous peoples which aim to gain control of their lands, wealth, and livelihoods. South Africa, Australia, Russia, USA (historically with Turtle Island "Indians," etc.) - all are examples of settler colonialism by which indigenous peoples, like the Palestinians, are deprived of liberty and land and far too frequently of life itself, as in genocidal warfare.

(The Tenth Commandment dealing with coveting a neighbour’s property applies to all these histories of “Christian” colonial nations (see Exodus 20:17; Deuteronomy 5:21 as do the Commandments about lying, killing, and worshipping false gods, e.g. of nationalism. No room here for Micah 6:8 either)

Resistance and Reaction

In the 77 years since the Partition / Nakba, Palestinians have not only raised their voices, they have resisted the occupation and control, the ethnic cleansing and the apartheid actions of the State of Israel. Regrettably when resistance – whether peaceful or violent – took place, the response of the Israeli government was consistent - brutally violent, disproportionate to the resistance action, and costly to the Palestinian people in countless deaths and injuries, in loss of land, and increase in oppression. Reading the history leading up to Partition / Nakba and beyond, leads me to conclude that political Zionism has been waging a "Hundred Years' War" to conquer Palestine and its indigenous Palestinians peoples. For the larger part of my life I didn't take that in.

Because of USA and UK support in the United Nations, Israel gained virtual impunity as the USA in particular exercises its veto power in the Security Council. At the same time, Israel had little but disdain for the same UNO which had allowed it to be born as a nation. It now acts as a rogue or pariah state without any concern for UN resolutions, ready to destroy organizations like UNWRA, and to reject judgements of the International Court of Justice, or the International Criminal Court . Issuing war crimes warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, (and two Hamas Palestinian leaders assassinated by Israel) may at some point allow laws to be enforced.

The history of the militarization of the Israeli state is outlined in Haim Bresheeth Zabner’s “An Army Like No Other – How the Israel Defense Forces Made a Nation”. + The cost to the Palestinian Peoples is recounted in Pappe’s “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine”. It is Pappe’s Lobbying book which reveals the extent to which the Zionist lobby – supported by the State of Israel – burdened not just Palestinians, but also other individuals and organizations who dared to resist, question, or critique the actions of the Zionist State. Israeli Lobbying is a key part of the war against Palestinians.

Abundantly resourced Israel's propaganda budget has recently been increased by $150M. Deeply embedded, the international Lobby works long and hard to ensure that the State of Israel narrative stays in the spotlight, while the actual injustice, carnage, and dispossession of Palestinian lands remain out of the spotlight. Any media or other organizations or individual leaders straying from the Lobby's approved narrative path, are vigorously addressed, too often with smears, innuendo, threat of legal action, withdrawal of funds (e.g. to Universities or Public Institutions), and the weaponizing of “antisemitism”. The Lobby has many organizations but in Canada, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affaires (CIJA) takes the lead. In the USA it is AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee), in the UK it is, among other organizations, Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI).

My own denomination – The United Church of Canada – bowed to these kinds of threats, potential legal action, and pressures by signing an agreement with the B’nai Brith (later CIJA) in 1973 agreeing to consult with the Canadian Zionist lobby before critiquing Israeli actions. This stifled accurate descriptions at the time in the careful work of the Rev. Al Forrest, author of "The UnHoly Land." And it hobbled the denomination for half a century from fulfilling its call to prophetic witness in Palestine. For a fuller account of this sorry story visit: ( https://mondoweiss.net/2020/07/the-united-church-of-canadas-accord-with-bnai-brith-prevents-it-from-supporting-justice-in-palestine/ )

In 2024, the UCC General Council finally broke free and issued Principles of Justice by which to determine what prophetic witness the Church might engage in. Based on these Principles, the Moderator of the denomination communicated to the Church that there were grounds to seek justice for Palestine prophetically. The statement affirmed participating in BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel), anti-apartheid movements and other actions in the quest for truth, justice, and peace in Palestine.

Ceasefire 2025

On Sunday, January 19th, a conditional and fragile first phase six-week Ceasefire started in Gaza. Bombs stopped falling, exchange of detainees and hostages started, delivery of humanitarian resources increased to stave off famine. Just before the pause took effect, the Israeli military took another opportunity to bomb, kill and maim hundreds more Palestinians.

Peter Beinart, a Jewish critic of Israel's war against Palestine, has helpfully reminded me and other people of faith that this ceasefire is a moment to delight in and to rejoice that there is a pause in the deadly hatred and an opening for three Israeli hostages (so far) and some Palestinian prisoners to be restored alive and apparently well to their families. For Beinart this is humans living the way God is. God's wrath at human sin is fiery and profound, but this anger does pause because undergirding that anger is the fact that "God's steadfast love is forever" for all people - even those whose lives demonstrate complete rejection of God's presence. Visit: https://peterbeinart.substack.com/p/for-a-moment-joy?publication_id=105260&utm_campaign=email-play-on-substack&r=46g3nn&utm_medium=email

I rejoice that Romy, Doron, and Emily have been freed into the embrace and joy of their beloved Israeli families, and I rejoice that unnamed Palestinians have been returned to those who hold them dear. May this moment of love extend into weeks and months and years where all see that love and hope is so much better and holy than hate and despair. Kyrie eleison. The past hundred years of war have not resulted in peace in Palestine.

Fervent prayers and hopes have been expressed that this ceasefire may result in long term peace and a journey towards reconciliation. I pray it might be true. For a Ceasefire comment by Kairos Palestine visit: https://www.kairospalestine.ps/index.php/resources/statements/the-palestinian-christian-initiative-kairos-palestine-statement-on-gaza-ceasefire-agreement

But I believe in the miracles God makes happen, I wish I could be confident that my prayers will be realized. Radical Zionists in the Israeli cabinet are clear about their goals: they want to retain all powers and controls over what their State occupies and whom it subjugates. They will relinquish nothing. If Palestinians resist, the Israeli military will continue the genocidal nightmare to impose "peace" and fulfill their dream of Greater Israel.

This “peace deal” has little basis for a just peace, especially when the new USA President has not a clue nor convictions about justice, let alone compassion for a less powerful, oppressed People. But we have also learned over the past century that Palestinians have deep roots in their beloved land, great courage to claim justice, and an identity that will not be extinguished. They will need to continue exercising all these gifts for their future or else survival may be taken from them.

I believe that when Truth overwhelms lies and false narratives and biased reports, when Truth is told and honoured, the incipient global movement for justice in Palestine may well become a tsunami that finally brings justice to this tortured land . It happened in South Africa and many other colonized countries, it happened when France and Germany once mortal enemies but now allies in European well being. May it come to pass in Palestine, with Palestinians and Israelis living, side by side - together - in just relationships and peace, gifts of the steadfast love of God.

For faith-based people this will always be our prayer addressed to the Holy One and to all people of goodwill seeking justice as both Torah and Jesus command.

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Footnotes:

*see Murray Sinclair, Who We Are , McLelland & Stewart, 2024; pp. 134f.

+London & New York, Verso, 2020

Recommendation:

Not everyone will be able to read the books I’ve referred to, but I do commend reading the following 150-page paperback: Ilan Pappe, Ten Myths about Israel , (Verso, updated 2024. ISBN 978 1 80429-704-9). It responds to ten key false assertions with all the wisdom, knowledge, and insights Pappe brings to and gains from his research into this particular catastrophe. The ten fallacies he demythologizes are:

1. Palestine was an empty land

2. The Jews were a people without a land

3. Zionism is Judaism

4. Zionism is not colonialism

5. The Palestinians Voluntarily Left their Homeland in 1948

6. The June 1967 War was a War of “No Choice”

7. Israel is the Only Democracy in the Middle East

8. The Oslo Mythologies

9. The Gaza Mythologies

10. The Two-State Solution is the Only Way Forward.

Beyond October 7th

One fallacy this little book was not able to address because it happened after publication, is the persistent effort by the Zionist Lobby and the compromised biased media (like CNN, BBC, etc.) to suppress the crucially relevant historical context within which October 7, 2023 took place. This partial reporting is so well entrenched into the public mind that too many now assume that before October 7 ^th things were “normal”, as if acceptable. "Normal" in Palestine since 1948 and before has been resistance by Palestinians as per the right of occupied and oppressed peoples. That resulted in hugely disproportionate and collective punishment by Israel's military, countless massacres and imprisonment – ongoing ethnic cleansing, apartheid, genocide, dispossession, and military subjugation.. October 7th, 2023 was the inevitable volcano of the 100 years of settler colonialism under which Palestinians have suffered and reacted.

Albright Gardens Retirement Community

Tue, 07 Jan 2025 15:53:00 GMT

A Retirement Village for Independent Living

To: United Church of Canada personnel in the diverse ministries of the Church

Dear Colleagues & Friends:

The United Church of Canada Properties Trust (UCC) owns Albright Gardens Retirement Community (AGRC) - a village of 41 homes in a park-like setting - providing affordable rental housing primarily geared to retired personnel who serve and have served in UCC ministries and normally are members of the UCC Pension Plan.

The AGRC is located in Beamsville, Ontario within easy reach of St. Catharines and Hamilton on the Niagara Peninsula - one of Ontario's wine and fruit-growing regions.

The property, donated to the Church in the 1950s with additional parcels purchased in the sixties, abuts the Niagara Escarpment. The Niagara to Tobermory Bruce Trail runs through the south end of the property and is one of several walking trails. The site provides majestic views of Lake Ontario, with the Greater Toronto Area just visible across the lake.

Re-development of the property to create more affordable housing for seniors is on the horizon. Integral to the planning process are careful attention to social values, the natural environment, geriatric needs, the intentions of the original donors of the property, the Rev. Raymund Albright, and Ms. Elsie Watt, funder of 12 frame homes. Kindred Works is the Church's vehicle for re-development planning and consulting.

The rent for the current independent-living two-bedroom units is about 70% of comparable area market rents. Lawn care and snow clearance are included.

The village has an active Tenants Association which fosters healthy community and good neighbourliness, maintaining open and cooperative relations with the owner. The Friendship Centre provides space for community activities, as well as offices of the Community Support Services of Niagara. The tenants' website can tell you more. It includes personal testimonials, as well as eligibility requirements. Visit:

Visit: www.albrightgardens.ca

The message? For UCC personnel near or at retirement, over 55 years of age, looking for affordable rental housing in the southern Ontario region - Albright Gardens is a great place to consider.

The property manager, Shabri Properties Ltd., maintains a waiting list for those interested in residing in this welcoming community. Contact: Rental Housing Administrator Leila Thompson at LeilaT@shabriproperties.com , tel. (905) 684-6333 or 1-(289) 362-1105 ext.232

Blessings,

A H Harry Oussoren (Rev. Dr.)

Owner's Agent for the AGRC of the UCC Properties Trust

email: ahharryo370@gmail.com

updated: January 21, 2025

Palestine Calls to Churches

Fri, 20 Dec 2024 15:36:08 GMT

A Call to European Churches (and Canada's Faith Communities)

Ed. note: In my last blog we heard the voice of Christian Palestinians calling other Palestinians to be steadfast and grounded in peace as they suffer the deadly force of the State of Israel's armed forces continuing the 76 year ethnic cleansing of Palestine lands and the annihilation of more than 50,000 Palestinians. Today's blog post from Global Kairos for Justice amplifies the voices of Palestinian Christians and others of goodwill calling the European churches to act justly as witnesses to Jesus Christ's Gospel. By extension, the call crosses the Atlantic and calls Canada's faith communities - Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Sikh, etc. to act on the basis of fundamental faith convictions - not the least of which is the Golden Rule, calling all humanity to "do unto others what you would have them do to you."

As one born in the midst of the brutal Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, I know that the Gospel's heart - Christ - is calling us all to resist evil, speak truth, seek justice, and walk humbly as we pray, discern Jesus' Way, and advocate for true peace in Palestine.

May the blessings of this holy season fill hearts, homes, and the halls of power with the Spirit's mobilizing gift of love and compassion in each and all. Harry Oussoren

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Call to European Churches :

Why are you silent in the face of genocide?

“Blessed are they who observe justice,

who do righteousness at all times.”

Psalm 106:3

December 19th , 2024

"We, members of the Global Kairos for Justice coalition, write this letter during a season commemorating God’s intervention in history to bring justice and peace to all nations and creation. The heavenly host proclaimed to the shepherds suffering under the heel of occupation, "Peace on earth!" (Luke 2:14) .

Yet, in the very land where peace was promised, a catastrophe is unfolding. The Israeli government’s actions against the Palestinians constitute an attempt to establish a false peace by eliminating the Palestinians—using the Hamas actions on Oct 7, 2023, which certainly violated international humanitarian law, as a pretext for genocide.

Numerous international legal bodies, including the International Court of Justice, have concluded that the accusation of genocide against Israel is “plausible”. Additionally, prominent human rights organizations such as the University Network of Human Rights, Amnesty International, and the Lemkin Institute [Ed.: Doctors without Borders (MSF), Human Rights Watch, the UN Rapporteur on Human Rights Francesca Albanese, etc.], have provided detailed documentation of the Israeli genocidal intent and action in Gaza. Furthermore, many respected scholars of genocide, including Israeli genocide and holocaust historians Omar Bartov and Amos Goldberg, have established a compelling case that the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza constitute war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. Kairos Palestine and Global Kairos for Justice coalition have always urged Global Churches to recognize the plight of the Palestinian people and the reality of apartheid.

As Christians, who share the values of equality and compassion, and as citizens of states that claim to uphold principles of human rights, we have a moral obligation to take firm and direct action when those principles are violated; therefore, our Christian witness requires that church bodies declare themselves in status confessionis in the face of practices that violate core principles of our faith. The integrity of our faith and the cause of Christ is at stake. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, 'To delay or fail to make decisions may be more sinful than to make wrong decisions out of faith and love ... and in this case it is really now or never. Too late means “never” ... Let us shake off our fear of this world—the cause of Christ is at stake; are we to be found sleeping?'

Kairos Palestine and Global Kairos for Justice coalition members have issued repeated calls to the churches around the world, beginning with the 2009 “Moment of Truth” document, followed by the “Cry for Hope” document in 2020. Both movements have called out, with increasing urgency and theological clarity, for steadfast witness and for solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for freedom and justice. Yet, even to this day, very few churches have responded with corresponding clarity. Fortunately, however, several churches in Europe, the United States, and South Africa stand out as having spoken with theological directness and courage. As an example, we cite the United Church of Christ in the USA, in a confession that follows the model of the “Barmen Theological Declaration against National Socialism in Church and Society.”

The first article of the United Church of Christ declaration states:

'We affirm that the continued oppression of the Palestinian people remains, after more than five decades of oppression of the Palestinian people, a matter of theological urgency and represents a sin in violation of the message of the biblical prophets and the Gospel, and that all efforts to defend or legitimate the oppression of the Palestinian people, whether passive or active, through silence, word, or deed by the Christian community, represent a fundamental denial of the Gospel. Therefore, we reject the notion that Israel’s occupation of Palestine is a purely political problem outside the consequence of global or regional geopolitical interest.'

We therefore call on you to:

1. Participate in an intensive process of responding to the “Cry for Hope” and to the 2022 resolution of the World Council of Churches Assembly on Peace in the Middle East calling for study and for an urgent decision on the recent reports of human rights organizations documenting Israel’s apartheid system; and challenge those churches who do not join in the process, bearing in mind Bonhoeffer’s statement that to 'delay or fail to make decisions may be more sinful than to make wrong decisions out of faith and love';

2. Form solidarity and fact-finding missions in Gaza and the West Bank, to witness the Israeli war crimes and evaluate the findings in the light of recent judgements of international law institutions;

3. Publicly repent of previous inaction, silence, and acceptance of theologies that support apartheid, discrimination, and genocide itself, and renounce previous statements to this effect;

4. Name Israeli apartheid and genocide in your relevant statements;

5. Demand that your government immediately and publicly condition further cooperation with Israel on its fulfillment of its obligations under international law;

- Call on your governments to suspend all arms sales, and impose sanctions on Israeli government ministers and on trade with Israel,

- Call Churches to divest from all companies profiting from the illegal occupation and war in Gaza,

- Call all individuals in churches to boycott Israel—economically, academically and culturally.

Fifty-one years ago, Rev. Martin Luther King wrote to his fellow clergymen:

'The judgment of God is upon the church as never before.' The legal and moral force of international law and the imperative of biblical justice come together today in a mighty river of confluence. History will judge your failure to respond to this urgent call. Your failure to respond to this call will mean that you are directly complicit in clear crimes against humanity and will put you in direct confrontation and contradiction with international law, the requires of you.

Israel’s genocidal actions are in full view of the world. Its intent to possess all of historic Palestine through the dispossession and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people has become inescapably clear. Israel has pursued this goal relentlessly for close to eight decades with the political, military and economic support of the Global North.

Where are the voices of the churches at this moment in history? What will be the actions that they take in response to this crime to humanity? Will your churches live up to the historic legacy of the churches when called upon to act decisively in human affairs?

Righteousness is turned away backwards, justice stands far away, and truth stumbles in the public square; This is my covenant with you, says the Lord: 'My Spirit that is upon you and my words that I have put in your mouth shall not depart from your mouth or the mouths of your children or your children’s children from now and forever.' Isaiah 59:14, 21

Global Kairos

with the blessing of Kairos Palestine Justice Coalition and

Kairos Palestine chair Patriarch Emeritus Michel Sabbah

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ ~

For the Christmas message of the World Council of Churches use this link:

https://oikoumene.org/resources/documents/2024-christmas-message-from-the-world-council-of-churches

Palestinian Voices

Mon, 16 Dec 2024 18:38:07 GMT

Palestinian Voices Call Amid Israel's Bombing

Editor's Comment: The letter below builds on the 15 year old statement "Kairos Palestine" in which Palestinian Christians lifted their voices to world-wide Christians to understand what they were (and still are) experiencing under the domination of the political Zionism of the State of Israel.

Below is a follow up call by Kairos Palestine to all Palestinian Christians (and people of goodwill) to remain steadfast in the face of Israel's genocidal assault armed by USA and western allies including Canada, condemned by Amnesty International, the International Court of Justice, International Criminal Court, and by the call for ceasefire by the UN General Assembly.

Zionist Israel's unending military action over 76 years, now spread to Lebanon, Syria, as well as Palestine, reveal that it is a rogue state with disdain for international laws and conventions, the United Nations which created it in 1948, and increasingly deemed a pariah in the international community.

May the truth, justice, and peace that pass all understanding fill the earth in this Holy Season and strengthen the resolve of all Christians and people of faith and of good will to amplify the Palestinian Christians'.

A H Harry Oussoren

Ottawa

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The Call to Our Palestinian People for Collective Actions, Steadfastness, Resilience,

and Hope in the Face of Ad versity

"You send forth Your Spirit, they a re created; And You renew the face of the earth. "

Psalm 104:30

Bethlehem, December 16th, 2024

"Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

As we mark the 15th anniversary of the Kairos Palestine Document, and approach the season of

Christmas, we are reminded of the ongoing struggles that our people face. This document, which began as a word of faith, hope, and love from the heart of Palestinian suffering, continues to resonate deeply in the lives of every Palestinian, particularly those who have borne the brunt of more than seven decades of Israeli occupation, apartheid, and committing genocide. As we reflect on the birth of the Prince of Peace, we are reminded that the message of justice, dignity, and reconciliation is as urgent as ever.

The Kairos Document remains a declaration of our collective will for justice, peace, and freedom for all. Yet, here we are, 15 years later, amidst a continuing genocide, a year and two months into the brutal genocidal war on Gaza and the West Bank. The international community and many churches around the world remain silent, and the suffering endures.

As Christians, we are called to walk closely with our brothers and sisters, to stand firm

in our faith, and to embody the very resilience and hope that have sustained our people through these trials. This is the time to reaffirm that our presence in the land of our ancestors is not accidental but rooted in the history and geography of this land and must encourage one another to stay, to remain steadfast, and to continue our collective struggle for freedom and justice.

In this critical moment, the role of the Church in Palestine is more vital than ever. While we deeply appreciate the tireless efforts of our churches in serving the community - providing spiritual support, relief, and supporting resilience- we must recognize that more is needed. Our community is facing existential challenges, and we need the Church to speak truth to power and to walk even more closely with its members, to be a source of spiritual strength and also a source of practical support and solidarity.

We ask our Church leaders, priests, and laypeople to work together to foster resilience within our congregations. Encourage our people to stand firm in the face of oppression, to find strength in prayer, and to rely on their faith as a source of endurance. But also, let us not forget that practical acts of solidarity are essential. Churches should organize efforts to support families who have lost their land, homes and loved ones, assist those in need of medical care and mental health support, and provide resources to help people rebuild their lives in this time of

devastation.

We also call for the creation of safe spaces within our churches where Palestinian Christians can come together— to grieve, to pray, and to strategize on how to continue their resistance and struggle in a peaceful and dignified manner. These spaces can serve as hubs for dialogue, for strength, and for the societal unity we need in these times of division.

As Christians, we are called to remain resilient and to cultivate resilience among one another. The road ahead will not be easy, and the suffering may increase, but we must hold fast to the hope that God is with us, and we must be reminded of our Lord’s promise that “He has overcome the world” (John 16:33). We heard Patriarch Emeritus Michel Sabah in the 15th anniversary of the Kairos Palestine conference speaking: "In the face of genocide, dispossession, and ethnic cleansing, we say a word of condolence, steadfastness, and hope to our people in Gaza and in all of Palestine. Be patient. God will shine upon us one day with His justice and peace."

In these dark days, let us be the light for one another. Christian resilience is about enduring the hardships and acting in solidarity with others, regardless of their faith. We must be mindful that our brothers and sisters in other faith communities, particularly Muslims, are also enduring unimaginable suffering. Civic peace and solidarity with all our citizens are critical. We must intensify efforts to collaborate, to foster interfaith cooperation, and to work together for the common good of all Palestinians.

In this advent time and while we are preparing ourselves to celebrate Christmas, Palestinian Christians must continue to be the voice of peace, justice, and reconciliation in a divided world. This is a time for us to deepen our faith, to engage and to unite people despite political and religious differences, and to strengthen the bonds of unity among all components of Palestinian society.

In the spirit of resilience and steadfastness, we urge our churches and communities to strengthen their pastoral care and offer regular support to those living in fear, especially

families who have lost loved ones or homes; to organize prayer meetings, counseling, and support groups for emotional and spiritual healing; to advocate for Justice on the international stage; to speak out against the ongoing occupation, the forcible displacement of Palestinians, and the human rights abuses we continue to face.

We also urge to help amplify the voices of the voiceless by raising awareness in international circles; to promote Interfaith Solidarity and strengthen partnerships with secular, Muslim and other faith communities; to organize joint initiatives for peace and social justice to show that we are united in our shared struggle for freedom and human dignity; to encourage Community Resilience and Self-sufficiency among Palestinians and to continue and strengthen the developmental programs and initiatives. And finally, to mobilize the Global Church and to call

upon the global Christian community to continue standing in solidarity with us.

Dear brothers and sisters: We are now at a critical juncture, and the strength of our community depends on our solidarity with one another. We call upon our Churches to stand firm in faith, to encourage one another, to support one another, and to work tirelessly for peace and justice. May we always remember that we are part of a larger, global movement for justice and that our hope, rooted in God’s love and righteousness, will one day lead to the fulfillment of His promises for peace, freedom, and dignity for all human beings.

In His name, we remain steadfast, believing in our right to life. We renew our faith in God and say: "I believed, even when I said, 'I am greatly afflicted.'" (Psalm 116:10). We pray to God for you and for all our afflicted land, that He may fill it with His justice and peace."

Kairos Palestine

K airos Palestine, the most extensive Palestinian Christian ecumenical non- violent movement, is based on Kairos Palestine document: A

Moment of Truth, launched in 2009, affirming that the Palestinian Christians are part and parcel of the Palestinian nation, calling for

peace to end all suffering in the Holy Land by laboring for justice, hope and love, embraced by the Christian community, signed by all

historically recognized Palestinian Christian organizations, and endorsed by the Heads of Churches in Jerusalem.

Email: kairos@kairospalestine.ps •

www.kairospalestine.ps

For the original Kairos Document: https://www.kairospalestine.ps/index.php?view=category&id=11

Called to Be a Prophet?

Sat, 07 Dec 2024 18:06:53 GMT

Israel's War Is Not the Way to Peace in Palestine

C alled to Be Prophetic? (Apologies for length; for links, please copy and paste on your browser)

Prophecy is a dangerous vocation. The prophets of the Tanakh – the Old Testament ran great risks to speak the truth of God as they surveyed the human situations and experienced the Spirit speaking to their souls.

The prophet Nathan must have been quaking in his sandals when he went to the palace to confront King David about his rape of Bathsheba, and the conspiracy resulting in the murder of her husband Uriah, to cover the rape-conceived pregnancy. 2Samuel 11 & 12 tells the story. But Nathan spoke God’s truth! Lo and behold, the King had enough moral fabric to realize his guilt. He confessed his sin, repented, and chose a more humble righteous path.

There are the later prophets who called Israel to account for its idolatry, its profligacy, it’s breach of the Covenant with God by failing abjectly to observe the Torah – the Commandments. Their disobedience was a de facto nullification of the Covenant. For the prophets, it called for a high risk role. But the call of God was compelling, enabling them to confront lies and speak truth, so that justice might abound. Not all of the prophets lived to see their speech transform people.

In our time too, the prophetic voice easily becomes an object of disdain and hate. The mighty don’t like their lies to be confronted by the Word from on high. Truth liberates and the quest for truth is resisted by the powerful, the rich, the autocrats, the military. Alexei Navalny, Roberta Menchu, Martin Luther- King, Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Oscar Romero, the Argentinian Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and various collectivities of women - all prophets – none perfect, but all embracing the risk and for too many the high cost to counter lies and speak truth to amoral power. The divine Word must be spoken, lived out by faith trusting in the Divine. God calls us to seek justice and resist evil.

Two UCC Prophets - Apologies Required

In the United Church of Canada, I think of two prophets who spoke truth at great cost. Rev. James G. Endicott (1898 – 1993) spoke of the revolution in China after WWII to liberate the masses from their imposed poverty and their powerlessness maintained by colonialism and autocrats. Endicott was despised and rejected, and was demonized by the “communist” epithet. In 1982, his prophetic voice was finally understood. The Church’s General Council was moved to apologize to him for its blindness and unwillingness to hear the truthful prophetic witness of Endicott. He graciously accepted it. (visit : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Gareth_Endicott )

In the early 1970s, the Rev. A.C. Forrest, editor of the UCC Observer magazine, spent time in Palestine to get close up views and residents’ accounts of what was happening. He witnessed the State of Israel, supported by western nations, especially USA, accorded impunity while the Zionist government oppressed Palestinians, stole their land by enforced legal fictions and by military-led massacres. All the while the political Zionist lobby spread the lie that tiny Israel was at risk of annihilation by the Palestinians and Arab hordes. (Read the Bresheeth-Zabner book below about that fiction.)

Many Israeli scholars have researched the history of 20th century Israel. They found that the Zionists’ Plan Dalet – essentially, get rid of the Palestinian people by any and all means and take control of the lands for a Jewish state - was steadily being implemented by Israel’s overwhelming power. Al Forrest saw it, wrote about it, was harassed and persecuted for writing about the unjust realities which then and in the intervening years are still revealed to be truth. He challenged the false narratives the Church was willing to accept as valid from the powerful political Zionist lobby the false narrative that Israel was at risk. In fact, Palestinians bore the burden for the impunity granted to warring Israel..

Read Forrest’s whole book at this link provided by Just Peace Advocates: https://www.justpeaceadvocates.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/The-Unholy-Land-by-AC-Forrest.pdf

Next August, the General Council of the UCC will meet in Calgary. I hope it will take the opportunity to confess its guilt of being beguiled by political Zionism's false narratives. Perhaps our Church taking the lead in this may move other Christian churches to do the same. The UCC must apologize posthumously to Al Forrest and to his family for not attending to his prophetic truth and for compromising truth with an appeasement policy in which friendship with the Jewish community was deemed a higher value than truth and justice for the Palestinians - including Christian sisters and brothers. My Church urgently needs to repent of its complicity with political Zionism in accepting Israel's ongoing war against Palestinians who have paid a huge blood-soaked price for the ongoing Israeli settler colonial takeover of Palestine during the past 80 years.

May Forrest’s example move the Church into new, more faithful paths by mobilizing its knowledge and acumen for a prophetic witness to truth and the pursuit of justice, and peace in Palestine. ( https://catalogue.unitedchurcharchives.ca/forrest-alfred-clinton-1937-1978;isaar?sf_culture=sk ) Contact your Region’s General Council commissioners about this urgent action for the soul of the Church and life in Palestine.

Amnesty International Truth - The Spirit Moves ...

On December 5th, 2024, we heard another clear-as-a-bell prophetic voice. After rigorous research and study – a mark of the integrity of the organization, Amnesty International, which so many United Church members have supported and trust, issued its report on the State of Israel’s genocidal policies and action in Palestine. Israel committed and is still committing genocide – the systematic annihilation of Palestinian people and their nation.

Read the report and meditate on its truth and write to our political leaders that Canada must end its complicity in the war on Palestine. Give thanks for Amnesty's great contribution to truth by writing to Amnesty International’s Canadian CEO Ketty Nivyabandi at members@amnesty.ca .

For the report visit: https://amnesty.ca/gazagenocide/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=engagingnetworks&utm_campaign=utm_gaza_genocide_report&utm_content=Gaza+Genocide+Report+Dec+4+2024

It took no time, of course, for the political Zionist lobby, like CIJA (Canadian Centre for Jewish Affairs) and it allies, to be heard denouncing the Amnesty conclusions. Almost any factual report about Israel's crimes, e.g. Francesca Albanese's UC Rapporteur document triggers volleys of denial and abuse. But with 50,000 known dead Palestinians and many thousands more rotting under the mountains of rubble created mainly by the USA-supplied arms, the countless maimed and damaged bomb and bullet victims, the enforced famine imposed by stopping humanitarian aid and other essentials of life, the continuing Settler violence in the Occupied Territories, and the characteristic Israeli disproportional collective excesses to any Palestinian resistance to colonial domination - for all those reasons the denunciations by Israel’s lobbyists and by the Israeli government itself ring hollow. They are well-crafted and ably-rehearsed, but they bear the mark of false witness that the Ten Commandments clearly forbid.

I am heartened that the there are growing numbers of Jews directly engaged in negating the political Zionist narrative. These courageous Jews speak truth. They uphold humanitarian and religious values and convictions - too often at great personal, family, and professional cost. This past week, fifty Independent Jewish Voices (IJV) organizations in many lands have bravely spoken out, demonstrated, and challenged the falsehoods and injustices of political Zionism. They help to reduce the stifling effects of Zionism's weaponizing antisemitism. They and many others reject the Canadian IHRA’s definition of antisemitism as an effort to silence truthful revelations of the state of Israel’s crimes.

Hear the international prophetic IJV voices at this link: https://www.ijvcanada.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Statement-by-50-Jewish-organizations-in-support-of-UN-Rapporteur-Francesca-Albanese.pdf.

Truth Is Powerful

The more truth we hear, the more I and others are motivated and given heart to persist in this humanitarian justice cause. Every Saturday or Sunday since October 2023, young Palestinians have organized demonstrations against the State of Israel's genocide and Canada's complicity is this war. The young people persist with resilience and perseverance in the face of ignorant neglect. My partner and I have joined in about half of these demonstrations ranging in numbers from several hundred to over a thousand Palestinians walking side-by-side peaceably with others concerned about Gaza. They are all voicing truth publicly to the powerful and the local population.

Remarkably but not surprisingly, local media never report it, unless the police cause a skirmish on the edges of the demonstration. Anti-Palestinian racism is so strong in both federal and municipal government and in law enforcement. The pro-Israel bias, against all the evidence, holds sway among media and public authorities. Every Canadian could call for a more honest, truthful accounting of the Palestinian horror. Write the Prime Minister at PM@PM.ca.

I’m encouraged by our local church’s “Focus on Palestine” team. We’ve sponsored several events that share knowledge, including two “ask me anything” evenings involving a diaspora Palestinian and a co-founder of the Canadian Independent Jewish Voices. They helped us remember that there are real people engaged in and experiencing the horror and sharing truth. On other evenings, we watched and discussed dramatically revealing films: “The Law and the Prophets” and “Where Olive Trees Weep,” both moving our hearts with the reality of oppression experienced by Palestinians under the brutal yoke of Israel’s politicians and its terrorizing military.

This past week some of us attended an Education for Liberation event at the St.Paul’s (Roman Catholic) University in the U of Ottawa. It was organized by students committed to naming and resisting Israel’s genocidal operations. These young leaders and the many “encamping” students in other university settings are the hope for a more truthful and ethically-based future after the disappointing political, social, and religious leadership we have experienced in both church and state.

I am also encouraged by all the people who are able to say: we’ll donate Doug Ford’s and Justin Trudeau’s bribe money ($200 and $250) to UNWRA as the one United Nations organization that serves the immense range of Palestinians humanitarian and educational needs. It must be effective because it helps Palestinians and that infuriates Netanyahu. Let both Ontario’s Premier and the Prime Minister’s politicized stewardship result in strengthening the UN agency’s crucial humanitarian work among Palestinians.

What are you doing with the political bribes? (Visit: https://donate.unrwa.org/-landing-page/en_EN )

Perhaps all these and so many other actions are generating the prophetic cohort needed to end the horrors in Palestine.

But Truth Resistance Is Also Strong

We are not heartened by our political leaders, especially Trudeau’s Liberals and Poilievre’s Conservatives; and the other parties. All could do so much more, but do next to nothing or nothing at all. All should obey the ICC and the ICJ legal advisories and they should especially cancel all permits and embargo all war materiel to and from Israel including that shipped via the USA. It is obvious to the “least of these” our children and anyone thinking that saturation bombing won’t bring peace. It also brings more death and rubble, augurs more repetitive cycles of violence and growing hate.

The “legitimacy façade” and the phony pillar that “security justifies” any and all of Israel’s demonization and murder of the Palestinian people – this is crumbling. The International Criminal Court may be under threat by bully US politicians and rejected by Israel’s regime, but the warrants for arrest of Netanyahu and Gallant are out there and countries refusing to do their duty by them are complicit in their crimes and guilty of undermining the rule of international law and order. The International Court of Justice – 15 judges from diverse lands committed to international law and order - is clear about Israel unlawfully controlling the Occupied Territories and demands removal of Jewish settlers and return of lands to Palestinians. Even the USA has sanctioned violent settlers in the Occupied Territories, while sending a $17 Billion package of bombs and war planes!! The USA send them to Israel in part to test on Palestinians about how effective these killing tools can be.

Will the State of Israel hear and confess its guilt as oppressor and transform its ways? Will negotiation ever happen with the state of Palestine as equals seeking a new way together? For sure not with the current Zionist regime. The virus of settler colonial domination is too strong, and the antibiotic of truth is both unheard and aggressively stifled by both Israelis and its western allies. Prophetic voices are not raised loudly enough yet!

I cannot gloat over this tragedy. My own church has been responding tepidly, still too influenced by the “soft Zionist” narrative along with pangs of Holocaust guilt. Like Canada itself, it is still not able to recognize how anti-Palestinianism has hardened its heart. The church has had 15 months to mobilize the collective voice of faith to this human tragedy, but the outputs are minimal. I agree with scholars Jan Porter of the University of Winnipeg and Michel Andraos of St. Paul University in Ottawa that Christian churches must confess their complicity and repent seeking the Spirit's leading to new, more faithful ways in and for Palestine.

Visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEpRVhQNR1k (Published in the Toronto Journal of Theology, 2024, pp. 222-233, as The Genocide of the Palestinian People and the Churches' Silence.)

Epiphany Moments of Truth Happen

My eyes too were too long unable / unmoved to hear and see the truth. The falsehood that Muslim Arabs and Palestinians were somehow more dangerous, less human, more prone to unjustified violence, and hostile to Christians (even though a substantial proportion of Palestinians are Christians) had crept into my soul and I hadn’t taken the time or the trouble to research the matter enough to be freed of my ignorance, prejudice, and the anti-Palestinian racism underlying my neglect.

A couple of books and various articles removed my blinders and personal conversation with Palestinians opened the doors to let the light of truth into my mind and gradually into my heart.

I commend three books (among many others) as very helpful:

- Ilan Pappe, “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine” (and several other Pappe books)

- Metri Raheb, “Decolonizing Palestine – The Land, The People, The Bible” Maryknoll, Orbis Books

- Haim Bresheeth-Zabner, “An Army Like No Other – How the Israel Defense Forces Made a Nation."

(check your local library, ask them to order the books; or invest personally by buying them in a local bookstore (avoiding Indigo since it funds Israel’s military with Cdn charitable dollars).

Pray that a generation of prophets anchored in truth of Gospel and fundamental commitments to the value of human life and to miracle of God’s Creation may arise to call humanity to account. Let truth and justice open doors to peace and paths to reconciliation, so that the children of Sarah & Hagar & Abraham may walk the paths that Jesus walked for the sake of the reign of God, Allah, the Holy One and Peace.

UN Reporter re Palestine

Thu, 07 Nov 2024 17:57:52 GMT

Francesca Albanese - Rapporteur re Palestine

The United Nations has been stymied from action about the genocide that the Government of Israel, with the military support and assurance of impunity provided the USA's Security Council veto and by other western nations including Canada, has been carrying out in Palestine before, on, and after October 7th, 2023.

Francesca Albanese as special rapporteur of the UN makes clear in eloquent, compassionate, and heartfelt terms what the fundamental issues are and, that above all the genocide of Palestinians must be stopped.

Provided in this post is the YouTube link to the video recording of Albanese's CPAC press conference in Ottawa in the first week of November 2024. In 34 minutes she presents TRUTH to counter the rhetoric and lies which confound observers and perpetuate Israel's unlawful and amoral genocide of Palestinians and Palestine.

Albanese's report is intended to stop the genocide and to end this 76+ years intentional implementation of Plan Dalet (see Wikipedia for a summary) - essentially to expand Israel's sovereignty over all of Palestine, to erase Palestinian culture, to deprive the people of the essentials for living, and to remove Palestinians - by all means including further mass killings.

Here., thanks to CPAC and YouTube, is the link: (please copy and paste in your browser)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlbFSpNASO4

As people of faith, there is no legal, moral, or theological justification for Israel's intention. It is clear that relevant political leaders will not heed the call of the Spirit for truth, justice, and peace. So it is up to all who are led by the Spirit to act as friends and companions on the Way of Jesus.

From the 1980s' campaign against the white South Afrikaner government we learned that recalcitrant supremacist governments and their allies do not listen to truth and justice for peace. We know that finally it was BDS - Boycott, Divest, and Sanction - brought about the tipping point for the liberation of South Africa's indigenous black and brown peoples. Today it is time again for BDS to finally help the State of Israel discover less costly and more legal, just, and life-giving ways of relating to the indigenous Palestinian peoples.

Just relations are not easy. Canada itself, and I as a settler Canadian, still have much to learn about our historic and current colonial relationship to the Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island. Our Earth and its diverse peoples is too small for the carnage and destruction settler colonialism wreaks in Israel and Canada. It must be transformed into healthy, just, and peaceful relationships - globally and locally.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlbFSpNASO4

The Whole World in God's Hands?

Thu, 17 Oct 2024 20:59:34 GMT

Can we believe that God holds the whole world in God's hands?

Colonial Aggression Plus

Palestinians, Lebanese, Ukrainians, Haitians, Democratic Republic of Congo population, Tibetans, the Uighur People in China, Rohingya People, the former colonies of the Global South, Indigenous People in too many countries including in Canada, in USA, in Latin America - the list of people suffering from the aggression of the more powerful colonizing nations seems endless. Add to that the other tragedies like climate change calamities, diseases that that damage and kill humans, etc. etc. and a crisis of faith is not out of place.

It is enough to make me, and probably many others who are still tuned into real news and more truthful reporting, to wonder and despair about God, prayer, covenants, miracles, and the whole of faith - personal and collective. I'm old enough to remember that radio / TV personality Gordon Sinclair became an atheist because he witnessed the suffering and desperation of the poorest in India and, what seemed to him, the world's readiness to live with this reality. This rationalisation of "the poor you will always have with you" ended faith for Sinclair. I've learned that it wasn't just poverty that needed to be lamented, imperialism's colonization was the meta-sin which allowed the "minor" sins to be neglected as normal.

Where is the Holy One?

Where is divine intervention to be witnessed? Some want to attribute to the divine's capability for intervention and punishment when e.g. disease strikes some with AIDS and gays; or when a natural disaster like a volcanic eruption kills many; or, vice versa, that abundance and success are the blessing of virtue and obedience.

It is hard to get over the idea that "in heaven" there is a person-like Deity / Judge who visits wrath upon the people we choose to regard as sinful and to favour those whom we believe to be living the "right way" or "doing the right things" (in our judgement). But the way I can apprehend the Holy One in the midst of life has little to do with a "Divine Intervenor" - comparable to Santa Claus, determining whose been "naughty or nice", and treating them accordingly.

That god is dead. I'm no atheist. The God I "apprehend," place trust in, and seek to honour in life, is revealed for me in the person Jesus, the anointed beloved one, who knows me and the entire one global human family endowed with gifts of the Spirit to discern and grow the Way of love and justice mercy and kindness - the sacred Shalom, the "reign of the Divine". All that diminishes this "reign", this sacred Shalom, is the consequence of not cultivating these gifts of the Spirit whose origin is the Divine. (see my blog post: minister.ca/revisitingthegreatcommission .)

Scriptural Witness

The scriptures - of both the Tanakh and the New Testament - when read in the light of the Reign of God, afford great help to discern the Way. For Covenant people, God is revealed and loved as the liberating God, who strengthens people to resist oppression, to seek their freedom in community and love of neighbour. "On these two commandments the whole Law (Torah), and the Prophets as well." (Matthew 22: 37-40; see also Deuteronomy 6:5; and Leviticus 19:18)

People of faith know themselves to be in relationship with the Holy One - a covenant relationship. Grateful to God for their liberation from bondage of diverse kinds they commit to cultivating the embedded gifts in their whole life and way of being. As a gracious gift, the Decalogue is provided to discern God's ethical intentions and the Way to Shalom.

Jesus simplifies but demands more than just issue-oriented obedience to the Ten Commandments. With a text from the Tanakh he calls us to: love God above all and neighbour as self. And in order to underline the horizontal point "In everything, do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets (Matthew 7:12), These "laws" become the measure of our affirmation or acceptance of the Covenant.

Covenant and Commandments

No longer is the primitive tribal god sovereign. The one who competes with powerless "other gods", with graven images, or demands of sacrifice that reveal blood and power thirst instead of the well-being of Creation and God's human family. "The nation state" is often such a graven image, false god, as we have learned in the twentieth century where the German nation, the Serbian nation, the Afrikaner nation, the Russian nation, the American nation itself and the political Zionist Israeli nation state were blasphemously accorded god-like status demanding sacrificial obedience and great cost of life to all who resisted. These false gods, based on racial supremacy a and subordination of "lesser peoples" lead their followers to the way of death, They contradict every one of the Commandments and therefore remove themselves from the Covenant with the Holy One. Too often we witness the liberated oppressed becoming the oppressor of another, weaker people.

Ten Commandments are summarized here and provide yardstick against which the failure of all these "Christian nations" can be measured:

"Then God spoke all these words, and said, "I am the Holy One who brought you out of the land of Egypt and of the house of bondage.

Do not worship any gods except me!
Do not make for yourselves any carved image or likeness of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth, and do not bow down to them or serve them! ... I will show kindness to the thousandth generation of those who love me and heed my commandments.
Do not utter the my Name to misuse it.....
Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy!....
Honour your mother and your father...
No murdering!
No adultery!
No stealing!
No false testimony against your neighbour!
No desiring your neighbour's house! ... or anything else that belongs to your neighbour."

(The Inclusive Bible translation, 2007.)

Maintaining Covenant?

In the past year and in the 75 years before that, and in the centuries before than one cannot say that the Judaeo-Christian peoples have carefully honoured and lived faithfully these Commandments and the summary of the Law Jesus taught in fidelity to the Covenant with God.

Christians

Anti-Judaism and antisemitic teaching and practice abounded in Christian countries while history tells us that ironically Islamic nations were in much more peaceful relations with Jews. The climax of this breach of the Covenant and Commandments was the evil goal by the Nazi oppressors and their supporters to exterminate all Jews. The Holocaust cannot be denied, nor rationalized away by anyone in their right mind. It persists as the worst of the genocidal crusades of too many nations. it is a failure with far too few prophetic voices calling for truth and justice.

Political Zionists

The past year and the history of the last century also stands out, for me, a person of faith, as a breach of the Judaeo-Christian Covenant with the Holy One and a pattern of negating the Torah as taught in scripture. We have seen Commandments 6, 8, 9 and 10 flagrantly broken by the political Zionist leadership of what is now the State of Israel deploying since the early 20th century its Armed Forces, powered by armaments from USA and other western nations using any and all opportunities to intentionally and brutally drive Palestinians from their homes and lands and asserting control if not sovereignty over much of Palestine, as if this was ordained by the Holy One of the covenant.

Nothing of the sacred is present in this annihilating quest - United Nations humanitarian personnel, refugees in tent camps, children in hospital and schools, medical personnel trying to save lives, journalists trying to report truthfully countering disinformation and lies from political Zionist agencies, and so much more evil - all indications that the foundational Covenant is in tatters, breached by humans with no regard for the God or neighbour. Lies and false witness are produced by the pro-Zionist Israeli government backed lobby to cover the evil intent and practice.

Judaism vs. Zionist Colonialism

In the words of Nurit Peled-Elthanan, Israeli professor of Philology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, author, and human rights activist,

"Israel has reached an unimaginable peak of evil. The only possible conclusion must be that Israeli evil has nothing to do with Judaism and that what is manifested in Israeli behavior is not Jewishness. It is pure colonialist nationalist and chauvinistic racism and should be treated as such." (Facebook post)

The State of Israel is not alone in this sin against the Holy One, but, at this moment in time is a singularly evil illustration. Instead of covenant fidelity, The State of Israel has presumed to be an imperial nation using any and all means to aggrandize and expand its territorial claims and to seek cover with both money and arms as vassals of an Empire to effect these national aims.

"Israel" - another meaning

Scripture understands "Israel" differently. "Israel is not a "natural" nation; it is, indeed, not a nation at all like the nations of the world. It is a supernatural, ethico-spiritual community, called into being by God to serve God's eternal purposes in history. It is community created by God's special act of covenant, first with Abraham [and Sarah & Hagar], and then with Israel collectively at Sinai.... Apart from the covenant, Israel is as nothing and Jewish existence a mere delusion. The covenant is at the very heart of the Jewish self-understanding of its own reality."

(from "Jewish Existence and Survival. A Theological View" by Will Herberg, cited in Mark Lind S.J. These Stones Will Shout - A New Voice for the Old Testament. Argus Communications 1975). p. 82f.

Room for the Others!

In that nation or land there must be room for non-Jews, who must be treated as "citizens" like all other citizens. "You shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you, You shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God." (Leviticus 19:33f). In scripture there is no "nation" which excludes the alien or stranger. The claim to drive out the Palestinian Arab people from Palestine so that an exclusive "safe" Jewish state can be built is an assault on both the righteousness and the sovereignty of the Holy One - a negation of the Covenant and the Torah, and unmindful of God's love for the entire global human family

Jubilee Hopes

Would that the scriptural year of Jubilee might be celebrated to allow the Palestinians to return to their land and the two peoples might learn again to live justly in shared harmony and peace (Leviticus 25:1-55 ).

For both peoples this would be a challenging, but liberating event. That would be a sign not only that the Covenant with God is being honoured, but also that God is alive as the family's Spirit endowment is being made fruitful. It would free us to sing confidently and joyfully, God has the whole world in God's hands!!!!

Let us pray, work, and wait expectantly for the end of all oppression and brutal demonization of neighbour.

May it be so, on earth as it is in heaven.

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As part of our work in faith, please write to MPs, Leaders of the Opposition parties, and the Prime Minister to call for an end to this war on Palestinians.

Empire and Genocides Statement

Thu, 19 Sep 2024 19:19:45 GMT

Where lies justice and hope of recovery?

The Peace Palace in The Hague, The Netherlands

Picture: Pexels / Patrick Jaksic

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This picture is chosen to remind us that even if the Gospel and divine justice are disdained, there is still the International Court of Justice and its commitment to global justice. Will its gifts and judgements ever be honoured by the "great" powers? Will the "crucified" peoples be able to count on observance of international law?

Ed. note : This unusual post is an earnest, profound document by pastors, scholars, teachers, lawyers, human rights & peace activists, and victims and survivors of genocides and the historical crimes perpetrated by European and USA-led corporate structures of injustice and oppression. The consultation took place in Windhoek, Namibia - a site of genocide in the early 20th century - to reflect on the profound issues "of Empire and Genocide" that confront us today and that call for people of faith to respond creatively and imaginatively with justice, love for others, as we walk with the Creator..

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We Charge Genocide - Again!

Cry of the Earth’s Peoples against the Geopolitics of Empire

STATEMENT

THE GLOBAL CONSULTATION ON

EMPIRE AND GENOCIDES: WHERE LIES JUSTICEAND HOPE OF RECOVERY?

20-24 August 2024, Windhoek, NAMIBIA.

Gathered under the auspices of the Council of Churches of Namibia (CCN), the All Africa Conference of Churches (AACC), the Council for World Mission (CWM), and the World Communion of Reformed

Churches (WCRC), we have convened to reflect on the profound issues of Empire and Genocide that

confront us today. This global consultation has brought together a diverse assembly of church and

ecumenical leaders, traditional authorities, academics, human rights activists, and most importantly, the victims and survivors of genocides and the historical crimes perpetrated by European and US-led corporate and political structures of injustice and oppression. Together we have come from 27 countries, representing academic institutions, and church and religious organizations mainly from the Global South. The consultation was intentionally held in Namibia which was the location of the first genocide of the 20th century in 1904. The notorious medical experiments that were conducted in the Nazi genocide of the Jewish people later were first unleased on the native peoples here in Namibia.

We resist selective application of the crime of genocide by the empire that suits its geopolitical agenda. We uphold that ‘Never Again’ means not ‘never again for my people alone’, but ‘never again for any people’. We state this at a time that the most reported genocide in our history is unfolding against the Palestinian people in Gaza with the total culpability of the imperial powers.

Genocide continues, and its legacy devastates, unleashed all too often by the multifaceted geopolitics of empire. Jesus of Nazareth, by whom our communities are empowered and inspired, lived among people suffering Roman imperial subjugation. He practiced concrete care for the marginalized and oppressed. He embodied a spirit of radical love and prophetic justice, which brought down upon him the torturous death by crucifixion that Rome reserved for those it deemed a political threat.

We name as “crucified peoples” all those who face geopolitical systems of empire that force upon them similarly cruel death, and the torturous conditions of massacre, starvation, displacement, economic exploitation, and, in the extreme, genocide, which means annihilation in part or in whole as a people. “Crucified peoples” are those who both suffer and resist these brutalities of empire. They embody both despair and hope.

Our Purpose: Witnessing Resistance among Crucified Peoples

The motivating purpose of the conference was to witness the resistance of the crucified, the impoverished, women, young people and children in their steadfast refusal to be erased and annihilated. Our statement arises from the cry of the earth’s people against the geopolitics of empire, the way empire continues to unleash “necropolitics” (i.e. a politics, practice and even celebration of death).

As we met, we were overcome by the urgency of the ongoing genocide in Palestine (Gaza and the ongoing ethnic cleansing in the West Bank). Over 40,000 have now been slaughtered in Gaza by the US-armed and backed Israeli state, with more than 90,000 maimed and wounded. The total dead by disease and starvation has been estimated at over 160,000.

However, we also bear the urgency of the invisibility and lack of recognition of the ongoing genocides in Myanmar - of the Rohingya, DRC-Congo, West Papua and Sudan among others and the ongoing consequences persisting from the legacy of genocide in occupied Tamil Eelam, Namibia, Turtle Island (North America), and of the Indigenous and black peoples of Abya Yala (Latin America).

We were moved by the reality of the genocide of the Nama and Herero peoples in Namibia that began in 1904, and who continue to resist and demand reparations against the settler colonialism of the Germans (German Namibians make up 2 per cent of Namibia's 3.1 million population but own about 70 per cent of the country's land).

The context forced us to ask the question, what role have the church, ecumenical partners, and other religions played, and can continue to play, in finding justice for the crucified peoples in the processes of genocide settings? How must the church stand with the crucified and commit to stopping the ongoing genocides and dismantling the unjust world order that foments them? To urgently transform empire and its structures and systems of necropolitics and put in place measures to detect and prevent potential genocides?

The enduring reality of genocides, whether in our distant or recent past, has highlighted the often- complicit silence of religious institutions and the urgent need for a renewed commitment to justice. This entails overcoming the death-promoting policy of a globalized and militarized capitalism, which systematically protects the interests of a transnational corporate class of elite power. This elite power deploys repressive supremacies and ideologies, and with grief and rage we note that these are often justified biblically and religiously.

Even as we must name our complicity and challenge the churches, we must also join with the other religions and spiritualities to charge the empire itself, and its supporters from any religion. We have learned to see through the imperial project and its pretensions. Empire’s geopolitics has included the masking of its genocides and mass atrocities, its political and economic exploitations, behind claims to be bringing “civilization,” “development,” “democracy,”, “human rights”, “freedom”, and even “salvation”. We have heard the cries of the earth’s peoples against these dehumanizing geopolitical pretensions and the peoples’ unceasing hope for a just world.

Our Method: The Perspectives of the Crucified.

We recognize that the only way to overcome this death-dealing reality is from the perspectives of the

crucified peoples—the community of victims, survivors, and oppressed—both the diaspora and those who remain in their land. A persistent hearing of the cries and analyses of crucified peoples became our “method.” This consultation aimed to ensure that our actions and strategies are led by those deeply informed by their suffering, experiences, needs, and aspirations as the subjects of restoration, justice, and transformation.

The presentations and discussions demonstrated the understanding that genocide is embedded in and is perpetuated by geopolitics of empire driven by the most recent forms of 21st-century capitalism. Genocide is a social process of destruction of peoples, including but beyond mass killings; it involves displacement, theft of land, extraction of natural resources, cultural destruction, intergenerational trauma and epistemicide (the eradication of our ways of knowledge), stigmatization, dehumanization, social and economic exclusion.

It is not only the systematic extermination of a people in whole or in part it is also the imposition of the

oppressor’s identity on the oppressed. The world order imposes a system of global apartheid; dominated by death-promoting policy, this system is the expression of violent domination imbued with the power to control by deciding who can live and who must die. Disproportionately, those who “can live” are the beneficiaries of white racism and its other ethno-religious versions, and those who “must die” are viewed as the racialized “others,” particularly women among them.

Through the eyes of the victims, we see how the framework of international law has bolstered the

necropolitics of empire. We lift up the rights of resistance and self-determination enshrined within

international law with all its flaws and pledge to struggle for the full and equal application of those rights.

Our Framing: A Geopolitics of Omnicide

Empire is a giant omnicidal machine that devours people, the earth and the future for the sake of profit, power and dominance of the few at the cost of the lives of many. The “omnicidal” character of the imperial machine is why we refer to the “geopolitics of empire.” Within the context of a death-dealing capitalistic economic system, profit-making and wealth accumulation lie at the very heart of the empire. Whether this is emergent through colonialism, settler colonialism, racialized capitalism or neo-liberal economic systems, it is the logic of power, supremacy and capital accumulation that has driven modern genocides.

Empire’s geopolitical designs include its own necro-theology that resonates with and reinforces genocidal necropolitics. It, too, operates in the geopolitics of our time. This necro-theology demands that everything, particularly life, be laid at the altar of profit-making. This is done through a fusion of economic, political, military, and theological power for the sake of the interests and profits of the few.

Genocide is not to be reduced to its legal definition but is a complex aggregate cumulative and often a

gradual social process. It is usually the result of processes of exclusion, marginalization and impoverishment that make certain human groups considered dispensable and, therefore, killable.

Presentations on Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, the Congo, Rwanda, West Papua, Myanmar, Brazil, Mexico and Puerto Rico, and others, all showed the limitation of the strict legal definitions of genocide, which can make invisible the destruction of people from land theft, impoverishment and displacement. We resist narrow definitions of genocide that suit imperial geopolitics. We focus on the collective experiences of the crucified peoples rather than the intentions of the imperial powers and assert the peoples’ right to exist.

We recognize that empire and genocides come with cruel consequences that have devastating effects on the victims and survivors. These are not only physical but also emotional, and mental, social, and spiritual and serve to break down the life-sustaining economic and cultural practices of those who have been brutalized.

Our Burden: The Role of Bible, Theology and Church

We especially confronted the role of theology, religion and the Bible in justifying and promoting empire and the genocide that is its poisoned fruit. We name and reject state theologies that promote and sacralize genocide. We recognize the church theologies that seek to focus on love, justice, peace and reconciliation but fall short in standing with “the crucified” in the dismantling of systems, structures and ideologies of oppression and death.

We commit ourselves to embrace prophetic theology and praxis rooted in liberation and centred on the ethic of justice and life for all (John 10:10). Put simply, the Bible has texts that are genocidal, promote genocidal ideologies, and describe genocide. We recognize that the Bible has been used in modern-day genocides, including but not limited to the Nama & Herero genocides, colonial genocides in the Americas/Turtle Island/ Abya Yala, and in Rwanda (e.g. deploying a “Hamitic Hypothesis”). We recognize that the Bible is both a tool of empire and a source of inspiration toward liberation. We call for a liberating hermeneutic of religious texts.

Religion has always played a role in the justification of imperial necropolitics. We expose and denounce all religious justification of empire and genocide specifically but not in any way limited to the Christian church.

We, therefore, recognize that there is church complicity in the initiation and perpetuation of genocide, both in the past as well as in the present. Therefore, we call on the church to recognize, repent, restore, make reparations and reconcile for its sins, standing at all times with the crucified.

We further recognize that the church is not always best placed to work for reparations, rebuilding and reconciliation. The complicity of the church has also compromised its ability to be a healing community.

Moreover, we encourage all other religions and spiritualities, of whatever nation and people, to examine its religious texts and traditions for the ways they can also be complicit with genocide, to reinforce genocide rather than to resist it. We therefore commit ourselves to deepening inter-religious anti-imperial alliances for life and call on all religious communities to join with us in common religious action for liberation and justice in

solidarity with the crucified.

Our Calls

The call for justice based on the ethic of life for all extends to and embraces the plight of our planet, which imperils the life of the whole earth community. We call on the international community and all peoples of faith, particularly the church communities who prophetically convened us, to urgently bend all advocacy and political efforts to stand with the community of the crucified in their struggle for self-determination, healing, restoration, reparation and justice. We ask them to renounce genocidal theologies and biblical interpretations of empire and struggle to dismantle the death-

dealing globalized capitalist economic system.

All participants have committed themselves to common action and to work to create on going mechanisms for advocacy and transformative justice against empire and genocide, specifically:

1) We commit to accompany the affected communities and churches in the building of unity in their

pursuit of justice and reparations for the genocide in Namibia faced with German refusal to assume

responsibility for the genocide, according to international standards and norms. We call on the AACC,

CWM and WCRC to join with us in these efforts.

2) We request that this declaration be transmitted with immediate effect to the international ecumenical community, including the Church World Communions, the WCC, the German churches, the REOs, and the Vatican, with the explicit call for solidarity with liberating prophetic action with the community of the crucified.

3) We commit ourselves to find ways to convene a meeting with representatives of the churches and

affected communities, including the diaspora, in all contexts of ongoing genocides to promote the unity of actions of the communities of the crucified and urge AACC, CWM and WCRC to join with us in this effort.

4) We call on the Christian World Communions and their member churches to reinvigorate theological reflections on genocide, to emphasize its incompatibility with the Christian faith. This needs to be made a part of theological education, and then faithfully woven into our liturgies and faith practices.

We call on the Churches to recognize the ongoing genocide in Palestine, emphasizing that this has emerged out of a legacy of occupation, settler colonialism and apartheid. We further call on the churches to repent of Christian Zionism, which we name as a gross misinterpretation and misunderstanding of both Bible and theology. We further call for political and economic solidarity with those who are being crucified in Palestine. In keeping with the ICJ’s determination of the state of Israel in apartheid illegal occupation, ethnic cleansing, and “plausible genocide,” we call on the church community to act consequently, calling all UN member states to end all diplomatic and economic relations with Israel until all findings of the ICJ are complied with.

We commit ourselves to participating in the global BDS movement and to mobilize our churches,

organizations and institutions to do the same. We call on the Churches and Church Institutions of the West to receive, read and respond with justice and repentance to Kairos Palestine, “A call for Repentance - An Open Letter from Palestinian Christians to Western Church leaders and theologians.

5) We call on the ecumenical community to join forces with those who are pursuing alternatives to global capitalism and the furthering of the principles and goals of the NIFEA (New International Financial and Economic Architecture) processes to dismantle the military-industrial complex and create economies of life beyond empire.

6) We call on UN and international courts to ensure that international law adopts parameters to guarantee that legal responses to genocide are also future-oriented and justice seeking.

7) We commit ourselves to creating concrete mechanisms for accompanying churches and affected

communities of the crucified during the genocide and struggles for self-determination. This should include training and supporting a rapid response team that strengthens the pastoral, political, and advocacy actions of churches against genocide in solidarity with those crucified by empire and its allies. We recognize the necessity and priority of victims/survivors directly participating in such mechanisms. We urge the AACC, CWM and WCRC to work with us in this effort.

8) We urge that follow-up actions to this conference be planned to increase the full participation of women and young people.

9) In all follow-up actions, we call for the building and strengthening of our inter-religious alliances,

including with indigenous and traditional spiritualities.

The call is clear. We know what is required of us: to do justice, love, and walk with the God of Life.

- Participants of the Consultation

24 August 2024

Windhoek, Namibia

The above Statement is endorsed by:

Ms. Jessica Chandrashekar Canada

Rev. Dr Chris Ferguson Canada

Prof. David Mayele Democratic Republic of the Congo

Rev. Issac Kalonji Democratic Republic of the Congo

Rev. Dr Bruk Ayele Asale Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia

Dr Ambia Perveen Federal Republic of Germany

Prof. Helen Ishola-Esan Federal Republic of Nigeria

Rev. Dr Lesmore Ezekiel Federal Republic of Nigeria

Dr Wanderley Pereira da Rosa Federative Republic of Brazil

Rev. Dr Lusmarina Campos Garcia Federative Republic of Brazil

Dr Gianni Tognoni Italian Republic

Rt.Rev. Zwanini Shabalala Kingdom of Eswatini

Dr Luciano Chanhelela CHIANEQUE Republic of Angola

Rev. Rupert Hambira Republic of Botswana

Bishop Eraste Bigirimana Republic of Burundi

Rev. Prof. David Mbengu Republic of Cameroon

Bishop Hilliard Dogbe Republic of Ghana

Dr Sudipta Singh Republic of India

Rev. Philip Peacock Republic of India

Dr Fransina Yoteni Republic of Indonesia

Dr Jude Lal Fernando Republic of Ireland

Rev. Dr Patrick Musembi Republic of Kenya

Prof. James Amanze Republic of Malawi

Bishop Manuel Ernestor Republic of Mozambique

Chief Jonathan Katjimune Republic of Namibia

Dr Paul Isaak Republic of Namibia

Gaob Dawid Gertze Republic of Namibia

Mr George Pieters Republic of Namibia

Mr Steven Isaack Republic of Namibia

Mr Werner Hillebrecht Republic of Namibia

Mrs Naledi /Uiras Republic of Namibia

Mutjinde Katjiua Republic of Namibia

Rev. James Fredericks Republic of Namibia

Rev. Heinz Mouton Republic of Namibia

Bishop John Rucyahana Republic of Rwanda

Rev. Dr Lungile Mpetsheni Republic of South Africa

Ms Hming Sangi Republic of the Union of Myanmar

Prof. Lovemore Togarasei Republic of Zimbabwe

Rev. Kudzani NDEBELE Republic of Zimbabwe

Dr Yousef Alkhouri State of Palestine

Prof. Faith Lugazia United Republic of Tanzania

Dr Carmen Margarita Sánchez de León United States of America

Dr Mark Lewis Taylor United States of America

end

Appeal for Solidarity

Thu, 12 Sep 2024 16:32:05 GMT

Who Will Stand with Palestinians?

Blogger's introduction:

From epicentre of the criminal disaster being inflicted upon Palestine, a voice of reason and faith can only lament, rage, and seek solace wherever. Listen carefully, please to this informed voice of Palestinian human beings.

For 76 years, political Zionist leaders of the State of Israel have been implementing Plan Dalet: expand Israeli control over all Palestine and banish, incarcerate, annihilate its Palestinian indigenous population. The Plan's aim has been to create an exclusive Jewish homeland freed of Palestinian Arabs. Repeatedly since and even before the Partition in 1948, the militarily superior and Western armed forces of Israel have used Palestinian resistance as the trigger to advance the political Zionist Plan - a Nakba process.

The Hamas-led assault of October 7, 2023 has unleashed any restraints that may have held Israel back. Currently 41,000 Gazan children, women, and men have been murdered and hundred thousand more grievously injured. Universities, schools, hospitals, churches, homes and essential infrastructure bombed and dynamited, Necessities of life have been held back with the result, according to Lancet journal, that as many as many as 185,000 Gazans can be expected to die.

It is a genocide - think what that word means.

This human catastrophe is a moral catastrophe for the faithful of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. It is a legal abyss which the International Court of Justice has declared unlawful. The International Criminal Court is processing warrants for the arrest of both the Prime Minister and Defense Minister of Israel. Western political leaders, esp. the USA, UK, Germany, and Canada are complicit in these war crimes by virtue of their ongoing funding and supplying of arms to the State of Israel.

What is published below is a strong voice crying in this wilderness of rubble created by State of Israel's political and military powers fueled by racist hate against the persevering victims who have been dispossessed and brutalized by heavily armed settler neo-colonial forces.

Palestinians plead with people of faith, hope, justice, and truth to stop just looking and to engage this evil with all their gifts of the Spirit, so that Palestinians may just continue to nurture the will to live in their diversely populated ancestral homeland, as promised by the UN resolution 194 - the right to return, and with it, the right to self-determination as UNDRIP* promises and as the Holy One intends and cherishes for all in the ONE human family.

What are faith communities doing to the "resist evil and to seek justice" in blood-saturated Palestine?

Harry Oussoren

*United Nation Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

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Palestinians: A Struggle for Survival in a World Turned Away....

by Rifat Kassis ,

Kairos Palestine & Global Kairos for Justice coalition

General Coordinator. Senior Consultant

Ruthless Settler Colonial Occupation

The Palestinian people, like many nations throughout history—Americans under British rule, the French during Nazi occupation, Indians under British imperialism, Algiers under French occupation and others—find themselves under the iron grip of ruthless military occupation. Israel, the occupying power, imposes a regime of oppression and apartheid that denies Palestinians all their fundamental rights among them to live in dignity and freedom.

Resistance

For decades, Palestinians have employed every method in their pursuit of liberation. They have taken up arms in resistance, but violence has led only to further devastation. They have committed to non-violence, hoping that the world would recognize their humanity, yet the global community remains largely indifferent.

Appeals to the United Nations and international community have been met with hollow promises, resolutions that remain unenforced, and a paralyzed institution incapable of holding Israel accountable.

They have turned to international courts in search of justice, only to discover that these courts are designed to prosecute the powerless, not the powerful.

Expansion of the State of Israel's Warfare

Today, the situation grows increasingly dire. Israel now targets cities like Jenin and Tulkarem with the same military force it uses against Gaza, using starvation, tanks and launching airstrikes that violate international law by targeting protected civilian populations.

The Palestinian Authority, weakened and powerless, cannot defend its people. Israel, as the occupying power, shirks its obligations under international law, choosing instead to deepen its hegemony and crimes.

The United States and Europe continue to supply Israel with finance, weapons and political cover, ensuring that the genocide endures unchallenged.

Meanwhile, the United Nations remains ineffective, incapable of enforcing its own resolutions. The Arab and Muslim worlds have proven too weak or disinterested to offer meaningful support.

The Grim Reality

In this grim reality, Palestinians are left with haunting questions: What can we do? Where can we go? How can we act? The world has turned its back, leaving Palestinians to either be killed in their homeland or face forced displacement yet again. It is a cruel world indeed, where justice is a distant dream and the struggle for freedom is met with silence.

In the face of this relentless violence and dehumanization, where even the very essence of our humanity is denied by those who call us "human animals," I have lost faith in the capacity of countries, politicians, diplomats, religious institutions, and the international community to halt the ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing against us.

The persistent failure of these entities to act against the brutality inflicted upon Palestinians has driven me to seek refuge in a final, desperate appeal: I call upon animal rights protection organizations and movements to extend their compassion to us, to spare our lives, and to protect us from the genocide that looms over us.

In a world where human rights are disregarded, perhaps the basic instinct to protect life, even that of animals, might awaken some semblance of action to prevent our annihilation.

Gaza and UCC

Wed, 28 Aug 2024 19:36:45 GMT

Laws and Prophets Time for Gaza

image source: My/Clay Banks

#2 in the Series: the 10 Commandments and Palestine

For some time, many United Church of Canada folks have been calling for the leadership of the Church to speak up about the heinous war the State of Israel is waging on Palestinians as both revenge for October 7th and as an opportunity to fulfill the 76+ years political-Zionist Plan D goal to have sovereignty over all of Palestine and eliminating Palestinian residents.

I am happy to report that the UCC General Secretary has issued a strong letter encouraging, among other ideas, that Canada suspend diplomatic relations with the State of Israel. The letter is a major step forward in calling not on for a ceasefire and humanitarian responses, but also a call to begin diplomatic negotiations triggered by the International Court of Justice's clear condemnation of the State of Israel's illegality.

Publishing the link to the letter and also to the home page of the UCC is my aim to spread the word and spark local action and advocacy in light of Palestinian suffering. All who seek justice and peace are called to contribute to ending this heinous war. Well over 40,000 Palestinians have already been murdered, with famine killing others, polio breaking out because of unhygienic conditions created by Israeli bombardment of infrastructure, and where as many as 186,000 could be killed by the time the genocide stops according to a report in the Lancet publication. That number and the term "genocide" are clear violations of the Divine Commandment: You shall not kill and breach International laws. Such killing prowess cannot but destroy faith and lay waste to any ethical and peaceable values for both the shooter and those shot, the living and those who grieve the dead.

This colonizing war presents the western world and its Christian churches with foundational challenges and the risk of ethical nihilism. The 76-year war must be stopped so that justice for Palestinians, including their United Nations' promised "right of return" and the restoration of self-determination so that Israel's apartheid settler colonialism may be reversed.

All people who reside in Palestine "from the sea to river" must learn to learn to live without fear, hate, and the threat of war, and learn the ways of peaceful co-existence as people with diverse gifts to share. It is what God intend for the entire human family and people of faith can no longer fail to answer God's call crying from the rubble. The letter follows:

Michael Blair, General Secretary of the General Council of the United Church of Canada, letter of

Aug 13, 2024 to

The Right Honourable Justin Trudeau, P.C., M.P. Prime Minister of Canada

House of Commons Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0A2

Justin.trudeau@parl.gc.ca Justin.trudeau@pmo-pmc.gc.ca

RE: Canada should suspend diplomatic relations with Israel, given Israel’s flagrant disregard for international law.

follow this link for the full text: https://united-church.ca/news/dear-prime-minister-quiet-diplomacy-isnt-working and other UCC documents on Palestine.

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Naomi Klein, professor at the University of British Columbia, Canada

As further insight from a Jewish moral point of view, I commend to you Naomi Klein's thoughtful and courageous speech delivered at an emergency seder held on New York streets. It reflects on political Zionist agenda and its destructive consequences for faith and humans. It was published in the Guardian and may be summarized in this quote: " Zionism is a false idol that has taken the idea of the promised land and turned it into a deed of sale for a militaristic ethnostate."

Follow this link to read her Tanakh/biblically aware insightful piece: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/24/zionism-seder-protest-new-york-gaza-israel

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.....More to come in this series on the Ten Commandments and Palestine

10 Commandments and Palestine

Mon, 29 Jul 2024 21:22:32 GMT

You shall not covet....

Picture source: Pexel / Mohammad/Abubakr

Ten Commandments and Palestine - #1

I’m just back from another weekly demonstration (40 so far) organized by Palestinian Canadian young people in the Ottawa region. It is a ritual sign of support for people of Palestine and a challenge to Canadian political and community leaders. My life partner Glenys and I have attended about half of these marches since October 6/7. (We are not oblivious to the horrors of those days, but we are even more aware of its aftermath and the history of horrors preceding them.)

The processions usually start at the Human Rights Monument before Ottawa’s City Hall, proceed toward the War Memorial, over to the Rideau Centre, to the USA embassy, and then to the office of the Prime Minister and/or Parliament. At times there have been several thousand peaceful demonstrators.

Most recently there were several hundred – summer vacations and heat, maybe some fatigue. The marches are noisy with meaningful chants, drum beats, and flags flying, with friendly companionship and mutual appreciation for the cause. They are peaceful.

I’m amazed at the justice-based concern motivating the young organizers to persevere. When Canadian political leaders can’t seem to hear the call for justice or understand the evil that is being perpetrated in Gaza and keep acting like Palestinians don’t matter, these young people persist.

The weekly marches continue and the call for justice continues in the face of Israel’s boundless commitment to annihilation of all Palestinian resistance (not just Hamas’) and the continuation of its colonizing ethnic cleansing, its apartheid, and “plausible” genocide – the continuing Nakba, catastrophe.

I wish my church – The United Church of Canada (UCC) – were as courageous and committed to advocating for historic truth, legal and moral justice, and peaceful co-existence for all who dwell in Palestine as these young people are. It isn’t.

I am ashamed to say that our denomination, along with too many other Christian denominations, is more concerned to appease the powerful Canadian pro-political Zionist lobby than to witness prophetically against the settler colonial agenda the State of Israel has pursued throughout the 20 ^th century and now nearing its deadly climax in 2024.

Regrettably, the UCC has not come to a theological, biblical, and accurate historical understanding – TRUTH - of what has been transpiring in Palestine over the last hundred years and what Palestinian indigenous people – Christian, Muslim, and other faiths, including Jewish - have suffered under the neo-colonial occupation and militarized State of Israel.

Our church has watered down prophetic witness into safe "balanced" calls for “both sides” to cease fire, to pursue vague justice, and for generous humanitarian initiatives to assuage suffering. But it has refused to recognize the State of Israel's settler colonialism, the ethnic cleansing, the apartheid domination, and the disproportionate massacres triggered when the subjugated people exercise their right to resist the illegal occupation and its terrors. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) clearly said on July 19 ^th that the occupation of the Palestinian Territory is unlawful, must end. Israel must pay reparations to those victimized, and settlements cleared!

Our church leadership’s considered response has too long been to play it safe. Why? Is it because of our guilt about historic Christian oppression of Jews, because of the Shoah (the Holocaust), and Christendom’s part in the annihilating racist mania of the Nazis?

Is it because we want to continue befriending the Jewish community – a worthy and desirable goal to which I am committed, but are afraid to speak truthfully because it might undermine this friendship, thereby indicating how flimsy it is? Is it because of the threat of the powerful political Zionist lobby, which wants any critique of the State of Israel condemned – even criminalized – with its weaponized definition of antisemitism.

Antisemitism is evil. The Shoah (holocaust) blasphemed the Holy One and subjected Jewish people to racism’s ugliest and most costly terror. It cannot and may not be denied. Antisemitism and anti-Judaism are an "affront to the Gospel of Jesus, a Jew born in Roman-occupied Palestine." (General Council of the UCC, 2003)

At the same time, the Shoah and antisemitism’s realities do not and may not accord Jews and the State of Israel a right to impunity. The standards and laws of international justice – whether they be religious, legal, social or simply humanitarian – must be honoured.

No one or any group or nation may claim without penalty the right to denigrate and subject Palestinians (Arabs, Muslims, etc.) to racism’s hatred, terror, or neglect. Anti-Palestinianism, anti-Arabism, along with Islamophobia have been cultivated especially in the western world. They are equivalent to antisemitism for Arabs and Palestinians. The impacts of these “isms” are evidenced by the war on Gaza and by the one-sided biases of governments, institutions, media, religious organizations, and by the lobbying work of pro-political Zionist and State of Israel interests. Anti-Palestinianism is rampant and largely unaddressed. Thank God that the International Criminal Court is pursuing the war criminals.

The foundational religious, better, human norm is clear: “do unto others as you would have them to you.” Each faith brings other teaching and commitments to this divine wisdom, but none, worthy of the term “religion,” is entitled to negate this cardinal command. (Matthew 7:12)

For Jews, the Tanakh – Hebrew scriptures - teaches much about Torah, laws for living and faithfulness. For Christians, the Tanakh or First/Old Testament, along with the Second/New Testament are foundational witnesses to God’s journey with people of faith. Both religions can affirm Jesus’ summing up of the “Law and Prophet” faith heritage: “to love the Holy One above all and the neighbour as self.” (see Deuteronomy 5:4-6; Leviticus 19:18; Mark 12:28-31.)

Observing this two-part commandment carries with it a divine promise of long life in a thriving context – land of promise – an eschatological vision, falsely transformed into a geographical area by biblical literalists and political Zionists.

I’m starting this scriptural reflection on Palestine history with the core legal tradition of the Judaeo-Christian world: The Ten Commandments or the Decalogue (Exodus 20:1-7; Deuteronomy 5:6-21). Too many books have been written about these moral imperatives, but history tells us that they have been observed far too often in the breach. Profoundly so in the case of the ongoing Nakba of Palestine.

Let me start with the Tenth Commandment since it seems to be the trigger for other breaches of commandments:

“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.” (Remember, the Moses vision is set in a patriarchal society.)

It’s a property matter. Everything in the sentence (and all that could be added) “belongs” to another (man). So, the law commands us, 20 ^th century folks, not to covet – a word that has slight usage today, but is the verb describing boundless activities by the human family. Merriam-Webster defines “covet” as “to desire (what belongs to another human – male or female or gender-free) inordinately or culpably.”

The Bible gives us several examples of what is meant and their implications. I'll offer two.

The story of King David forcing himself on Bathsheba is such a story (2 Samuel 11 & 12). She is the faithful wife of Uriah, a courageous soldier in David’s military – by the standards of that time “she belongs to Uriah”. In a sordid tale David arranges for Uriah’s death in battle, and finally causes Bathsheba to occupy his royal bed. In the process he breaks not just the 10th, but also the 6th (don’t murder) and the 8th (don’t steal) commands. A case could be made for adultery (7 ^th ) and even for the 1st (no other gods before the Holy One – i.e. sex; and certainly for the crime of rape).

David’s crimes do not go unchallenged. The courageous wise prophet Nathan tells a gentle parable about a covetous rich man, with many sheep, and a poor neighbour, with only a beloved lamb. It mirrors David with both his crime and the rage of the Holy One at injustice against the vulnerable. There is a cost to crime and sin.

Another story is that of Naboth, a simple farmer of his family’s ancestral vineyard. He is neighbour to the royal couple, King Ahab and Queen Jezebel (1 Kings 21). Ahab has both the money, the power, and the desire/covetousness to acquire the beloved vineyard. Naboth, respecting the 5 ^th Commandment – “honour your father and mother” - declines to sell away his inheritance.

Result: royal fury and an infantile sulk. Jezebel comes to the rescue and they conspire. They arrange for a breach of the 9 ^th commandment – “bearing false witness” by two paid thugs falsely accusing Naboth of “cursing God and the king” (a sin against the 3rd Commandment - "don't take the name of God in vain.") The assembled court convicts and Naboth is stoned to death – murder . The 10 ^th commandment has begotten action to breach also the 6 ^th (don’t kill) and the 8 ^th (don’t steal) commandment and to deny Naboth his right to observe the 5 ^th .

The royal pair are on their way to occupy and enjoy their ill-gotten vineyard, but there is an obstacle. The prophet Elijah crosses their path. “Have you killed and also taken possession of the coveted vineyard?” Disaster looms for Ahab, Jezebel, and their clan for the evil “they committed in the sight of Adonai.” The voice of the Holy One comes through courageous inspired prophets described in the Tanakh.

Since the late 19 ^th century, political Zionists have coveted and planned to make Palestine a Jewish homeland. After World War I, the United Kingdom had mandate responsibilities for the well-being of Palestine taken from the defeated Ottoman Empire.

British politicians also wanted to solve their “Jewish problem” in the western world, where Canada and other countries weren’t willing to put out the welcome mat to Europe’s Jews. They came up with the idea of a homeland in Palestine for the diaspora Jews scattered widely in Europe and looking for a less dangerous place.

It took some years, but eventually the United Nations, with military support from USA, UK, France and more, approved the idea of partitioning Palestine with Israel taking the lion’s share of the land and the Palestinian people getting the left overs.

The Nakba or Catastrophe of 1948 was the result with hundreds of thousands made refugees, facing well-armed Irgun, Hagana, Stern Gang, and and the official state military units doing the crime of “ethnic cleansing” for the partition.

Plan Dalet, well-secured in Israeli files, called for as much land as possible to be taken and controlled by the Zionist government of the new ethnically-based state to be named Israel, suggesting, but not at all proving, continuity with biblical kingdoms Judea and Israel (see 2Kings 14-16). Massacres, theft of properties, illegal settlements, military control, and disproportionately murderous responses to Palestinian resistance became the long-term plan.

The State of Israel's current Gaza war fits into the long-term plan as a climactic opportunity to vastly expand the controlled territory of the Palestinian people.

Read Jewish scholar Ilan Pappe’s “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine” (ISBN 978 1 851 685 555 4) for the story – very much like the biblical stories above. Or delve into Mitri Raheb's "Decolonizing Palestine - The Land, The People, The Bible." (ISBM 978 1 62698 549 0).

More to come as we reflect on the Ten Commandments

Memories, Connections, Gratitude

Fri, 05 Jul 2024 19:26:25 GMT

An Anniversary Vacation to Remember and Appreciate

The cost of war is incalculable for soldiers and all who loved them. D. Smith's grave in the Canadian Forces cemetery in Dieppe,

is the last home for him and 825 other comrades killed on August 22, 1942.

Vacation?

Was it a vacation? Some holidays may focus on lying on the beach and soaking up sun and surf. Others may centre on one or two places where sights and sounds entice further exploration. This period of our lives was a time to remember, to reconnect, to renew.

On the Continent

We flew to Amsterdam’s Schiphol and returned home from London’s Heathrow. Between those two flights we were in five different countries. Admittedly our family roots made Wales and Zeeland the preferred regions in the UK and The Netherlands, respectively; but we also drove into Germany, Belgium, and France in pursuit of disparate roots.

War's Legacy

Honouring our Canadian heritage, we decided to visit two sacred sites witnessing to the huge cost of diplomacy’s end. The pristine military cemetery at Holten is a silent witness to the campaign to liberate the Dutch nation (into which I had just been born) from the brutal yoke of Nazi Germany. The post D-Day bloody battles fought north of the great rivers finally resulted in the end of the great famine that killed thousands of big-city citizens. And thousands more in uniform and Dutch resisters paid dearly to gain the articles of capitulation that Canada’s General Charles Foulkes required his German counterparts to sign on May 5 ^th , 1945.

The other site was Dieppe on the Normandy coast. On August 22, 1942, 821 Canadians from across the country were killed in a badly planned assault on the heavily guarded beaches of Dieppe. Over 1500 Canadians became prisoners of war, impatiently awaiting the D-Day (June 6, 1944) turn of fortune. Carefully maintained cemeteries in both countries speak of grateful nations and of terrible loss, suffering, grief, and sorrow.

Family Connecting

In my birth land, we took time to visit with cousins. This time we invited them to visit with us since we had so often been welcomed in their homes on previous Europe trips. We rented a bungalow near Hilversum and hosted two cousins and partners for lunch. The day before we had coffee with another cousin-in-law who the day before had been knocked off his bike (Holland, you know!). We found that our generation of cousins is becoming less mobile – age has a way of getting in the way of flexibility and mobility.

The next week we focused on the southern part of the country. We stayed at the farm where my mother was born and a cousin, Jan, with two sons continue to work the land. The pigsty had some years before been redeemed from animal care to B&B people care. We comfortably occupied the space within sight of the great protective dikes that keep the Scheldt River from drowning the land, flowing instead into the North Sea. Unexpectedly, we arrived just in time to be part of the funeral service for Jan’s wife, Janny. We wondered whether this might make a lunch together redundant.

Not so! Six days later, Jan and his family with almost all the other cousins came back for a family lunch in a nearby village restaurant. Seventeen of us – cousins and partners – ate, drank, and were happy remembering times past, losses experienced, and joys celebrated.

Side trips had us visiting a cousin & spouse near Bonn on Germany’s Rhine; staying with a dear friend in Kortrijk, near the infamous Menin Gate in Ieper/Ypres commemorating a million soldiers’ sacrifice; and my birthplace, Middelburg where a trip to the provincial Archives taught me about researching family roots. It also revealed for me and others the horrors of the Slave Trade in the 18 ^th Century. Middelburg had served for a few years as a transit slave trade harbour on the way to Surinam and other colonial haunts to enrich Dutch and other European burgers.

A big disappointment for us was our failure to visit another dear friend in Lausanne, Switzerland. We had planned to travel there and elsewhere with a 4-day, $650 Eurail Pass and then to train across France to the ferry taking us to the UK. We’d used the Pass system before when it was just a booklet for the conductor to legitimize. This time technology had taken over. For us digital novices it was a disaster – far too much to explain – but thoroughly frustrating and disappointing. We gave up on the Pass. Eurail refused to give us a refund even though we did not travel a inch on the Pass. We promised our Swiss friend “another time.” We do not recommend the Eurail Pass if you’re part of the pre-digital generation. It was a nightmare made complicated by the fact that there are two companies with roles not clarified: Eurail (which seems to be the principal firm; and Rail Europe which seems to be the sales and distribution firm (more willing to be helpful than Eurail, in our experience).

United Kingdom Bound

By a combination of rental car and train tickets, we did finally get to the ferry sailing from Dieppe to Newhaven. There, we rented our third car (automatic transmission with GPS!!) and drove left!!

(No, not politically - we doubt our presence influenced the British election results of July 3/4).

Past Stonehenge, we headed west to Glastonbury (preceding the great music feast days later) and its abbey ruins, on to the Cheddar Gorge and the Brecon Beacons, charmed by the growing number of sheep and lambs adjacent to our several country inns. Rain had made the hills abound in green grass for the hungry woolies.

Cardydd (Cardiff in English) was our goal – a cousin and her partner awaiting our visit. They represent our strongest link to the Welsh heritage of the Huws-Jones family. The elders of the clan have died, and most of the next generation had emigrated. So the diaspora third generation relations have to make special efforts (and trips) to keep the Welsh dragon flag flying and its culture alive.

We worshipped in the Welsh Presbyterian Chapel. We didn’t understand 95% of the spoken words but reveled in the singing and commitment to the Welsh Spirit. A visit to the impressive Tintern Abbey ruins reminded us of the incredible commitment to faith and community by those medieval Christian monastics. What power Henry VIII had to be able to implement his political, military-backed policy order of 1539 destroying these and other potent witnesses to another Way.

An important goal for our travel was to “climb” Mount Snowdon (Yr Wyddfa in Welsh). We’d done it by foot twice before, but this time we took one of the several cog-wheel trains up and down. Along with hundreds of other mountain climbers - by train and on foot, the clear day let us survey the principality from the 1,085 metre summit – a majestic view of the land of Glenys’ parents and forebears.

Searching

Family-history sites was also part of our stay in north Wales. In Machynlleth, Pontcymmer, Pentrebroughton near Wrecsam (Wrexham in English), we searched for places where parents or grandparents had lived and worked. We had some hair-raising drives on one-lane country roads to get from one village to another. Locals must have guessed we were novices since when it came to passing, they backed out of our way to wider spaces!! In Wrecsam, we found the Wrexham Football Club shop to buy souvenirs for one supporter friend and several family opponents of this remarkable team owned by an investor group, including Canadian Ryan Reynolds.

We ended our Wales stay, by overnighting at Gladstone’s Library in Hawarden (pronounced Harden) near Chester. As a graduate of Gladstone High School in Vancouver, I welcomed the opportunity to learn more about this complicated British Prime Minister. His Library, supplemented by more current volumes, offers a trove of books - theological, political and other. Daily worship led by the Warden, Andrea Russell; educational events focusing on current faith, political, and social issues; a residence to accommodate scholars and others just passing through; and a fine restaurant, appropriately called “Food for Thought" - for residents and visiting groups, this is a welcoming, quiet and comfortable haven to meditate, pray, think, research, write, and imagine.

Durham County

The east coast colliery towns of Durham County, with now closed mines extending miles under the North Sea, was our next destination. In the first decades of the 20 ^th century, most of Glenys’ family moved to Easington Colliery. Some remained to mine coal (with its inherent danger to health and environments) and others subsequently immigrated to Canada. With the help of a cousin-in-law, we searched for the grave of a grandfather (who died of “pneumonia,” usually coal-dust generated, or "black lung") to no avail. The search continues!

Durham City & Cathedral

On our last Sunday, we drove into the cathedral city and parked our rental car in the Bishop’s Parking Garage - cars are hardly allowed in the old city. We were early in order to attend the worship service in the cathedral, set on the heights beside the castle on a dramatic and secure site created by the meandering River Wear.

On the way into the grounds, we came upon “encampment students” from the adjacent University of Durham. Like their counterparts in most western world nations, they were clear about what they were protesting, viz. the State of Israel’s war on Palestine and calling on the University to divest and boycott. We marveled at their courage and perseverance for greater justice. We gave them some money to buy food. And we applauded the security guards the University had provided to specifically protect these peace & justice motivated students from belligerent opponents! Would that our universities and authorities could be so committed to truth, justice, and peace for all of Palestine.

Our worship was something of a counterpoint to these motivated students. The genocidal catastrophe Palestinians continue to experience was nowhere to be found in our worship – in the prayers, in the sermon, in the order of service, in the announcements, in the music. Impressive as the setting and ceremony all was, the worship could have been any time, any place. The contextual realities were missing. So, the triumphal patriarchal tradition and ambiguous heritage of Christendom were maintained.

On the way back to the massive parking garage, the little streets on the hill were filled with crowds looking to shop or eat or just explore the high street from medieval times. My eye was caught by a book store window displaying “An Army Like No Other” – How the Israel Defense [sic] Forces Made a Nation , by Jewish scholar Haim Bresheeth-Zabner (2020, Verso, London & NYC. ISBN 978 1 78873 784 5) – a book that has helped me take with a barrel of salt Netanyahu’s frequent comments about the “moral virtues” of the State of Israel's military. His lies exposed, truth is starting to find its way into the popular and decision-makers' minds.

Going Home

Our trip came to an end with a long drive south on the A-1(Motorway) to a little hotel close to the Heathrow airport. In the morning, we dropped off the rental car, had breakfast in the terminal, and then the long, long walk to board the plane! But we had been strengthened vacationing! Our 50 ^th anniversary trip – delayed by four Covid-disrupting years – was accomplished safely, with renewed connections, and deeper appreciation for our roots.

Confess, testify, act

Mon, 29 Apr 2024 19:40:40 GMT

End Settler Colonialism in Palestine

A Personal Witness -- for those impatient with too long texts, there are action ideas at the end of the piece.

1. I have been the product of a Christian cultural context in which antisemitism was and still is a malignancy. I absorbed that culture through church, school, family, and culture in which I grew up. I was born in a time when Jews were being killed only for being Jews by so-called Aryan Nazi German leaders and their willing murdering agents. The murder of 6,000,000-plus Jews is a blot on the whole human family, an affront to God, and the most evident of the too-many criminal occasions when the powerful demonized and eliminated the less powerful and innocent vulnerable human members of a religion, tribe, nation, ethnicity, gender, some “other” human diversity. The holocaust is an unforgiveable crime against humanity and the Jewish people.

2. As a mature person, I have sought to shed the inherited antisemitism, by appreciating Jewish culture and its faith heritage. I sought out cooperative and collaborative relationships with Jewish individuals and communities and became better able to discern truth from lies and prejudices. I have appreciated the special human gifts and wisdoms Jewish peers have shared and lived and am grateful for their patience with my ignorance.

3. I must admit that my knowledge of the history of Palestine and its people in the 20 ^th century was shallow and inadequately informed. It is only in the last decade that I have been able to gain more understanding of the fundamental dynamics that have underlain the frequent flash points of conflict and political intrigue that have become public.

My awareness of the anti-apartheid liberation movement in South Africa increased my general awareness, particularly as I talked with South Africans. I learned that tarring the movement with the label “communist” was a ploy that had traction in the western world and particularly in the USA and UK.

I became aware of Canada’s own settler colonial history which began with a relationship between European entrepreneurs and Indigenous peoples for mutual convenience and support, and ended with the creation of an apartheid state as legislated in the Indian Act of 1876 (frequently amended). Dispossession of lands and resources, subjugation leading to assimilation and cultural and human genocide, and economic and social and spiritual marginalization were the outcomes. As part of the settler colonial agenda, Indigenous Peoples (First Nations, Inuit, and Metis) have also been dehumanized labelled savages, animals, and other epithets to provide settlers with reason to hate, diminish, and disdain their amazingly peaceable and spiritual Indigenous hosts to Turtle Island. My church has not yet confessed its part in nor formally repudiated this apartheid regime legislated in the Indian Act.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is yet another of the many stories of settler colonization seeking to expand imperial power and to subjugate a vulnerable neighbour – more learning.

4. These learnings of history and biblical-spiritual learnings have propelled me into the quest of truth, resistance to false authority, and justice-based peace for the human family. I have understood that the apparent victors in the colonization dynamic create false narratives to “justify” their actions and to gain the support of their own people. Truth is the first victim in war and in colonization struggles, and has been whether it is with Nazi Germans, Afrikaners, Canadian settler churches and governments, Russian nationalist leaders, Chinese politicians with Uighurs, or, with political Zionist ideologues and their advocates.

5. The genocide currently being carried out by Israel against Palestinians in both Gaza and the Occupied Westbank and East Jerusalem is consistent with settler colonial patterns in world history. The issue is fundamentally summed up by the sentence of intention: we must enlarge our control/possession/governance over as much of Palestine as we can by any means at our disposal and diminish/reduce/destroy/evict/ethnically cleanse/kill as many Palestinians/Arabs to ensure that this region is and remains the homeland for Jews.

a. This is the vision or ideology expressed in early political Zionist writings.

b. It is articulated as the goal of Zionist political leaders to be pursued intentionally and persistently under military political Plan D (for Dalet, the 4 ^th Hebrew alphabet letter), requested by David Ben-Gurion before he became Israel's first prime minister. (See Jewish UK Historian Ilan Pappe’s “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine”. London, One World Publications, 2006-2023. pp. 86-126 passim.)(Google: “Plan D” for Wikipedia summary)

c. The vision is the motivation for the horrors that the subjugated Palestinian people have had to live with (and resist) for 76 years, from Partition in 1948 – the Nakba (Catastrophe) - and before. That regime became the "normal" which the state of Israel dominated and USA facilitated in "peace processes" intended to institutionalize the colonized reality.

This agenda is implemented by what an Amnesty International report describes as “…massive seizures of Palestinian land and property, unlawful killings, forcible transfer, drastic movement restrictions, and the denial of nationality and citizenship to Palestinians … all components of a system which amounts to apartheid under international law. … This system is maintained by violations … found to constitute apartheid as a crime against humanity, as defined in the Rome Statute and Apartheid Convention."

The International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid defines apartheid as a system designed to maintain one racial group's domination over another through policies or practices that include murder, bodily or mental harm, arbitrary arrest and illegal imprisonment, poor living conditions, denial of basic rights, racial segregation, exploitative labour practices, and persecution of opponents.

https://www.readthemaple.com/heres-what-amnesty-internationals-report-calling-out-israeli-apartheid-means-for-canada/

The Canadian Jewish social and political commentator Naomi Klein, writes:

Political Zionism: It is a false idol that has taken the transcendent idea of the promised land – a metaphor for human liberation that has traveled across multiple faiths to every corner of this globe – and dared to turn it into a deed of sale for a militaristic ethnostate. Political Zionism’s version of liberation is itself profane. From the start, it required the mass expulsion of Palestinians from their homes and ancestral lands in the Nakba.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/24/zionism-seder-protest-new-york-gaza-israel?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Read also Naomi Klein's reflections on the Israeli genocide: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGe5q2cGw/

6. While Israel claims the “right to defend itself” from Palestinian resistance and assaults, Palestinians, as subjugated and occupied people, have the “right to resist”. To be sure, when resistance involves crimes against humanity, then rights trespass into illegality - whether perpetrated by Israelis or Palestinians. But the history since Partition (and before) is replete with illustrations of Israel using militant resistance as an excuse and as seize-able military opportunity to take more Palestinian lands and villages, and to “ethnically cleanse”, kill, expel, or imprison resisting Palestinians in vastly disproportionate measures - injustice abounds well beyond self-defense.

7. Israel has operated as if it were a state that has earned “impunity" - because of the holocaust? It has not! Its crimes against humanity and its war crimes, its disregard of UN General Assembly resolutions, UN Security Council judgements, and verdicts and advisory decisions of the International Court of Justice clearly attest to Israel’s disregard and disdain of the international community and violations of its standards, including the 4 ^th Geneva Convention. Current rumours suggest the International Criminal Court is on the verge of criminally prosecuting Israeli decision makers.

Israel has been accorded and has counted on the complicity and the all-too-ready support of the United States of America with its powerful veto in the Security Council, and on both political support and war material supplies from the USA, Germany, Canada for its terrorizing actions; and, finally, it counts on its home-grown and safely-guarded nuclear weapon. These and too many other actions are the marks of a “rogue” state which will not observe the foundational and legal international declarations for peace, justice, and lawful order on Earth. Its accomplices are also vulnerable to criminal prosecution.

8. Israel has been aided in this self-granted “impunity” by its political allies, compliant media sources, and a very well-developed and influential international lobby which has spun a convincing but false narrative to gain widespread support especially in western nations, and to discredit and dehumanize the Palestinian victims of Israeli Zionism. Antisemitism – an evil – has been weaponized. Advocates of truth, justice and peace have been pilloried and too often prosecuted as antisemitic for critiquing Israel’s Zionist settler colonial apartheid policies and brutal military control.

9. The United Church of Canada in the 1970s had signals from insightful and courageous witnesses about the fundamental Zionist agenda, but the Church as part of Christendom was still too guilt-ridden because of its historic contribution to the antisemitic agenda, especially during the second World War years. It too often prevented Church bodies from engaging critically the political Zionist agenda and its colonizing implications.

Even the 2022 – 44 ^th General Council side-stepped adopting critical analyses sent from regional Church Councils addressing Israel’s Zionist intentions. The Church’s current governing bodies have not yet condemned the current genocide in Gaza and the Occupied Westbank.

10. Now after a life-time of experience and too much historical evidence, I can no longer simply accept the pro-Israel lobby’s false interpretation of the reality in Palestine that blames Palestinians as the aggressors. It’s time my Church also adopted a more evidence-based critical position and a Gospel-driven course of action. To do so would be to take a substantial step along with a rising tide of voices to diminish the suffering and tyranny which Palestinians have been compelled to live under for 76 years. It is time – especially after the total destruction of Gaza and the murder of far more than 35,000 women, children, and men, to embrace the persistent biblical faith and the call of the Spirit guiding the whole Church to be witnesses to the truth and bearers of the Good News of liberation, abundance, kinship, and justice-based peace.

The issue in Palestine is not a conflict between two protagonists or several religions. It is simply the colonial settler domination and apartheid-based ethnic cleansing and genocide by Israel of the indigenous Palestinian people. This is a tragic and costly parable of victims falsely transformed into the presumed aggressors, by the real aggressors who themselves have been transformed from being victims of one of history’s most evil extirpation of humanity to become the terrorizing aggressors seeking imperial hegemony of the entire Palestinian terrain at the cost of its indigenous people.

(Witness the parable’s lived reality by viewing Joshua Vis' Youtube video “The Law and the Prophets”:
https://www.google.com/search?q=youtube+video+%22The+Law+and+the+Prophets%22&oq=youtube+video+%22The+Law+and+the+Prophets%22&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggA

11. As a member and minister of The United Church of Canada, I am impatient with the leadership of my Church's unwillingness to express clearly its abhorrence of Israel’s apartheid and genocidal settler colonial policies and the flagrant and persistent violation of international law and order. I await our Church's clear take on the political situation. It's not a new role!

Truth, peace and justice for the one global family and for all Creation is the Creator’s heart’s desire and it must always be ours. All the peoples who inhabit Palestine have a right to self-determination, the right to live peaceably and justly in their homeland, and the right to share equitably the bountiful gifts of the Creator. The current Kairos Ceasefire Pilgrimage takes ecumenical steps in the right direction.

https://www.kairoscanada.org/gaza-ceasefire-pilgrimage/calls-for-action . See the Pilgrimage's core convictions : https://www.gazaceasefirepilgrimage.com/core-convictions .

I believe our Church can do more. The General Council as an act of repentance could confess: " Both the sins of omission in not standing with the Palestinian people, or in the sins of commission where there has been active support for what experts overwhelmingly identify genocidal intent in the ongoing war on Gaza." (Ecumenical Kairos Pilgrimage final core conviction.)

We too can be in solidarity with our Palestinian sisters and brothers. We can express our concern with and for Israelis and Jewish neighbours also praying for an end to these endless rounds of death and destruction. Who doesn't want to learn to live in just peace and mutual appreciation?

The Spirit is calling us all to act faithfully - individually, as a family, as a community of faith, as a regional Council, as a denomination, as a nation. Our local congregation has a Focus Group for learning more. We've had a pilgrimage to Parliament Hill, some of us march weekly to call for justice and peace, walking from the Human Rights monument to Parliament and beyond. We've written to federal government politicians and opposition leaders, to civil society organizations like Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME.ca) and we've grappled with underlying issues.

And as a United Church member I and others have written to the Moderator (CLansdowne@united-church.ca) , the General Secretary (MBlair@united-church.ca), the General Council Executive (GCE@united-church.ca) to encourage them to take even more steps that witness on all our behalf, Every action can contribute something to the lengthy arc of justice and God's indefatigable habit of mending the world. The Spirit is calling, especially via the voices of Palestinian sisters & brothers.

Just Peace Palestine

Tue, 26 Mar 2024 18:45:22 GMT

Call to Action for Justice & Peace in Palestine

Dear Pilgrim Praxis Readers: This post comes with heavy heart and high commitment to respond to the catastrophe we have been watching over 75 years and especially since October 6th of last year. Countless Palestinians have been killed (estimates start at 31,000 today but more lie under rubble, and executions, bombing, and dying of famine and disease goes on unabated.)

The United Nations Security Council has called for a ceasefire but Israel seems intent on defying this global call. The President of Colombia is calling on nations to cut diplomatic relationships with Israel if it defies the call. People of faith everywhere join Palestinians in the call for an end to ethnic cleansing and genocide and finally the pursuit of justice and peace in Palestine.

The letter which follows was created by members and friends of the United Church of Canada responding to cries for help and solidarity from Palestinian Christians and to mandates the UCC has given itself. Please read this letter, search out more information, and speak out calling for justice and peace for ALL in Palestine. To write the Church officials: cge@united-church.ca; the UCC website includes letters sent by the Moderator and General Secretary.

For an informed history of the 75 years, read the remarkable volume by Israeli professor of history (at Exeter U in UK) Ilan Pappe entitled "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine" or watch the interview with him for 25 minutes on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5CpuPEgLJU . The UCC website includes letters sent by the Moderator and General Secretary

TO:

EXECUTIVE OF THE GENERAL COUNCIL of THE UNITED CHURCH OF CANADA, and its members

The Moderator, The Right Rev. Dr. Carmen Lansdowne

The General Secretary, The Rev. Dr. Michael Blair March 21, 2024

cc. Commissioners of the General Council

The Rev. Dr. Japhet Ndhlovu, Executive Minister, Church in Mission

Ms. Jocelyn Bell, Editor, Broadview magazine.

“Justice is driven back and righteousness stands at a distance; truth has stumbled like a drunk in the streets, honesty cannot enter. Truth is nowhere to be found and whoever shuns evil becomes prey. Yahweh looked and was displeased that there was no justice. God was appalled that there was no one to intervene.” (Isaiah 59:14-16)

Dear Members of the General Council Executive (GCE) of the United Church of Canada (UCC)

We write to you, the elected and appointed leaders of the United Church of Canada, to call for a comprehensive, prophetic, and urgent response to the genocide and other war crimes occurring in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

As you will recall, we wrote to the GCE on November 9, 2023 requesting the UCC to write to the Prime Minister calling for a ceasefire, respect for international humanitarian law on the part of all parties to the conflict, humanitarian aid to Gaza, and a just resolution to the decades-long Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands. We also requested educational actions in support of responses to the crisis by UCC communities of faith across the country.

Since last October, the situation has continued to deteriorate, with most Gazans driven by the Israeli military into the southern margin of the Gaza strip, and thousands currently facing starvation. Housing, hospitals, churches, mosques, universities, schools, bakeries, and small businesses have been destroyed in the bombardments. The majority of the more than 31,000 killed have been women and children. The extent of this human-made catastrophe and the inability, to date, of the international community to bring the conflict and destruction to an end, is shocking and appalling.

We believe the current catastrophe – the culmination of 75-plus years of injustice and endless bloodshed – in Gaza and in the illegally occupied and settled West Bank areas, including East Jerusalem – demands urgent faith-based, prophetic witness and action, and generous pastoral care for all concerned. We are speaking out again because mandates and scripture clearly demand that our whole Church respond to this human tragedy with compassion, lament, outrage, and faithful action and prayer.

We expect the leadership of our Church to initiate and be at the forefront of denomination-wide witness and action to confront and stop the continuing genocide in Palestine and address the root causes of the oppression of the Palestinian people. The slaughter must stop, as must Israel’s apartheid regime of oppression and settler colonial domination. The way to just peace must be found through negotiation leading to self-determination where all peoples of Palestine – Muslims, Jews, Christians, Druze, Baha’i, non-religious – in all their diversity are free to enjoy full and equal rights.

Mandates and Messages Calling for Action

1. This 44 ^th General Council (GC) and, you, its Executive (CGE) have challenged the whole church:

Through the Strategic Plan 2022-2025. We were called to: “witness in love and justice to the liberating healing Christ risen in this place and time,” “to be a bold, connected, evolving church of diverse, courageous, hope-filled communities united in deep spirituality, inspiring worship and daring justice;” “to have a common orientation towards work that is deep, bold, and daring;” “to embolden justice: collaborating to mend church and world.”
Seven principles were developed to guide the Church’s justice work: anti-oppression, truth-telling, holistic scope, respect for human dignity, full participation and decolonization, equity mutuality and reparations, and costly and prophetic solidarity. (cited in Broadview, March 2024, p.53)

2. Palestinian Christians sent an open ecumenical letter to the western churches calling us to repent for ignoring the ongoing oppression and, now, horrific devastation of both people and place in Palestine. “…We are disturbed by the silence of many church leaders and theologians when it is Palestinian civilians who are killed. We are also horrified by the refusal of some western Christians to condemn the ongoing Israeli occupation of Palestine and the oppressive and racist military occupation that constitutes the crime of apartheid.” “We hold western church leaders and theologians who rally behind Israel’s wars accountable for their theological and political complicity in the Israeli crimes against Palestinians which have been committed over the last 75 years.”

https://www.change.org/p/an-open-letter-from-palestinian-christians-to-western-church-leaders-and-theologians

3. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) , responding to the application of the government of the Republic of South Africa, made a provisional judgment in January 2024 indicating that genocidal conditions in Gaza are plausible:

The court cited various examples showing that the Israeli action is aimed at Palestine and not only Hamas.

The court considers urgency and concludes that there is possibility of irreparable harm to the Palestinians should it not order provisional measures at this stage. The healthcare system and breakdown of public order and epidemic is identified with irreversible conditions as declared by the UN.
The court notes Israel says the war will continue for several months. Meanwhile Gazans do not have basic conditions for life. Therefore, the catastrophic conditions will further deteriorate before the court makes a final order.

Israel must take all acts to prevent all conditions in Article 2 of the Genocide Act, that is, to not commit any acts of Genocide.

(https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/192-20240126-sum-01-00-en.pdf)

4. Some Canadian churches , including the UCC, having heard the call of Palestinian Christians for repentance, recently responded with a letter and “confessed, with contrite hearts and deep sorrow for the ways we have failed God, you, and all who are our family in faith in the land of the Holy One. We decry the devastating loss of life in Gaza, particularly the deaths of thousands of children. We condemn the lack of moral and political leadership from our government. We must do all we can to protect the human rights and struggle of Palestinians for justice, security, freedom, and dignity.” “We confess our complicity in the violence.”

“We acknowledge our complicity in the dehumanization of you as Palestinians, beginning with our apathy in the 1948 Nakba that displaced hundreds of thousands of your families from their homes and communities, and which continues with our ongoing complicity in the daily displacement of your families and neighbours today.”

“We confess that our colonial doctrines and the ways in which we read the Bible have been used to justify war, apartheid, discrimination, and ethnic cleansing here in the land called Canada, and to tolerate and justify it in Palestine and other places.”

“We commit to continue working with you to end the ongoing illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine. We commit to continue mobilizing our fellow Canadians for action.” … https://presbyterian.ca/2023/12/20/open-letter-to-palestinian-christians-from-christians-in-canada/

“Justice, and only justice, you shall pursue, so that you may live and occupy the land that the Lord your God is giving you.” (Deuteronomy 16:20)

Summary

As of today, we are all agreed that none of us has done enough. We believe profoundly that the imperatives, mandates, and the messages from Palestinians, the Canadian Churches, the International Court of Justice, along with our foundational Christian documents – scripture, creeds, GC reports like “Mending the World” – compel our Church to more faithful action.

We must stop failing the Palestinian people.

We believe that there is a pent-up concern - in the Church and perceptible globally - which apprehends (as did the ICJ) that Israel’s war on Hamas is part of a much larger comprehensive genocidal effort by the Zionist Israeli government to ethnically cleanse Palestine – Gaza and the Occupied Territories and East Jerusalem – of Palestinians so that a final resettlement of these territories by Israelis may take place.

The Israeli cabinet has approved a military ground invasion assault plan on Rafah; it has been blocking the necessities of life from reaching starving and wounded Palestinians; it continues the bombardment terrorizing hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians corralled in south Gaza and killing many daily.

In the face of this apocalyptic, hugely asymmetrical conflict, the phrases “Deep Spirituality, Bold Discipleship, and Daring Justice” are empty without action. We acknowledge gratefully the several letters that have been sent by the Moderator and the Chair of the National Indigenous Council, and by the General Secretary to express concern and to “amplify the voices of members” about the horrors they have witnessed.

It is simply not enough. We are failing the Palestinian people and our partners in Palestine.

To our knowledge, the GCE has not met specifically to discuss the gravity and devastating consequences of this current and historic murderous assault on world peace, on relations between peoples and religions, on all our partners in faith. Our Church has undertaken no special or sacrificial action to respond to the tragedy God and the human community are witnessing. We lament this lack of will for courageous and prophetic witness which our Strategic Plan is affirming and calling us to live out.

The decision was taken at the last GC, as we understand it, to effectively suspend consideration of new prophetic action and policies related to Palestine/Israel until the justice principles were approved and apparently until further work was done on internal antisemitism within the United Church of Canada. The justice framework was approved in principle at the last annual GC meeting and it was said they could be applied on experimental or trial basis.

However, there is an overall perception on the part of many that as a denomination we are somehow in a special state of waiting and there is an ethos of constraint impeding us from taking bold leadership in addressing the genocide and the more than 75 years of oppression. The historic urgency of this time requires us to take immediate and concerted action to fully address all the issues brought to the 44th GC by at least 5 regional councils and do it now even while other important work moves forward.

There can be no experimental or constrained approach to the justice which God requires of us.

As God stands appalled witnessing injustice and slaughter, and because the Kairos moment is now, we are compelled to call for unprecedented levels of faith-driven defense of life, justice, and peace in the name of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We remember Jesus’ words: “If these [disciples] were silent, the stones would shout out.” (Luke 19:40) The silenced voices under the Gazan rubble still call us.

We know how difficult it is for many concerned about this catastrophe to be able to raise their voices to communicate their concerns and to engage through constructive action. Truth telling has become hazardous. We live in a time when the pro-Israel lobby has been effectively controlling the narrative and weaponizing the term “anti-Semitism”, a term which labels an evil all must resist. But when virtually any critique of the state of Israel and its actions against Palestinians is deliberately and falsely deemed to be “anti-Semitic,” then truth is stifled and, too often, innocents are punished.

Members of The United Church of Canada and all Canadians urgently need to be empowered to distinguish in their discourse between anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism, anti-Judaism, critique of Israeli policies and actions, anti-Palestinianism, and Islamophobia, so that informed and thoughtful discourse can contribute to justice and peace.

Proposal for Action

In view of the urgency of the situation in Palestine and Israel and the sacred responsibility of the United Church to respond faithfully and generously now, without further delay,

We propose:

1. That the Moderator, in her role as spiritual leader of the Church,

a. send a pastoral letter to the entire Church in this season of death and resurrection and ask that it be read in all worship gatherings and other assemblies of the Church. Its aim is to communicate to the entire Church: the threat and harm caused by the catastrophic conflict in Palestine / Israel, the urgency in the face of death to choose life by responding faithfully to this catastrophe, to strive to learn more about this conflict, to act in the interest of justice and peace, life and well-being;

b. convene the General Council Executive in extraordinary session before Easter, to consider ways and means for the denomination to respond to the urgent call for justice and peace in Palestine – a denomination-shaping issue - and

c. recommend that the GCE “call a special meeting of the General Council” (Manual D.5.3.2.g.) to receive the recommendation of the GCE for an urgent action plan to involve the entire Church as this crisis represents a denomination-shaping issue. [Manual D.3.2 Special Meetings of the General Council. If it decides the circumstances are exceptional, the Executive of the General Council may call a special meeting of the General Council between regular meetings.]

d. forward this letter to the Commissioners of the General Council.

2. That the General Council Executive affirm the Moderator’s request to convene the General Council and

that the Executive and / or the General Council consider the following actions :

a. To assess the current relevant framework and policies pertaining to Palestine / Israel and to rescind any impediments constraining the Church’s prophetic witness.

b. To embrace the call and provide space for the voices of Palestinian partners of the UCC under the ethic of “nothing about us without us” when their life and future is discussed; to seek the advice of informed and independent Jewish witnesses, and suitable other resource persons, including GC office staff, Ecumenical Accompaniers appointed by the Church, religious and legal scholars like Prof. Yakov Rabkin, etc. for their discernment about the current catastrophe in light of its 75-year history.

c. To mobilize the entire denomination:

i. to call for the cessation of the genocide, address root causes in support of justice and peace in Palestine / Israel, and

ii. to embrace the UCC’s commitment to Palestinians’ self-determination and their full exercise of rights and freedoms under international law within the territories historically called Palestine, and

iii. call Israel to adhere to the Fourth Geneva Convention and resolutions of the United Nations in order that justice and peace may be made real for all who dwell in this tortured Holy Land.

d. To mandate the GCE and GC office and/or regional staff to immediately develop and implement comprehensive action plans to respond to the Palestine /Israel tragedy, including

i. To provide educational resources on a priority basis, as part of the Church’s overall Anti-Racism initiatives and de-colonializing imperatives, including UCC resources and others already developed by world Reformed and Methodist communions, Sabeel and Independent Jewish Voices, and other denominations and secular organizations;

and

in light of the increasing weaponization of “anti-Semitism,” special attention to provide resources that can assist members to distinguish between and speak truthfully and constructively about anti-Judaism, anti-Zionism, anti-Semitism, anti-Palestinianism, and Islamophobia, criticism of policy and actions of the government and state of Israel and of Palestinian governing bodies.

ii. To provide regular and frequent updates and resources to local communities of faith via the E-ssentials resource, UCC website, and other means of communication about this comprehensive action plan to encourage and empower UCC members

iii. To encourage members to donate sacrificially to established UCC partner bodies that foster renewal and well-being for all Palestinians, and especially children and youth.

e. To demand (in partnership with other denominations and organizations as possible) that the Government of Canada call for:

i. Immediate and permanent ceasefire ,

ii. the release of all detainees under administrative detention and political prisoners by Israel and the hostages held by Hamas,

iii. immediate adequate provision of humanitarian necessities for Palestinian life;

iv. An immediate embargo on the transfer of military goods to Israel, including the cessation of new arms export authorizations, cancellation of previously approved permits, and halting of exports through third states, such as the U.S.

v. The historic rights including the right of self-determination and the right of return for Palestinians;

vi. explicit support for the case brought by South Africa to the ICJ, thereby demanding that Israel adhere to the requirements of international law, to the resolutions of the United Nations and to the judgements of the ICJ – using all diplomatic efforts to bring about justice.

vii. Full and equal adherence to requirements of international law, to the resolutions of the United Nations, and the judgements of the ICJ; and

viii. the International Criminal Court to investigate and prosecute Israeli and Hamas leaders who committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in Palestine / Israel.

We believe that many UCC members and adherents and Canadian society as a whole are awaiting a robust, fully public, broadly visible, and prophetic UCC response to the historic and current catastrophe in Palestine / Israel, and that now is the Kairos moment for our Church to take bold, daring, and faith-based steps that reveal the United Church’s abiding and global commitment to the divine call for justice and peace for all members of God’s global family and for Creation itself.

We want to respond to God’s unconditional love and God’s persistent requirement of us, namely, “to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8)

In faith,

Steve Berube, Paula Butler, Chris Ferguson, Susan Ferguson, Pierre Goldberger, Dale Hildebrand, Glenys Huws, Bern Jagunos, Gary Kenny, Maria Morales, Hal Llewellyn, Karen MacKay Llewellyn, Harry Oussoren, Maureen Scott Kabwe, Margie Sumadh

Engaging Gazan Catastrophe

Tue, 27 Feb 2024 22:02:38 GMT

75 years of violence and death is too much

source: Pexels / Patrick

The Peace Palace in the Hague, Netherlands, seat of the UN's International Court of Justice (ICJ)

It took the courage of the South African government to bring the catastrophic situation in Gaza to the ICJ. Deeply understanding both apartheid and subjugation, the South Africans took to the Court the case of the Palestinian people especially in Gaza to the judges for a ruling on the question of genocide and other war crime activity. After deliberating for a month the Court issued its ruling, here summarized:

SUMMARY OF THE ICJ RULING January 26, 2024

Court rules:
1. South Africa has standing to bring the application.
2. There is a legal dispute.
3. Some of the actions SA says has occurred could be Genocide.
4. The Palestinians are a discernable group and are therefore a protected group under the Genocide Act.
5. Large numbers of deaths, destruction of homes and civilian infrastructure and huge displacement are evident.
6. The court notes that UN agencies declare unprecedented conditions in Gaza. There is deep trauma and unsafe conditions. They live through the unlivable. The effect on children is especially concerning.
7. Dehumanizing language from Israel is repeated. Various ministers made statements dehumanizing Palestinians. The court cited various examples showing that the Israeli action is aimed at Palestine and not only Hamas.
8. Court concludes at least some of the rights identified to defend Palestinians are plausible.
9. The court concludes that at least sone of the rights requested by South Africa are rational.
10. The court considers urgency and concludes that there is possibility of irreparable harm to the Palestinians should it not order provisional measures at this stage. The healthcare system and breakdown of public order and epidemic is identified with irreversible conditions is declared by the UN.
11. The court notes Israel says the war will continue for several months. Meanwhile Gazans do not have basic conditions for life. Therefore the catastrophic conditions will further deteriorate before the court makes a final order.
12. Israel claims its war is being downgraded. The court finds this is insufficient to ensure Palestinian rights.
13. The court can impose its own provisional measures and need not be identical to those requested.
14. Provisional measures are appropriate and are ordered as follows:
A. Israel must take all acts to prevent all conditions in Article 2 of the Genocide Act, that is to not commit any acts of Genocide.
B. Israel must ensure none of the aforementioned acts occur.
C. Israel must ensure sufficient aid is available.
D. Israel must take urgent measures to ensure conditions of life.
E. Israel must give a report as to what it has done is submitted in one month to the court and South Africa would then be allowed to engage the court as to its contents.
F. The court calls for the release of all hostages.

Court decision 15 to 2.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Now the question is: will Israel obey the rulings? At this point there has been little sign of accepting the judgement of the Court. So now the question becomes: will the other nations who have signed on to the Court's authority and have signed on to Declarations, Conventions, Covenants, and other international laws help / convince Israel about the necessity of implementing the Court rulings?

If the other nations don't call for a ceasefire, make humanitarian aid a priority, stop providing war material, stop destroying infrastructure and other necessities of societal existence - will they acknowledge their complicity in this horrendous, barbarous, blood bath with 30,000 deaths known and how many more unknown and how many more still to happen because of famine, disease, wounds, and torture?

Citizens of countries like Canada and the USA and others, where governments are not willing to end their support of Israel's genocidal activity now become complicit - as do their citizens, like me in Canada, in this ghastly, evil barbaric affair. It is time for all to demand that "law and order" be observed so that justice and peace might finally flourish after these 75 years of death and destruction, oppression and apartheid.

May the love of God flourish, may the Spirit awaken the gifts and values that are endowed in every human being, and may justice break the shackles of the oppressed. Let there be peace, shalom, salaam, mir, vrede, paix, friede for the entire human family of the Holy One - now!

Beyond ritual acknowledging

Sun, 11 Feb 2024 23:14:51 GMT

A Personal Acknowledgement

The Kitchi Sipi (Ottawa River) with the Gatineau shores - from my desk.

Acknowledgement of a Guest.

It is hard to sit at my desk looking at the Ottawa River or Kitchi Sipi – the great river, with the Gatineau hills to the north, forests to the south along the 416 Hiway, and fertile farm fields to the east – without thinking of the thousands or millions of years these lands and waters have witnessed birth, life, and death in the evolution of Creation.

In the fulness of time, people arrived – the human beings the Creator called to live in relationship with these Great Lakes parts of Turtle Island on planet Earth. The Algonquin people have lived here and still do – one of a family of first nations: Nipissing, Mississauga, Potawatomi, Odawa, Chippewa/Odawa, Ojibwe-Cree, Chippewa Saulteaux.

This larger family of nations is called Anishinaabe. Sometimes the word is translated as “people from whence lowered” [is that “lowered” to Earth from the Creator?]. It’s also translated “the good humans” – people of the right way taught by the Creator.

These blessed people lived and still live in caring and grateful relationship with the land and waters, the birds, fish, and four-legged creatures. For me, “people of the right way” echoes the “people of the Way” – the label given to early Christians in the Bible’s Acts of the Apostles (19:23).

Explorers, Traders, Settlers

In the 16 ^th and 17 ^th centuries, European guests came with royal mandates in their pockets. Thinking they had arrived in India, they called the people they met “Indians”. The label stuck. Their indigenous nation names were judged too much trouble for settlers to learn and use, so the great diversity of Indigenous nations who occupied Turtle Island was swallowed up in the easier “Indian” hopper. Not a label indigenous peoples chose for themselves - they knew the names by which they called each other.

The Algonquin people and other Indigenous nations used the rivers as travel & transport highways, reaping the abundance of the land for other necessities of life, and for trade. The guests learned from the hosts how to live, move, and have their being in this fair land. Gradually, but steadily, these guests made themselves at home as if they had both a divine and royal right to settle and harvest – some say, plunder - without let.

In reality, the Algonquin territories were never ceded to the settlers’ Crown or other authorities – the Crown simply asserted sovereignty as if it were legal – and still does. The settlers carried on with little thought about trespass or theft – in fact they even built their Parliament Buildings and the national seat of government on these territories.

The National Dream

By the Indian Act of 1876 (much amended), the Crown – in the form of the nascent national government created by the Confederation of 1867 – codified Canada as an apartheid nation with settlers in charge, while the Indigenous nations, their lands and citizens became wards of the Crown. The national dream legislated the assimilation of the “Indians” into the Euro-Canadians population. Genocide. Blessedly, a costly nightmarish failure.

Today we have evidence of how frighteningly costly this assertion and dispossession was for these Algonquin and other indigenous peoples across Canada and how much the settler state and church diminished the humanity of these “good humans”.

Today, also, we cannot neglect to remember their generous sharing, their spiritual wisdom, their patience. We can also marvel at their indefatigable, peaceful perseverance to have these settlers, including me, behave like respectful faith-based guests committed, at least, to justice.

Their many grueling and tiresome trips to local, provincial, and federal courts – especially the Supreme Court – have been remarkably successful in having land claims and human rights adjudicated in their favour. Self-determination and nation-to-nation relations are becoming well-rooted seedling in the legislative framework of Canada. "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice," as Martin Luther King Jr. experienced and observed so personally.

Intentional Action for Justice - Collective and Personal

In acknowledging the Algonquin First Nation of this geographic region, I want to express both my gratitude and also my pledge to continue to find ways of restoring justice – toward ending a long history of injustice and failed “law and order.”

I join the quest for healthy treaty relationships with the Algonquin First Nation and with all indigenous peoples – Métis, Inuit, and First Nations - of Turtle Island. I acknowledge that more progress has been made in the last half century than in the previous four-and one-half centuries since “contact” or “invasion”. I worry that at the rate this relationship is being improved, it could well take another century before justice can be deemed to have been well served.

This is unsatisfactory and unacceptable. Gradualism must stop. I believe that communities of faith – including my own - and other groups and individuals of goodwill must respond to the call of the Spirit demanding more dedicated and swifter action on the part of settler society and the Crown in energizing that “arc of justice.” The historic social order has been too costly for both Indigenous and settler people. A new covenant relationship could open the door to well-being for all who dwell in this fair land.

I will lift up the Creator's goodness and open myself to the living breath of the Spirit, who endows us - each and all - with the gifts needed for us all to become good humans on the way together and better neighbours respecting and sharing the lands and water in friendship and peace as long as the sun rises and sets, and as the rivers continue to flow. May it be so!

February 11, 2024

Ottawa

United Church call re South Africa court case

Fri, 12 Jan 2024 01:37:52 GMT

International Court of Justice & South Africa's Case re Gaza

[Ed. note: The United Church of Canada Calls government of Canada to support South Africa's case re against Israel before the International Court of Justice. The full letter is copied here:}

www.united-church.ca

January 11, 2024

3250 Bloor St. West, Suite 200 Toronto, Ontario

M8X 2Y4 Canada

The Right Honourable Justin Trudeau, P.C., M.P.

Prime Minister of Canada

House of Commons

pm@pm.gc.ca

Justin.Trudeau@parl.gc.ca

RE: Canada should support South Africa’s application to the ICJ regarding Israel’s breach of its obligations under the 1948 Genocide Convention, and ban arms sales to Israel

Dear Prime Minister,

As Israel’s war on Gaza intensifies, I write to amplify the voices of people of The United Church of Canada and the hundreds of thousands of Canadians urging the government to take moral and decisive actions to support justice and peace.

More than 23,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel in Gaza over the past three months, 70% of them women and children. The population of Gaza is at great risk of dying from disease, dehydration, famine and lack of adequate medical care; Israel intentionally denies access to drinkable water, food, fuel, and electricity. Israeli politicians have repeatedly called for extreme measures to be imposed on the people of Gaza, even promoting ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza .

Under these inhumane conditions, Canada’s decision to offer refugee status to family members of Canadians in Gaza is needed and welcome. However, this temporary refuge should not impede Palestinian refugees’ right of return to Gaza, East Jerusalem or the West Bank, or indeed, to all of historic Palestine, in accordance with international law.

Further, Canada must take every step to end complicity in war crimes and/or crimes against humanity, and violations of international human rights law, committed in Palestine and Israel. Project Ploughshares, a Canadian churches’ peace research institute that focuses on disarmament efforts and international security, released a detailed report outlining just such risks, stating,

“There is a substantial risk that the export of Canadian military goods to Israel could contribute to ongoing violations of IHL or IHRL. Therefore, Canadian officials must halt the further transfer of weapon systems to Israel to meet both its international obligations under the ATT and domestic obligations under the EIPA. As per Article 4 of the ATT, Canadian officials must also close loopholes allowing unregulated export of military goods to Israel through the United States.”1

The Mission and Service of The United Church of Canada: God’s Mission, Our Gifts La mission et le service de l'Église Unie du Canada : la mission de Dieu, pour nous, par nous

In light of these factors, I urge Canada to:

• support South Africa’s application to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to declare Israel in breach of its obligations under the 1948 Genocide Convention. Canada should support international independent legal mechanisms such as the ICJ to issue a legal opinion on this issue, and

• halt the further transfer of weapon systems to Israel to meet both its international obligations under the ATT and domestic obligations under the EIPA. As per Article 4 of the ATT, Canadian officials must also close loopholes that allow the unregulated export of military goods to Israel through the United States,” as called for by Project Ploughshares, of which The United Church of Canada is a member. Over the past decades there have been numerous opportunities for Canada to act decisively, without exception and according to its obligations under international law. I urge Canada to be courageous and respond positively to the requests in this letter.

Sincerely,

Rev. Michael Blair

General Secretary

The United Church of Canada

Cc:

The Hon. Bill Blair, Minister of National Defence, Bill.Blair@parl.gc.ca ; Bill.Blair@forces.gc.ca The Hon. Mélanie Joly, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Melanie.Joly@international.gc.ca The Hon. Rob Oliphant, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Rob.Oliphant@parl.gc.ca

The Hon. Michael Chong, Conservative Foreign Affairs critic, Michael.Chong@parl.gc.ca Heather McPherson, NDP Foreign Affairs Critic, Heather.McPherson@parl.gc.ca Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc Québécois Foreign Affairs critic, Stephane.Bergeron@parl.gc.ca Elizabeth May, Co-Leader of the Green Party, Elizabeth.May@parl.gc.ca

Bob Rae, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Canada to the United Nations in New York, Bob.Rae@international.gc.ca

Lisa Stadelbauer, Ambassador of Canada to Israel, Lisa.Stadelbauer@international.gc.ca David Da Silva, Representative of Canada to the Palestinian Authority,

David.DaSilva@international.gc.ca

Too Many Deaths - Two Lives

Thu, 21 Dec 2023 18:11:28 GMT

Two Human Beings in Violent Context

History made Personal - The Lemon Tree, by Sandy Tolan

The killing machines have been working overtime in 2023. In Ukraine, the Russians pursue their imperial expansionist policy – to restore USSR empire by unprovoked attacks?! How many hundred thousand young Russian soldiers have paid for their dictator Putin’s psychotic fantasy with their lives? How many Ukrainian children have lost their fathers and mothers defending their land against the Russian war machine murdering civilians, destroying hospitals, school, churches, homes, and so much more!

In Yemen, the Democratic!! Republic of Congo, in Sudan, in the horn of Africa, in Myanmar, in Afghanistan and God knows where else, those with guns cut down “them” – the presumed or designated enemy others with impunity. They don’t get as much press coverage interfering with their gruesome pursuits but the consequences are no less bloody and real.

And then there is the not very “Holy Land” – sacred now and for decades because of the blood that has gushed out of human veins into the earth. As I write I am conscious of the latest episode in this endless fratricidal relationship of the children of Abraham and Hagar/Sarah.

Over 1200 Israelis killed and 200+ hostages taken by Hamas on October 7 ^th , and I can’t even imagine the gruesome reality of now countable 20,000 children, women, and men – Palestinian human beings murdered by Israeli forces, plus uncountable others dead under the Gazan rubble which used to be their homes, and the wounded, and the hundreds killed in the West Bank Occupied Territories or hauled off into Israeli prison back doors, while a few hundred are released before cameras at the front door.

The question is impossible to avoid: is the Israeli end goal actually to wipe out Hamas? Hamas – weren’t they actively working with Netanyahu’s crew once so that Palestinian Authority would be undermined and divided? Now any Palestinian has become first of all the devil incarnate, until proven innocent or dead.

Do the Hamas loyalists wear badges indicating their membership? Just how are they distinguishable from “ordinary” Palestinians who writhe under the Israeli punitive control? It surely must be true that there is some degree of Hamas sympathy in most who have been experiencing the Gazan outdoor prison, its blockaded borders, and others in the Occupied Territories subjugated by Israeli forces?

Or is it the intended end game to annihilate all Palestinians like the biblical Amalekites Netanyahu is wont to talk about? (Ref.: Judges 3:13, 6:3-5,33; 7:12, 10:12; 1Samuel15; 27:6; 1Sam 30:1-20; 1Chronicles 4:43)

Is the Israeli goal to remove this resistant, but rightful, presence totally to only God knows where? What could possibly be the destination? Going west won’t work – the Mediterranean Sea won’t open its watery path to liberation. South won’t work – Egypt's current Pharaoh doesn’t want to be overrun by politically aware refugees. East is difficult - Gazans would have to cross Israeli territory; and those in the Occupied Territories would have to contend with Jordanian or Syrian bad memories of Palestinians fleeing land and homes, upsetting stability in neighbouring lands. And, to the north, Lebanon…the spectre of 1982, Sabra and Shatila's slaughtered Palestinians in Beirut refugee camps – victims of militant Christians colluding with Ariel Sharon and the Israeli armed forces.

Is death really the only road to “liberation” for Palestinians?

Increasingly Earth’s nations are saying “no way.” The recent vote by the UN General Assembly registered clearly the world’s frustration and impatience with the always asymmetrical "wars" that kill wildly disproportionate numbers of Palestinian innocents and resisters as revenge by USA -armed Israelis. Now the frightening proportions again are 20 to 2, i.e. 20,000 women, children, men overwhelmingly Palestinian Christians and Muslims, compared with 2000 women, children, men - most Israeli citizens.

I was reading the story of King Solomon in the Tanakh (Old Testament) book of Kings – the slaughter was still underway in that time. It had started, according to Scripture, when the Hebrews were liberated from Egypt and trekked to the “promised land” and there fought their way into the “land of milk and honey” – by the command, according to the scriptural editors, of the Holy One – Adonai. That commanding and warring God is too often still the image of the Holy One, especially for fundamentalist Christians and, perhaps, for fanatic Jews and Muslims too.

Happily, there are other witnesses in the Tanakh who testify to a more compassionate, loving, and righteous (just) God who calls the faithful to not kill, but to care for foreigners, strangers, the “little ones” and the poor at the margins of life. The “minor” prophet Micah sums up what this loving God expects from the one human family: to seek justice, and love kindness, and walk humbly with God.” (6:8)

That expectation has been a long time coming and so, as a wise Jew Abraham Heschell helps us remember, the Holy One everyday rises impatiently to wonder what’s next on the divine agenda with humans’ participation to “mend the earth” ( tikkun olam ).

The reason I mention all this is because the book I’ve just finished reading points only in the direction of the divine. There is no simple solution. There is absolutely no military solution to the endless animosities and terror of power. There is no imperial solution because the great powers are unwilling to give up their control of the stalemate. The politicians are incapable of doing it – they’ve either sold their souls for power, or have resigned themselves to their sorry state.

And yet there are voices that keep protesting above the din: there is a solution. It must be possible.

Murdered on the fateful October 6 ^th , Vivian Silver had previously told an Associated Press reporter: “We went through three horrific wars in the space of six years”, she said, “at the end of the third one, I said: no more. We each have to do whatever we can to stop the next war. And it’s possible. We must reach a diplomatic agreement.” (Thanks to Joel Harden, Ottawa Centre MPP for this testimony in his MPP Update #185 14 Dec. ’23).

We cannot force the “other” - the enemy - to think – or better, to feel - differently. Their deeply rooted love of home, land, history and all that contributes to identity will not easily or violently be expunged. No. Forging just peace takes people of sound minds and big hearts, holding differing opinions strongly, but committed to the “other” - the "enemy" - as the only partner really available. (p. 262 in The Lemon Tree.))

War will only breed more hate and conflict as we have well learned over the last 75 years, and in the Biblical witness. The prospect of one combatant nation slaying the other is too evil to countenance. In the end there must be a resolution to live with the other and to make the terms of living side by side as tolerable, just, and peaceable as possible. It means foregoing dreams of vanquishing the other and pursuing, instead, the Way of ceasefire, deepening understanding, and actively building bridges where walls now block the view of the "other".

This is really the narrative thread that makes The Lemon Tree such a gripping book. The lemon tree of the book is the backyard icon of the home which Bashir’s family built and, with the Nakba of 1948, was compelled to vacate rendering them homeless. It then became for Dalia and her Bulgarian Jewish refugee family their home but with mixed compromised feelings.

In the context of the violent animosity of their two nations, two persons discover each other as amazing kindred spirits able to respect and appreciate each other. But they do so without compromising their personal convictions or deepest yearnings as an Israeli IDF officer, Dalia, and Bashir, as a Palestinian resister.

There is little comfort in reading this non-fiction account. There is no fairy tale ending. But in the conflicted context of the gruesome saga of violence and bloodshed that is Palestine/Israel, The Lemon Tree helps us understand deep-seated commitments that inhabit the antagonists. And it reinforces the inexorable conclusion that the damned warfare must end and the Sisyphean quest for just peace and neighbourliness must be found.

In this Holy Season, may the way to Bethlehem's peace be discovered and proclaimed by all of "goodwill".

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

T olan, Sandy: "The Lemon Tree - an Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East." New York, Bloomsbury USA, 2006. ISBN 9 781596 9134431

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Journeying to Reconciliation

Sun, 19 Nov 2023 22:25:04 GMT

Three Steps toward Reconciliation for Settlers

Journeying to Reconciliation

1) Brief History

“Reconciliation” is about relationships. In this case, about the relationship between Settler and Indigenous Peoples in Canada

a) Indigenous Peoples have been living on Turtle Island for millennia. Settler people has been here only five or six centuries. Initially there was much sharing and cooperation.

b) Especially in the last 2 centuries: the relationship has deteriorated – as Settlers increased. The British Crown and Canada’s government assert sovereignty over all land and disdain the nation-to-nation, Crown to First Nations Treaties. Settler society assume superior and subjugating stance.

c) Since Confederation 1867: assimilation was the primary policy - make “them” like us European, Christian, individual property-ownership and agriculturally based. Don’t let Indigenous People impede the National dream of Canada “from sea to sea.” Confine and control Indigenous Peoples. Ignorance of the Indigenous realities grows profoundly in Settler society.

d) It's TIME to change the channel from bad (or dystopian) to more just, mutually respectful, fair, self-determining relationship of equals (or utopian).

e) It's a big job – given more than 150 years of legalized subjugation – especially the Indian Act of 1876. Read more about the story at https://www.minister.ca/indian-act-proposal .

2) How do we journey toward Reconciliation ?

Jody Wilson-Raybould (Puglaas) wrote “ True Reconciliation” , offering a paradigm: three steps on the journey leading towards Reconciliation. The three steps: Learn – Understand – Act . Read more at: https://www.minister.ca/who-writes-history.

Jody Wilson-Raybould (Puglaas)True Reconciliation - How to Be a Force for Change. . Penguin Random House Canada Ltd./McClelland & Stewart. 2022. ISBN 9780771004384.

3) My Take on Puglaas’ Three Steps

a) Learn – Images to remember “ head" or "brain .”

i) I started with basic facts, truth to dispel rumours, stereotypes, prejudices. Others may choose a different image or way to start. Books that taught basics included:

· Stephen King: “ The Inconvenient Indian .” Anchor Canada, 2012

· Lynda Gray: “ First Nations 101 – Tons of Stuff You Need to Know”, Vancouver, Adaawx Publishing, 2022. ISBN978 0 9869640

· Bob Joseph: “ 21 Things you May not Know about the Indian Act , Helping Canadians Make Reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples a Reality”, Port Coquitlam BC, Indigenous Relations Press, 2018.

· Bruce McIvor: “ Standoff, Why Reconciliation Fails Indigenous People and How to Fix It.” Gibsons BC, Nightwood Editions, 2021.

· " This Place – 150 Years Retold ." A graphic novel of 10 stories for adults and children. Foreword by Alicia Elliott; stories by Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm [and 10 others]; illustrations by Tara Audibert [and 5 others]; Highwater Press. 2019, ISBN 9781553797586. $36. This volume contains Indigenous/settler stories in words and beautiful graphics that make all readers reconsider the histories we've learned before about life in Canada for Indigenous Peoples. The courage of Indigenous heroes inspires Indigenous and settler folks alike and awakens visions of another future together in this fair land.

ii) Learn about the Doctrine of Discovery ( Google it! ). There have been many repudiations and apologies about this false doctrine promulgated in the late 15 ^th century. But this faux Papal teaching still quietly undergirds Crown sovereignty in Canada!! Go figure!

iii) Read about Treaties (Crown-Indigenous) and how the Indian Act trampled on and negated Treaties, dishonouring the Crown and depriving Indigenous Peoples of their rights, land base, and the inevitable outcome of impoverishment.

iv) Understand WHY Indigenous People are much poorer than Settlers - social, educational, economic inequality; and why so many are in jails (Read: Harold R Johnson: “Peace and Good Order, The Case for Indigenous Justice in Canada.” McClelland & Stewart, 2019. ISBN 978 0 7710 4872 2)

v) Keep exploring to get to the truth and dispel the myths (e.g. re taxes).

b) Understand – Images to remember “ Heart ” or “ Learn to walk in their shoes ”

i) Meditate on what you’ve learned about Indigenous Peoples and about yourself as a Settler person. A heavy duty book to do this seriously is: Elaine Enns and Ched Myers. “ Healing Haunted Histories – A Settler Discipleship of Decolonization. ” Eugene Oregon, Cascade Books, 2021. ISBN 978 1 7252 5535 7.

ii) Discuss with others (e.g. Living into Right Relations Book Study Group at First United Church; conversation with Indigenous neighbours, acquaintances, classmates; take a course at community college, etc.)

iii) Reflect deeply, honestly, humbly on the costly & harmful settler colonial policies to “assimilate” Indigenous Peoples: dispossession of lands by the Crown; Residential Schools and the ‘60s Scoop of children destroying families; chronic underfunding of education, health, and basic amenities on reserves; prohibition of cultural and spiritual heritage activities.

Read: John Ralston Saul: “ A Fair Country – Telling Truths about Canada. ” Toronto, Penguin Books, 2008.

Understand the intentions of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples by reading the summary report produced by The Institute on Governance based in Ottawa (April 1997). Website: www.IOG.ca .

v) Read first person accounts of the harm and pain Indigenous People have experienced. E.g.:

Andrew Stobo Sniderman & Douglas Sanderson (Amo Binshii). “ Valley of the Birdtail – An Indian Reserve and a White Town and the Road to Reconciliation”, Toronto, Harper & Collins, 2022.
Alicia Elliott. “ A Mind Spread Out on the Ground ”. Anchor Canada, 2019
Brian Thomas Isaac. “ All the Quiet Places ”. Touchwood Editions. 2021.

vi) Hardened hearts : Consider how these subjugating policies hardened our hearts, reinforced prejudices or superiority and domination, making us ignorant of Indigenous losses and suffering, stifling our compassion, kindness, and goodwill.

vii) Connect with Indigenous persons and listen carefully to their truth, their wisdom, courage, vision.

c) Act. “hands" or "feet.”

Remember becoming agents for change is to renew the relationship – individually and collectively.

i) Attend Indigenous focused events : education, cultural, festivities, exhibitions – to both discover and support Indigenous efforts to honour heritage and foster identity.

ii) Become more aware and active about Settler wealth compared to Indigenous impoverishment . Where did settler wealth come from? In B.C. I learned how much wealth was generated by the forestry industry (an Indigenous lands). In Saskatchewan, potash and uranium, not to mention prairie grains, generated settler wealth from Indigenous lands. In Manitoba, rivers and lakes generated hydro as was the case in Ontario and Quebec; in the Maritimes, fishing was the wealth source.

Would a Guaranteed Basic Livable Income balance the income scales between Indigenous & settler people?

In Victoria volunteer “taxes” paid to First Nations are balancing the scales. ( Victoria Reciprocity Trusts .)

iii) Vote on the remit to help Indigenous United Church of Canada Indigenous folks self-determine their way of being UCC. And if your congregation isn’t voting, participate in Federal & Provincial elections to support Indigenous-friendly and supportive political candidates.

iv) Prod the politicians federal, provincial, municipal to implement the Truth & Reconciliation Commission's (TRC) Calls to Action, the recommendations of the Murdered & Missing Indigenous Women & Girls Report, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP(, and the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples

v) Support efforts to repudiate the Indian Act and call for a new nations-to-Crown treaty negotiated between settler society’s representatives (The Crown) and Indigenous Peoples (Inuit, Métis, First Nations.

And humbly and patiently do much more to implement our core prayer to restore “God’s reign on earth as in heaven”; or other blessed images like “two canoes and one river” and the “two row wampum” treaty of friendship, justice and peace.

Learn – head. Understand – heart. Act – hands and feet.

Steps for the journey toward Reconciliation and a new relationship between Indigenous Peoples and Settler Society in Canada.

Q&A re Gaza War

Tue, 14 Nov 2023 19:12:23 GMT

#2 Peace & Justice Goal for Palestinians & Israelis

Pilgrim Praxis Friends :

Hope you are well. I've written four previous posts about the abominable "war" still going on in Palestine / Israel now. More needs knowing, understanding, and acting. Many will have taken part in demonstrations calling for ceasefire in Gaza. Others have written germane and illuminating articles. The team at CJPME - Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East have helpfully informed concerned observers of this criminal conflict. I have found CJPME to be trustworthy and focused on justice and peace for all involved in this long lasting conflict. ( info@cjpme.org )

So, thanks to the CJPME staff more of our questions are answered in a balanced manner to help us more faithfully respond to the War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity going on in plain view. Whether we are people of faith - Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Baha'i, Sikh, etc. or simply people of goodwill - there is no higher goal than to stop this (and other) murderous wars and bring just peace to this bloodied region. "Do unto others as you would have them do to you."

Regrettably, our own Canadian government has refused to call for a permanent ceasefire, following the lead of the American government. This makes us, as Canadians (and them), complicit in these crimes. Expecting our government to demand prosecution of these crimes is but wishful thinking. The International Criminal Court can, we fervently hope, bring perpetrators to redemptive justice. The Holy One calls us all to stop the slaughter and restore Shalom! Salaam! Peace!

In faith, Harry Oussoren

[Links activated with "control" and click for reading on your browser.]

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Here is the CJPME post:

Sadly, the tragedy continues: more horrific Israeli violence and killing against Palestinians, and more silence from Canada's Liberal government. But people of good conscience must labour on. We must continue to demonstrate, we must continue to press our government for action, we must continue to press our media for balance. We must also reach out to family, friends and community about the oppression, deprivation, and dispossession of the Palestinians. As such we provide the answers to frequently asked questions (FAQ) on Israel's war on Gaza below (and on-line here .)

Below the FAQ, we also provide links to resources from our friends at the Canadian Muslim Lawyers Association (CMLA) about 1) the rights of Canadians to free expression vis-a-vis their employers, and 2) vis-a-vis protest actions.

Finally, we wanted our adherents to know that we have many flyers that can be downloaded and printed on your home printer. These flyers can be very useful as you talk with the people in your network about Israel's war on Gaza. Download our home-printable flyers on " Apartheid in Israel ," " Anti-Palestinian Racism ," " What is Palestine ," and " Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment (BDS) on Israel ." Below, you can also download our " Disappearing Palestine " map card. Dozens of printable resources can be found on this page .

If you appreciate CJPME's work on Palestinian human rights and liberation, please consider supporting financially .

Frequently Asked Questions: Israel’s War on Gaza

Is the Gaza Strip occupied by Israel?

Yes. Even before Israel’s recent re-invasion, the Gaza Strip was under Israeli military occupation (since 1967) and under blockade (since 2007.) Even though Israel “disengaged” from the Gaza Strip in 2005, removing its illegal settlements and ground forces, experts including United Nations fact-finding missions, human rights organizations, and the International Committee of the Red Cross had concluded that Israel had not ended its role as an occupying power . Under international law, an occupation does not depend on whether a foreign power has a direct ground troop presence in a territory, but on whether it asserts “effective control” over the territory. As such, the Fourth Geneva Convention continues to apply in Gaza. This means that Israel, as an occupying power, has a responsibility to protect the welfare of the civilian population.

Does Israel have a right to self-defence in Gaza?

In a general sense, Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations recognizes the right of self-defence in the case of armed attack by one state against another. However, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) determined in 2004 that Article 51 has “no relevance” in the case of Israel’s actions in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, because Israel already exercises military control.

While Israel does have a right to “respond” to violence “in order to protect the life of its citizens,” its actions are bound by the laws of occupation. As noted by American-Palestinian legal scholar Noura Erakat, the laws of occupation are more restrictive than other laws of war, as they put on Israel “an obligation and a duty to protect the civilians under its occupation.” For example, Israel must make a distinction between civilians and combatants, Israel’s response must be proportionate, Israel must allow civilians access to food and medicines, and Israel cannot impose collective punishment. By harming the population of Gaza through bombardment and siege, Israel’s war on Gaza is therefore unlawful.

Do Palestinians have a right to resist?

Yes. Under international law, Palestinians have a right to resort to armed violence against racist regimes, military occupation, and foreign domination. However, there are limitations to this right. For example, the actions of armed groups are subject to international humanitarian law, and must distinguish between combatants and civilians.

Violence directed at military targets, including Israeli occupation soldiers and military installations, can be considered within an occupied people’s right to resist. However, the deliberate killing of civilians is not consistent with this right, and such attacks should be investigated as war crimes.

Is Hamas using Palestinian civilians as human shields?

Israel has often alleged that Hamas uses Palestinian civilians in Gaza as “human shields.” This is an unfounded and inflammatory claim that Israel uses to deny Israeli responsibility for its illegal attacks on densely populated civilian areas including homes, schools, and hospitals. Amnesty International investigated the accusation following the 2014 war and concluded: “The Israeli authorities have claimed that in a few incidents, the Hamas authorities or Palestinian fighters directed or physically coerced individual civilians in specific locations to shield combatants or military objectives. Amnesty International has not been able to corroborate the facts in any of these cases.”

While Amnesty did not find evidence of Palestinians using human shields, it did determine that the Israeli military had used Palestinians as human shields in a number of instances. The UN’s 2009 Goldstone Report similarly documented multiple cases of Israel using Palestinians as human shields in Gaza. Today, Defense for Children International - Palestinian has repeatedly documented that Israel uses Palestinian children as human shields in the occupied West Bank - including five children in May of this year.

Why do we need a ceasefire and not a “humanitarian pause”?

It is clear that “humanitarian pauses” in the context of Israel’s war on Gaza cannot address the full scope of the critical humanitarian needs. Such an approach would amount to a temporary ‘pause’ in fighting, within a localized area, to allow for displaced people to leave their homes and possibly to facilitate the entry of aid. However, this makes little sense if these same people would immediately be targeted in subsequent mass killing operations and acts of deliberate starvation.

Frankly, the scale of the current humanitarian catastrophe inflicted by Israel cannot be reversed with temporary and localized influxes of aid, especially if Israel continues to block aid from reaching the north half of the Gaza Strip. A ‘pause’ will not bring the hospital system back from collapse. Instead, averting catastrophic human loss requires a total and permanent end to hostilities, the immediate, massive, unconditional transfers of aid throughout the entire territory, and the resumption of basic services necessary for maintaining the conditions of life.

Will Israel’s war make Israelis and Palestinians safer?

Israel’s war on Gaza has not reduced the risks to safety and security in the region, but appears to be escalating the conflict to a regional war, making everyone less safe. Israel’s actions have prompted attacks on US bases in Iraq, firefights on the border with Lebanon, and drone attacks from Yemen. This is still a powder keg that could blow wide open. This path we are on leads to war with Iran. Canada must pull Israel and the US back from the brink.

Isn’t war necessary to rescue the hostages?

No, Israel’s war on Gaza is undermining efforts to secure the safe release of civilian hostages who are being held by Hamas in violation of international law. Further military escalation is the last thing that would secure their release. Instead, the escalation of Israel’s ground operations is putting the lives of hostages in direct jeopardy, making the conditions less safe for them to be released, and is undermining Qatar-led negotiations towards a prisoner/hostage swap. The release of hostages is supposedly a priority for the Canadian government, and a ceasefire is the best way to ensure their freedom.

Is Israel’s goal of ‘eliminating’ Hamas feasible?

There is no military solution to Israel’s problems in Gaza. Israel has repeatedly bombed Gaza and has always ended up back in the same place. Even if the elimination of Hamas was possible, its war has already caused a catastrophic loss of human life. Canada must be honest about how many Palestinian children it will allow Israel to kill to achieve this goal.

It is also evident that Israel has no clear end game. Even if Hamas could be successfully eliminated, what happens the day after? We have learned in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria that Western-led operations to topple regimes and replace them with compliant clients will lead to worse actors arising from the power vacuum (ISIL), or their return when we finally give up (Taliban). Without addressing the underlying problems of occupation, dispossession, and the denial of freedom for millions of Palestinians, there is no hope for a just resolution. The mass killing, starvation, displacement, and oppression of millions of Palestinians will never lead to peace.

Is a ceasefire possible?

Both Israel and Hamas have held to ceasefires in the past, and both parties have also been responsible for violating them. All parties must be held responsible to the same standard.

Canada must remember that you don’t make peace with your friends, but with your enemies. The only way forward is through a negotiated ceasefire and a resolution of the underlying issues of dispossession, occupation, and apartheid. To this end, Hamas must be seen as a political actor and negotiating partner, not a force of evil outside of history to be ‘eliminated.’

Would a ceasefire give a ‘free pass’ to the crimes of Hamas?

No, a ceasefire would not give a free pass to the crimes of Hamas, no more than it would give a free pass to the crimes that Israel has also committed since October 7. Instead, a ceasefire would bring an immediate end to the pointless destruction of human life in Gaza, and prevent further catastrophic loss. A ceasefire would put a brake on Israel’s efforts to forcibly displace the population of Gaza. A ceasefire would allow for unrestricted access to humanitarian aid and for society to rebuild.

Both Hamas and Israel must be held accountable for the war crimes committed before and after October 7. However, this accountability cannot be reached through a war of elimination, but through international forums of justice that are capable of investigating and prosecuting these crimes. The International Criminal Court (ICC) has an open investigation into alleged war crimes committed by all parties in the occupied Palestinian Territories since 2014, and the ICC’s chief prosecutor has confirmed that it has jurisdiction to investigate the ongoing actions of both Israel and Hamas. To pursue justice, Canada should put its full support behind this investigation.

Why do people say that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza?

This determination is not made lightly, as genocide is a grave crime under international law. As defined in the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948), the crime of genocide involves certain acts conducted with “the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.” Genocide can be committed in either a time of war or peace. Acts associated with genocide include “killing members of the group,” “causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group,” and “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”

Israel’s war on Gaza amounts to the collective punishment of the civilian population, and very much embodies the crime of genocide as legally defined. Indiscriminate Israeli airstrikes – at times targeting even schools, mosques, churches, hospitals, ambulances, and apartment buildings – have killed over ten thousand Palestinians in just one month, most of them women and children. Israel’s ‘total siege’ – illegal under international law – has cut off access to water, food, electricity, fuel, and medicines to civilians, bringing the health of the population to the brink of death. Israel has also ordered more than 1,500,000 people in northern Gaza to flee their homes, and is considering plans to push the population of Gaza into Egypt. In justifying these illegal actions, Israel’s defence minister and other key official have referred to Palestinians in Gaza in dehumanizing language, including as “human animals.”

Looking at all of these factors, UN human rights experts say that they are “convinced that the Palestinian people are at grave risk of genocide.” Palestinian human rights organizations have filed a lawsuit with the International Criminal Court (ICC), urging the body to investigate Israel for “genocide,” and Canada should support these efforts.

What is the meaning of the slogan, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”?

“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” is a widely popular chant in support of the right of Palestinians to live freely throughout their homeland, which spans between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. It asserts that Palestinians have a right to be free from Israeli domination and oppression, and that this right applies whether they are living under Israeli military occupation, as second-class citizens within Israel, or as refugees waiting to return to their homes. It is a call for a future in which all inhabitants of Palestine-Israel can live as free and equal citizens, and no group is privileged over another.

Resources on rights of employees and protestors:

FAQ: Freedom of Expression and the Israel-Palestine Conflict

The CMLA has developed an excellent document that covers our rights to free expression vis-a-vis our employer in Canada. They answer questions like, "Can an employee be
terminated for posting about the conflict on social media?" and "Can workplace conduct or off duty conduct be a subject of a regulatory complaint?" Download the complete flyer here , and feel free to get in touch with the CMLA if you feel you've been mistreated by your employer.

FAQ: Your Rights and Guidelines for Peaceful Protests in Canada

The CMLA has also published an excellent guide on citizens' rights during peaceful protests in Canada . They answer questions like, "What are the legal rights of protestors?" "What to do if confronted by police?" and "What to do if detained or arrested?" Download the document here .

Can you support our work?

All of the resources provided above require time and specialized skills. If you believe in what CJPME is doing to influence the government, the media and the public, please consider making a gift of financial support to CJPME. Our work depends entirely on private donations. Monthly donations are especially helpful, as they sustain our ongoing work and make it easier for us to strategize for the future. If you don't like to donate by credit card, you may donate via email transfer , over the phone (438-380-5410), or complete and mail in this form .

Thank you for supporting our collective efforts. Every added voice makes a difference!

Warmest regards,

Tom, Michael, Jason, Lynn, Dan, Alex, Fatima and the rest of the CJPME team ( CJPME Email )

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end of CJPME citation.

At War's End

Tue, 31 Oct 2023 19:23:04 GMT

Liberation? Continuation?

Image Source with thanks: Ahmed Akacha

In a previous post, I mentioned reading “ The Hunger War – Occupied Holland 1944-1945 ”* written by Henri van der Zee. I’m very interested because I was an infant spectator when the realities that van der Zee describes were actually taking place in my birth country – The Netherlands.

Fortunately for me and my family, we lived in Zeeland, one of the southern provinces, whose capital is my birthplace, Middelburg.

After fierce fighting by Canadian and British soldiers and the destruction of massive dikes allowing North Sea water to drown much of our island, the Nazi forces of occupation were compelled to capitulate in November of 1944.

Imagine the relief and the joy when those occupation forces became prisoners of war and we Zeelanders were freed of our bondage and able to get on with doing, thinking, speaking, reading, listening, loving, and praying - life - without fear of imprisonment, torture, or execution. Being human agents was allowed again.

Our neighbours in the urban-centred provinces of North and South Holland and Utrecht were not as fortunate. Zeeland had been no picnic, but the 4.5 million people living in Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam and other cities experienced a hideous reign of terror.

Subjugated by the Nazi-imposed governor Arthur Seyss-Inquart and his various forces of occupation (Wehrmacht, Gestapo, SS, Dutch sympathizers), residents were subjected to all the terrors of war – bombardments, imprisonment and executions, reprisal murders, extermination of Jews and other minorities, mass deportations of men and boys, concentration camps for resisters, food rationing, and theft of property. Annihilation was the lot of any caught resisting the Nazi occupation.

But in the final months of the war there was also total shortage of all that is needed to maintain life. No fuel, gas or coal, and dwindling food stocks. In April 1945, per person rations were reduced from 525 calories to 400 per day – or half a loaf of bread per week, one slice per day (p. 224) . There was no end in sight and the misery of hunger climaxed for far too many in death. Nine months of hell resulted in 18,000 civilians starving to death, not to mention the disastrous physical and mental inflicted harm shaping the remainder of countless lives.

The Nazis broke the rules of war by not protecting the civilian residents of the occupied territories governed by the Nazi forces. These were crimes and were prosecuted. At the post-war Nürnberg Trials, Seyss-Inquart was convicted of crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity along with fellow conspirators. He was executed. (+ see footnotes below for more data.)

Imagine the joy the May 5 ^th , 1945 – Liberation Day - awakened in the millions of Dutch people kept in this open air cage of Nazi occupation. When Canadian and British forces finally drove into the cities, hidden Orange and Red-White-Blue flags were brought out of hiding and into the public sphere. All who could came into the streets to surround their liberators, to share in the relief of occupation’s end, and celebrate the return of Queen Wilhelmina of the House of Orange to her wounded, liberated kingdom.

Many thousands of weary and physically depleted people couldn’t join “the party” unable even to walk out of their homes. Their rehabilitation was a large mission that would occupy their liberators and able residents long past the celebrations. But the wheels were put in motion for resurrection and joy in living in the free Netherlands.

More War

It is disillusioning to know that the horrors of war are again happening at this stage in my life. Russia’s attempt to re-colonize Ukraine by warfare is being courageously resisted at great cost. Yemen and Ethiopia and Eritrea don't get much press, but blood still seeps into ground.

Right now, Gaza’s densely populated little sliver of land, home for 2 million or so Palestinian people, is at war again. Already more than 8,300 people have died, mostly children and women civilians succumbing to the terror of bombardment from sea, air, and ground forces of the Israeli armed forces. Supported by both encouragement and armaments of the United States and allies, Israel feels no constraints in its war - even though Hamas-held hostages are at great risk being hit by "friendly fire". According to Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, this is the beginning of a long war to annihilate Hamas (and many other Palestinians).

The rationale provided by Israeli authorities is that this is a war to defend Israel and as response to surprise violent and murderous attack by Palestinian Hamas party forces against Israeli citizens on October 8 ^th . About 1400 people were killed in this attack and as many as 200 hostages were taken. This assault was a War Crime and Crime against Humanity+ against non-combatant Israeli civilians and humans of other nationalities.

As part of its war, Israeli has hermetically sealed off Gaza – preventing the provision of adequate food and medical supplies, water, electricity, fuel, and other necessities of life. Calls for humanitarian ceasefires or pauses have been rejected. The population in northern Gaza were warned to leave their area for their own safety from bombardment and infantry assaults – a displacement of as many as a million with no real place to go. No place is safe from Israeli bombardment and many civilians are simply in no position to be displaced. Hospitals have been bombed, schools, churches, and essential infrastructure destroyed.

The plight of 2-million-plus Palestinians is precarious and many more deaths can be expected before Israel finally decides to declare that its war aims have been achieved and its defense secured. The casualty count will be – as has previously also been the case - wildly disproportionate indicative of the disparity of power between the enemies. As occupying power Israel is committing Crimes of War and against Humanity+.

When the inevitable victory is declared, it will be unclear just what was being defended. Was it simply the peace and security of Israelis? Or was it the continuation of Israel’s subjugation of Palestinians?

In any case, unlike the liberated Dutch in 1945 celebrating the end of war and their liberation from Nazi subjugation, Palestinians will have little to celebrate. They may be relieved, but there can be no joy of “liberation” because the end simply allows the continuation of the subjugation Palestinians have experienced and resisted for 75 years.

Palestinian will have to deal with incalculable personal and collective losses, their harm and grief inconsolable, and their hope for the future bleak and grim. There is nothing on which to base hope because their subjugation will continue and likely worsen.

The Israeli domination will resume in somewhat less violent but well-established de-humanizing ways. Palestinians' entire lives will continue to be dependent on what the Netanyahu or his successor Israeli government decrees. The long- term blockade and controlled border will continue to imprison Palestinians, with rumours and omens of ethnic cleansing abounding.

Restoring the essential Gazan infrastructure and institutional fabric of life will take a generation. Memories of the violence experienced will harden and hate will perpetuate the multi-generational cycles of violence.

In the illegally Occupied Territories the Settler land-theft, home-destruction, and displacement already involving 1000 Palestinians will continue and Palestinians will continue to be subjected to the threats and violence of armed Settlers and Israel's army. Since October 7th, 109 Palestinians (of which 33 are children) have been killed. The rule of Knesset law, likely with a weakened Supreme Court undermining the rule of law will pour fuel on Palestinian fears for their future.

No, the end of this brutal war will bring no joy with the end of hostilities. It will signal the resumption of the status quo of subjugation and worse for Palestinians. Is this what Israel is defending? To maintain and enhance its domination over Palestinians in this bloodied portion of God’s earth?

Shamefully, Canada is currently contributing nothing to real peace in the Middle East. It has given the green light – along with the USA and other western allies – to this Israeli War Crime and Crime against Humanity+ as response to the Palestinian Hamas Crimes. This will bring peace to neither Israelis nor Palestinians. And that makes Canada and Canadians complicit in crime. Negotiated justice only will bring peace.

May God have mercy. May God’s yearning to end the one human family’s crimes and war be fulfilled and may just peace be the quest which motivates the entire human family.

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Footnotes

*Van der Zee, Henri A: Lincoln, U of Nebraska Press, 1982 (1998 reprint, Bison Press); ISBN 0-8032-9618-5

+https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/nuremberg-trial-judgements-arthur-seyss-inquart

+ https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/nuremberg-trial-proceedings-indictment-count-three (War Crimes)

"All the defendants, acting in concert with others, formulated and executed a Common Plan or Conspiracy to commit War Crimes as defined in Article 6 (b) of the Charter. This plan involved, among other things, the practice of "total war" including methods of combat and of military occupation in direct conflict with the laws and customs of war, and the commission of crimes perpetrated on the field of battle during encounters with enemy armies, and against prisoners of war, and in occupied territories against the civilian population of such territories.

The said War Crimes were committed by the defendants and by other persons for whose acts the defendants are responsible (under Article 6 of the Charter) as such other persons when committing the said War Crimes performed their acts in execution of a common plan and conspiracy to commit the said War Crimes, in the formulation and execution of which plan and conspiracy all the defendants participated as leaders, organizers, instigators, and accomplices.

These methods and crimes constituted violations of international conventions, of internal penal laws and of the general principles of criminal law as derived from the criminal law of all civilized nations, and were involved in and part of a systematic course of conduct."

(A) MURDER AND ILL-TREATMENT OF CIVILIAN POPULATIONS OF OR IN OCCUPIED TERRITORY AND ON THE HIGH SEAS

"Throughout the period of their occupation of territories overrun by their armed forces the defendants, for the purpose of systematically terrorizing the inhabitants, murdered and tortured civilians, and ill-treated them, and imprisoned them without legal process.

The murders and ill-treatment were carried out by divers means, including shooting, hanging, gassing, starvation, gross overcrowding, systematic under-nutrition, systematic imposition of labor tasks beyond the strength of those ordered to carry them out, inadequate provision of surgical and medical services, kickings, beatings, brutality and torture of all kinds, including the use of hot irons and pulling out of fingernails and the performance of experiments by means of operations and otherwise on living human subjects. In some occupied territories the defendants interfered in religious matters, persecuted members of the clergy and monastic orders, and expropriated church property. They conducted deliberate and systematic genocide, viz., the extermination of racial and national groups, against the civilian populations of certain occupied territories in order to destroy particular races and classes of people and national, racial, or religious groups, particularly Jews, Poles, and Gypsies and others.

Civilians were systematically subjected to tortures of all kinds, with the object of obtaining information.

Civilians of occupied countries were subjected systematically to "protective arrests" whereby they were arrested and imprisoned without any trial and any of the ordinary protections of the law, and they were imprisoned under the most unhealthy and inhumane conditions.

In the concentration camps were many prisoners who were classified "Nacht und Nebel". These were entirely cut off from the world and were allowed neither to receive nor to send letters. They disappeared without trace and no announcement of their fate was ever made by the German authorities.

Such murders and ill-treatment were contrary to international conventions, in particular to Article 46 of the Hague Regulations, 1907, the laws and customs of war, the general principles of criminal law as derived from the criminal laws of all civilized nations, the internal penal laws of the countries in which such crimes were committed, and to Article 6 (b) of the Charter."

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/nuremberg-trial-proceedings-indictment-count-four (Crime against Humanity)

…. (A) MURDER, EXTERMINATION, ENSLAVEMENT, DEPORTATION, AND OTHER INHUMANE ACTS COMMITTED AGAINST CIVILIAN POPULATIONS BEFORE AND DURING THE WAR

"For the purposes set out above, the defendants adopted a policy of persecution, repression, and extermination of all civilians in Germany who were, or who were believed to be, or who were believed likely to become, hostile to the Nazi Government and the common plan or conspiracy described in Count One. They imprisoned such persons without judicial process, holding them in "protective custody" and concentration camps, and subjected them to persecution, degradation, despoilment, enslavement, torture, and murder. "…..

Criminal Collective Punishment

Mon, 23 Oct 2023 00:49:45 GMT

Criminal Collective Punishment

Collective punishment is a punishment or sanction imposed on a group for acts allegedly perpetrated by a member of that group, which could be an ethnic or political group, or just the family, friends and neighbors of the perpetrator. Because individuals who are not responsible for the wrong acts are targeted, collective punishment is not compatible with the basic principle of individual responsibility. The punished group may often have no direct association with the perpetrator other than living in the same area and can not be assumed to exercise control over the perpetrator's actions. Collective punishment is a war crime prohibited by treaty in both international and non-international armed conflicts, more specifically Common Article 33 of the Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocol II.

A war crime is a violation of the laws of war that gives rise to individual criminal responsibility for actions by combatants in action, such as intentionally killing civilians or intentionally killing prisoners of war , torture , taking hostages , unnecessarily destroying civilian property , deception by perfidy , wartime sexual violence , pillaging , and for any individual that is part of the command structure who orders any attempt to committing mass killings including genocide or ethnic cleansing , the granting of no quarter despite surrender, the conscription of children in the military and flouting the legal distinctions of proportionality and military necessity . (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_punishment#cite_note-2)

The 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court is a further body of law which in detail sets out and proscribes war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity, etc. which are carried out within the Israeli Defense Force controlled Green-line areas of Palestine. (source: https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/RS-Eng.pdf )

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Collective punishment is a criminal activity perpetrated to incentivize opposing people (too frequently indigenous peoples under colonial rule) to change their behaviour. Usually, it is practiced by those who have short-or-long term power over others who resist being subjugated. It can include a variety of means: large scale imprisonment, destruction of homes, depriving people of the essentials of living, collective fines, strict controls with brutal enforcement, rape of women and girls, and murder of one or many, including first responders and medical personnel, etc.

The consequences of collective punishment may include: imposed "peace," rage and hatred, ongoing resistance, and violent reprisals, and the undermining of principles of justice. Seldom does collective punishment result in durable peace. Equally seldom is collective punishment prosecuted.

The universal principle acclaimed by many faiths - do unto others as you would have them do to you - is fundamentally negated by collective punishment. International standards condemn collective punishment as war crimes. There is a universal consensus that collective punishment is wrong and criminal. But it happens – all too frequently.

Canada knows about collective punishment. In retribution for participation in or sympathy with the Riel rebellion in 1885, Prime Minister John A Macdonald decreed that a pass system would be imposed “as a consequence of their disloyalty,” not only on 28 ‘disloyal’ ‘Indian’ bands, but the restrictive measure was extended to all First Nation reserves. (see Sniderman, Andrew Stobo, & Sanderson (Amo Binashii), Douglas, Valley of the Birdtail, Harper Collins, 2022. P. 123.)

The Indian Act pass system required any First Nation people who wanted to leave a reserve to obtain an official pass specifying the purpose and duration of the absence, duly signed by an Indian agent. The pass might be for a day, for ten days (to marry), 15 days (to visit a child in residential school), 21 days (to go hunting). Without a signed pass First Nations people could be arrested for vagrancy or trespass and returned to the reserve.

“The system transformed every unauthorized [First Nations] traveler into a fugitive and every reserve into a holding pen.” (p. 125 op. cit.) . It ensured that parents were forcibly kept apart from their children taken to compulsory Indian Residential Schools. Without legal validation, this genocidal apartheid system of the Canadian government negated the Treaties which affirmed “Indians’” right to hunt and gather food freely. Weaponizing food by depriving supplies to "uncooperative" First Nations was another form of collective punishment.

Beyond Canada

Too many horrific examples of collective punishment fill history books. During World War II, e.g., in Yugoslavia (now Serbia ), Nazi troops killed 434 men in three villages near Kragujevac on October 19, 1941, as punishment for previous actions of the Serbian resistance movement.

The expulsion of German speaking population groups after World War II by the Soviet Union, Poland and Czechoslovakia represent one of the greatest examples of collective punishment in terms of the number of victims. Joseph Stalin 's mass deportations of many nationalities of the USSR to remote regions (including the Chechens , Crimean Tatars , Volga Germans and many others) exemplifies officially orchestrated collective punishment. (Cited in Wikipedia "Collective Punishment") There are countless other examples.

What was the deadly fire-bombing of Hamburg, Dresden, and the indiscriminate nuclear bombing of countless civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki but collective punishment? And what of the Holocaust – Hitler Nazism’s policy of murderous hate extinguishing 6-million-plus lives simply for being Jewish? The horror of collective punishment – too often genocidal – haunts the Earth.

As a Dutch person born near the end of World War II, I am all too conscious of the murderous impact of collective punishments. Nazi forces robbed the Netherlands of key infrastructure and resources, and then imposed collective punishments upon residents of highly urbanized North & South Holland – Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague – in the winter months of 1944-1945. Before the Allies were finally able to liberate the nation, citizens had been deprived for months of coal, gas, electricity, food and other essentials for life, resulting in 18,000 Dutch civilians starving to death. The entire population was subjected to gruesome conditions of living and of disproportionate reprisal executions.

Relief only came to the starving population when Allied nations were confronted with the costly disaster imposed on the Dutch and were convinced to supply essentials for life and end the Nazi occupation. (See: Henri A. van der Zee, The Hunger Winter. First Bison Book, 1998ed. (1982 first edition, London, Jill Norman & Hobhouse).

Today in Palestine and Israel

Hamas’ surprise attack on Israeli and other non-Israeli participants in the southern Israel music festival will long stand out as a horrific example of innocents falling victim to brutal, bloody collective punishment. It was a war crime and a form of collective punishment inflicted on non-combatant civilians. The murder of more than thirteen hundred human beings and 220 hostages taken in the assault cry for justice.

The response by the Israeli government is already revealing the intention to respond to this evil event by again using its overpowering ability to impose collective punishments on Palestinians in the effort to eradicate Hamas militants. The history of the IDF response to Palestinians is clear – Israel's disproportionate response results in the death and maiming of far larger numbers of Palestinians than Israelis who suffered. In two weeks the number of Palestinian deaths exceeds Israeli victims by a factor of five.

The removal of civilian population from northern Gaza; the indiscriminate bombing on the home territory of more than 2 million human beings with the destruction of residential buildings and public facilities; the bombing of churches, schools, hospitals and community centres; the blockade of resources essential to life itself – food, electricity, gas, water, medical equipment and personnel, education, etc. These qualify, according to the Geneva Convention and Treaty of Rome’s Statute founding the International Criminal Court, as war crimes no less than those of Hamas.

The claim of the right to self-defense does not include this kind of total collective punishment.

People of faith cannot tolerate the criminality of collective punishments, not only because their tolerance makes them complicit – just as it does the powers behind these combatants, but also because the Divine law excludes this kind of punishment.

The lex talionis of Jewish and Christian scriptures was given to limit the price that could be exacted from those committing crimes. An “eye for an eye” commandment signaled a limitation on responses to violence. As illustration, one eye, not both, was the measure of reciprocal justice. Disproportionate responses were contrary to the Law of God. (Exodus 21:23-27). Jesus is even more exacting about the response to evildoers. (see Matthew 5:38-48) The faithful way is to love even your enemies, because the greatest commandments are to love God above all and your neighbour as yourself. (Mark 12:29-31)

The main outcomes from disproportionate vengeance are an increase in hatred and the desire for more revenge. It never takes long for the next revenge cycle to make blood flow again and then more of the Creator's children will die.

Unless….people of faith and goodwill persist in calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire and the war to end, so that peaceful means can be pursued. Will these combatants and their witnesses learn the lesson already so thoroughly drenched in blood?

End the Cycles of Hate and Death

Rather than deepening complicity, it is time especially for the great powers to incentivize peaceful efforts toward justice. History shows this is but a faint hope but citizens must demand it of their leaders.

More likely is the hopeful possibility that middle powers, like Canada, Ireland, Brazil, South Africa and other nations can collaborate to conclude the 75-year cycles of death and destruction in Palestine/Israel, which criminalize both Hamas in its violent negation of Israel and the Netanyahu Israeli expansionist government’s subjugation and expansionism in the Palestine’s Occupied Territories. Canada needs to reclaim the role of peace building and stop providing Israel the green light for collective punishment.

Individuals and groups can speak and write without ceasing to political leaders calling for ceasefire and for negotiated peace;

Support United Church ( https://united-church.ca/ ) and other faith groups, like the USA-based Jewish Voice for Peace ( https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/2023/10/rabcab10-08/ ) working for just peace;

Support the efforts of Centre for Peace & Justice in the Middle East providing principle-based, informed, balanced work for just peace: https://www.cjpme.org/

Act now to end criminal lawlessness - for the sake of the children and the whole human family. Give peace a chance. Collective punishment and cycles of death and destruction solve nothing and harm God's human family. Kyrie eleison.

People of Faith call for justice & peace

Fri, 20 Oct 2023 19:32:48 GMT

Palestinian Christians Call for Peace and Allies

Friends:

The barbaric assaults which have plagued so many so long and have caused and continue to cause so much death and grief urgently demand action.

Listen to Palestinian Christians as they call for a fair assessment of the horrors of the current cycle of war and murder and its violent roots.

The war must stop - it is criminal activity by both Hamas and Israel. People of faith will resist the evil of war and seek humbly and tearfully the ways of peace for the tortured Holy Land.

After the Open Letter below you will find a prayer by Jewish Voices for Peace. We can all pray together.

Harry Oussoren

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Here is the link for the letter copied below:

https://www.change.org/p/an-open-letter-from-palestinian-christians-to-western-church-leaders-and-theologians?recruiter=1319605589&recruited_by_id=a6f6fd10-6e69-11ee-abdf-5b152ac3937c&

A n Open Letter from Palestinian Christians to Western Church Leaders and Theologians

October 20, 2023

A Call for Repentance: An Open Letter from Palestinian Christians to Western Church Leaders and Theologians

“Learn to do right; seek justice; defend the oppressed” (Isa 1:17).

We, at the undersigned Palestinian Christian institutions and grassroots movements, grieve and lament the renewed cycle of violence in our land. As we were about to publish this open letter, some of us lost dear friends and family members in the atrocious Israeli bombardment of innocent civilians on October 19, 2023, Christians included, who were taking refuge in the historical Greek Orthodox Church of Saint Porphyrius in Gaza.

Words fail to express our shock and horror with regard to the on-going war in our land. We deeply mourn the death and suffering of all people because it is our firm conviction that all humans are made in God’s image. We are also profoundly troubled when the name of God is invoked to promote violence and religious national ideologies.

Further, we watch with horror the way many western Christians are offering unwavering support to Israel’s war against the people of Palestine. While we recognize the numerous voices that have spoken and continue to speak for the cause of truth and justice in our land, we write to challenge western theologians and church leaders who have voiced uncritical support for Israel and to call them to repent and change. Sadly, the actions and double standards of some Christian leaders have gravely hurt their Christian witness and have severely distorted their moral judgment with regards to the situation in our land.

We come alongside fellow Christians in condemning all attacks on civilians, especially defenseless families and children. Yet, we are disturbed by the silence of many church leaders and theologians when it is Palestinian civilians who are killed. We are also horrified by the refusal of some western Christians to condemn the ongoing Israeli occupation of Palestine, and, in some instances, their justification of and support for the occupation.

Further, we are appalled by how some Christians have legitimized Israel’s ongoing indiscriminate attacks on Gaza, which have, so far, claimed the lives of more than 3,700 Palestinians, the majority of whom are women and children. These attacks have resulted in the wholesale destruction of entire neighborhoods and the forced displacement of over one million Palestinians.

The Israeli military has utilized tactics that target civilians such as the use of white phosphorus, the cutting off of water, fuel, and electricity, and the bombardment of schools, hospitals, and places of worship—including the heinous massacre at Al-Ahli Anglican-Baptist Hospital and the bombardment of the Greek Orthodox Church of Saint Porphyrius which wiped out entire Palestinian Christian families.

Moreover, we categorically reject the myopic and distorted Christian responses that ignore the wider context and the root causes of this war: Israel’s systemic oppression of the Palestinians over the last 75 years since the Nakba, the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestine, and the oppressive and racist military occupation that constitutes the crime of apartheid. This is precisely the horrific context of oppression that many western Christian theologians and leaders have persistently ignored, and even worse, have occasionally legitimized using a wide range of Zionist theologies and interpretations.

Moreover, Israel’s cruel blockade of Gaza for the last 17 years has turned the 365-square-kilometer Strip into an open-air prison for more than two million Palestinians—70% of whom belong to families displaced during the Nakba—who are denied their basic human rights. The brutal and hopeless living conditions in Gaza under Israel’s iron fist have regrettably emboldened extreme voices of some Palestinian groups to resort to militancy and violence as a response to oppression and despair.

Sadly, Palestinian non-violent resistance, which we remain wholeheartedly committed to, is met with rejection, with some western Christian leaders even prohibiting the discussion of Israeli apartheid as reported by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and B’Tselem, and as long asserted by both Palestinians and South Africans.

Time and again, we are reminded that western attitudes towards Palestine-Israel suffer from a glaring double standard that humanizes Israeli Jews while insisting on dehumanizing Palestinians and whitewashing their suffering. This is evident in general attitudes towards the recent Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip that killed thousands of Palestinians, the apathy towards the murder of the Palestinian-American Christian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in 2022, and the killing of more than 300 Palestinians including 38 children in the West Bank this year before this recent escalation.

It seems to us that this double standard reflects an entrenched colonial discourse that has weaponized the Bible to justify the ethnic cleansing of indigenous peoples in the Americas, Oceania, and elsewhere, the slavery of Africans and the transatlantic slave trade, and decades of apartheid in South Africa. Colonial theologies are not passé; they continue in wide-ranging Zionist theologies and interpretations that have legitimized the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the vilification and dehumanization of Palestinians—Christians included—living under systemic settler-colonial apartheid.

Further, we are aware of the western Christian legacy of Just War Theory that was used to justify dropping atomic bombs over innocent civilians in Japan during World War II, the destruction of Iraq and the decimation of its Christian population during the latest American war on Iraq, as well as the unwavering and uncritical support for Israel against the Palestinians in the name of moral-supremacy and “self-defense.”

Regrettably, many western Christians across wide denominational and theological spectra adopt Zionist theologies and interpretations that justify war, making them complicit in Israel’s violence and oppression. Some are also complicit in the rise of the anti-Palestinian hate speech, which we are witnessing in numerous western countries and media outlets today.

Although many Christians in the West do not have a problem with the theological legitimization of war, the vast majority of Palestinian Christians do not condone violence—not even by the powerless and occupied.

Instead, Palestinian Christians are fully committed to the way of Jesus in creative nonviolent resistance (Kairos Palestine, §4.2.3), which uses “the logic of love and draw[s] on all energies to make peace” (§4.2.5). Crucially, we reject all theologies and interpretations that legitimize the wars of the powerful. We strongly urge western Christians to come alongside us in this. We also remind ourselves and fellow Christians that God is the God of the downtrodden and the oppressed, and that Jesus rebuked the powerful and lifted up the marginalized. This is at the heart of God’s conception of justice.

Therefore, we are deeply troubled by the failure of some western Christian leaders and theologians to acknowledge the biblical tradition of justice and mercy, as first proclaimed by Moses (Deut 10:18; 16:18–20; 32:4) and the prophets (Isa 1:17; 61:8; Mic 2:1–3, 6:8; Amos 5:10–24), and as exemplified and embodied in Christ (Matt 25:34–46; Luke 1:51–53; 4:16–21).

Finally, and we say it with a broken heart, we hold western church leaders and theologians who rally behind Israel’s wars accountable for their theological and political complicity in the Israeli crimes against the Palestinians, which have been committed over the last 75 years.

We call upon them to reexamine their positions and to change their direction, remembering that God “will judge the world in justice” (Acts 17:31). We also remind ourselves and our Palestinian people that our sumud (“steadfastness”) is anchored in our just cause and our historical rootedness in this land. As Palestinian Christians, we also continue to find our courage and consolation in the God who dwells with those of a contrite and humble spirit (Isa 57:15). We find courage in the solidarity we receive from the crucified Christ, and we find hope in the empty tomb.

We are also encouraged and empowered by the costly solidarity and support of many churches and grassroots faith movements around the world, challenging the dominance of ideologies of power and supremacy. We refuse to give in, even when our siblings abandon us. We are steadfast in our hope, resilient in our witness, and continue to be committed to the Gospel of faith, hope, and love, in the face of tyranny and darkness. “

In the absence of all hope, we cry out our cry of hope. We believe in God, good and just. We believe that God’s goodness will finally triumph over the evil of hate and of death that still persist in our land. We will see here ‘a new land’ and ‘a new human being’, capable of rising up in the spirit to love each one of his or her brothers and sisters” (Kairos Palestine, §10).

Signed Organizations and Institutions

Kairos Palestine

Christ at the Checkpoint

Bethlehem Bible College

Sabeel Ecumenical Center for Liberation Theology

Dar al-Kalima University

Al-Liqa Center for Religious, Heritage and Cultural Studies in the Holy Land

The East Jerusalem YMCA

The YWCA of Palestine

Arab Orthodox Society, Jerusalem

Arab Orthodox Club, Jerusalem

The Department of Service to Palestinian Refugees of the Middle East Council of Churches

Arab Education Institute Pax Christi, Bethlehem

Prayer from the Jewish Voice for Peace organization

https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/

(an American gathering of 443,000 members and supporters )

JVP Rabbinical Council: “We call for an immediate end to the violence.”

Rabbi Alissa Wise
שִׂיםשָׁלוֹםטוֹבָהוּבְרָ כָהחֵןוָחֶ ֽסֶדוְרַ חֲ

May the One Who Comforts hold all those grieving and traumatized and frightened for however
long it takes

May the One Who Releases the Captive release all those caught and bound

May the One Who Makes Peace illuminate paths of peace for those seeing only paths of
violence and vengeance

May the One Who Loves Justice fortify us to reinforce our solidarities with all those who share
our vision of justice and dignity for all people

May the One Who Knows Hope instill in us the confidence to imagine wholeness, safety, and
freedom for all people

May the One Who We Need be there for us as we waver and struggle, as we are confused and
uncertain until we find solid ground once again

May the One Who Remembers allow us to hold in one hand 75 years of occupation,
dispossession and violence and in the other a future of peace, justice and freedom

May the One Who is Slow to Anger soften our hearts and our fists helping us to put down the
sword even at the height of the arc of our rage

May the One of Possibility remind us that a future of peace with justice is possible

May the One Who Awakens Us to Life hold us in our pain and vindictiveness until we set those
down for the sake of life

May the One Who Endures allow us to act for the sake of the coming generations

May the One Who is Without Limit expand our senses of what is possible as we reach for
justice, freedom and peace for us all.

May the One Who Knows Life is Precious help us to affirm life is precious

May the One Who Grants Peace, Goodness, Blessing, Grace, Lovingkindness, and Mercy grant
them now no matter how undeserving we are.

מִים

What International Laws require of occupying powers

Fri, 20 Oct 2023 18:00:14 GMT

Law and Order - International Rules for Powers Waging War

fThe Peace Palace in The Hague - Humanity's Icon and Symbol of Peace

Opened in 1913 with funds donated by Andrew Carnegie, providing two international courts for justice and arbitration, a library and global art works, and an academy for peace -

all to address root causes of conflict and to seek solutions toward peaceful coexistence among the nations.

More Middle East Violence and Suffering of Innocents

Most global citizens pray and yearn for peace. The Peace Palace works towards peace at the mega-level. Conventions and other international agreements set the standards for seeking peace and protecting innocents from the barbarities of conflict in war settings. Here's how the International Committee of the Red Cross describes the Conventions:

The Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols are at the core of international humanitarian law, the body of international law that regulates the conduct of armed conflict and seeks to limit its effects. They specifically protect people who are not taking part in the hostilities (civilians, health workers and aid workers) and those who are no longer participating in the hostilities, such as wounded, sick and shipwrecked soldiers and prisoners of war. (source: https://www.icrc.org/en/doc/war-and-law/treaties-customary-law/geneva-conventions/overview-geneva-conventions.htm)

Unfortunately there is no mega-power which enforces peace standards and means. United Nations peace keepers, proposed by Lester B Pearson, served and serve in many situations of conflict, but have been relatively powerless to enforce both the conventions and the regulations relevant to conflict situations. Great powers too often use their UN vetoes according to their geo-political ambitions (vs. standards of justice and truth) to thwart the ways and means to safety for innocents and actions for peace.

Below you will find key articles of the 4th Geneva Convention pertaining to the current intentional tragedies plaguing the peoples of Israel and Palestine. Both Israeli government forces and Palestine's Hamas militants are violating the Convention in various ways. This means that they are committing war crimes. It means that their backers and people who simply watch crimes happen are complicit in these criminal activities. The lack of commitments to peace by too many nations and too many people undermines the international conventions and the fervent global yearning and praying for a more peaceful world.

It is important that all citizens know the rules and be able to discern from truthful news reports the extent to which each of the combatant parties are criminally engaged. In the short run, our knowledge may make little difference.

But in the longer run, the potential for criminal prosecution because of war crimes committed can have impact on both Hamas and Israel. Even President Putin dares not travel in countries which respect warrants for arrest of accused war criminals because of his war crimes in Ukraine.

A safer route for all now concerned and engaged would be to end the hostilities and the horrific measures affecting humanitarian suffering and death. The adversaries need to seek the help of mid-level nations to help find the ways to stop the war and find ways toward just peace. The Divine Spirit calls all to give peace a chance so that human suffering and the Creator's anguish can end. Kyrie eleison!

Your assistance in spreading this information is welcome. We must share this key information and raise the voices of faith and goodwill for peace on Earth.

A H Harry Oussoren

Ottawa

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GENEVA CONVENTION RELATIVE TO THE PROTECTION OF CIVILIAN PERSONS IN TIME OF WAR OF 12 AUGUST 1949 PART I GENERAL PROVISIONS

Article 1. — The High Contracting Parties undertake to respect and to ensure respect for the present Convention in all circumstances. (Ed.: 194 nations have signed on, thereby making this international law.)

STATUS AND TREATMENT OF PROTECTED PERSONS SECTION I PROVISIONS COMMON TO THE TERRITORIES OF THE PARTIES TO THE CONFLICT AND TO OCCUPIED TERRITORIES

ART. 27. — Protected persons are entitled, in all circumstances, to respect for their persons, their honour, their family rights, their religious convictions and practices, and their manners and customs. They shall at all times be humanely treated, and shall be protected especially against all acts of violence or threats thereof and against insults and public curiosity. Women shall be especially protected against any attack on their honour, in particular against rape, enforced prostitution, or any form of indecent assault. Without prejudice to the provisions relating to their state of health, age and sex, all protected persons shall be treated with the same consideration by the Party to the conflict in whose power they are, without any adverse distinction based, in particular, on race, religion or political opinion. However, the Parties to the conflict may take such measures of control and security in regard to protected persons as may be necessary as a result of the war.

ART. 28. — The presence of a protected person may not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations. PROTECTION OF CIVILIAN PERSONS 179 Treatment I. General observations II.

Danger zones

ART. 29. — The Party to the conflict in whose hands protected persons may be, is responsible for the treatment accorded to them by its agents, irrespective of any individual responsibility which may be incurred.

ART. 30. — Protected persons shall have every facility for making application to the Protecting Powers, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the National Red Cross (Red Crescent, Red Lion and Sun) Society of the country where they may be, as well as to any organization that might assist them. These several organizations shall be granted all facilities for that purpose by the authorities, within the bounds set by military or security considerations. Apart from the visits of the delegates of the Protecting Powers and of the International Committee of the Red Cross, provided for by Article 143, the Detaining or Occupying Powers shall facilitate as much as possible visits to protected persons by the representatives of other organizations whose object is to give spiritual aid or material relief to such persons.

ART. 31. — No physical or moral coercion shall be exercised against protected persons, in particular to obtain information from them or from third parties.

ART. 32. — The High Contracting Parties specifically agree that each of them is prohibited from taking any measure of such a character as to cause the physical suffering or extermination of protected persons in their hands. This prohibition applies not only to murder, torture, corporal punishment, mutilation and medical or scientific experiments not necessitated by the medical treatment of a protected person, but also to any other measures of brutality whether applied by civilian or military agents.

ART. 33. — No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited. Pillage is prohibited. Reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited.

ART. 34. — The taking of hostages is prohibited.

Universal Basic Income

Mon, 16 Oct 2023 00:30:37 GMT

Beyond Welfare - UBI

Updated & Re-Issued Post on

Guaranteed Livable Income / Universal Basic Income for Canadians

Published first in May 18, 2022, this "Beyond Welfare - UBI" post is being republished today because on Tuesday, October 17, 2023, at 9 a.m. the matter of Guaranteed Livable Income or Universal Basic Income will be the topic of discussion in the relevant Canadian Senate committee. I will be attending to add my voice to this progressive, faithful, and "common sense" proposal.

Through the initiative of two parliamentarians, Senator Kim Pate and NDP MP Leah Gazan , with the backing of more than 25,000 Canadian petitioners, including former Conservative Senator Hugh Segal, former independent Senator and past Moderator of the United Church of Canada The Very Rev. Lois Wilson, and the United Church as a denomination (see the UCC website for more information: https://united-church.ca/social-action/act-now/create-guaranteed-livable-income-program ), this visionary legislation is winding it way through the Parliamentary maze as bill S-233 and, eventually, as bill H-223. If passed by the two houses, it would require the Minister of Finance within one year to create a Canada-wide framework for the implementation of a Guaranteed Livable Basic Income.

My blog post below features some of the virtues of such a proposal. I was moved by Rutger Bregman's convincing book " “Utopia for Realists – How We Can Build the Ideal World” (Littlebrown and Company, 2014 & 2017. ISBN 978 0 316 47191 6.) and I'm no economist! But it just makes sense as a way of reducing poverty and decreasing bureaucratic barriers to better living conditions for many.

Here is the statement of the current Moderator of the UCC issued March 2023: (Creative Commons attribution):

The Right Rev. Dr. Carmen Lansdowne Calls for a Guaranteed Livable Income for All

Moderator's Statement Supporting a Guaranteed Livable Income

Friends, I’m here today to invite you to join The United Church of Canada, its networks and partners, in calling on Canada to ensure a guaranteed livable income for all in our country.

When we talk about a guaranteed livable income, use of “guaranteed” signals a focus on ensuring a base level of income for all. Emphasis is on its being available to anyone below a certain income level rather than necessarily paid out to everyone and then clawed back. The use of “livable” signals an income that enables people to live with dignity, not just stay alive.

When the pandemic first happened, we often heard the phrase “We are all in the same boat.” In fact, we are not all in the same boat. Inequities that existed long before COVID have been exacerbated since the onset of the pandemic.

In 1995, when Marion Best was Moderator of the United Church, she wrote a letter with all 13 Conference Presidents and the Leading Elder of the All Native Circle Conference naming the unravelling of Canada’s social safety nets at that time, and urging communities of faith to reflect and act on what they called then “the growing war against the poor in society.” Canada’s current social welfare system continues to fail to recognize the value of all persons, the work and contributions of all, denying the dignity of our common humanity.

The reality is that while there have been some very minimal baseline gains in poverty reduction over the past decade, there are recent statistics that show disturbing trends with increases in unmet housing needs, food insecurity, unmet healthcare needs, low literacy and numeracy, and slight year-over-year decreases in the median hourly wage.

Even the temporary wage supports put in place in the first two years of the pandemic were only set at 80 percent of the minimum individual need for survival at the time. And those supports were in many cases at least double our current provincial income supports for the poorest in society.

In addition, artists, caregivers, and workers in our precarious gig-economy struggle with inadequate incomes that suck the time, energy, and health from those with the fewest resources. These realities contradict the very justice and peace God envisions for creation.

Therefore, we call for a guaranteed livable income that implements a structure of justice-making and justice-keeping that no longer excuses, rationalizes, and tolerates poverty. We call for a system that expresses a fundamental, fair level of income security for all, as did the early Christians who shared their resources so there was no need among them. (see Acts of the Apostles chapter 2 ,verses 37-47)

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Original Pilgrim Praxis Blog Post published March 2022:

Times Change

Back in the “good old days” people used to be expected to work as many as 60 hours a week, starting when they were still children and ending when they were killed on the job (safety requirements were an expensive, unnecessary luxury, right?) or just wore out.

If you were poor, it was, of course, because you were lazy and not adequately motivated to get ahead. The fact that you couldn’t go to school because you had to work to eat and pay the rent was just another excuse.

Attitudes

Welfare and the “nanny state” just fed into the sloth culture by providing charity where it really wasn’t deserved. “THEY just smoked and drank it away anyway! So why waste money on THEM!” Monitoring the abuse of “welfare” was crucial to keep unnecessary government costs in check – the real job of social workers is to surveille THOSE abusers of the system and report them to law enforcement.

Oh, really? In an under-funded and disrespectful system where staff are waiting for clients to fail - too many suspicions become reality. “In fact, conservative criticism of the old nanny state hits the nail on the head,” says Rutger Bregman in his master work “Utopia for Realists – How We Can Build the Ideal World”. “The current tangle of red tape keeps people trapped in poverty. It actually produces dependence.” ( p.96.) [Thanks to Carolyn Boyer for bringing this resource into my viewfinder!]

Political conservatives might be inclined to crack the whip and increase the penalties for cheats (usually fewer than 5%). As an attentive Calvinist, I’ve never noticed that prisons generate a lot of positively-oriented industrious workers. Ontario’s Ford government killed a experiment testing a better way in 2018. Not all conservatives are equally blinkered. Former Senator Hugh Segal had a better idea. Rutger Bregman, a Dutch observer-writer makes the alternative to welfare and related “programmes” understandable in his joy-to-read volume.

Another Way

The better way? “Mincome” (unconditional basic income, universal basic income, guaranteed annual income, or guaranteed livable income) is the pilot experiment that was launched in Dauphin, Manitoba in 1974 by the Edward Schreyer NDP government with federal support from P.E. Trudeau. The town's 13,000 residents were assured of an annual income of $19,000 for a family of four.

The pilot program endured for four years. Then a Progressive! Conservative provincial government led by Sterling Lyon was elected. For typical reasons, Lyon with then Prime Minister Joe Clarke cancelled the program, but before the data generated had been analyzed to see what effect this social experiment had on people’s lives.

Of course, Mincome residents all turned into aimless drunks on drugs, had sex orgies producing unwanted children, and heaven knows what other laziness and immorality transpired - together putting more pressure on the already over-burdened health, social, and police/correctional services systems, all working hard to keep residents on the straight and narrow. Right?

Benefits Noted

Well actually, no! Analytical research was subsequently carried out by the University of Manitoba’s Prof. Evelyn Forget using the many boxes full of data, well hidden in the archives. “What really happened was precisely the opposite. Young adults postponed getting married, and birth rates dropped. Their school performance improved substantially: the “Mincome cohort” studied harder and faster. In the end, total work hours only notched down 1% for men, 3% for married women, and 5% for unmarried women. Men who were family breadwinners hardly worked less at all, while new mothers used the cash assistance to take several months’ maternity leave, and students to stay in school.” (Bregman, p. 17, citing Evelyn Forget, “The town with no poverty” http://public.econ.duke.edu/~erw/197/forget-cea%282%29.pdf)

“Forget’s most remarkable finding, though, was that hospitalizations decreased by as much as 8.5%. Considering the size of public spending on healthcare in the developed world, the financial implications were huge. Several years into the experiment, domestic violence was also down, as were mental-health complaints. Mincome had made the whole town healthier. [Prof.] Forget could even trace the impacts of receiving a basic income through to the next generation, both in earnings and in health.” ( loc.cit.) Cost-benefit analysis must take place over a longer period of time and from varying perspectives to fairly assess UBI.

Bregman does a much better job of explaining why the Dauphin experiment can be extrapolated into larger society. Read the book – it’s an eye-opener that will, I think, make you too want to remove blinkers asap.

United Church GLI

If book learning isn’t your thing, try the following online link

https://united-church.ca/search/all?search_api_fulltext=Guaranteed+livable+income

Trust the United Church of Canada to be about utopian dreams! A whole section of the official website focusses on what it calls a “guaranteed livable income.” Included is a prayer, stories that demonstrate need and impact, a letter from the Moderator Richard Bott, a study guide and suggestions for group conversation, and a grassroots effort to get a petition – supported by members of all major political parties - pressing parliament to support another experiment in Prince Edward Island.

Maybe UBI, GAI, Mincome isn’t just a utopian dream – maybe it’s actually a smart, efficient, effective move to make life more livable for more people at less cost – not just monetarily, but in terms of the costly harm poverty and financial insecurity do to children and teens, and young adults, and parents struggling to keep head above economic waters threaten to overwhelm, and singles on their own.

I think so – it makes sense to me. One result would be that we have more people freed from mind-deadening, soul destroying jobs monitoring others’ behaviour – the red-tape will be cut because basic needs are met. Fewer people will have anxiety complaints that burden health care, and more people will pursue educational opportunities to enhance their skills and knowledge. Some will actually choose to work part-time at things that give them joy and fulfillment, worn down folks might just take wisdom breaks or travel – all opening up new work opportunities for other people needing work.

If after thinking about it, you want to act on this idea – this utopian dream – BTW utopias don’t arrive in this life, they keep drawing visionary people toward themselves – like the Kindom of Heaven or the Reign of God – and when it is filled with empathy, compassion, generosity, justice, hope and community – life is better and “abundant life” reaches more people.

Action

Oh yes, if you want to act: waiting for you there is a petition initiated by Mary Sanderson and sponsored by NDP MP Leah Gazan (Winnipeg Centre). You may want to take the opportunity to share it, and sign it yourself calling on the federal government to support the P.E.I. guaranteed livable income demonstration experiment: https://petitions.ourcommons.ca/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-3987. See also UBIwork.ca . The United Church site also has an email-writing campaign.

Thanks

Someday our children or grandchildren may thank us for having the foresight and the counter-intuitive wisdom to use large amounts of money to end poverty and foster human well-being for a healthier society, and spend less on useless work and dispensable things. They may know that because of our decision for UBI, benefits far outweighed the costs, and carrots were more effective and productive than sticks in creating flourishing societies.

West Coast Discovery

Wed, 06 Sep 2023 18:17:34 GMT

A "West Coast Idyll"

"Museum on Wheels" - car #15089 in Sloman Park, Clinton

picture courtesy of the Clinton BIA

Summer Tradition

Last year, my life partner Glenys and I, started a new close to home road trip tradition. We drove our hybrid Ford C-Max up the Ottawa River past Pembroke, over to North Bay, Sudbury, Espanola, and Manitoulin Island, and, by Chi Cheemaun ferry, to Tobermory and the Bruce Peninsula, along the way dropping in friends’ homes for a visit and catchup conversations.

The experience made us want to continue the pattern. So now we have a tradition. This year we visited the “West Coast” – a term easily evoking our former home in British Columbia, but now – new to us – applied to Ontario's 100-km shores of Lake Huron. Its inviting beaches are just the most obvious attraction to this part of the province, but there is more. ( visit: www.ontarioswestcoast.ca )

What a pleasure! We again knocked on the doors of friends and family in this region – by itself, their hospitality was enough to make the tour enjoyable and worthwhile. But there were other welcome reasons to make this trip memorable.

We marveled at the roads – well-maintained compared to too many other Ontario highways and not very busy! Pleasant drives alongside “oceans” of soya beans, alfalfa, and especially corn “taller than an elephant’s eye“ – spectacularly inspiring crops.

We were glad for the farming folk in the region who this year are harvesting bumper crops. Huge milking “parlours” told us dairy is big here. We learned that farmers in verdant Huron Country produce more agricultural products than all the Maritime provinces combined!

The various towns and cities we visited radiated pride of home and heritage, signs of purposeful settler toil, and prosperous enterprises. We saw some places where low incomes and social deprivation are evident – but the overall impression is that this is an area where the economy is in good shape and there is room for fair and robust living.

Here are three memorable vignettes from our tour.

Blyth

We bought tickets to the Blyth Festival’s theatrical production of James Reaney’s “ The Donnelly's: A Trilogy. ” Since 1999, the Donnelly family saga has been told in the town of Blyth alongside other stage productions. Normally this production is an outdoor event at the Harvest Stage in the fairgrounds. Rain forecasts changed the venue to the town’s Memorial Hall where we saw only part two of the trilogy.

If you’ve read anything about the Lucan, Ontario Donnelly family of the 19th century's second half, you will expect to witness small town fierce competition, fear, envy, anger, hatred, violence, and murder on stage. It’s all there, but so also is suffering, grief, fierce love, and family loyalty. The play is a mixture of human reality inviting all present, according to artistic director Gil Garratt, “to try to understand a little deeper, why we are here.” (visit: https://blythfestival.com/ )

Clinton

In the town of Clinton, we had our second memorable visit. The name Sloman meant nothing to us, but at the School on Wheels Museum in Sloman Park we were introduced to Cela and Fred Sloman, Canadian heroes.

For 39 years they taught in one of the “School on Wheels” routes. The rail-based school system was a project of the Ontario government and both CN and CP railways. Railway car #15089 now serving as a museum in the park was the Sloman's second wagon that for 25 years was both home for their seven-member! family and classroom for the children along their particular route.

On September 20, 1926, the Slomans inaugurated their first train car as “school” at Nandair, a siding eight miles north of Capreol, on the 150-mile CN line to Foleyet. Their monthly trip, one of seven such routes, had four weeklong stops- repeated from September to June. One Ontario Northland, two CP and three other CN rail lines carried out similar educational outreach into sparsely populated parts of northern Ontario.

Children, many related to loggers, railway workers, and others who lived in the bush, were welcomed, taught, nurtured, nourished, and given “homework” for next month’s visit of the travelling classroom. Evening programs welcomed adults – for adult literacy, movies, board games, crafts and cooking lessons, and just plain friendly conversation.

The museum car witnesses dramatically and poignantly to the human thirst for education and the commitment on the part of some to provide learning opportunities, especially in under-resourced areas. The Slomans retired in 1964. The rail school program ended in 1967. Fred died in 1973. For their commitment Cela Sloman was inducted into the Order of Canada in 1984.

For more on this inspiring story find a copy of the “School on Wheels – Reaching and Teaching the Isolated Children of the North” booklet by Karl and Mary Schuessler. (published by CNR Original School on Wheels #15089, Clinton ON. 1986. ISBN 0-9731129-0-5) [ visit schoolonwheels@centralhuron.com , or view the CBC TV Drama’s 1985 fictional account, “And Miles to Go” starring Gordon Pinsent, though this account “hardly represented the type of men [known] as school car teachers!”)

Comfort and Joy

Our third “find” in the region was the Benmiller Inn and Spa, “nestled in idyllic rolling hills between the tranquil banks of Sharpe’s Creek and the Maitland River.”

The Inn includes several buildings of an old mill. It has a history – like so many other mill structures set on Ontario creeks and rivers. Its natural setting invites hikers, relaxers, and observers – to just enjoy being there. A great pool and hot-tub plus spa add to the enjoyment of the place.

The Inn is unpretentious but has 51 comfortable rooms – in our case, spacious and overlooking the creek - at reasonable cost. The Ivey dining room is a fine place to eat – we enjoyed the breakfast – elegantly presented, high quality, and tasty!

This overnight visit was a great way to end our little sojourn. (For more information: visit, www.benmiller.ca , or phone 1 800 265 1711. Address: 81175 Benmiller Line, Goderich ON N7A 3Y1.)

In one short week, we experienced some of life’s treasures right here in Ontario – natural beauty, earth’s boundless gifts, an “undiscovered” part of Turtle Island, the welcoming love of family and friends, comfortable accommodations, and opportunity to reflect away from the routines of home.

Indian Act Proposal

Tue, 29 Aug 2023 20:12:09 GMT

A Call to the Whole United Church of Canada and All People of Goodwill

Let the Sunflowers of Love-Justice Bloom in This Fair Land

The Indian Act – A Proposal

Preamble

This proposal calls settler colonial church - The United Church of Canada, of which I am a member and ordained minister, to confess its historic part in creating and implementing the apartheid society legislated by the Indian Act of 1876 (variously amended) and to repudiate this legislation as unjust and contrary to international human values, the cause of great suffering for those it has controlled, and a dishonouring of the Crown. This proposal does NOT ask anyone to dismantle or repeal the Indian Act. It is for the Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island and the Crown - the governments of Canada - to engage in negotiations that will result in getting beyond this nefarious legislation to true reconciliation and honourable (treaty) relationships characterized by Indigenous self-determination and nation-to-nation respect.

Reconciliation or redeeming the relationship between Indigenous Peoples of northern Turtle Island and colonial settler Canadian society is a vision and goal to be sought by all people of goodwill. Blocking the way to such a “two-row wampum” vision* are both the Indian Act, and widely-held non-Indigenous prejudices and assumptions.

For almost 150 years, these factors have obstructed the way to healthy and just relations between the Crown – asserting sovereignty on behalf of the entire Canadian nation, and the diverse Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island North.

This Proposal seeks to address this situation and to contribute to strengthening the “Reconciliation” process.

Part 1: Recommendations

[ The following recommendations are based on rationale and commentary in the Proposal’s Part 2 below. Footnotes follow.]

(To access the Proposal's links: copy and paste in your browser)

In light of historical data, a haunting past, and in consultation with non-Indigenous Canadians and United Church of Canada (UCC) members,

In light of the Remit amending the Basis of Union and supporting the development of an autonomous Indigenous United Church , and

in light of the UCC commitment to “deep spirituality, bold discipleship, and daring justice”, and

in light of the General Council’s purpose to “engage in national and global partnerships and ecumenical and interfaith relations”; and to “live in covenant with Mother Earth and All My Relations in the Earth community” (Manual D.2.3.b.&f) ;

taking seriously Justice Murray Sinclair’s call to Non-Indigenous Canadians: “We don’t need you to help heal us, we need you to fix yourselves. We need you to get those people out there who are perpetrating this process of working against Reconciliation under control. We need you to straighten yourselves out….” #; and

in anticipation of The UCC’s 100 ^th anniversary since Union,

this Proposal comes as an impatient call of the Spirit to the entire settler United Church of Canada/L’Église unie du Canada – individual participants, diverse study & action groups, local communities of faith, educational centres and other specialized ministries, Regional Councils, the General Council and its Executive, with the following recommendations for the whole Church and its General Council:

1. Confess The United Church of Canada’s past and ongoing complicity with the government of Canada in creating, amending, implementing, and maintaining the Indian Act of 1876 (variously amended); the Church’s failure to witness to the covenantal nature of the Treaties between Indigenous Peoples/nations, the Crown (symbolizing the entire Canadian nation) and the Creator; and the Church’s failure to listen to the Spirit’s persistent call for just relations with all the Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island;

2. Repudiate the Indian Act as a racist and illegal apartheid legislative framework governing the relationship between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Peoples in Canada, and as denial of the nation-to-nation relationship attested by historical and modern Treaties between the Crown and Indigenous Peoples and the Creator;

3 . Witness to the convictions of faith and justice, that the Indian Act is an apartheid policy contrary to the fundamentals of Christian faith (heresy), rooted in genocidal assimilation prejudices, which have harmed Indigenous Peoples beyond measure since Contact in 1534;

4. Apologize for the Church’s part in sins of omission and commission that led to and sustained unjust legislated subjugation and the genocidal assimilation policies and practices imposed on Indigenous Peoples over the past 150-plus years;

5. Repent of beliefs, assumptions, convictions, and actions that undermined and continue to undermine faithful relationships and prevented equitable sharing of land and resources with Indigenous Peoples, human beings of the Creator’s one global family;

6. Commit joyfully to persevering with Indigenous Peoples and other non-Indigenous people of goodwill toward healing and transformation of the relationship between The United Church of Canada and Indigenous Peoples, and to the decolonization of both Church and society^;

7. Attest to the conviction that the wisdom and experience of Indigenous Peoples are keenly required, vital and gracious gifts to enable the whole human family navigate the challenges which threaten Creation, including climate change, degradation of lands and seas, armed conflicts with the threat of weapons of mass destruction, disabling dependence on technology, spiritual emptiness, and more;

8. Commit to pursuing the intentional journey toward and realization of the Reconciliation vision that all Indigenous and non-Indigenous Peoples on Turtle Island / Canada can live together respectfully and thrive as friends sharing all the Creator’s gifts for the well-being of the human family and a just and peaceful co-existence within Creation “as long as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, as long as the rivers run downhill, and as long as the grass grows green.” (Two-Row Wampum - Teiohate Kaswenta Treaty of 1613)*;

9. Recognize and confirm the conviction of Indigenous Peoples that, because the Doctrine of Discovery has been officially repudiated and denounced by Pope Francis of the Roman Catholic Church and by the UCC, Treaties~ between Indigenous Peoples and the Crown are the valid basis for legitimatizing non-Indigenous presence in Canada. Treaties – historic and modern, nation-to-nation – must therefore urgently be reviewed, updated, developed, implemented, and observed, “nothing about us without us,” for the Honour of the Crown, the well-being of both Canadian society and of Indigenous Peoples, and in obedience to the Creator;

10. Affirm the concern of Indigenous Peoples, namely, that fiduciary aspects of the Crown relationship, past and present Treaty provisions, and inherent Indigenous rights must be honoured and protected as Canada and Indigenous Peoples seek to dismantle and supersede the Indian Act system and culture; and that honouring this concern may require “some federal legislation to make clear the obligations the federal government bears towards [Indigenous] First Nations Peoples.”

[Ovide Mercredi, 1993 in Joseph, Bob. 21 Things … Indian Act. P. 95]; (as per the 1984 R. v. Guerin judgement of the Supreme Court of Canada. See also the Final Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP) recommendations on the expansion of the Crown’s fiduciary duties.)

11. Call on the Crown and all governments to denounce the Indian Act as the historic and ongoing fundamental violation by Governments of Canada of the Charter of Rights and Freedom, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; and as unacceptable contradiction of the 46 Articles of United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples’ (UNDRIP);

and to do so not later than 12 April 2026, the 150 ^th anniversary of the Act.

12. Call on the Crown and all governments to pursue diligently the implementation of the 94 ‘Calls to Action’ of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), the 231 ‘Calls for Justice’ of the National Inquiry into Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls; and to mine the Final Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP) for its wisdom and focused recommendations for the journey to Reconciliation - all to energize a respectful and good faith process of negotiation between appropriate Indigenous and non-Indigenous spokespeople accountable to decision-making authorities and communities to dismantle the Indian Act and transform the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples;

13. Call on the federal and provincial governments to honour the Crown’s historic and modern Treaty commitments by confirming and encouraging the self-determination and nation-to-nation inherent rights of Indigenous Peoples, and by ensuring adequate resources in a negotiated fiscal framework are available to provide and enhance Indigenous governance capacities with the ability to realize these aspirations;

(RCAP based new financial arrangements on five principles: self-reliance, equity, efficiency, accountability and harmonization. See Appendix 8 for current fiscal policy).

14. Call for intentional initiative based on the acknowledgement of nation-to-nation relationships and key animating principles consistent with both historic and modern Treaty understandings, relevant reports esp. the RCAP and the UNDRIP framework for Reconciliation, and good-faith engagement to design and recommend foundational laws coherent with the emerging relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Peoples in Canada, including a critical review of federal ministries dealing with Indigenous affairs to transfer appropriate work and adequate resources to prepared and equipped Indigenous capacities for self-determination and nation-to-nation governance and partnership; the review to be undertaken jointly by Canadian government and Indigenous People representatives;

16. Invite all Christian Churches, the Canadian Council of Churches and other ecumenical organizations, diverse faith-based communities, and all people of goodwill in Canada to assemble and confer, to collaborate and actively ensure that the constructive voices of faith are heard calling to leave the Indian Act behind;

17. Pray that the Creating Spirit may lead all in Canada into the love-justice Way of being and acting with and for “all our relations” in this fair land, and that the Holy One’s grieving about the injustice and suffering of the entire human family in Canada may end. The RCAP concluded: “It is essential to recognize and respect the common humanity of all people – to recognize and respect Aboriginal people as people who do matter and whose history matters, not only to them but to all Canadians.” (RCAP Final Report, vol. 1, p. xxv)

Proposed by A H Harry Oussoren (Rev. Dr.), Ottawa, in consultation with others - settlers and Indigenous.

Footnotes to Recommendations:

*For more on the “two-row wampum” vision, visit: https://humanrights.ca/story/peace-friendship-and-respect)

# cited in Jodi Wilson Raybould, “True Reconciliation”, p. 237)

^ a useful resource for this is Jody Wilson Raybould’s “True Reconciliation: How to Be a Force for Change”, McClellland & Stewart, 2022.

~ For more on modern Treaties and their implementation, visit the government page on: Canada's Collaborative Modern Treaty Implementation Policy at

https://www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1672771319009/1672771475448 . See also Appendix 3 re historic treaties.

Part 2 – Background and Commentary

( Numbers below relate to recommendations in Part 1)

(Recommendations 1 – 2):

The Indian Act

Just nine years after Confederation, the Indian Act governed the relationship between the Canadian Crown and Indigenous Peoples (First Nations, Inuit, Métis) of northern Turtle Island. It is the principal law through which the federal government administers Indian status, local First Nations governments, and the management of reserve land and communal monies. The Indian Act does not include Métis or Inuit peoples. The Act was proclaimed on 12 April 1876.

The Act was created and imposed unilaterally by the government of Canada with consent (explicit or implicit) and complicity of the then contemporary religious communities, including The United Church of Canada’s (UCC) antecedents: Presbyterian, Methodist, Congregational, Local Union churches and after 1968, the Evangelical United Brethren denomination. The Anglican (Church of England) and Roman Catholic Churches were similarly engaged, as were other ethnically-based faith communities.

Indigenous Peoples – in all their diversity - were not consulted when Parliament considered and promulgated the Act. They had no agency in the process and the Act was imposed on them as a separate, identifiable group of inhabitants residing on their Turtle Island land mass.

Said John A. Macdonald, Prime Minister of the day, paternalistically: Our Indian legislation generally rests on the principle that the aborigines are to be kept in a condition of tutelage and treated as wards or children of the State. … every effort should be made to aid the Red man in lifting himself out of his condition of tutelage and dependence, and that is clearly our wisdom and our duty, through education and every other means to prepare him for a higher civilization by encouraging him to assume the privileges and responsibilities of full citizenship."

The purpose of the Act, as declared by the MacDonald government, was to end the “Indian Problem.” The Act ensured that Canada’s national dream “from sea to sea” could evolve without being impeded by “Indians.” “Savages and heathens” – inferior and subhuman or deemed not human at all - were to be civilized and Christianized, assimilated into the presumed fuller humanity, community, and religion of the settlers.

In the colonies, the norm of religious uniformity (Christendom) of European nations ( cuius regio eius religio – whoever’s region, his [the monarch’s] religion) was taken for granted. Assimilation into homogeneous European-based colonial cultures and religion (Roman Catholic and Protestant/Anglican) was the presumed benefit that settler society was, in its judgement, benignly willing to impart by imposition on Indigenous Peoples. Regrettably the various theological capacities of the day – both in Canada and in Europe – did not critically analyze or shake the theological basis of the superiority assumptions informing legislation.

It wasn’t long, however, before the Act and zealous agents of government became more aggressive, hostile, and less patronizingly “benevolent”: “I want to get rid of the Indian problem…Our objective is to continue until there is not an Indian that has not been absorbed into the body politic, and there is no Indian question, and no Indian Department…,” said Duncan Campbell Scott, the then General Superintendent of Indian Affairs. A key corollary of this goal was the destruction of Indigenous community and communal land understandings, and the rise of European individual property ownership patterns opening “vacant” lands to be parceled out to new settlers .

(Quotations from Bob Joseph: 21 Things You May Not Know about the Indian Act . Port Coquitlam, Indigenous Relations Press, 2018, p.8; refer to this readily accessible resource for details about the startlingly destructive, harassing, and disabling regulations of the Indian Act and amendments.)

The Act betrayed the previous vision, first mooted in the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which gave rise to the historic numbered Treaties between Indigenous Nations and the Crown – nation-to-nation. (see Appendix #3 for comments on treaties) . Instead of respectful relating, the Macdonald government imposed dictatorial legislation creating an “apartheid” society by which colonial settler governments controlled the lives of Indigenous Peoples and subjugated them to a patriarchal dependency system.

The legislation empowered policies leading to “cultural genocide” ( according to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission ) or outright “genocide” ( according to now retired Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin of the Supreme Court of Canada) . It has been the legal foundation for inter-generational trauma and criminal injustice administered with impunity for almost 150 years. (See Appendix 6. )

Indigenous Peoples were deemed dependent wards of the state, controlled, and monitored by government-appointed Indian Agents, empowered by the Act to be all-powerful dictators over “their” bands and people. The 2023 edition of the Act still gives “full authority to the Minister or their agent authority” over an astonishing list of matters related to “band” life.

This racist history included the commonly held assumption that Indigenous people were sub-human. An Indigenous person’s only avenue to being recognized as a “person” was to give up their Indian status – known as voluntary enfranchisement. Once they became “people” they assumed all the rights other Canadians enjoyed, but it also meant they gave up legal rights, benefits and restrictions related to being status Indians. (Bob Joseph, ibid., p. 27). Ironically, in 2023, the federal government is engaged in rectifying the destructive impact of the enfranchisement policies through Bill C – 38. (cf. https://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/44-1/bill/C-38/first-reading )

Once and for all, the Act superseded both the significance and the provisions of the Treaties negotiated between the Crown, Indigenous Peoples – as self-determining nations, and the Creator. Governments conveniently interpreted Treaties to mean that Indigenous Peoples had relinquished claims to their lands as if they were terrae nullius – no one’s lands. On the other hand, Indigenous Peoples understood the lands as the Creator’s gifts to them for their nurture and well-being in perpetuity. They understood the Treaties as nation-to-Crown agreements made in the Creator’s presence to share the divine gifts of these lands, seas, and resources. The faith communities stood mute.

Government trampled on the Indigenous understanding ensuring that Confederation’s first Constitution Act (British North America Act) 1867 asserted the Crown’s sovereignty, in continuity with the notorious Doctrine of Discovery, over “Indians and lands reserved for Indians” (Section 91, class 24) . The powers and wealth of the Canadian Crown are, therefore, still based on the Doctrine of Discovery. However, the Supreme Court of Canada’s judgements have made it increasingly untenable to rely explicitly or implicitly on the Doctrine of Discovery. Nevertheless, the governments’ interpretation will continue to pervade political thinking - until a comprehensive new Treaty relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples is negotiated. (For more on the Doctrine of Discovery, visit:

https://united-church.ca/sites/default/files/doctrine-discovery-backgrounder.pdf.)

Lands Stolen Consistent with Doctrine of Discovery and Terrae Nullius

The Indian Act of 1876, without lawful authority, blatantly confirmed the Crown’s theft of Indigenous traditional lands of which 0.002% [or 9247 Sq. miles of 3,850,000 sq. miles] became 2200 newly created Reserves. This minuscule portion of the Canadian land mass was left for 558 bands of Indigenous Peoples. Still, even it was “owned” by the Crown “for the use of ‘Indians’” to terminate Indigenous nomadic lifestyles and learn agricultural ways. These reserves being relatively “out of sight and minds” of most Canadians was, for settler society, a bonus. [Melling, John. Right to a Future – the Native Peoples of Canada, UCC & Anglican Church of Canada Publ., 1967 p. 68)

The remaining lands – of incalculable financial value and foundational to Indigenous identity and to mental, spiritual, and material well-being - were wrested from Indigenous control to become settler society’s treasure chest controlled by the Crown, i.e., the federal government and governments from coast to coast. In effect, “Ottawa gave itself control of almost every aspect of the lives of First Nations…. Made them ‘wards’ of the state, legally children with no rights. That is one reason why Canada is rightly defined as a colonial power and First Nations as colonized people.” [Whitcomb, Dr. Ed. Understanding First Nations – the Legacy of Canadian Colonialism . Ottawa, From Sea-to-Sea Enterprises, 2019. P. xv]

During the century and a half of Indian Act, Indigenous Peoples have been marginalized and impoverished socially, economically, educationally, culturally, and spiritually compared to settler society. The statistics substantiating this generalization are clear. A bottomless pit is filled with critically analytical reports detailing Canada’s “Indigenous Problem” attesting to the economic and social oppression Indigenous Peoples have experienced under the umbrella of the Indian Act.

Canada created and continues to legislate a two-track society, not in the Two-Row Wampum manner, but as “apartheid” – a paternalistic, racism-based quasi-legal means of subjugating and controlling Indigenous Peoples and their lands.

The Canadian Senate’s Standing Committee on Indigenous and Northern Affairs is currently (July 2023) undertaking a study on the restitution of land to Indigenous Peoples, including the possible access to and transfer of “Crown lands” across Canada and Indigenous rights related to those lands. With the repudiation of the Doctrine of Discovery the assumption of Crown sovereignty over lands is put in question. Jully Black’s sung replacement of “and” by “on” in verse one of the “Oh, Canada” national anthem might someday lead all Canadians to sing “our home on native land”, though a further evolution might have all Canada’s peoples sing “our home on shared land”.

Assimilation Failed but Act Continues

Remarkably and fortunately, the colonial goal of complete assimilation was not achieved. Indigenous People have survived, with great resiliency and courage, and with remarkable patience and goodwill, but with enough militant voices to shake up the status quo. Despite the Act and the obvious temptations of colonial capitalist values, Indigenous Peoples have maintained core values, have sustained their close spiritual relationship with Mother Earth, and demonstrate unique cultural and collective identities. They have also succeeded, despite limited resources and countless bureaucratic obstacles, in gaining key judicial judgements confirming their rights and claims.

Unfortunately, no Prime Minister of Canada, from John A. Macdonald to Justin Trudeau, has had the conscience, political integrity, or concern for the honour of the Crown, to renounce the Act or to condemn its fundamental apartheid essence, let alone to declare the urgent need to dismantle it within a new Treaty context.

Foundational laws guaranteeing systemic justice and their implementation for Indigenous Peoples have yet to become a priority for Canadian governments. As late as 1969, the Pierre Elliott Trudeau government produced a “White Paper” under the leadership of the then Indian Affairs minister, Jean Chrétien, which confirmed the original intentions of the Indian Act. The White Paper continued the assimilationist track involving the abolition of Indian status.

After vigorous Indigenous objections including the publication of a “Red Paper”, the White Paper was withdrawn – a deserved addition to piles of shelved reports. Instead, there has now been a half century history of addressing ad hoc situations needing attention, e.g., boil-water situations, inadequate housing, social and health crises, educational inadequacies, police enforcement issues, etc.

Far too many of these calamitous situations have been “addressed” with expressions of concern and an inadequate shipment of money, but with little radical collaborative re-thinking and addressing of the root causes. Major crises might result in an inquiry producing a massive report – too often a dodge to avoid real action.

The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples

In 1996, the Royal Commission of Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP) offered an opportunity for dramatic change. In its five volumes, 4,000-page, the Final Report entitled “People to People, Nation to Nation” recommended 440 constructive actions to transform the problematic relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. (RCAP used the term ‘aboriginal’ while current usage is ‘indigenous’.)

Among the recommendations were several new institutional proposals, including an Indigenous Lands and Treaties Tribunal, a permanent Treaty Commission in relevant provinces to facilitate Treaty negotiations, an Indigenous Arts Council and Languages Foundation, Indigenous Development Bank, Indigenous Peoples International University, an Indigenous Parliament to provide advice to the Parliament of Canada, and more.

Significantly, the recommendations did not call for immediate constitutional changes – a wise decision given the imbroglios experienced in previous constitutional negotiations.

Because the Report voiced the wisdom and vision of informed Indigenous Peoples, all initiatives to replace the Indian Act would be well served to study and profit from the RCAP’s careful critical analysis and its well-considered recommendations.

[A succinct summary of the Final RCAP Report produced by the Institute On Governance, a non-profit charitable organization based in Ottawa, is available via this link: https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/122230/rcapsum.pdf . An important resource about the RCAP is the volume of essays edited by Katherine A H Graham and David Newhouse, “Sharing the Land, Sharing the Future – the Legacy of the RCAP,” results of the 2016 national forum on Reconciliation marking the 20 ^th anniversary of the RCAP. U of Manitoba Press, 2021. ISBN 978 0 88755 868 9.]

While some implementation of the Report has taken place, tragically but not surprisingly, Canadian governments largely shelved the RCAP Report and its heroic and careful work. The commitment in settler society to the festering status quo goes very deep. It points to the need for all-party representatives and stakeholders to work together for change and prophetic voices to call for it.

Growing Awareness

Since the late 1980s, it has been increasingly difficult for settler Canadians to remain ignorant of or aloof from the consequences of the Indian Act. The Indian Residential Schools (IRS) crimes and tragedies generated regular national news stories. In May 2006, negotiations for a Settlement Agreement under the leadership of Supreme Court Justice Frank Iacobucci were more than routine. They ensured the process would become a news cycle not soon forgotten. IRS survivors’ class action court process against the government and churches became lasting news. The Settlement was an historic event, contributing to the “education” of all Canadians about the existence of the IRS and its devastating impact on First Nations.

The federal government’s Apology to Indigenous Peoples for the IRS system in 2008 and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) work begun in 2010 graphically shocked the public about the IRS’ prison-like cultures. Still the government did little to ride the wave of outrage. The TRC finally presented its report in 2015 to “redress the legacy of residential schools and advance the process of Canadian Reconciliation” with 94 Calls to Action, including a call to adopt UNDRIP as the incentive and framework for a national action plan for Reconciliation. But Implementation was then and is now, slow. ( The story of the costly, but rejected, early 20 ^th century witness of Dr. Peter Bryce, public health leader, reporting tragic health conditions in the IRS can only shock us today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v51KPVp5ycM .)

The National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) issued its 231 Calls for Justice in 2019 after a lengthy period of public concern about the violence experienced by Indigenous women and girls. To date only two recommendations have been implemented and about half have started to be addressed. The rest await attention.

Court judgements have required governments to fund huge settlements for discriminatory neglect and inequities experienced by Indigenous communities and individuals. The current (July 2023) proposed settlement of $10 Billion for non-fulfilment of Huron-Robinson Treaty provisions is a stark case in point. Complaints from the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada, championed by Dr. Cindy Blackstock, about the disparate resourcing of child welfare provisions also resulted in multi-billion-dollar government settlements.

These and many other reports and judgements witness to the devastating consequences of the Indian Act over the past 150 years revealing the racism and injustice of this core legislation perpetuating the Canadian colonial apartheid system and non-Indigenous society’s inability/unwillingness to address the fundamentals causing them.

The Indian Act remains in force, variously amended, with its racist, paternalistic, dependency-maintaining, inequitable provisions for Indigenous Peoples and requiring the highly complex, hugely inefficient and costly public service administrative apparatus to implement the Act.

Harold Cardinal analyzed accurately the Indian Act in 1969 stating: “It is discriminatory from start to finish. … No just society and no society with even pretensions to being just can long tolerate such a piece of legislation, but we would rather continue to live in bondage under the inequitable Indian Act than surrender our sacred rights. Any time the government wants to honour its obligation to us we are more than ready to help devise new Indian legislation.” (Cited in King, Thomas: The Inconvenient Indian, Anchor Canada, 2013, p. 200.)

One can only speculate about why legally competent advocates for Indigenous justice have not challenged the legitimacy of the Act in light of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Criminal Code. Concerned non-Indigenous folk of goodwill can only feel shame that many Indigenous People have so long suffered subjugation and gross injustice, and that Canadian societal values are so tainted. [See Appendix 5 re ongoing “Self-governance Process”.]

(Recommendations 3-6):

Apartheid

It is more than troublesome that Canadian faith-based denominations, communities, and organizations, rooted in theological discernment and informed by jurisprudence, have not yet concluded they need to publicly denounce and repudiate the Indian Act as racist, de-humanizing, patriarchal, cruel, and theologically heretical.

The Act is and continues to be contrary to both human and divine laws – tainting and undermining Canadian society’s stated rights, principles, and integrity and challenging faith communities about the deficiency of their witness in their own land. This ongoing conscious or unconscious acceptance or toleration of the Indian Act makes all non-Indigenous members and communities of faith complicit in the injustice of this Act.

It is impossible to pardon ourselves by saying that we, today, had no hand in creating the Indian Act. As Moderator Bill Phipps stated in 1998 in the UCC’s formal apology to survivors of the IRS and their families and communities, “We know that many within our church will not understand why each of us must bear the scars, the blame for this horrendous period in Canadian history. But the truth is, we are the bearers of many blessings from our ancestors, and therefore, we must also bear their burdens.”

The UCC and South African Apartheid

In 1984, the General Council of the United Church of Canada (UCC), after substantial consultation, reflection and action, repudiated “apartheid” and declared the theological rationale of apartheid as applied in South Africa to be “heresy”. Apartheid is the only theological teaching the UCC has condemned as heresy in its almost 100-year history. (cf. Record of Proceedings, 30 ^th General Council, UCC, 1984; pp. 355-364;70-71.)

The UCC was not alone in this action. In fact, the UCC was following the lead of both the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (1982) and the World Council of Churches (1983) which responded to calls for support from South Africans engaged in resistance to the white Afrikaner regime’s oppression. Both international bodies directly condemned the theological rationale issued by South Africa’s (white) Dutch Reformed Church in support of the country’s apartheid system.

The UCC General Council declared “the struggle against apartheid in South Africa and Namibia to be a just and legitimate struggle, worthy of increased humanitarian and moral diplomatic support.” It called for substantial trade, investment, cultural, and religious boycotts on South Africa to pressure the regime to yield its control. (ibid. p. 360-363)

The same Council repeated the UCC’s 1979 call to church agencies and members personally “to evaluate their own relationship through their bank accounts, their political activity, their use of share ownership and other assets to this particular question (apartheid) and take appropriate action” (p. 363 ). Other Canadian Churches were equally active in their condemnation of South Africa’s apartheid system and contributed to the end of South Africa’s apartheid government in 1994.

Canada’s Apartheid

Ironically, Afrikaners had been aided in creating their “Pass Laws,” which controlled the movement of Black South Africans, by studying Canadian regulations embedded in the Indian Act imposed on Indigenous Peoples! Canada’s “apartheid” was, for Afrikaners, a useful example of race-based policies separating Indigenous (“Indian”) human beings from non-Indigenous settler Canadians on the basis of specious but conventional biological and racist reasoning and quasi-theological conclusions reflective of Euro-white/Christian superiority convictions of the 19 ^th and early 20 ^th century.

In the then predominately Christian Canadian culture, churches and their members shared mainly in newly created Confederation’s sub-human views on “Indians.” Faith communities are not reported to have challenged the introduction of this reprehensible legislation and surprisingly missing then as now is Church-based formal theological assessments of the Act. Not even as amendments to the Act tightened the vice on Indigenous Peoples’ being and doing, (e.g., outlawing seeking legal counsel to pursue justice and fining lawyers who counselled Indigenous’ quests for justice!), not even then did the faith communities officially challenge the government’s oppressive measures.

In the 1950s the UCC’s irrepressible vision of becoming a national church to Christianize society and become the “soul of the nation” may still have been just too strong to address the injustices of the Act. (cf. chapter 7 by Gail Allan & Marilyn Legge, in Schweitzer, Fennell, Bourgeois, eds.: “The Theology of the UCC,” Wilfred Laurier Press, 2019. pp.173 ff. Also, Phyllis D. Airhart, A Church with the Soul of a Nation – Making and Remaking the UCC, McGill U Press, 2014).)

Historically, church missionaries had acted as good-faith witnesses at the signing of Treaties. They promised that “the government would respect Treaties expected by the Indians to ‘last as long as the sun shines and the rivers run’ … accepting a moral responsibility that would not be forgotten.” (John Webster Grant, Moon of Winter Time. U of Toronto Press, 1984. P.155)

But the Indian Act dashed any such expectations brutally, and the churches did not howl. The “split of humanity” became a fact in Canada with settlers benefitting and Indigenous Peoples deprived and forced into mean dependency to implement the Act’s apartheid assimilationist policies.

The churches actively collaborated with the government. Operating the Indian Residential Schools is doubtless the worst and most personally traumatic example of this type of implementation work. The downstream consequences of the Act’s implementation processes are still immense. With the theft of their lands and imposed residence on reserve parcels, the well-being of Indigenous families, communities, cultures, spirituality, and economies was fundamentally undermined.

Settler society, including its churches and their members, were captured by the ‘Christianizing’ spirit of the era. As late as 1947, a UCC brief to the federal government felt able to state: “In spite of failures, we believe that the change from paganism to Christianity is such that we can let the work speak for itself.” (Archival citation in “Justice and Reconciliation – Resource for Congregations”, Toronto, UCC, 2001, p. 14)

Denominations were not ready to pursue justice by challenging the Indian Act. Caught in the spirit of the time, churches did not protest the breach and dismissal of the Covenant/Treaties their missionaries had witnessed. “The split of humanity” had become an established fact in Canada, with settlers led by state and churches benefitting from the wealth of land and sea, while Indigenous Peoples were deprived of land and sea by enforced mean dependency.

That spirit generally and unilaterally determined that Indigenous Peoples were in direct need of the “improvements” that dominant civilized, Christian society was anxious to share charitably – insufficiently conscious of the actual causes of Indigenous want. The ongoing assimilationist goals of both church and state were less than “charitable”, but failed to generate criminal investigation.

(Recommendations 7-15):

UCC and Indigenous Peoples

The United Church and other denominations carried out their diverse ministries both within this Indian Act context and beyond it. By the second half of the twentieth century, the Indian Act system was beginning to unravel. A variety of influences were pressuring both government and church for change.

In 1951, the St. Laurent government was becoming aware that the United Nations’ values and goals (human rights, liberation of colonies, rejection of colonial imperialism) were negated by Canada’s Indian Act. (See Appendix 6) As a result, a significant revision of the Indian Act was approved by Parliament. It did, however, not tamper with the underlying assertion of Crown sovereignty and Indigenous wardship. But the door to Indigenous legal action was opened when an earlier amendment forbidding access to legal counsel was finally rescinded. Indigenous land claims and human rights were headed to the courts – with legal counsel!

The negative impacts of the colonial apartheid society were becoming noticeable by more settler Canadians. In Canada’s centennial year, the UCC and the Anglican Church commissioned Professor John Melling, a Quaker, to write a report, “Right to a Future – The Native Peoples of Canada,” signaling that the societal arrangement was unhealthy. The study booklet intended to help Canadian Christians “pause in the midst of their centennial pride and consider their fellow-citizens of native background …. with a commitment: to help native peoples of Canada in ways consistent with membership in the Church.” The tone of the resource was charitable, compassionate, promoting “Indian” agency. Land claims were regarded as disputes to be settled. But the core issue – the injustice of the Indian Act – was not challenged. (John Melling, ibid. p. ix)

In the 1970s and beyond, Indigenous Peoples were becoming restive, with a growing awareness of their inherent rights and basic strengths – patience was complemented by resistance. Challenging the conditions imposed on them and the assets stolen from them became dramatically visible nationally with the Oka Crisis or the Mohawk Resistance at Kanesatake, a 78-day standoff (11 July–26 September 1990) between Kanyen'kehà:ka (Mohawk) protesters, Quebec police , and the Canadian Army . (source: Canadian Encyclopedia)

The place and role of Indigenous UC congregations, members, and leaders within the Church became active issues to discuss in national consultations of Indigenous UCC people. UCC residential schools were closing – prodded by the fact that the federal government stopped funding the church-run schools at this time. At least this part of the Church’s implementation of the Indian Act ended. The huge justice gaps experienced by Indigenous Peoples could no longer be attributable to genetic or racial disparities.

The Divine Call for Justice in the Human Family

Increasingly, the Church became conscious that gaps in economic and social well-being were justice issues. This awareness was growing in its world outreach endeavours and in-Canada ministries.

Huge disparities between settlers and Indigenous peoples were recognized as symptoms of the failure of dominant colonial society to relate justly to Indigenous people. Land and resource plundering by settler society was increasingly understood as infringements of Indigenous rights and outright assaults on Mother Earth with wealth extracted without consent of rightful owners.

With this new theological lens, the UCC was actively engaged as an ally to Indigenous Peoples via the Project North (response to Berger Inquiry re Mackenzie River Pipeline), Aboriginal Rights Coalition, and later Kairos – all ecumenical Christian coalitions engaged in social justice work on behalf of the churches. Indigenous theological centres to foster Indigenous leadership were opened initially in Ft. Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan, then Beausejour, Manitoba (Dr. Jessie Saulteaux Centre), and at Paris, Ontario (Francis Sandy Theological Centre). Vancouver School of Theology launched an Indigenous education stream.

Apologies

In 1986, the General Council of the UCC issued its first Apology to First Nations Peoples of the UCC: “We imposed our civilization as a condition of accepting the gospel. … We tried to make you be like us and in so doing we helped to destroy the vision that made you what you were. As a result, you, and we, are poorer and the image of the Creator in us is twisted, blurred, and we are not what we are meant by God to be . We ask you to forgive us….” Indigenous people had clearly been harmed by claimed superiority, and the UCC as a church and its ministries in Jesus’ name faced a loss of integrity and insufficient understanding of the Gospel!

In the 1998 apology related to Residential Schools, Moderator Bill Phipps, on behalf of the Executive of the General Council stated: “… I apologize for the pain and suffering that our church’s involvement in the Indian Residential School system has caused. We are aware of some of the damage that this cruel and ill-conceived system of assimilation has perpetrated on Canada’s First Nation peoples. For this we are truly and most humbly sorry.” (cf. https://united-church.ca/social-action/justice-initiatives/reconciliation-and-indigenous-justice/apologies ]

The Blackwater lawsuit (1996 – 2010), by 27 former students at the Alberni Residential School on Vancouver Island, claiming damages for abuse by staff, forced the UCC to a new understanding of the scope of harm done to Indigenous Peoples through the IRS and the Church’s complicity in this tragedy. The Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, actively participated in and contributed to by the UCC, was implemented in 2007 as the then largest class action settlement in Canadian history. Participating in the Residential Schools tragedy afflicted the pupils and their families and harmed the Church’s credebility.

In its March 24-26, 2012 meeting, the General Council Executive addressed faux-doctrine inherited from before the Reformation. It formally denounced the Doctrine of Discovery as “fundamentally opposed to the gospel of Jesus Christ and a violation of the inherent human rights that all individuals and peoples have received from God.” It went on in a general way to urge “governments, including the government of Canada, to dismantle all legal structures and policies that are based on, or influenced by, the Doctrine of Discovery” … and to “take steps to repudiate the Doctrine of Discovery in word and action.” The Indian Act was however not specifically mentioned. ( https://united-church.ca/social-action/justice-initiatives/reconciliation-and-indigenous-justice/doctrine-discovery )

The Truth & Reconciliation Commission

The 2008 apology for the Indian Residential Schools system by Stephen Harper, the Prime Minister was followed by the creation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in 2009. The testimony of many of the 80,000 still living survivors of the 150,000 Indigenous children in the 139 schools led to a five-year process of discovering the consequences of the Indian Residential School system. In 2015, the Commission published a six volume, 3231-page Final Report in which 94 “Calls to Action” focused the way toward “Reconciliation.”

Included in the Report was a call for all Canadian governments to implement fully the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (Call #43) as the framework for Reconciliation. The government apologized for the IRS but made no mention of the Indian Act – the legislative foundation, upon which IRS and other oppression was founded.

Toward Reconciliation - UCC

The United Church has been actively participating in the societal actions towards justice for Indigenous Peoples and in “in-house” processes of honouring the unique cultural, spiritual, and ecclesiological reality of Indigenous Church members. The UCC has apologized and taken significant steps toward reconciliation both to enhance social justice and to address colonial aspects of church life. Three initiatives may serve as examples.

F irst, financial proposals : Two special funds were created. The Healing Fund was born of the 1986 Apology as both a fundraising and educational opportunity. The Fund supports innovative healing activities in Indigenous settings. The programs are designed and implemented by Indigenous people. The Justice & Reconciliation Fund seeks to address community impacts caused by the IRS. Another funding initiative now requires that with UCC property sales, congregations and other structures shall contribute not less than 10% of the net sale revenues to Indigenous ministries.

Second, symbolic proposals: Recognizing that no Indigenous members played a role in the formation of the Church in 1925 nor in the development of the UCC crest, the General Council amended the crest to signify the participation of Indigenous faith communities in the life of the Church. First the medicine wheel colours were added to the crest and then the phrase AKWE NIA’TETEWA:NEREN (all our relations) paralleled the motto “ut omnes unum sint” (that all may be one, John 17:22 ). The new phrase acknowledges that relations extend far beyond humans into the entire Creation. Symbolically the Church was acknowledging the particular gifts Indigenous members shared while recognizing that as an organization, much of the colonial legacy still required addressing.

This need was stated explicitly by “Caretakers of Our Indigenous Circle”, Indigenous members of the UCC, in a report to the 43 ^rd General Council in 2018. Entitled “Calls to the Church” echoing the “Calls to Action” of the TRC, the report points to the Church’s own “application of the policy of assimilation and it’s impoverishment by the rejection of an Indigenous understanding of spirituality.” It is to the “repentant church” that the calls are voiced to pursue the “original Indigenous desire for friendship, peace, and the strength that comes from respect.” ( https://united-church.ca/community-and-faith/being-community/indigenous-ministries/calls-church )

The General Council affirmed the “Calls to Action” and proposed that significant changes to the Basis of Union, the denomination’s constitution, be authorized, by sending remits to Regional Councils and to local UCC communities of faith for approval. Truth-telling about the history of the UCC has become a priority.

Third, theological witness: In March 2012, the Executive of the General Council issued a statement “denouncing the Doctrine of Discovery as fundamentally opposed to the gospel of Jesus Christ and a violation of the inherent human rights that all individuals and peoples have received from God.” ( https://united-church.ca/social-action/justice-initiatives/reconciliation-and-indigenous-justice/doctrine-discovery )

The statement included several other steps the UCC would take to counter the Doctrine’s ongoing influence. Among these were included: affirming the collective rights of Indigenous Peoples and their right to self-determination and self-governance; urging governments, including the government of Canada, to dismantle all legal structures and policies that are based on, or influenced by, the Doctrine of Discovery.

Ironically, this action did not specifically include a condemnation and repudiation of the legislation which perpetuates the reality fraudulently “authorized” by the Doctrine of Discovery. The Indian Act, the key implementing legislation empowering the Doctrine’s heretical and repudiated teachings, is neither mentioned nor condemned. Even though there is little talk about the Indian Act, it continues to be the comprehensive legislative framework which governs the lives of “registered Indians” – Indigenous Peoples of Canada.

The UCC and the Indian Act

Surprisingly given its history of social engagement locally and globally, the UCC has not renounced the Indian Act. This key legislation clearly contravenes international human rights standards like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and UNDRIP. It is theologically abhorrent, treating a specific group of people as somehow less than fully human, regarded still as wards of the state. It imposes governance structures that have nothing to do with the governance heritage of the various Indigenous Peoples. It effectively robs Indigenous Peoples of their land and forces them to seek costly and tedious legal recourse to reclaim land and human rights, which thanks to the resilience and persistence of Indigenous Peoples, regularly results in judgements acknowledging the validity of their claims. It evades the validity of the historic Treaties. In sum, the Indian Act is racist “apartheid” legislation that has been implemented and tolerated by church and state for almost 150 years.

The UCC General Council aggressively advocated for the repudiation of “apartheid” in South Africa. But for 150 years, Canadians including the UCC and its antecedents have tolerated the Canadian version of apartheid. There is no justification for “apartheid” and any doctrine justifying it is “heresy” – contrary to the Divine love-justice Gospel revealed in the life and work of Jesus. It harms Indigenous Peoples, taints all complicit in its maintenance, continues to dishonour the Crown, and defies the Holy One.

But the UCC has not denounced nor repudiated it, nor called for the dismantling of the Indian Act. It has not honoured the pledge of those missionaries who witnessed to the validity of the historic Covenant / Treaties.

This ambiguous, if not hypocritical situation evokes Jesus’ splinter and log teaching unfolded in Luke 6:41-42. “Why do you look at the splinter in your brother’s eye, but pay no attention to the log in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Please, brother, let me take that speck out of your eye,’ yet cannot even see the log in your own eye? You hypocrite! First take the log out of your own eye, and then you will be able to see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.”

Why Not Now?

Why does the UCC tolerate “apartheid” based on “heresy”? There is no stated reason that can be cited. We can only speculate.

I s it:

- Because the antecedents and forebears of the UCC were complicit in the legislation’s creation as an aspect of the national policy of government, and it is humiliating to acknowledge this truth? (The sought for religious (Christian) and political (British) and ethnic (European) uniformity wasn’t then nor is it now achievable or desirable, so why tolerate it?)

- Because the Act has been in effect for 150 years and dismantling it might cause more disruption, division, and distress than keeping it? (Do we remember how much suffering and social distress the Act has caused? Is not division the exact problem we face today?)

- Because some Indigenous people fear that eliminating the Act would result in the Crown’s fiduciary responsibilities and benefits being withdrawn? (Can these not be part of the negotiations when that door opens? But is that fear adequate to not call into question the continuation of the Act?)

- Because the United Church’s voice by itself carries little weight in government circles or in the popular mind? (True, but that hasn’t stopped the Church before. There are other faith-based communities, both Christian and other faiths, not to mention civil society activists, all of which could raise their voices together against this harmful legislation, and in the process contribute to preventing negative extremist reactions.)

- Because there is some movement toward “Reconciliation” but no popular call to repudiate and dismantle the Indian Act? (But the Church, at its best, is not simply based on popular opinion. It seeks always to root itself in the call of the Spirit and the heritage of faith conviction, and the need to repent of its complicity.)

- Because “it is not the right time?” (Never is too soon?)

- Because “it would distract us” from more important matters of climate change, health care, affordable housing, endangered animal species, economic challenges, etc. (Is anything more important than justice for Indigenous Peoples who have languished under settler domination and largely ill-will for centuries? Equally important, these are the very issues that call for full participation of all, including Indigenous Peoples, who dwell in this fair land.)

- Because it would open the constitutional Pandora’s box? (Even though the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples’ recommendations deemed it unnecessary to open that troublesome imbroglio immediately!)

- Because the history created by the Indian Act is too terrible to be told and should not trouble current society? (But we know that terrible stories will haunt a society and its peoples, often turning the stories into fairy tales or denials, rather than truth which sets people and society to be free and whole. Besides, it is time for a gentler, more just, and collaborative spirit to drive the Canadian identity.)

- Because it might undermine the Canadian economy to truly honour the land claims and rights of Indigenous Peoples? (Consequences for ill-gotten gains are part of our justice system; the disastrous impacts on land and sea are in considerable measure the result of an “extraction-based” capitalist economy designed to make some wealthy, many affluent, while impoverishing Indigenous Peoples. Could this action launch a new era of Indigenous-led responsible stewardship of land and sea?)

Excuses will not get Indigenous People and colonial settler society beyond the Indian Act and its evils. Integrity requires the Indian Act’s societal arrangement to end.

Complicit both in the original imposition of the Indian Act and in its continuing impact on Indigenous People over almost 150 years, the largely colonial settler UCC has a specific and real responsibility to distance itself from the Indian Act. “The Indian Problem” resulted from Euro-colonial settler dominated Canadian society in which the UCC and its antecedents were vitally engaged. It is not a problem to be attributed to the Indigenous Peoples - they were here first.

It is for this reason that this Proposal calls The United Church of Canada as a whole to denounce the Indian Act and its impacts and to call for that Two-Row Wampum friendship relationship based on mutual respect and justice.

(Recommendations 16-17):

Healing for Wholeness

Two current resources are cited here to remind us that “haunted memories” can undermine and trouble wholeness. [See Appendix 2 below] .

Canadians have a growing memory bank issuing frequent reminders of how much the “Contact” with European explorers and Settlers has cost Indigenous Peoples – spiritually, socially, economically, culturally, and in their essential relationship with ancestral lands and waters. It has been a traumatic history of incomprehensible and incalculable consequences.

Indigenous Peoples have suffered the most and unjustifiably. But non-Indigenous people will fool themselves if they believe that they have not been wounded and shamed by the experience. We admitted this in the 1986 Apology when the General Council through Moderator Bob Smith said: “…the image of the Creator in us is twisted, blurred, and we are not what we are meant by God to be.” Both peoples have different but significant haunted histories. And haunted histories damage body and soul and disturb the peace.

The two resources cited in the Appendix may help some people with haunted histories to come to terms and to transcend the woundedness they have suffered. This is an important healing option!

“Reconciliation” is a process toward wholeness and health, toward justice and peace – to God’s shalom. Understanding and acknowledging our past truthfully; denouncing the evil and claiming the blessings; forging respectful new frameworks of relating; sharing more graciously the wealth of the land and seas; and embracing the two-row wampum friendship might be just what is needed to address the huge challenges that face all in Canada and the global human family.

Ironically, the UCC will have to decide whether it is willing to really hear the Good News Indigenous Peoples are communicating to the Church, its members, and society. Liberation is available from the sins of hubris, superiority, subjugation, theft, and more, and, even now, from tolerating the oppressive apartheid system still degrading the soul of non-Indigenous Peoples and of society. The Spirit works in mysterious ways to restore wholeness to her human family. The Good News Indigenous Peoples are still willing to share for the healing of the faith communities and society as a whole can be experienced as an unforeseen blessing.

Negotiations

Of course, any new societal arrangement, based on foundations with integrity and truth, would have to be carefully negotiated with representatives of Indigenous Peoples and their communities – “nothing about us, without us.” They would be the principal agents representing the diversity of Indigenous communities/nations/peoples and their interests. The Crown would need to be represented whether by officials of governments and/or by a Crown/Governor General representative. Perhaps the Senate might be the place to start the process.

Crucial will be to have an all-party delegation of political leaders involved to ensure that Parliament as a whole would eventually approve negotiated terms. The election of a new government quashed the Kelowna Accord of 2005. That scenario must not be repeated.

Conclusion

Given this history and the factors contributing to our current situation, having consulted with the National Indigenous Council of the UCC, drawn upon Indigenous-produced resources, and considered factors that required the colonial settler Church to acknowledge its role in the colonization of northern Turtle Island, including the creation and maintenance of the Indian Act,

L et The United Church of Canada (hopefully, in partnership with other faith-based communities of goodwill) now confidently and joyfully take further action to de-colonize Canada by repudiating the Indian Act and by seeking a transformed, justice-based relationship with Indigenous Peoples, and a fairer, flourishing, peaceful Canada.

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Appendix for Additional Resources

(Other resources are cited in the body of the text)

1. Bob Joseph, “21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act” Indigenous Relations Press. 2018. Though not exhaustive, Bob Joseph gives a clear picture of the Act’s oppressive policies implementing the federal government’s assimilationist goal for solving “the Indian problem”.

2. Elaine Enns & Ched Myers. Healing Haunted Histories – A Settler Discipleship of Decolonization . Eugene, Oregon. Cascade Books. 2021. ISBN 9788 1 72525535 7. AND: Susan Neiman. Learning from the Germans – Race and the Memory of Evil. New York. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2019. ISBN 978 0 374 15446 9. See also: Nations in Reconciliation and Reconciling Nations, Appendix III in Justice and Reconciliation, The Legacy of Indian Residential Schools and the Journey Toward Reconciliation a Resource for Congregations , The United Church of Canada/Église unie du Canada, 2001.

3. Suzuki Foundation video series and commentary on Treaties

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uB83G7xZgU

https://davidsuzuki.org/what-you-can-do/treaty-promises/?utm_source=mkto-first-englishBroadcast-banner-header&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nature-treatyPromisesLaunch-en-27jun2023&mkt_tok=MTg4LVZEVS0zNjAAAAGMnSfZ6dAMNL8ZNW4sdUZPD179CtirFJww3G2EzXnrmPH5uGhqIKnw8JmudrlJ1GFCamG9sBWRVMT_ghHUcn1KXXKMl_wVQU3N6s3wl9R2MQfEYQ

Suzuki Foundation re Treaties: Treaties confirm agreements between the federal government (often referred to as “the Crown”) and Indigenous Peoples. Fundamentally, they are an expression of relationship and are the basis for legitimate settler presence. As Aimée Craft said, “Indigenous nations, prior to contact, were developing treaties all across Turtle Island, amongst themselves, inside of the nations, with other nations, with nations of non-human beings, so animal nations. And then when the Crown comes along and starts making treaties, this is not something that’s foreign to Indigenous people.”

4. Book Resources:

Michelle Good via CBC offers thirty key books to resource the quest to get beyond the conventional histories of Canada and for a truer understanding of the Indigenous / non-Indigenous history. Link:

https://www.cbc.ca/books/books-to-read-national-indigenous-history-month-michelle-good-1.6860760 .

For a younger generation and those who rely on graphics for their reading seek: Alicia Elliott et al., This Place -150 Years Retold, High Water Press / Portage & Main Press, 2019. ISBN 9781553797586. Ten stories exploring 150 years of history through the eyes of Indigenous creators in a handsome graphic novel anthology.

5. Shared or Self-Governance Process. Moving to self-determination or self-governance is an ongoing process involving First Nations and the federal government. In “… (2014), there were approximately 100 comprehensive land claim and self-government negotiation tables around Canada. The agreements reached may ultimately replace the Indian Act as the chief instrument governing the relationship between First Nations and government without altering the special relationship between Indigenous peoples and the Crown or revoking existing Indigenous, treaty, or constitutional rights.” (source: Canadian Encyclopedia.) “Ultimately” is the operative word, but needs to be shortened by action clearly indicating that the Indian Act can no longer be tolerated in a validly democratic society.

6. “In 1948, the General Assembly of the United Nations unanimously adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG). Canada signed the Convention in November 1949 and, today, there are 152 state parties. In signing, Canada along with all other parties, accepted the definition of genocide, which in part, states: (a) Killing, (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm; (c) Deliberating inflicting . . . conditions of life calculated to bring about . . . physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births; (e) Forcibly transferring children.

The Convention made genocide an international crime and provides mandatory jurisdiction for the International Court of Justice (ICJ) with the authority to adjudicate disputes.” (Cited in Gar Pardy, Opinion in The Hill Times “Colonialism Continues Its Brutal Reign, ” Ottawa, August 9, 2023 . Enforcement is an obvious problem for this UN Convention, given Canada appears un-investigated for this crime! https://ww.hilltimes.com/ht_author/gar-pardy/

7. For more on modern Treaties and their implementation, visit the government page on: Canada's Collaborative Modern Treaty Implementation Policy at https://www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1672771319009/1672771475448

8. For more on fiscal policy and the evolution of fiscal capacity for Indigenous governance, visit: Canada’s Collaborative Self-Government Fiscal Policy at https://www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1566482924303/1566482963919

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Author of Proposal: August 28, 2023

A H Harry Oussoren (Rev. Dr.)

Ordained Minister (ret.) of The United Church of Canada

Ottawa. Email: ahharryo370@gmail.com

Grateful appreciation to many people who contributed substantially to this Proposal. In particular I acknowledge the contributions of Rev. James Scott, Dr. Jeffrey Smith, Mr. Clifton Prowse, Rev. Sharon Moon, Mr. Gary Kenny, Dr. Glenys Huws, the Living into Right Relations Book Study Group of First United/All Saints Churches Westboro (Ottawa), Mr. Aster Dusome, and Rev. Dr. Teresa Burnett-Cole (member of both the General Council Executive and the National Indigenous Council (UCC)); Ms. Sara Stratton (Reconciliation and Indigenous Justice Animator in the General Council office (UCC)) for advice re process; and audio-visual and written resources produced by Indigenous and allied sources, including UCC. Apologies to helpful others for failing to name them.

conversion and sales

Fri, 11 Aug 2023 20:21:24 GMT

Reflections on Conversion Proselytism Sales

The Conversion of Saul / Paul by Michelangelo

Guess what!!? Business is using not just the “mission” word, but now also the “conversion” word.

“…They wanted to examine the reps role throughout the sales funnel, from prospect for leads to converting those leads to customers,” reports the Harvard Business Review in its July-August 2023 edition on pages 15-18. (HBR Reprint F2304A)!

Prospecting and converting is part of a study of the auto insurance industry carried out by Srninath Gopalakrishna and colleagues of the University of Missouri. They were trying to learn what drives sales success. What they found is that prospecting is driven by motivation, opportunity, and ability and can be effectively carried out by novices. But - and this is key - “conversion” of identified prospects was more effective when carried out by experienced reps. Interesting!

Prospecting and converting obviously drives success in the sales world. As a concept converting is a well-known in religious parlance. Prospecting may be a less familiar term, but a not unfamiliar practice in some religious circles. In the sales world prospecting is identifying a potential buyer. But converting means closing the deal.

Conversion

In religious terms, conversion is transitioning from one life-shaping understanding to another. The Damascus Road conversion of St. Paul as described in Acts 9:1-22 is one of Christianity’s examples of dramatic conversion. On the road to terrorizing early Christians, Saul experiences the divine call to change. The persecutor is transformed into Paul the indefatigable missionary of Jesus' love movement.

Emperor Constantine’s is another, less attractive conversion example. Upon seeing a vision with the cross/sword and motto “in hoc signo vinces” (in this sign, you will conquer) promising victory in battle, Emperor Constantine is converted to identifying himself as a Christian.

John Wesley reported that “his heart was strangely warmed” listening to a Christian preacher and that was a tipping point in his life.

So, conversions can take place as an epiphany - moment of transformative existential awareness. A person suddenly or gradually senses that their “way of life” is no longer “their core self” and embraces another more integral way of being.

Proselytism

But too often such conversions happen with external influences. The word “proselytism” comes into play here. Says Wikipedia, “Proselytism is the policy of attempting to convert people's religious or political beliefs.” Historically the words had a neutral meaning but in our day it has increasingly sinister connotations: individual agency may be impaired by external influences, often pressures hard to resist.

Some of these influences may be benign and others not. They can vary dramatically. In the Middle Ages of Europe, Charlemagne used the ultimate social pressure, offering the Saxon tribal people a choice: leave your “paganism” to become Christians by being baptized, or die by the sword of my warriors. Pressures are usually less threatening than that. They can also be financial rewards, enhanced social status, family approval, lover’s appeals, etc.

In Canada it was government policy with the active support of the Christian churches to pressure Indigenous peoples to adopt Christianity as their way of life. Assimilation was the goal: turning Indigenous Peoples away from their “pagan and heathen, uncivilized ways” into “civilized, settled, Christian, citizens”. The history of this policy is full of many generational trauma, harm, and suffering by Indigenous people. The policy and its practices are worthy of confession, repenting, apologies, and intense discernment of more faithful ways by a humbler church.

The trouble with proselytism is that usually the people doing the prospecting assume that they know best. The recruiter may even understand her/his aggressive role as beneficial – “I’m trying to save this 'other' from damnation.”

Whether it is assertive individuals or aggressive faith communities, the pressure is too often very real. Superiority, hubris, social power, enticements of various types are exploited to make the conversion happen. Whether the change caused is deeply rooted, heartfelt, or life-giving is too often not factored in by the recruiter. Presumably the more “experienced [religious] salesperson – the “closer” knows the right levers to press and the subtle pressures to apply “for your own good” to get the sale, the conversion.

The Spirit Way

Adopting a recruiter’s way and truth is no blessing. The “other” becomes alienated from their true selves. Proselytism doesn’t take seriously enough the humanity of the “other”. It usurps the role of the ubiquitous Divine Spirit who “works in us and others” calling each and all to immerse ourselves in the divine presence. Conversion is intended to be the work of the Spirit - summoning out of us the gifts with which each human being is endowed so that the fruits of our living may flourish.

Christians are called not to recruit, to sell, to coerce, to "convince", but simply to be the persons Creator calls us to become. In the best of Christianity, the 'other’s' freedom, humanity, and personhood is recognized and honoured. With people of other or no particular faith, we are given opportunity for dialogue for mutual benefit. Real dialogue may result in deeper awareness of truth for both partners in the conversation.

The “great commandment” applies: “love God above all and your neighbour as yourself.” (Matthew 22:35-40) Not even the “Great Commission” (Matthew 28:19-20) gives anyone the right to treat other human being as objects for change.

The Human Way

I assume this applies not only to those who identify as friends and companions of Jesus today, but also to all sales people of whatever faith and of whatever is for sale. Making the sale is a secondary goal, after honouring the humanity of the other and seeking to respond to the real needs they identify. The human way for religion and commerce!

Visionary Educator

Fri, 11 Aug 2023 14:14:50 GMT

Ensuring Education for Theological Leadership

C. DOUGLAS JAY: FAITHFUL VISIONARY

(Republished with author's permission from Touchstone - Theology Shaping Witness. Vol. 41, June, 2023, No. 1)(Photo: courtesy Victoria University)

By Phyllis D. Airhart,

Professor Emerita of the History of Christianity, Emmanuel College of Victoria University in the University of Toronto.

My introduction to C. Douglas Jay was as a voice on the other end of a telephone call on a Monday evening in December 1983. A few days later I flew from Chicago to Toronto to be interviewed for the position in church history that was opening at Emmanuel College with John Webster Grant’s

retirement. It is not going too far to say that meeting Doug Jay for the first time changed my life.

The search committee was willing to take what appeared then (and looks to me even now after retirement) to be a huge gamble. I was, after all, still a graduate student. I had applied in order to practice putting together my first curriculum vitae and was not expecting an interview, much

less an offer. Yet he and the committee he chaired were somehow able to imagine me as a professor at Emmanuel—perhaps more readily than I at first saw myself in that role. My admiration for Doug’s visionary leadership grew over the years as I learned more about the breadth of his accomplishments.

What I experienced in the aftermath of my first encounter was typical of his various roles: his gift for imagining the potential of persons and institutions and a gentle but tenacious resolve in guiding them.

Ecumenical Trailblazer

Doug was a boy from rural Ontario whose theological journey took him around the world, making his mark in denominational, ecumenical, and interfaith circles along the way. He was born on 10 October 1925 in Monticello, Ontario, to the Rev. Charles and Luella Jay, four months after their Methodist congregation became part of the new United Church of Canada. He quickly showed himself to be extraordinarily accomplished. He graduated from the University of Toronto with a Bachelor of Arts in

philosophy and history in 1946, marrying Ruth Crooker that same year.

Queen’s University was the first to recognize his promise as a teacher, hiring him after the war to teach logic to classes mostly made up of veterans around his own age. But he chose Emmanuel College rather than Queen’s to pursue his theological education and graduated in 1950 with the Sanford Gold

Medal for the highest standing. He was ordained to further study that year and moved with Ruth to Edinburgh, returning in 1952 with his PhD in hand. After serving his required ministerial placement in

two rural pastoral charges (Elk Lake and Trafalgar in Ontario), he returned to Victoria University yet again in 1955, this time to teach philosophy of religion and Christian ethics at Emmanuel.

A search of the University of Toronto Library database shows a list of articles and books authored by “C. Douglas Jay” covering subjects ranging from “Logical Analysis, Theological Positivism, and Metaphysics” to residential schools, Canadian identity, and theological education. What does not show up is arguably his most important work as a scholar faithful to the church. As secretary of the United Church’s Commission on World Mission, he was principal author of a report prepared for the 1966 General Council that comprised nearly one hundred pages in the Record of Proceedings. The sixteen recommendations at the end formed the basis for a new direction in the United Church’s mission policy, with the eleventh signaling an openness to other faiths that differed from past approaches to missions and evangelism: “The church should recognize that God is creatively and redemptively at work in the religious life of all mankind.” 161

Preparing the R.P. Mackay Memorial Lectures gave Doug an opportunity to introduce to a wider audience the church’s emerging understanding of “world mission” and its relation to evangelism. In a series of lectures he delivered at theological colleges across Canada in 1966-67 and published as World Mission and World Civilization, he described how the ecumenical task had recently shifted from focusing on global missionary enterprises—“missions”—to making “an effective Christian presence in the world.” 162 He later came to see the tragedy of the residential schools in Canada as an illustration closer to home of the consequences of earlier methods. He admitted that what was now considered cultural abuse or genocide closely paralleled past missiological approaches that were still

practiced, especially in Third World contexts. 163

Reflecting on the report of the Commission on World Mission thirty years later, Doug claimed that “the United Church pioneered in the establishment of an interfaith dialogue portfolio,” ahead of similar initiatives in the World Council of Churches by several years. 164

As his Emmanuel colleague Roger Hutchinson looked back on Doug’s accomplishments, he astutely suggested that the report’s significance for the United Church itself was in pushing it “to the edge of where it was prepared to go at that time.” 165 Its stance was more controversial than some members of the Commission perhaps realized, with no guarantee of acceptance in the wider church.

The implications of ecumenism and religious pluralism drew Doug’s attention in other contexts. He was a consultant for the World Council of Churches, attending meetings that took him around the world as part of its program on Dialogue with People of Living Faiths and Ideologies. 166 He was

also involved with the Association of Theological Schools (ATS) before and after his retirement, serving as its president from 1984-86. His presidential address urged theological educators to see ATS’s bi-national association as “a modest sign or symbol of our intent to transcend national or other partisan interests which circumscribe the global dimensions of the gospel,” insisting that “nothing less than a genuinely global consciousness” would suffice to meet that task. 167

Adroit Administrator

Doug had new opportunities to put his ecumenical principles into practice when he stepped away from his teaching position at Emmanuel in 1969 to become the founding director of a groundbreaking venture that became the Toronto School of Theology (TST). On the occasion of his 90th

birthday, TST’s boardroom was named in his honour and his leadership commemorated with a plaque that recognized his role in guiding the new undertaking in ecumenical theological education “with clear-sighted vision, exceptional gifts of leadership, unstinting dedication, and enormous tact. 168

Doug returned to Emmanuel in 1981 and until his retirement served as principal for what his obituary described as “nine challenging years.” I admit that I had a twinge of conscience as I read those words in the Globe and Mail, for not everyone was happy with the announcement that the church history position had gone to a then young woman in her first academic job. I later heard from an acquaintance that Doug had joked that he was sleeping with the letter from my dissertation supervisor at the University of Chicago under his pillow. It was something we still laughed about years later. But I suspect he had more troublesome issues to deal with than my appointment.

There were hints at the formal installation ceremony of challenges ahead. John Webster Grant brought greetings from the faculty, lauding Doug’s leadership at TST as showing “an admirable talent for bringing members of the community together in conference and ensuring that all points of view received a fair hearing.” He expressed confidence that Doug’s “enigmatic smile” and “proven toughness” would lead to “creative resolution of inevitable tension.” 169

Doug acknowledged the prospect of tension in his own address, identifying its “basic source” as Emmanuel’s “dual citizenship”: belonging “simultaneously to the sphere of church and

higher education.” 170 Being seen by some as an unduly conservative institution, unwilling to change, and by others irresponsibly liberal or even radical was another challenge he anticipated. 171 I can attest that Doug did indeed display patience in listening to all points of view, although his faculty didn’t always appreciate the lengthy meetings that consensus-building entailed! His fairness was matched by a firmness more quietly wielded.

I saw flashes of toughness as I thumbed through archival documents from his years as principal. He rightly predicted that the college’s relationship to the church would be a source of tension, some of it related to a group of conservative ministers and members who came together as the Community of Concern in 1988. Although it was the ordination of gay ministers that galvanized the organization, other theological “concerns” had been smoldering for years. Matters came to a head for Emmanuel when the president of Community of Concern made headlines with a statement that questioned the theological integrity of the United Church’s theological schools. Doug’s response was diplomatic but unyielding in his defence of Emmanuel’s reputation. He drew attention to the college’s recently revised mission statement that had affirmed “the central significance of Jesus Christ within a trinitarian understanding of God” and the centrality of the Bible as “the primary witness to God’s creative, reconciliatory, redemptive activity in the world.”

The conciliatory tone turned tougher when he pointed out that it had never been his own practice to be “narrowly defensive, let alone threaten lawsuits even when statements are made that could be construed as libelous”; yet he warned that the college was being “grossly misrepresented by sweeping generalizations.” Doug’s letter did not end criticism of the college but seems to have lowered the temperature; at least no lawsuits followed! 172

Doug was also mindful of Emmanuel’s university setting where excellence in both teaching and research were taken into consideration when assessing faculty performance and institutional accreditation. As chair of search committees for over half a dozen faculty positions, he had a hand in

shaping an ethos where both were valued. He aimed to raise the profile of faculty research, and a grant from the Lilly Endowment that he oversaw was designed to provide seed money for initiatives such as the Centre for the Study of Religion in Canada that has since expanded its mandate as the

Centre for Religion and Its Contexts. He brought together a mix of established and younger scholars in Bible, history, theology, and ethics to work with practitioners in a variety of pastoral areas. His intelligence and insight shaped us as a faculty in ways that had institutional repercussions spanning four decades. I was the youngest of those appointees, and the last to retire in 2020.

A grant from ATS after his retirement supported further research on the globalization of theological education. Reflecting on his findings, he declared: “If it was ever justifiable to ignore religious diversity in theological education, that time is past.” Unless religious diversity was addressed in the theological curriculum, students would be left miseducated.” Rather than adding courses to an already crowded

curriculum, he suggested approaching diversity in “the ethos throughout the whole curriculum.” 173 That openness to sharing the curriculum with other faith traditions contributed to a spirit of theological hospitality at Emmanuel that led years later to initiatives in interreligious education.

Farsighted Christian Ethicist Doug Jay never left behind the field to which he was first appointed

at Emmanuel. On some matters of Christian ethics, his discerning analysis was ignored—or was perhaps too far ahead of its time to gain traction. For instance, how to deal with misinformation in a changing media environment was the subject of a TST symposium published as a booklet on Truth in

Advertising that he co-authored soon after he became director. While it focused on how to analyze “truth norms” for various types of truth-claims in advertising, the concluding paragraph warned that newspapers, magazines, movies, and television programs were prone to the same abuses: “The

shocking and terrifying danger we felt impelled to point out here … is the subtle slanting of news in its very reporting.” The “patient search” for standards that the symposium called for is still ongoing some forty years later, complicated by the new quandaries of social media. 174

“Environmentalists and Banks Square Off” was a headline in the Globe and Mail’s business section that caught my eye as I worked on this profile. Coming across Doug’s correspondence related to a magazine article that was never published was a reminder that long before Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG), Canadian churches had been players in faceoffs with financial institutions. In 1981 Doug was invited by P.B.C. (Brian) Beauchamp, the public affairs manager at the Canadian Imperial

Bank of Commerce, to write about “The Role of the Church in Today’s Society.” The letter explained that the bank had launched Spectrum, a new publication dealing with issues of broad public concern. Beauchamp had turned to Doug seeking answers to “questions that are troubling sincere people, within the Church and outside” about its role in “an increasingly interdependent global society.” Beauchamp listed eight questions that showed particular interest in the political activism of some churches and sensitivity to criticism of business practices. Was the “aggressive” activism of some church groups representative of the whole? Should the church be interested in social or political issues, some of them foreign rather than domestic, or “should it confine itself to spiritual and doctrinal matters?” 175

Doug addressed the fundamental issue head-on in the opening paragraph of his article. He acknowledged that the Anglican and United churches, along with other church-related groups, had been at the forefront of outspoken responses to social issues that were to some “surprising and

alarming.” He went on to defend their activism, explaining that it was not a new or unprecedented role but inspired by a prophetic tradition that dated from biblical times. 176 He commended the work of interchurch coalitions that had brought Protestants and Catholics together, among them the Taskforce on the Churches and Corporate Responsibility, GATT-Fly (focused on monitoring international trade), and Project North (an ally of Indigenous opposition to the Mackenzie Valley pipeline)—advocacy groups that might well have been on radar of business executives. 177

Doug admitted that some religious activists had lost credibility due to prophetic zeal, deliberate misrepresentation, over-simplification of complex issues, and attention-grabbing tactics. Yet his measured conclusion was to urge cooperation among social justice advocates, specialists,

government, and other agencies to solve social problems that were beyond the churches’ expertise. 178 His attention to environmental issues was particularly prescient. To him it was apparent that “a finite planet” could not sustain unlimited growth and the environmental deterioration accompanying

it. 179 There was, he added, much to learn from “native peoples…and other important allies in the environmental and ecological groups which are protesting the unrestrained exploitation of nature by the dominant technocratic culture.” 180

After submitting the Spectrum article, Doug received a generous honorarium of $3,000. However, the bank withdrew the publication offer two months before it was scheduled to go to press in the April 1982 issue. An apologetic letter from Beauchamp delivered the news; after “considerable discussion,” the editorial board had decided to delay it until “certain other areas of widespread interest have been covered” since it was likely to be of interest to “only a specialized segment” of the magazine’s audience. The editorial board retained exclusive rights to the article “consistent with the payment of the honorarium.” 181 Doug’s reply expressed disappointment on learning that the decision was based not on his article’s lack of merit but “on appraisal of addressing your target audience on this theme at this time.” There was a hint of annoyance in his request to be kept informed “as to when the article might see the light of day.” 182

Doug had good reason to be miffed: he had covered the topics suggested by the public affairs manager’s questions, though admittedly his in-depth responses were not “dumbed down” for a mass audience. Possibly the editorial board expected a viewpoint more favourable to the financial

“establishment” rather than of a defence of a prophetic gospel. The article was never published; Spectrum appears to have ceased publication shortly thereafter. 183

CONCLUSION

Doug retired as principal of Emmanuel College in 1991, was appointed as professor emeritus 1992, and at the time of his death on the first day of 2021 in his 96th year was principal emeritus. By then he had accumulated a long list of achievements and honours: member of the Order of Canada (1988), the Governor-General’s Commemorative Medal for the 125th Anniversary of Confederation, the Award for Outstanding Service from ATS (1988), an Arbor Award from U of T (2001), medals for both the

Queen’s Golden and Diamond Jubilee (2002 and 2012), Distinguished Alumni Award from the Emmanuel College Alumni Association (2012), and five honorary degrees.

Not to be overlooked are his more personal accomplishments and honours: husband to Ruth, who predeceased him in 2012; father to David, Ian, Garth; grandfather and great-grandfather to their children; and minister emeritus at Christ First United Church in Mississauga in the community where he and Ruth had lived for many years. “Quiet wisdom” is a phrase that recurs in citations and tributes to C. Douglas Jay. His is a vision that still inspires the mission of Emmanuel College and its creation of an interreligious curriculum that fosters intercultural dialogue. He valued the wisdom that was to be found in other faith communities while remaining committed to the teachings of his own. He was, and remains in my memory, a faithful visionary.

161 “World Mission,” Record of Proceedings (1966), 435.

162 C. Douglas Jay, World Mission and World Civilization (Toronto: Board of World Mission, United Church of Canada, [1967?]), 2–4.

163 C. Douglas Jay, “What Should We Learn from a Sorry Past?” In Trust 12, no. 3 (Spring 2001): 20.

164 C. Douglas Jay, “Missiological Implications of Christianizing the Social Order with Special Reference to the United Church of Canada,” Toronto Journal of Theology 12, no. 2 (1996): 278

165 “Ministry through Hope: C. Douglas Jay Exploring the Lines that Divide Humans,” EC News, Autumn 2013, https://issuu.com/vic_report/docs/ec_news_autumn_2013, 2. Roger was interviewed for the Emmanuel College newsletter after Doug was honoured by the Emmanuel College Alumni/ae Association with the distinguished alumni/ae award.

166 John Webster Grant, “Biography of C. Douglas Jay,” in Theological Education in Canada, ed. Graham Brown (Toronto: United Church Publishing House, 1998), 6-7.

167 C. Douglas Jay, “On Bi-Nationalism and Globalization: President’s Address to the Biennial Meeting,” Theological Education 23, no. 1 (Autumn 1986): 66.

168 Pamela Couture, “A Tribute to TST’s Founding Director, Rev. Dr. C. Douglas Jay,” Toronto Journal of Theology 37, no. 1 (2021): 1-2. The article includes reflections on Doug’s illustrious career made by Roger Hutchinson, who had served as the student representative on the search committee that selected him as director.

169 John Webster Grant, “Faculty Greetings,” 18 November 1981, Emmanuel College Principal’s Office fonds, Victoria University (Toronto) Archives (cited hereafter as VCA), Installation Jay, C.D., 2004.088V, 8-7.

170 C. Douglas Jay, “Installation Address,” 3, VCA, Installation Jay, C.D.,2004.088V, 8-7.

171 Ibid, 9.

172 Letter from C. Douglas Jay to John Trueman, 4 June 1990, VCA, Community of Concern, 2004.088V, 3-2.

173 C. Douglas Jay, “Theological Education beyond 2000: A Canadian Perspective,” Theological Education 36, no. 2 (Spring 2000): 12.

174 C. Douglas Jay, et al., Truth in Advertising: A Symposium of the Toronto School of Theology, University of Toronto (Toronto: Fitzhenry & Whiteside and Harper & Row, 1972), 37; emphasis in the original. The preface indicates that the material from the symposium was considered “a companion-piece to the already-published and highly-praised Report of the Committee on Advertising and Ethics,” which Doug had chaired for the United Church; cf. Record of Proceedings (1971), 252-67.

175 Letter from P.B.C. Beauchamp to C. Douglas, 9 July 1981, VCA, Magazine Article, 2017.13V, 4-2.

176 C. Douglas Jay, “The Role of the Church in Today’s Society, or What in the World Is the Church Doing?” 1-2, VCA, Magazine Article, 017.13V, 4-2.

177 Ibid, 4-5.

178 Ibid, 12.

179 Ibid, 4.

180 Ibid, 10.

181 Letter from P.B.C. Beauchamp to C. Douglas Jay, 10 February 1982, VUA, Magazine Article, 2017.13V, 4-2.

182 Letter from C. Douglas Jay to P.B.C. Beauchamp, VUA, Magazine Article, 2017.13V, 4-2.

183 Rod McQueen, A History of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (Toronto: ECW Press, 2021), 64 notes that bank changed the name of the publication Commercial Letter to Spectrum in 1979 but makes no reference to its demise. The University of Toronto Library catalogue has no record of it after the third volume.

The Rainbow

Fri, 16 Jun 2023 20:05:34 GMT

A Sign of God's Good News

The Rainbow

What an amazing natural gift the rainbow is for Earth’s human family. It is beautiful. It serves as a sign that even if the rain lasts 40 days, the sun is still shining. It becomes a sign of hope to people around the world.

And for those who read and are nurtured by the Spirit as they read the Bible’s words, there is promise and peaceful assurance.

I’m thinking of Genesis 9 verses 8-17. Here are the words in a modern translation (The Inclusive Bible, A Sheed & Ward Book, 2007):

[After the flood:] “God said to Noah and his family: ‘hereby establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you – birds, cattle, and the earth’s wildlife – everything that came out of the ark, everything that lives on the earth. I hereby establish my covenant with you: All flesh will never again be swept away by the waters of the flood; never again will a flood destroy all the earth.”

God said: “Here is the sign of the covenant between me and you and every living creature for ageless generations. I set my bow in the clouds, and it will be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth, my bow will appear in the clouds. Then I will remember the covenant that is between me and you and every kind of living creature, and never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all flesh. Whenever my bow appears in the clouds I will see it, and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature on the earth.”

God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all living things on the earth.”

[two other translations are provided below]

The stories in the first book of the Bible are meant to give a glimpse into the Divine - God's ways .

The Noah story reveals a God who hates evil, but loves the world of people and creatures generated by Divine creative love.

The “bow” in the Hebrew language of scripture is qeset – the ordinary word for a war-bow. But here the instrument of war and a symbol of vengeance is transformed by the Divine heart.

What was a weapon of war becomes a rainbow by the sunlight of God’s mercy and grace. The Holy One makes peace with the covenant partners – all people and all creatures to be honoured as God honours them.

The story is clear. A key sign of God's boundless love and peace is the rainbow. And people of faith will take that seriously by putting the multi-coloured sign everywhere to celebrate God’s persistent goodness to the entire global family – God’s one human family, and all creatures beyond.

How ironic and blasphemous then to see parents encouraging their children to trample on the rainbow flag. To witness others cursing the sign of God’s mercy and love. To experience hate-filled strangers stealing the rainbow from porches and other public places as if to suppress this sign of God’s kindness! What kind of Catholic district school board refuses to hoist the rainbow symbol of God’s peace on the schools in their district? Unbelievable.

The stories of Jesus in the Gospels confirm the heart of God revealed in Genesis. The Good Samaritan story calls the faithful to go beyond tribal prejudices. Jesus won’t let conventional and ceremonial rules prevent him from relating creatively, mercifully, and kindly with people forced to the margins.

I have no doubt that if there had been such things as rainbow flags in Jesus’ time, he would have made the connection: God’s covenant with Noah’s perpetual family – all people. I'm convinced Jesus would have hoisted that piece of cloth onto unguarded! Roman war standards and lifted that wondrous sign in the Jerusalem temple compound. Jesus lived in and for God's love - for ALL.

Real friends and companions of Jesus remember that the principal sign of the presence of God is love! And to make that clearly visible, it is made visual. We have the rainbow in the heavens and Jesus' friends and companions reproduce the rainbow in homes and public places and wherever people gather, in order to confirm the faithful conviction that God’s love is for all. Nothing can separate the human family from the love of God.

It's a good time to get rainbow flags and signs spread far and wide to proclaim the Gospel that knows no limits to the love of God. But don't forget to look for the rainbow in the clouds on those contradictory days when clouds threaten, but the sunshine breaks through. Hallelujah!!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Here is the King James Authorized Version translation (17 ^th Century):

And God spake unto Noah, and to his sons with him, saying: And I, behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your seed after you; and with every living creature that is with you, of the fowl, of the cattle, and of every beast of the earth with you; from all that go out of the ark, to every beast of the earth. And I will establish my covenant with you; neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth. And God said, this is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations: I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth. And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud: And I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh. And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth. And God said unto Noah, “This is the token of the covenant, which I have established between me and all flesh that is upon the earth.”

Here is The Message, a contemporary language paraphrase, by Eugene H Peterson, NavPress, Colorado Springs.

Then God spoke to Noah and his sons: “I’m setting up my covenant with you including your children who will come after you, along with everything alive around you – birds, farm animals, wild animals – that came out of the ship with you. I’m setting up my covenant with you that never again will everything living be destroyed by floodwaters, no, never again will a flood destroy the Earth.” God continued: “This is the covenant I am making between me and you and everything living around you and everyone living after you. I’m putting my rainbow in the clouds, a sign of the covenant between me and the Earth. From now on, when I form a cloud over the Earth and the rainbow appears in the cloud, I’ll remember my covenant between me and you and everything living, that never again will floodwaters destroy all life. When the rainbow appears in the cloud, I’ll see it and remember the eternal covenant between God and everything living, every last living creature on Earth.”

And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I’ve set up between me and everything living on the Earth.”

Theological Education Leadership - Series #1

Mon, 29 May 2023 18:24:48 GMT

Theological Education Leadership - Series #1

The way the world is evolving, we all need to become as children learning to live faithfully as fully human beings.

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Theological Leaders

For some time, I’ve been fretting and thinking about the shortfall of academically qualified, faith-based, diverse-background Canadian United Church scholars to teach and do research in the theological centres related to the United Church (UCC). School principals have expressed concern about the shallow pool of such candidates to meet their staffing needs.

In the early 1980s, we worried about appointing more British theologians to such teaching positions. Now in the 2020s, we again ask ourselves, “where is the new generation of Canadian UCC researchers and educators”?

We’ve seen a steady stream of American scholars filling vacancies in our theological schools. Happily, some American appointees dove into both United Church and Canadian life – honouring the context – and have been able to contribute substantially to the enterprise.

In the Covid 19 days we were, however, learning how hazardous it is to rely on other nations to provide professional expertise, research, and vaccines needed for health in Canada. We now have reason to lament selling off the renowned Connaught Laboratories, with the firm’s brilliant minds and proven capacity for medical and pharmaceutical breakthroughs.

Post-Colonial Canada

Trusting that other nations will provide for Canadian needs is a lazy expectation rooted in colonial thinking. Colonies seldom got the pick of the crop – whether vegetables or manufactured goods or creative intellectuals. Canada is no longer a colony and doesn’t need to act like one.

As a post-colonial nation, Canada is learning that neither the British and French parents nor the American institutions can prioritize the health and well-being of the United Church or the Canadian family. In the area of theology as in pharma, it is the better part of wisdom to develop and resource home-grown competent theological leadership .

At the same time, we know that pharmaceutical nationalism is not smart. We need all expert hands on deck. There are no borders for the virus. We need others' particular research capacity for the development of pharma wonder drugs.

Similarly, theological nationalism is no virtue, and can, in fact, become dangerously idolatrous, as we learned from Germany and now Russia. The Gospel is global; the Spirit who “works in us and others,” is ubiquitous, and God’s beloved human family is one. The world needs deeply grounded and creative minds to explore and share the theological treasures - past and present - for the future of the Earth. W ithin that entire human family, each community – whether religious or cultural is called to create capacity for informed discernment and shared wisdom .

United Church Contribution

The United Church of Canada is such a community – an important sub-set of Earth’s religious diversity, a part of the universal Christian household, a portion of the Protestant branch, an ecclesial community with its particular identity, history, and impacts - locally, provincially, nationally, globally.

The one human family needs the informed gifts of Canadian, UCC theological educators who bring their mix of denominational, cultural, gender, and theological gifts into classrooms, congregations, and into civil society. As a denomination, we need thoroughly informed, bright, and wise teachers of the important role religious knowledge and practice occupies in the human family and in Creation.

The UCC has a history and a particular identity worth researching and sharing. Both its regrettable sins and its courageous witness over almost 100 years is indispensable data for faithful individuals and communities for the next 100!

If Pierre Berton could identify “Canadian” with both ice hockey and the UCC, then there are good reasons to plumb the denomination’s faith, work, and witness for its life and contribution in the national context and beyond!!

The one human family, the Canadian nation, and a faithful church – whatever its size may become – need competent researchers and imaginative teachers who have lived in and understand both contexts - Canada and the United Church – as people of faith seek to address the immense global and local issues of our time and the years ahead.

R & D - Urgent Need

Bill Gates of Microsoft fame has become a (wealthy) prophet on a stage much larger than even his remarkable IT setting. He tells us that R&D – research and development – are crucial activities if we are to embrace the impending future graciously and beneficially.

That is true for his business, but equally important for the Church and other faith traditions. Skilled, discerning, and inspired intellects need to marry both the heritage and reality of faith with present and future dilemmas, so that faithful witness and compassionate justice are woven into the life of the world – into the shalom God intends for all our relations – people, creatures, Creation.

Thoughtful Faith

Douglas Hall, now retired from teaching theology at McGill University, writes, “thought-less faith …. is today a stage on the road to the extinction, not only of Christianity itself, but of whatever the architects of our civilization meant by ‘Humanity’. Only a thinking faith can survive. Only a thinking faith can help the world survive.” (Hall’s emphasis, p. 13*)

Simplistic fundamentalism will not bless the world. A thinking faith requires an awareness of God’s multi-billion years of Creation and multi-millennia of scripture, writings, thought, and witness – the global Tradition – that the faithful of many contexts have passed along to our generation. All this remembering must be accompanied by “awareness of ourselves, our own identity, our ‘situation in life….” (Hall, p. 14)*

Today, more than ever, we must take seriously the movements, trends, blinders, perceptions, visions peculiar to our time and place – our context - as Canadian Christians, in a pluralistic, multi-cultural, multi-faith, inequitably endowed world together longing for justice and peace – God’s reign.

A recent comment by an observer of human development stunned me. He stated that the World-Wide-Web and the technological revolution is the biggest single advance in human history since humans started to walk upright!! The entire global human family and the whole of Creation, of which we are all a part, has been impacted by this core IT transformation, by dramatic global changes, AND by the unfathomable explosion of available and accessible knowledge.

Christians and all people of faith and goodwill need wise, thoughtful, and faith-filled leaders to humbly help us all wend our way through life's complexities in a creative and faithful way.

So why are we failing to produce enough gifted and qualified Canadian United Church theologians?

Money....

A whole new post could list the factors. A small volunteer task group identified some of the issues:

lack of appreciation for the role of academic research and teaching for the church's diverse ministries
general decline of church membership
lack of inviting and mentoring gifted persons to further study in theology and ministry
lack of academic employment opportunities for holders of doctorate in Canada
Church processes blocking employment while studying
the high cost of doing graduate studies
Students' high debt loads from undergraduate studies

But one fact stands out most dramatically: money.

Graduate studies is a costly activity. An academic doctorate requires three or four years of further study beyond the basic Master of Divinity degree! In times when tuition fees were low, the main costs were for food and lodging. But now fees are astronomical, and the cost of living has risen proportionately. American schools are able to produce more scholars because they have huge endowments financing graduate theological students.

By comparison Canadian schools and church bodies are poor cousins. There are some bursaries and scholarships but amounts tend to reflect the generosity of a previous era, not current costs. At this years meeting of the UCC Foundation's Academic Scholarship and Awards group there were 26 applicants. Thirteen of these had a total debt load of $124,000. The 26 applicants were requesting grants of just under $295,000. The Foundation Board was able to distribute no more than $117,458. In 2022, 55 applications were considered and only 29 were able to receive partial grant funding totaling about $118,000. Amounts granted will mean some will go deeper in debt. Others will decide on part-time studies dragging out the process by years. And others will choose other paths of service.

Now is the time for a new surge in giving to strengthen the United Church Foundation's capacity for helping to fund gifted applicants. Responding to the Spirit's calling for informed wisdom is an honourable vocation and essential as Canadian society urgently needs the voices of faith to share clear thinking and commited truth for the healing of Creation.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

*Douglas John Hall, Thinking the Faith – Christian Theology in a North American Context. Minneapolis, Augsburg Press, 1989. ISBN 0-8066-2388-8.

A Settler History

Fri, 12 May 2023 19:55:03 GMT

From Europe to Turtle Island

New York Harbour's Statue of Liberty - Not for Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island

A Personal Settler History

I was born in August 1944 in the city of Middelburg, the capital of the province of Zeeland, in the Netherlands. I need to admit that at one point in its history, slave trade was carried out here, but soon rejected by the city.

My maternal family line consisted mainly of well-to-do farmers, leasing lands from substantial land owners, including the Roman Catholic Diocese of Utrecht. My paternal genealogy up to the end of the 19 ^th century is primarily agricultural and then becomes ecclesiastical with my grandfather, father, an uncle, and a brother as ministers in the Protestant tradition.

World War II

My birth in August of 1944 took place in the guest room of the manse right next to the church where my father was one of three pastors service in the city. Our house involuntarily hosted two German officers, part of the occupying Nazi forces blockading Allied efforts to access the port of Antwerp via the western Scheldt River.

During curfew hours, my father worked on his doctoral thesis focused somewhat uncritically on the theological and missionary principles and practices of Wm Carey, the “father of modern missions” in the late 18 ^th and early 19 ^th centuries in Serampore, India. Father also quietly informed the resistance movement about what he had gleaned from a radio hidden in the roof trusses of the church. Our family – close and extended – did not suffer traumatic losses in the war, but had to function carefully and often secretively to prevent punishment by the occupier’s subjugation and oppression.

When I was three months old, the Allies bombed our island’s occupiers and blew up portions of the dikes protecting us from the North Seas waves with the result that most of the Walcheren Island was flooded. The benefit was that the Germans ended their occupation and had to surrender to British forces.

Liberation

The rest of the Netherlands had to suffer dramatically for another half year till on May 5 ^th , 1945, the German forces capitulated in the town of Wageningen to Canadian General Charles Foulkes resulting in the liberation of the entire nation.

The war ended but not the turmoil and the trauma which had been endured. As well, there was a sudden switch in the Allies camp – the Soviet forces became a formidable threat which awakened fear in the Dutch that another occupation might take place. Was Stalin’s state communism going to subjugate all of Europe?

The war and its consequences, plus being the youngest of five children, have, I believe, created in me a strong reaction to superior power and bullying authority - injustice.

America Calling

Meanwhile, my father’s professional ambitions led him to explore and imagine places where there might be peace and greater professional fulfilment. In 1950, he travelled to the USA for a three-month speaking/preaching blitz in various cities. He returned to Middelburg thinking that peace and fulfilment might be gained in the “new world.” He accepted a “call” to serve as pastor to a small congregation of Dutch settlers and also served as chaplain to the seamen’s home in Hoboken, New Jersey, the then terminus of the Holland America Line.

Our family said good-bye to all our relatives in both Zeeland and in the more northern provinces. We waved farewell to my maternal grandmother looking out of her home’s picture window as the train to Rotterdam rolled past. It was unclear whether we would ever see her and her paternal counterpart in Rijswijk near The Hague again. The sense of loss was hardest on my mother.

After seven days on the MS Nieuw Amsterdam, we sailed past the Statue of Liberty in April of 1951 to settle in Hoboken. There we were among a variety of “new Americans” – Italian, Puerto Rican, German, Dutch – and, for us, a whole new experience: Black people and their sorry history in the USA.

There were no “Indians” to our knowledge, but soon after we got our first television, we discovered them in programs like The Lone Ranger and Hopalong Cassidy. I also learned about the “purchase” of Manhattan from local First Nations by Dutch Settlers of the 17 ^th Century and their subsequent conquest by colonizing British forces.

But overall, we lived with the notion that America was a nation of “melting pot” white people largely from Europe now living out the nation’s destiny. The bloody history of “Indian” – American Indigenous Peoples, in particular – remained virtually unknown to me or ignored by the adults.

Canada Calling

In 1955, we moved again – another 3000-mile trek - to Vancouver B.C. Again, there were Dutch immigrants, including our family, and little if any awareness of local or regional Indigenous Peoples – even though Vancouver is surrounded by Reserves – Tsawwassen, Musqueam, Kwantlen. Kwikwetlem First Nations, often sliced and diced in the settlers’ favour for various industrial and infra-structure projects. There was certainly no sense of respecting the lands reserved for Indigenous Peoples and held in trust for them by the Crown.

We lived in manses beside the churches my father served. Purchasing land was not a direct issue for our family. But we enjoyed the natural beauty of sea, land, and mountains with little reference to the actual “owners” of these lands. The churches we worshipped in, the schools we attended, UBC with its “endowment lands,” the hotels where my brothers and I got summer jobs – all were “just there” – all on “native” land.

Bliss-less Ignorance

Hindsight reveals to me that the Doctrine of Discovery with its complement, the concept of “terrae nullius”, were unnamed and unrecognized givens, with legal subjugation and apartheid previously experienced in the war but hardly known or recognized in this new context. Even majoring in history in both high school and undergrad UBC did not open my eyes to the realities of injustice to which Indigenous Peoples were being subjected.

I moved to Toronto in 1965 to study theology at Emmanuel College. Canadian history was assumed to be boring so European political and ecclesiastical history got the academic attention. Again, the realities experienced by Indigenous Peoples were ignored – as if inconsequential.

Opening Eyes

As a student minister for two summers in Manitoba, I “met” some First Nations people from northern Reserves attending the Conference annual meetings. They were always on the margins of things and I experienced little effort to build community with this minority. Shamefully, they were left apart – by me and the meeting leadership - as if they were aliens from another world, rather than the actual involuntary hosts to dominant settlers on their lands.

In 1980, after further studies in Geneva, my partner Glenys and I job-shared the deputy-secretary role in the Division of Ministry Personnel and Education of the UCC. It meant that I became the link to the theological education centres/Con Ed programs and that Glenys served as the theological education advocate for marginalized church workers: women, diaconal ministers, lay workers, and Indigenous professionals.

Our lives suddenly became much more aware of the Indigenous reality in the church and to some extent in society. We had the privilege of hosting in our homes Indigenous people attending national meetings, of visiting churches on reserves, and attending national consultations where talking circles told the tales we had not heard or heeded previously.

Touching the Heart

The UCC Apology of 1986 was a turning point in our and the church’s awareness. The election of Stan McKay as Moderator in 1992 was a watershed moment. Glenys’ staffed a group initially addressing the UCC Residential Schools issues and staffed the Aboriginal Rights portfolio. We shared out the basement unit of our home with a First Nations woman, staffing the Healing Fund portfolio in Church House. We heard and shared with First Nations people and almost invariably experienced their gracious and generous ways in the face of my settler ignorance.

The story requires more but I can confess that I only came to understand the gravity and evil of the Settler-Indigenous experience in Canada when I saw the film produced by the Anglican Church of Canada with the title “The Doctrine of Discovery” at a learning event in our local church – First UC Ottawa. It became a long overdue epiphany. My historical and theological studies and my observations from lived experiences with Indigenous Peoples finally forced open my eyes and heart to the foundational horrors inflicted on Indigenous Peoples since “Contact” and especially in the latter half of the 19th Century by settlers - like me, soldiers, and politicians. The Indian Act of 1876 was the legislative package to assimilate "Indians" out of existence.

Confession

All this awakened for me personal and professional shame/guilt for my ignorance and lack of faithfulness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. As well, the experience revealed how colonialism’s sinful hubris and greed has infected so many nations – led by European, usually “Christian”, colonizers, including my own homeland, the Netherlands, and has afflicted too many Indigenous Peoples around the world.

Perhaps the real “original sin” is the human propensity to dominate “others” and deprive “inferior” neighbours’ – near and far - of both land, wealth, and self-determination.

Engagement

So, for the past three years I have been learning, discovering, reflecting, planning, discussing, and writing – in partnership with Indigenous and settler colleagues and acquaintances about ways to address some of the injustice and damage done and to foster personal, political, economic, and religious ways that might lead to a new relationship and a more just future for all. Meanwhile (full disclosure) our family “owns” an apartment along the Ottawa River and a 100-acre cottage property near Bancroft Ontario on unceded lands of the Algonquin Peoples – facts that present their own dilemmas and ambiguities in faithfulness and justice.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

[Author's note: This Pilgrim Praxis post was written in response to reading the book by

Elaine Enns & Ched Myers : Healing Haunted Histories - A Settler Discipleship of Decolonization. Eugene, Oregon, Cascade Books, 2021, ISBN 978 1 7252 5535 7 - and for involvement in a continuing education on-line course focused on the subject.]

Healing Colonialism Legacy

Thu, 30 Mar 2023 19:35:21 GMT

Colonialism's Legacy of Aggrandizement

Caesar Augustus 31 B.C. - 14 A.D. Roman Empire's Colonizer

( Source, with thanks: Pexels/Thomas K.)

United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP):

“The General Assembly, affirming …that all doctrines, policies and practices based on or advocating superiority of peoples or individuals on the basis of national origin or racial, religious, ethnic or cultural differences are racist, scientifically false, legally invalid, morally condemnable and socially unjust, ….

Solemnly proclaims the following United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as a standard of achievement to be pursued in a spirit of partnership and mutual respect…” (Preamble)

Colonialism Continues

Immersing myself in the relationship between Indigenous and non-indigenous Settler inhabitants of northern Turtle (Canada), I have become increasingly aware of colonialism as a malignant human endeavor, which from a theological and ethical perspective can only be labelled as “sin”.

To be sure this “ism” is often dressed up in benevolence and best intentions. As in the scourge of war, there are many benevolent actions that can and must be acknowledged - even within the context of colonialism. But the overarching reality in colonialism is a pervasive and empowered, and usually racist, quest for self-interested power and control - aggrandizement - over and at the cost of other nations and peoples, and too often persons.

Today the human family is cursed to witness a most blatant and bloody example of this evil. Putin’s Russian war on Ukraine is an archetypal example of one nation’s hubris-based attempt to reclaim and effect through conquest its self-interested colonizing control over another sovereign nation and people.

Empowered by the Russian Orthodox Church’s arrogant and blasphemous blessing, by a history of brutal colonial control, by a powerful and vast military machine, and by money flowing freely from the sale of earth destroying fossil fuels, Putin’s Russia would rather murder the nation and people of Ukraine than allow them to determine their own future. The Russian bear is ferocious as too many of the former soviet “republics” have learned only too well.

Genocide is far too often the ultimate goal of the superior colonizing entity. Either eliminate or assimilate the presumed inferior nation/people to extinction. Imposing dominant self-interested uniformity is the colonizer's goal.

Russia's war on Ukraine may be the clearest example of our time, but there are many other blatant examples – current and historic – that can be cited.

Here’s a brief sample:

People’s Republic of China: Extending the modern Han empire based on communist capitalism is pre-occupying autocrat Xi Jinping and his followers. The Dalai Lama’s Tibet has been a long-time victim of this aggression, not likely to be reversed. Add to that the subjugation and “re-education” of the almost 12 million Muslim Uighur people, plus the constant threat to re-integrate Taiwan into the PRC fold and we have another current example of imperial colonialism.

To be sure, China probably learned many lessons from western European colonial powers and from Japan’s pre-World War II expansionism, but the People’s Republic of China has developed its own multi-dimensional strategic military, economic, technological, and political initiatives to advance its imperial goals. Those high-flying balloons we saw earlier this year are not as benign as the PRC would have us believe – but are multi-valent symbols of PRC’s hegemonic intentions.

United State of America: Close relations with our southern neighbour may incline Canadians toward more benevolence than warranted toward American foreign initiatives. But the USA has a long history of expansionism which ensured its territorial control from Atlantic North America to Pacific - with little room for Indigenous rights. The War of 1812 may have helped to block its northern ambitions – “Manifest Destiny” – but its political, economic, and cultural influence over Canada should never be underestimated. More clearly colonial has been the USA’s war of aggression in Iraq, its coup d’états of the 1950s in Iran and Guatemala, its ongoing efforts to undermine the independence and self-determined existence of Cuba, and its continual military and economic support of autocratic governments in Latin and Central American nations – too often at great cost to Indigenous People like Mayans in Guatemala. The American Eagle flies high and wide to spread it power and influence.

Brazil: Bolsonaro’s presidency gave us a vivid example of subjugating and disempowering Indigenous Peoples. Amazonia's native peoples are experiencing the worst of colonialism's racist disrespect and violence. Economic development for the benefit of the rich and powerful at the expense of the environment, wildlife, and local residents are dominant characteristics of Brazil’s colonialist project. There is no partnership in this evil tangled dance.

Israel / Palestine: Colonialism's creation of the state of Israel gave birth to the modern struggles plaguing the “Holy Land”. But the current unjust arrangement is no less marked by colonialism’s malignant characteristics. The “inferior” Palestinian people are subjugated by “superior” Israeli political and military forces in an enforced apartheid arrangement. Extremist Israeli leaders are now voicing genocidal goals. Israel's failure to comply with international standards and United Nations’ declarations threatens Palestinians’ well being and their human and property rights, especially in the illegally occupied territories, in Jerusalem, and, for ultra-nationalists, even in parts of Jordan. The current government’s “judicial reform” initiatives exacerbate the already dangerous threats to Palestinians. Biblically-based shalom rooted in justice is increasingly hard to imagine for both Palestinians and Israelis.

Morocco: This kingdom was assigned administrative responsibility (presumably by the United Nations) in 1979 for Western Sahara or Sahrawi Arab Republic, But Morocco has exploited the trusteeship role as an opportunity to add territory and to extract natural resources at the expense of Sahrawi's people. The self-determining aspirations of the Polisario independence movement are opposed and protesters brutally imprisoned.

The Netherlands and Belgium: For me it is unavoidable to mention that these "low countries" (part of my heritage) used their political, military, and economic power to magnify themselves at the cost of millions of people in, respectively, Indonesia or the Dutch East Indies and "The Congo" (now the Democratic Republic of Congo). There is no rationale to justify such a relatively small population of Europeans disempowering and subjugating the peoples, now independent nations. Leopold II, King of the Belgians from 1865 to 1909, raised the colonizers' racism hubris bar by presuming to be not only the founder but the sole owner of the Congo Free State from 1885-1908!

Former British Colonies: Nations conquered or declared colonies as part of the former British empire are many indeed. South Africa, Zambia, Kenya, India/Pakistan, Ghana, Belize, Jamaica, Barbados, and others coloured the world map red to demonstrate their part in the British Empire. In many countries it took armed rebellions to effect the transition from dependence and subjugation to independence and self determination.

Now, all these nations must invest their time, money, and efforts to extinguish colonialism’s persistent negative impact on their indigenous culture, lands, and legal rights. South Africa became a classic example of colony where the dominant white settler minority with armed power and money prescribed how Black and Coloured people were to live. The Afrikaans term Apartheid has become internationally recognized policy to describe the separate and grossly unequal racist relationship between racial communities. Apartheid, inspired by Canadian Indian Act pass laws for Indigenous Peoples, describes similar situations where race or religion unjustly and unequally separate indigenous folk from the governing colonizers.

Former colonies, like Australia and New Zealand now dominated by settlers from British and other European nations have ongoing legal and political struggles to achieve social peace based on respectful and justice-based relations.

Northern Turtle Island (Canada): Relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples for the first two centuries after Contact seemed promising. But by the middle of the 19 ^th century, there was an erosion of respectful goodwill and the emergence of a Settler movement to assimilate and “erase” Indigenous presence in the emerging Canadian nation. With the proclamation of the Indian Act of 1876 (variously amended) an apartheid regime was legislated to benefit of Settler society and at great cost to Indigenous Peoples. We are currently living in an era where there is growing hope that a new “reconciled” relationship may be possible and that Canadian Confederation might fully include Indigenous Peoples as intended in the UNDRIP standards and spirit.

Is It Natural?

Probing further into history of colonization reveals many, many more stories of colonial powers' self-interested aggrandizement and subjugation of less powerful peoples. Colonialism in its political, military, and religious guises has filled history books. Economic colonialism usually was part of these stories, but in our time this form of colonialism has proliferated aided by the digital revolution and global transportation.

Pushing the power-based dynamic further into more familiar terms, we are only too familiar with dominance and subjugation in personal relations whether in corporate and collective contexts or in domestic situations.

What all this raises for us is the question: is this ubiquitous power dynamic just simply part of the natural order of life on Earth? Or is this the redeemable corruption of what the Creator intended for the human family in the larger context of the natural order? Theologically, we might ask: is this what is meant by the biblical Genesis stories of “the fall”, the murder of Cain, and other sin narratives by which humanity degrades itself and breaks the peace and justice the Creator meant for All?

Gospel Critique

To maintain a critical perspective on the ways of colonization, I keep being called back to the story of the birth of Jesus. Caesar Augustus in his imperial palace is referenced as the emperor of the widely expanded Roman empire. Military and economic power have established it and “pacified” it.

But Luke 2 has the temerity to suggest that it is the powerless baby born in the stable who is “the anointed one” – the Christ - who is the expression of God's power called "love". The angels celebrate not the dominating emperor and his version of peace, but the little child, who as the incarnation of God's love is Lord and the harbinger of God’s sway of peace.

The Ubiquitous Spirit of Life

I believe that the Divine Spirit – best revealed for me by the life and Spirit of Jesus – invites, calls, prods, and yearns for the human family to transcend the temptation to dominate, subjugate and control other nations, other peoples, and other persons.

The Spirit calls us all to implement what has been grafted into our being and have learned to trust, namely: justice, creativity, peace-making, humility, generosity, gratitude, and compassion. These and many other qualities and characteristics are gifts of the Spirit to foster relationships of respect, inter-dependence, and cooperation for the well-being of All. Is is to much to imagine and press for a time when the powerful forego the oddity and destructiveness of colonizing domination and instead respectfully, generously, freely seek mutual benefit and well-being?

On the Way

UNDRIP is a huge step in the right direction, if taken seriously. Humans paying attention are learning that Earth is too small for the spirit of fear, aggression, domination, greed, and control. It's time to live with respect for and in Creation, and, for the entire human family to live the abundant life the Creator intends for all of life. Embrace the gift. Walk the Way.

Revisiting Land Acknowledgements

Wed, 01 Mar 2023 22:03:41 GMT

Land Acknowledgement and Action Go Together

For the last three years I have been growing in my discomfort with the usual land acknowledgements so frequently and easily recited by individuals and in public gatherings. Two years ago, I published a Pilgrim Praxis blog post initially expressing my disquiet about the practice. Read it here: https://www.minister.ca/restitution-for-the-stolen-lands.

It’s not that I object to the motivations behind acknowledgements. They are a way of signaling that there is a problem and the problem is not an “Indigenous problem”, but one which is historically and still in our times a settler or non-indigenous problem.

Settlers like me live on stolen lands – by and large. The British government in the name of the Crown claimed sovereignty over northern Turtle Island. In 1869, for just $1.5 million, the Hudson's Bay Company sold its nearly 7-million square kilometres of stolen lands!! to the government of Canada, vastly extending sovereignty without any reference to Indigenous inhabitants!!! It continued the pattern set in 1763 when the British Crown simply asserted its prerogative claiming sovereignty over most of North America with its Royal Proclamation of 1763. This immodesty sparked Revolution in the 13 Colonies (USA), but in Canada it resulted in Indigenous Peoples’ sovereign land rights being reduced to occupancy rights – and that didn’t last either. With assumed sovereignty, the Crown’s governments, led initially by John A Macdonald, didn’t hesitate to dispossess the Indigenous Peoples and confine them to postage-stamp sized scattered Reserves .

It all goes back to the fictitious notions put on paper in the papal Doctrine of Discovery and terrae nullius. Indigenous Peoples were deemed savage, pagan, second-rate humans and therefore could be disregarded, dispossessed, and subjugated by European Colonial Christendom. A long and haunting story of colonial imperialism – not exclusive to Canada, but easily recognized in so many other nations where the powerful are held to be superior and others, inferior.

The evil, racist assumptions fill many-a history book, as well as current reporters’ notebooks. It is no wonder that the United Nations Organization had to express itself on the issue in the unanimously approved United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) applying universal standards to the way states must relate to Indigenous Peoples. But few nations are rushing to make it happen! Rhetoric is easier than substance.

So, in and of itself, acknowledging that settlers occupy Indigenous lands is a virtue. What is objectionable is “acknowledgement” without a spoken and lived commitment to “action” rectifying the problem. I was reinforced in this opinion by listening to Isaac Murdoch (Bomgiizhik) a member of the Nimkii Aazhibikoong First Nation in Anishinaabeg Territory north of Elliott Lake in Ontario. With winsome candor he explains why he’s not a fan of land acknowledgements in a post at: nSprotesdoiuhe2150F c72mmyt13 tauag0c6rM56A4u8ra4 1h1b i1u:8 .

Briefly summarized, Isaac Murdoch shares his concern by stating that land acknowledgements :

1. Once spoken, seem to give institutions, companies, and colonial structures permission to do nothing more;

2. Focus exclusively on people (e.g. Algonquin people) rather than on a more inclusive, broad understanding on who and what lives on the land – sentient species, spirit realities, trees, stars - all our relations.

3. Can become a shield, removing guilt, blocking real acknowledgement of the loss experienced by Indigenous Peoples, and requiring nothing more; in and of themselves they don’t facilitate change;

4. Are not accurate because virtually all lands are and remain under Crown sovereignty;

5. Are lip service until some stolen land is actually returned; i.e. they're not a real start on the road to “reconciliation” when things basically stay the same.

Indigenous Peoples have been and are still forced to engage in endless litigation processes to get their land rights recognized by Crown governments still hiding behind repudiated Doctrine of Discovery notions. The Nuchatlaht First Nation of British Columbia is taking the BC government, right now, to the Supreme Court of Canada in the tiresome, repetitive struggle to have their land rights confirmed.

But that isn’t all that makes land acknowledgements hollow. Like Murdoch, I have felt that the other side of the coin was missing. Acknowledgement on the one side - but action on the other is required to fundamentally change the unjust system.

Action to change things was the reason a group of Indigenous leaders and I worked together for an Indigenous revenue source based on real estate sales in Canada. In 2021, 1% of all real estate sales in Canada would have generated a land-related revenue of $9 billion for Indigenous Peoples to dramatically change things in human development - education, social conditions, employment.

Our proposal aimed to accomplish several goals: recognize that fundamentally all of pre-Contact Turtle Island was the Creator’s gift “owned” and “occupied” by sovereign Indigenous Peoples; acknowledge that a two-row wampum way of sharing was required by both grace and by moral standards; recognize that Indigenous Peoples had been illegally deprived of their lands and the many-facetted riches they offered and Indigenous Peoples were, as a very minimum first step, entitled to revenue based on their lands; a 1% slice of all real estate transactions could serve as a first-step, “good faith” act to provide a substantial, ongoing revenue base for Indigenous Peoples - even while the needed clarification of Section 35.1 of the Constitution Act of 1982 continues either through negotiation with Crown governments or, regrettably, through litigation in the courts.

Our proposal lacked the traction needed to carry it forward. But it is encouraging to see many non-Indigenous organizations, groups, and individuals walking the Way toward a more respectful and justice-based relationship with Indigenous Peoples. As more and more non-Indigenous Canadians understand the injustice perpetrated against Indigenous Peoples, there appears to be some real progress in the “reconciliation” journey. It is encouraging, but will it be enough to transform Canadian society?

In his book “ Standoff – Why Reconciliation Fails Indigenous People and How to Fix It, ” Bruce McIvor, a leading Metis lawyer in B.C., may be hopeful but is not optimistic. “Reconciliation, ” he states, “continues to fail because it rests on a foundation of systemic racism. It is predicated on the denial of Indigenous Peoples’ inherent rights and the willingness of the Canadian state to use violence to suppress Indigenous rights. … The right is the pre-existing interest Indigenous Peoples had and continue to have in their land and the right to make decisions about their land before and after the colonizers’ arrival. This includes the right to benefit from their land and decide how their lands should be used or not used. The lie is that through simply showing up and planting a flag, European nations could acquire an interest in Indigenous land and displace Indigenous laws.” (p.168)

It's time to repudiate the lie, to re-think land acknowledgements. Alberta Indigenous minister Rev. Tony Snow, in the current issue of Broadview magazine, observes that “Performative rote acknowledgement sidesteps the need for true relationships” whereas acknowledgements need to become an “overture toward repairing a relationship.” (March 2023, p. 61. https://broadview.org/land-acknowledgments/ )

It’s time to read more Indigenous authors, discuss with Indigenous partners, to re-learn truthful history, to understand and reject the apartheid system imposed by Canada’s government and still legally in effect through the Indian Act. It is time for the Crown – the entire Canadian population - to embrace the shared vision of a real Two-Row Wampum society. It's time to commit to ACTION which would give land acknowledgements integrity and substantial meaning. This is the right time!

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A tentative provisional personal Recognition of Indigenous Land Rights

With gratitude to the Creator of all that is,

I live on the shores of the Kitchissippi (Ottawa) River in Ottawa and cottage in the Hastings highlands, the ancestral homelands of the Algonquin people with the fauna, flora, and nature’s myriad other phenomena native to the region. I recognize that I am a guest in these unceded and blessed territories shared graciously by rightful Indigenous hosts.

With gratitude, I embrace and commit myself to respectful, friendly endeavors that move Canadian society towards a time when settler people and Indigenous peoples enjoy mutually agreed upon understandings implementing the 17 ^th Century Two-Row Wampum vision.

For almost eight centuries - since first Contact - Indigenous Peoples have patiently and steadfastly awaited a fair and shared peace that fulfils the Creator’s yearning for all of Turtle Island’s relations to be respectful, mended, and whole.

Now is the time for change.

Miigwetch!

Faith & Indian Act

Tue, 07 Feb 2023 20:04:59 GMT

Where Is the Voice of Faith about Canada's Indian Act?

Dear Reader: This is a two-part post. The first, is the short form; the second elaborates some of the history. Up to you to decide how far you will read. I write out of my experience in The United Church of Canada / L'Eglise Unie du Canada. But my concern is for all Canadian faith communities and their need to speak faithfully to the Indian Act society we still inhabit.

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Part 1

It has become a growing conundrum for me that Canadian faith communities, and especially the Christian churches, have hardly raised their voices against the complex and costly colonial domination system, represented by the Indian Act, which is still coursing through Canada's societal veins today.

Summary History (for more detail read on in Part 2 below.)

A cursory glance at ecclesiastical history in Canada regrettably shows little theological analysis of the policies based on the racist Indian Act (1876 frequently amended). The Act famously eschews any and all governance and cultural traditions that were part of Indigenous life. It shuns the historic Treaties between Indigenous First Nations and the Crown.

The assumptions underlying the Act are frightening for most 21 ^st Century Canadians, if they know them. It relies on racist 19 ^th century doctrines proclaiming that Indigenous Peoples were inferior to the superior white, Euro-colonial settlers and therefore should be treated as dependent wards of the Crown. The wards were subjected to the supervision (subjugation) of Indian Affairs agents, enforced by the RCMP.

In the latter half of the 19th Century, colonial settlers focussed on building the nation and the growth of the Christian churches. The Indian Act expressed both political and religious opinions about how to overcome "the Indian problem". Indigenous Peoples were dispossessed from their vast inherited lands, confined to tiny and usually unproductive reserves, and deprived of essential cultural identity sources.

The story of Indigenous treatment at the hands of the dominating Settler society casts long, dark and frightening shadows on the “true patriot love” for Canada not “all of us” sing about in the national anthem, absent of any recognition that “our home” is “on native land.”

What troubles me about this sordid story is that the Church of which I am an ordained member has not been heard raising its prophetic and theologically-based voice then, and not even now, against the 150-year old system of subjugation prescribed by the Indian Act.

Historically it is easy to recognize that the values informing the aspirations of colonial society and the values espoused by the Christians churches of that era were vastly overlapping. And while today’s churches have repudiated the 15 ^th century’s incredible Doctrine of Discovery and the terrae nullius lie, the malignant effects of these papal doctrines still survive in the Indian Act.

At its core, Christendom, the totality of Christianity institutionalized in the Western world including its Canadian outposts, felt called to Christianize and “civilize” the entire human family, especially presumed inferior indigenous and "pagan" peoples, into superior European ways through colonization and missionary endeavors.

United Church Ways

To be sure, the UCC has repudiated the Doctrine’s imperialism and the anthropology which pits races against each other. Our theological commitments forbids us from assenting to racist superior-inferior doctrines. We have a vital tradition of speaking bravely and in timely fashion of God’s unconditional and eternally persistent love for the entire human family in Creation.

All humans, we confess, are “made in the image of God” deserving the blessings of abundant life, as they in their context can embrace it. Unconditional love and respect for human diversity are core understandings of the Gospel. Divine law and the Way of Jesus contradict any laws, mores, and religious doctrines that allow powerful interests and people to impose their ways on other humans. “We sing of the Creator, who made humans to live and move and have their being in God.” As a church we have committed to working “with God for the healing of the world, that all might have abundant life.” (quotes from “A Song of Faith” – A Statement of faith of The UCC/EUC. https://united-church.ca/sites/default/files/song-of-faith.docx )

This collaborative healing work took many forms. We found ways to undermine the fascist brutality of Pinochet’s Chile and to provide safe places for its refugees. We shared efforts with Christians in "second world" Soviet-dominated countries like East Germany to break down brutal walls of separation. We raised our collective voice against antisemitism. and have actively sought a future of justice-based peace for Palestinians to live in a healed relationship with Israel. Through Project North, we campaigned in support of the Berger report against oil exploration and the proposed pipeline up the Mackenzie River valley threatening to destroy Indigenous territories and communities. We worked hard to counter sexism by reforming the Church as an egalitarian organization with women and men in partnership roles and commitments to the Gospel. We have confessed our homophobic past and recognized God’s call to discipleship and leadership for LGBTQ2 friends and companions of Jesus (1988). We embraced the "inter-cultural" vision for the Church - and society! We have confessed and apologized to United Church Indigenous participants for the disrespect with which we treated them, their spirituality, and their ways of being faithful (1986). And we apologized (1998) and paid reparations for our part in the Indian Residential Schools (2006), including the inter-generational damage and suffering this system caused. We expressed our intention to be less “church oriented” and more “world oriented” together with other people of goodwill to work with God…for the mending of creation, calling us to see the world through God's tears….” ( https://ecumenism.net/archive/docu/1997_ucc_mending_the_world.pdf ) And much, much more.

Our Church has not shied away from courageous (and often costly) witness to the liberating and healing Gospel of Jesus Christ for all people.

Yet despite all this necessary and faith-based witness, I am left with the question: where is the Church’s testimony against the inherited and still operative legislated framework and policies – the Indian Act - that afflict our nation and burdens Indigenous Peoples? I am personally puzzled by this void.

Contextual Theology

In the 1980s, I co-taught Canadian contextual theology at Emmanuel College in Toronto. My partner, Professor Harold Wells, and I were committed to the understanding that Christian theology must be contextual. Douglas John Hall, a leading theologian of the UCC, based in Montreal defined it thus: “in [the contextual] mode of reflection which we call Christian theology, there is a meeting between two realities: on the one hand the Christian tradition, namely, the accumulation of past articulation of Christian concerning their belief, with special emphasis upon the biblical testimony; and, on the other hand, the explicit circumstances, obvious or hidden, external and internal, physical and spiritual, of the historical moment in which the Christian community finds itself. Theology means the meeting of these two realities.” (in Toronto Journal of Theology, Vol I/1, Spring 1985. P. 4)

The surprising question for me now is why in our classroom conversations then the contextual relationship between the Settler society, of which all in the class were part, and Indigenous Peoples were not on the agenda, In the classes, we discussed inherited theological convictions and historic social passions and actions of the Church in relation to issues of poverty, homelessness, workers’ rights, the "Christianizing of the social order", and much more. I do not, regrettably, remember any conversation then about or related to the repudiated Doctrine of Discovery and terrae nullius concept upon which Crown sovereignty over Indigenous peoples depends and nothing about the Church's witness against the societal order prescribed by the Indian Act.

Perhaps in our classroom discussions we shared the blinkers that pervaded 20th Century Canadian mainstream. There seemed to be an agreed upon ignorance of the reality of Canadian society's treatment of Indigenous People. Somehow the Indian Act and its dire consequences seemed a marginalized given – “it is what it is”. In our time, we just took the arrangement for granted.

Yet, change was happening. First Nations people within the Church were calling for justice. The Church offered an Apology to Indigenous members of the church in 1986 admitting “We tried to make you be like us and in so doing we helped to destroy the vision that made you what you were.” The Residential Schools horror was beginning to be understood. Soon the churches and federal government would be taken to court for the violence and sexual abuse experienced in those schools.

We had, however, not come to the realization that Indigenous People of Canada were living in a society in which the rules, the opportunities, the properties, and the money were controlled by Settler society, while Indigenous peoples inherited the biblical “crumbs under the Canadian table.” We still lived as if it was simply their lot!

Apartheid

Remarkably, even as we protested apartheid in South Africa and the General Council of The UCC declared apartheid a “heresy” (the only doctrine the UCC so labelled), we did not make the connection we ourselves were living in an apartheid society.

But others did. As Brian Giesbrecht, a retired Manitoba Provincial Court associate chief judge (1976 to 2007) observed in a Troy Media posting of 11 September 2018:

In the 1940s, when white South African politicians were designing a system that would keep people of different races separate, they came to Canada to study our system: its Indian Act, status cards and reserve system. They went back to South Africa and created a system that modelled its homelands largely on our reserves and its status cards, largely on the cards Canada hands out to status Indians.

The irony of Canadians passionately denouncing South Africa’s apartheid system, while not noticing that we had an apartheid system of our own, was not lost on either South African politicians or Canadian Indigenous politicians. In fact, during the height of the demonstrations against the South African regime in 1987, South African Foreign Minister Glenn Babb and Peguis First Nation Chief Louis Stevenson teamed up to stage a press conference pointing out this hypocrisy.

Change

We were “hoist with our own petard”. Jean Chretien's 1969 White Paper on Indian policy once more proposing the assimilation of Indigenes Peoples evinced huge negative reactions by Indigenes Peoples and supportive settlers. It started a trend. Government inertia was giving way to informed analysis and energetic challenges and litigation by persevering Indigenous bands. The comprehensive Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (1996) merited serious study and pursuit of its recommendations by all Canadians, including Church councils. It became a beacon, even if governments and churches didn’t implement its recommendations. In 1998, the United Church apologized for its part in the Residential Schools system, having been responsible for 15 residential schools operated between 1849 and 1969.

https://united-church.ca/sites/default/files/apologies-response-crest. )

Indigenous relations were increasingly becoming prime discussion topics. Supreme Court judgements in favour of Indigenous claims and rights moved the dial on government recalcitrance. Indigenous people were gathering to discuss and act on their situation in Canadian society . It was beginning to be a time of ferment.

But the core issue – the Indian Act system - hardly came into societal focus. Lots of individual issues were being addressed, frequently with the federal government responding with cash grants. But the framework, the underlying discriminatory constitutional order remained the same. The Indian Act seemed impregnable.

I confess my personal failure in this matter; I am ashamed as a Canadian, a Christian, and as a member of the Church that we didn’t own our country's apartheid system, that we tolerated a system that has the marks of cultural genocide, that we failed to raise our prophetic voices to call for an appropriate end of this sinful Act and a new basis for the Indigenous and Settler relationship. We still haven’t.

Where to?

It is not too late for the United Church and all the faith communities to confess this hypocrisy and raise the voice of faith for an end to the system represented by the Indian Act. This settler imposed legislated order has too long dishonored the Crown* and tormented Indigenous Peoples. Calling for its end is a Gospel imperative if we - the UCC and other faith communities - are to be faithful.

I hope that the second 100 years of the United Church will entail a sacred commitment to live in friendship and just peace (Two-row Wampum) with Canada’s Indigenous Peoples - a transformed relationship. I would be even happier if it were an inter-faith commitment - the voice of Canadian faiths calling for a new way to be Canada. For Christians, such a new way would include once and for all ridding Christendom of its worst theological arrogance, its misunderstood mission, and its hubris. Instead it would signal an embrace in the Spirit of the Way of Jesus.

I hope the 150 ^th Anniversary of the Indian Act in 2026 will mark its end, its repudiation, and the launch of new, mutually respectful negotiations with Indigenous representatives for a new Covenant or Proclamation or Treaty - a transformed relationship, that honours previous treaties, legal judgements, and the Crown’s* fiduciary responsibilities to Indigenous Peoples. The whole of Canadian society would benefit.

May the Spirit forgive, reconcile, transform, and free us all to “work with God for the healing of the world that all might have abundant life.” (Song of Faith)

* see below for John Ralston Saul's clarification of "The Crown" in the Canadian context.

Part 2 - a thumb nail history

It wasn’t always an asymmetrical relationship of power over subservience. The earliest Europeans .landing on northern Turtle Island’s beaches quickly learned that their survival could only be assured by cultivating relationships with Indigenous Peoples. Cooperation and eventually trade was paramount, though peace was a fragile flower and atrocities on both sides punctuated the complexity of the relationship.

The Great Peace of Montreal (1701) marked the beginning of a period of Haudenosaunee – French agreement, allowing the French authorities freedom to focus on defenses against British expansionism. The defeat of the French forces on the Plains of Abraham in 1759, however, confirmed British dominance of North America.

George V's Royal Proclamation of 1763 asserted the victor’s sovereignty over all (a factor in the American Revolution) and provided clear understanding of the Indigenous occupation (but not sovereignty) of the territories. European settlers were permitted only to acquire land from the Crown and the Crown obtained land from the Indigenous peoples. The Proclamation laid the basis for nation-to-nation treaties.

The Treaty of Niagara (1764) confirmed the British – Indigenous alliance as a nation-to-nation relationship and resulted in First Nations allied with the British in the American Revolution and in the War of 1812, ensuring the survival of British North America – Canada!

In the first half of the 19 ^th century, the relationship between the British settlers and the Indigenous Peoples might be defined as mutually beneficial, if not always complementary. The Indigenous way of life was threatened by the increase of settlers, but some mitigation of the threat came with the efforts of missionaries and teachers often working with new Indigenous converts to educate and improve social conditions.

Later church representatives competed (shamefully) in their vigour to bring their particular denominational brand of the Gospel into the lives of Indigenous peoples. Significant numbers converted to Christianity.

Living conditions improved for many and death rates declined. John Grant, a pre-eminent Canadian church historian, notes: “Never in Canadian history has conversion to Christianity been of such evident benefit to Indians as in Upper Canada during the second quarter of the nineteenth century.” (Grant, John Webster. Moon of Wintertime – Missionaries and the Indians of Canada in Encounter since 1534. Toronto, U of Toronto Press. 1984. P.91)

"The Indian Problem"

But as the settler population grew, the ways of Indige nous people were deemed increasingly incompatible with settler values and lifestyles. The dominant governing system – British – deemed it to be an “Indian problem” that needed solving. The notion that Indigenous communities might the determine the situation to be an “settler problem” was not entertained.

In 1842 Governor General Sir Charles Bagot commissioned a report which proposed solutions to the Indian problem. “Significantly, it recommended the establishment of Residential Schools to separate children from their families and ensure their ‘civilization.’” Assimilation and education of the Indigenous children became the plan to create a uniform society. (source: Indian Residential School History & Dialogue Centre. https://collections.irshdc.ubc.ca/index.php/Detail/objects/9431 )

“Civilization” carried with it the assumption of Christianity not only in the government report but also in the mind of the missionaries and church leadership. Would this double conversion open the doors to the new mainstream society? Not likely. Says Grant:

“During this period … a subtle but significant shift was taking place in the missionaries’ conception of their task. Instead of seeking to help Indian converts to make a voluntary adjustment to a new situation, they attempted increasingly to impose Western values whether the Indians were willing or not. Other civilizers, including the Aborigines’ Protection Society, were moving in the same direction. These views were embodied in the Civilization Act of 1857, which contrary to the desire of tribal leaders provided for the voluntary transfer of individual Indians to white status.” (Grant, p. 94)

Assimilation in the guise of “civilizing” and “Christianizing” effecting cultural genocide - this became the dominant intent of both church and state. The colonizers’ doctrine of superiority pervaded settler society’s attitude and behaviour. Patriarchal racism pervaded the colonial society while Indigenous society crumbled.

Nation and Church Building

In the latter half of the 19 ^th century, nation building became the dominant agenda of the colonial government. Treaties with Indigenous Peoples were negotiated as nation-to-nation commitments, but were soon undermined by government failure to honour the terms. Moreover, government advanced the unilateral conclusion that in signing the Treaties, Indigenous Peoples had traded away their lands to the Crown.

With Confederation, the nascent government with the authority of the Crown took responsibility for Indigenous matters. The British North America Act of 1867 assigned to the federal government the care and well being of Indigenous Peoples. Negotiated treaties, reflective of the nation-to-nation relationship with the Crown, were soon superseded by legislation more in tune with the dominant sentiments of settler society.

The Indian Act - "solving the problem"!

In 1876 the Indian Act was proclaimed with its racist policies. (Resource: Bob Joseph, “21 Things You May Not Know about the Indian Act, Indigenous Relations Press,2018.) The Annual Report of the Department of the Interior for the year ending 30 ^th of June 1876 outlined the operative philosophy:

“Our Indian legislation generally rests on the principle that the aborigines are to be kept in a condition of tutelage and treated as wards or children of the State…clearly our wisdom and our duty, through education and every other means, to prepare him for a higher civilization by encouraging him to assume the privileges and responsibility of full citizenship.” (Source: Sessional Paper, 1877, vol. 7, no.II, Xiv)

Prime Minister John A Macdonald in 1883 made clear in Parliament the intent of the Act’s educational provisions – not withstanding Treaty provisions or the Royal Proclamation of 1763:

"When the school is on the reserve, the child lives with its parents, who are savages, and though he may learn to read and write, his habits and training mode of thought are Indian. He is simply a savage who can read and write. It has been strongly impressed upon myself, as head of the Department, that Indian children should be withdrawn as much as possible from the parental influence, and the only way to do that would be to put them in central training industrial schools where they will acquire the habits and modes of thought of white men." ( May 9, 1883, First Session, 5 ^th Parliament, 1107-8; cited in Wilson Raybould, p.97)

An Alberta Methodist Commission saw the government's unjust policies as fulfilment of charity: "The Indian is the weak child in the family of our nation and for this reason presents the most earnest appeal for Christian sympathy and cooperation.. We are convinced that the only hope of successfully discharging this obligation to our Indian brethren is through the medium of the children, therefore education must be given the foremost place." (Cited in Wilson-Raybould, op cit, p. 94)

As late as 1921, Duncan Campbell Scott, the deputy superintendent-general for Indian affairs, was able to declare: “Our objective is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic and there is not Indian question, and no Indian Department, that is the object of the Bill.” (Cited in Wilson-Raybould, Jody: True Reconciliation. P. 91.) A better definition of ethnic cleansing would be hard to find.

State and church – settler culture as a whole – were influenced by biological theories that promoted beliefs that some races were superior and others inferior. It was not hard for Anglo-Saxon Caucasian Christians to believe that they were the superior race and that the inferior Indigenous peoples might die out, or, at least, would need to careful, charitable support to assimilate into the dominant culture. (see Airhart, Phyllis, A Church with the Soul of a Nation, p. 8).

Christendom

Theological support came from Christendom’s history of institutionally-driven dominating expansionism, as articulated in late 15 ^th and early 16 ^th Centuries pronouncements like the Doctrine of Discovery. The 18 ^th Century emergence of the modern missionary movement relied heavily on an interpretation of the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20) that reinforced Christendom's religious and cultural inclinations, but underemphasized Jesus' humbler, accepting Ways as revealed in the Gospels.

At the time of Confederation, church and government policies were aligned on these theologically dubious assumptions. Both politics and religion agreed on the conviction that Indigenous Peoples were legally incompetent (as the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples observed) and should melt “through education and every other means” into the higher civilization of the dominant Euro-colonial settler culture of the new Canadian nation.

Nothing should impede the way forward in building a “civilized” Christian society from coast to coast and eventually to the third coast – the north. In 20 ^th Century parlance this is described as cultural genocide and, increasingly, simply as “genocide of Indigenous Peoples”. The shared solution to the "Indian problem" was to erase Indian-ness!

Dispossessing the inferior race of their native lands and the potential wealth of this incalculable inherited asset was, of course, key to their erasure. Postage-stamp sized reserves were held by the Crown for the “exclusive benefit” of Indigenous peoples, but the vast territories beyond were deemed “Crown lands” by which to finance and populate the new nation.

Dispossession led to: economic deprivation, spiritual uprooting, psychological wounding, source of food, and cultural alienation; while educating the children away from their communities assured the efficacy of the policies for the long term..

Christian churches – Methodist, Presbyterian, Anglican, and Roman Catholic - rushed to take on the educational role by staffing and maintaining the Residential Schools system. Under-funded, poorly staffed, badly supervised, unhealthy environments - the plight of Canada’s Indigenous people worsened (fulfilling the prophecy of the false biological theories), now specifically burdening their children with the curse of the de-Indianizing process.

The actual patriarchal relationship between Canada’s Settler Society and Indigenous Peoples was articulated in the Indian Act undergirded by the culturally-accepted convictions of the Doctrine of Discovery. It still is because the Indian Act still is.

To be sure much has changed. A new constitution in 1982 affirmed Indigenous inherent rights and treaty rights. Supreme Court judgements regularly unmask federal and provincial usurpation of Indigenous right and land claims. Governments were forced to repeal unbelievably cruel, and often petty, rules and amendments to the Indian Act. The amazing persistence and patient courage of Indigenous leaders pursued justice and gained it. The diligence and creativity of many Indigenous scholars, lawyers, artists, politicians, teachers, advocates, and leaders made it increasingly difficult to dismiss Indigenous challenges.

But the Indian Act still is! In 2026 it will be 150 years old.

A Time to Raise the Voices of Faith

Where are today's faith communities in this unwelcome saga? There were moments in history where there was some semblance of being concerned for the well-being of Indigenous people facing the Euro-settler invasion. But as we’ve noted, this turned into a concerted effort to erase “Indian-ness” from the culture – the racist genocidal apartheid policy.

The churches were able to acknowledge their sin and their contribution to the suffering, wounding, and death of generations of Indigenous children in the Indian Residential Schools system. The Settlement Agreement (still not fully owned the Roman Catholic Church) and apologies were important steps toward atonement for this particular inter-generational crime.

All the denominations have expressed some form of contrition – to Indigenous members of the church for disrespect of their person and faith; to survivors and families of Residential Schools for the harm done to them; to the general public by repudiating of both the Doctrine of Discovery and terrae nullius.

But the fundamental issue, I believe, still has not been addressed – at least not by my denomination, the United Church of Canada. The Indian Act with its societal implications is still is in place. It continues to defile and betray the Honour of the Crown*. It still inflicts its worst on Indigenous Peoples and haunts settler society. It is still sinful, vile legislation.

It is time for the United Church of Canada - preferably in partnership with other faith communities - to repudiate the Indian Act and demand that the government of Canada on behalf of the Crown* – i.e. all people of Canada - begin the process of replacing this criminal document by a new, justice-based settler-Indigenous negotiated framework of relating, respecting the Treaties, inherent rights, hard-fought judicial judgements, and the Crown's fiduciary responsibilities owed to Indigenous Peoples..

The two-row wampum symbol for respectful friendship and just peace in perpetuity must inform the negotiations and the new Covenant/Proclamation

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· John Ralston Saul defines "the Crown":

“The Crown is the people. The people are the guarantors of the state. The governor-general is the protector of the Crown, that is, of the people. This is not about money or law or soldiers. It is about a role above power, a concept of the state above interests. … A meeting with the governor-general present automatically invokes the state, the Crown, the people. And the Crown automatically invokes the Honour of the Crown, a concept given its Canadian form in such historic Supreme Court decisions as Guerin in 1984, Sparrow in 1990 and, most recently, the Manitoba Metis case in 2013. …

What is the Honour of the Crown? It is the obligation of the state to act ethically in its dealings with the people. Not just legally or legalistically. Not merely administratively or efficiently. But ethically. The Honour of the Crown is the obligation of the state to act with respect for the citizen.” (Source: John Ralston Saul, The Comeback. Toronto, Viking Penguin Book, 2014. P. 33).

Russia's War on Ukraine

Thu, 19 Jan 2023 20:42:00 GMT

Peace is Elusive

Year One of Russia's War

We will soon be at the first anniversary of Russia’s unjustified war on Ukraine. How many thousands of the human family have already been killed? We’re told that well over 100,000 Russian soldiers and sailors have died and who knows how many went out of the war theatre with serious, life-changing wounds or just fled.

The Ukrainian casualties – military and civilian, adults and children, all innocent victims of Putin’s immoral and criminal decision-making can’t be numbered, but must also include the millions who have been turned into refugees – internal in their homeland and external to receptive countries like Poland and Canada.

The Russian expectation that brutal invasion would quickly lead to a takeover of Kiyiv and a change of regime was a miscalculation with potentially fateful consequences. The possibility of the giant Russian marauding bear being driven back to historic border continues to be mooted and yearned for.

As a Christian, I abhor this war and all war. The birth of the Christ-child we just celebrated again reveals God’s intentions for the human family are peace, abundance, joy, love, and hope for a future where all might live with respect for each other and for all Creation. So an unprovoked war is a curse and a sin of the highest order.

When we see the Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kyrill standing with the sociopath Putin in support of this bloody war then we can only wonder what Jesus would do in the face of such blatant evil.

I understand that Putin has imperial pretensions he wants to realize. And! those pretensions are backed up by an institutional religious background. The Russians don’t want to tolerate the highly significant schism that took place in 2018 when the Ukrainian Orthodox Church separated from the Russian Church. Pan-Orthodoxy and Pan-Russian aspirations are overlapping and complementary. Theocracy is a dangerous and deadly form of government - as Iran has ably demonstrated.

Here's how Maine-based Orthodox Archdeacon Rev. John Chryssavgis of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and theological advisor to the Ecumenical Patriarch in Istanbul summarizes the Russo-Ukrainian stakes in an article in America-the Jesuit Review magazine:

The war is not about Russia capturing Ukraine; it is about Russia challenging the Western world, which Mr. Putin and Patriarch Kirill both regard as evil. Russia has declared war against the world order and for a new morality. Russia is competing for what it considers the soul of the world, for a cultural unity that—again in their distorted image of the world and interpretation of the Gospel—brings Russia and Ukraine together in a brave new Russian world. This worldview presumes a Russian hegemony, no matter how fictitious that appears to the rest of the world.

It will take more than a map and Wikipedia to sort out the ecclesiastical morass underlying Kyrill’s ecclesiological fantasies and Putin's wedding of his new-found religious convictions and his demonic megalomaniacal imperial dream to Kyrill’s blasphemous claims. But all the rest of the world and certainly Christians need to reflect carefully on the course of this tyrannical project.

For now I am most concerned about the consequences of a possible Ukrainian defeat in this hugely significant unjustified invasion. Russian history shows us that the consequences for Ukraine and its peoples would be colossal.

History Foretells

Joseph Stalin’s Holodomor or Terror-Famine of 1932-1933 imposed on the Ukrainian people tells us that Russian authoritarians have no moral compass when it comes to terrorizing a subject people. As many as 30 million Ukrainians died as food became the chosen weapon of Soviet subjugation.

The “Katyn Forest” massacre by Stalin’s secret NKVD forces is another foretaste.

The massacre was initiated in NKVD chief Lavrentiy Beria 's proposal to Joseph Stalin to execute all captive members of the Polish officer corps , which was secretly approved by the Soviet Politburo led by Stalin. Of the total killed, about 8,000 were officers imprisoned during the 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland , another 6,000 were police officers, and the remaining 8,000 were Polish intelligentsia the Soviets deemed to be " intelligence agents and gendarmes , spies and saboteurs, former landowners, factory owners and officials". The Polish Army officer class was representative of the multi-ethnic Polish state; the murdered included ethnic Poles , Ukrainians , Belarusians , and Jews including the chief Rabbi of the Polish Army, Baruch Steinberg . (source Wikipedia: Katyn Massacre)

Putin has also demonstrated his cowardly ability to use his armed forces for the annihilation of civilian adults and children, including those in hospitals, schools, and other clearly non-military targets as a political gift to Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad efforts to cling to power.

T he current invasion has revealed this same criminal mind as we heard of murders in Bucha.

The Bucha massacre ( Ukrainian : Бучанська різанина, romanized : Buchanska rizanyna) was the mass murder of Ukrainian civilians and prisoners of war by Russian Armed Forces during the fight for and occupation of the Ukrainian city of Bucha amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine . Photographic and video evidence of the massacre emerged on 1 April 2022 after Russian forces withdrew from the city. (source Wikipedia: Bucha).

I remember well both the Hungarian Uprising of October/November 1956 terminated by Soviet tanks and the 1968 Prague Spring snuffed out by the invasion of 650,000 Soviet-led troops. The memory helps me understand the Russian colonizing imperial mind and its ruthless ways with dissident people.

The bombing of key Ukrainian infrastructure in the current war with weaponizing of winter weather, the use of criminal conscripts and the Wagner unit’s convicted rapists and murderers as mercenaries conscripted and freed to be canon fodder and terrorizers of Ukrainian people – these are further signs of the evil conscience inhabiting Russian leadership in this killing campaign.

If this, or that

If Russia is the victor, the consequences for Ukraine will not just be regime change. Count on a blood-letting that goes far beyond the current Ukrainian political leadership. It will extend to any and all who espouse Ukraine’s freedom from Russia’s all-encompassing oppressive yoke and those who choose to orient themselves to a more democratic and European way of being a nation and a people. The reign of terror will be real and deadly.

As well, count on ongoing “nibbling” away at the land base of former Soviet “republics” and Warsaw Pact nations by claiming that Russian citizens of those lands are being badly treated. All neighbours Chechia, Slovakia, Moldova, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Latvia, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and others are vulnerable to the Russian imperial appetite for vassal states and buffer zone to serve as obstacles to western influence in the Russian plutocracy.

For any person of faith and for me as a friend and companion of Jesus, we are caught between the hard rock of Russian brutal victory with its inevitable reign of conscience-less, criminal terror, and on the other hand, the hard place of ongoing armament and support to Ukraine to repel the invader in order to maintain self-determined independence.

No real peace option is in sight - just ongoing armed conflict.

Pray for the Spirit to Prod

At this point I can only try to keep informed and aware, but also to pray that the invader will be driven out and Ukrainians can embrace peace and pursue the restoration of their country. I pray that somewhere in the hearts of key people the Spirit of Christ will enable those in power to move toward a peace that merits the label of justice. But till then we need to stand with and arm Ukraine.

I acknowledge that there are many places that are equally problematical, if not quite as bloody, but all in need of humbler and more peaceful ways which the Spirit endows in us all and await full awakening: Canada’s Indigenous / Colonial Settler relationships are urgently in need of transformative change; Palestinians are waiting for justice and order that isn’t maintained by Israeli guns and legal manipulations; Brazil’s and Central America's Indigenous peoples are terrorized by colonizing powerful resource developers and armed ranchers; Iraq’s “democracy” is maintained by American power and money after an unjustified war; and China still oppresses the Dalai Lama’s homeland of Tibet, while Taiwan is being threatened China’s expansionism and Uyghurs face cultural genocide. This human disease of colonizing and oppressing others is rampant in your earthly household, Holy One. Maranatha!

When, O holy Creator, will your human family learn to live with humble respect, goodwill, and justice as your intended way of peace?

Who Writes History

Thu, 05 Jan 2023 20:51:55 GMT

Understanding Whole History Is Key

Image Source: Pexels/Cottonbro Studio

(Source of quotes in italics below: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/history )

“History is written by the victors.” ― Walter Benjamin

Canadian History

It is commonplace to say is history is written by the victors. We may not always have that fact confessed as openly as when Winston S. Churchill is reputed to have said: “History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.”

The history written about Canada has, until now, been largely written by colonial settlers – Euro-Canadians, like me, who found on Turtle Island a place where they experienced relative freedom to live with the dispossession of Indigenous Peoples and their subjugation to the colonial rule of the British/Canadian Crown.

As one of those immigrant settlers, I confess that even my history majors in university-level studies did not sensitize me to the oppressive reality epitomized by my presence. If Donald Creighton had been my professor I would have absorbed his disdain and total neglect of Indigenous Peoples and been even more ignorant of their plight imposed by the colonial government led by Sir John A Macdonald. (see my previous Pilgrim Praxis post at: https://www.minister.ca/ignorance-is-not-bliss )

It was, in my early years, as if Indigenous Peoples didn’t exist in Canadian history, as if I wore blinders. If I had searched more diligently, I could readily have found them at society’s margins in reserves, other remote regions, and via original documents. Dan Brown of Da Vinci Code fame concludes: “When two cultures clash, the loser is obliterated, and the winner writes the history books - books which glorify their own cause and disparage the conquered foe.“

Canada’s Indigenous Peoples were not conquered (the battle of Batoche a notable exception); but through manipulation, fraud, enforcing power, racist social pressures, disease and addictions, and many more devious political and personal means, the dominant colonial power impoverished, subjugated; they marched the dehumanized Indigenous Peoples toward assimilation and genocide. The Indian Act of 1876 with its many subsequent amendments codified the immoral social, political, and economic conquest.

History's Importance

Do we really know and understand that today? Michael Crichton declares: “ If you don’t know history, then you don’t know anything. You are a leaf that doesn’t know it is part of a tree.” That evil, racist legislation – the Indian Act - is still in place! Where is the revolt, the righteous rage, the resistance against this horror?

I thought I knew quite a bit of history. But whose history? Clearly I learned the victor’s history. I hadn’t learned a fundamental history lesson that said: analyze who is writing this history and whose life story is being left out of this history. I assumed, trusted, took for granted that the history I was learning from tenured profs, historians, teachers was a fairly accurate, robust account of both the events and meaning of what had taken place in the past.

I hadn’t learned, but succumbed to what Carl Sagan reports as one of the saddest lessons of history, namely: “If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.” #

Too many of us colonial settlers (and some Indigenous people who have internalized the bamboozled history) are still not clear about the truthful history of Turtle Island/Canada since European contact in the late 15 ^th century. Perhaps we are too proud to admit our ignorance, or lack the courage to tackle the truth fearing the consequences.

By grace, my bamboozled history learnings have been substantially de-mythologized mainly by Indigenous people – friends, colleagues, public leaders - able and willing to testify to truth - in conversation, in public testimony, and in stories and books about their life experience, their communal suffering under the racist colonial regime, their resistance and resilience.

Revising Inadequate Histories

Mercifully, it is harder today to ignore the malignant reality of the relationship between Canada’s settler population and Indigenous Peoples. The burial grounds of residential schools call loudly and clearly about the injustice experienced and the need for confession and repentance. The endless investigations, studies, commissions and their reports weigh heavily on aware legislators, civil society organizations, educational institutions, and faith communities to take action for justice. The overwhelming judgements confirming Indigenous inherent rights and the validity of treaties rendered by the Supreme and other Courts of Canada cannot be ignored. These and other developments have made it increasingly difficult for settler society to simply carry on living with ignorance or actively perpetuating history’s horrors.

Says Jim Burcher (in Dead Beat, book 7 of the Dresden Files): “Time after time, history demonstrates that when people don't want to believe something, they have enormous skills of ignoring it altogether.”

Wonderfully, another force driving settler society toward justice is the energetic younger generation of Indigenous artists, educators, and writers whose perseverance and creativity are re-shaping Canadian culture. History is being re-written as gifted Indigenous people share their knowledge, their skills, tell their stories, and contradict the one-sided accounts too long fed to uncritical settler learners like me.

Settlers are learning about the profound wisdom, the extensive respect for and life-saving knowledge of Creation, the deeply rooted spirituality, and the common sense that a growing generation of Indigenous students, teachers, and leaders are committed to sharing. Their productivity is impressive and their creativity is humbling to anyone once immersed only in the victors’ tales.

Says Indspire , the national organization for Indigenous education, “Education is a key principle to transforming the relationship between Canada and Indigenous people…”^

Indigenous people understand the importance and the power of learning – theirs and ours as settlers. Happily there is energy to pursue this track. The failed 1% Fund for Indigenous Human Development* was an Indigenous-led attempt to strengthen this pressing priority. (See my previous Pilgrim Practice post h ttps://www.minister.ca/beyond-one-percent. ) Indspire and other Indigenous educational initiatives will continue to pursue the key priority.

Understanding History's Realities

It is crucial now for settler people to open ourselves to learning a more complete history. We need to understand the untold history by which we have blithely lived and from which we have so unfairly and substantially benefited. As Jody Wilson-Raybould stresses in recent book True Reconciliation , understanding what took place over the past 500 years in Turtle Island’s Canada is the foundation for building a new respectful “two-row wampum” relationship between settlers and Indigenous peoples.

A truthful history understood with mind and heart can cultivate, not just apologies soon forgotten, but repentance and a principled commitment to just and peaceful friendship – two-row wampum - between Canada’s peoples. It is foundational for my faith commitment to be an ally in transforming the malignant relationship between settlers and Indigenous peoples in Canada. Subsequent Pilgrim Praxis posts will elaborate on settler faith commitment to this transformation process.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Resources

Previous Pilgrim Praxis posts have identified resources that can remediate inadequate historical learnings. Here are a few more:

This Place – 150 Years Retold. A graphic novel of 10 stories for adults and children. Foreword by Alicia Elliott; stories by Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm [and 10 others]; illustrations by Tara Audibert [and 5 others]; Highwater Press. 2019, ISBN 9781553797586. $36.

This volume contains Indigenous/settler stories in words and beautiful graphics that make all readers reconsider the histories we've learned before about life in Canada for Indigenous Peoples. The courage of Indigenous heroes inspires Indigenous and settler folks alike and awakens visions of another future together in this fair land.

All the Quiet Places. Brian Thomas Isaac. TouchWood Editions. 2021. 9781990071027.

A prize-winning first novel by Okanagan Reserve (B.C.) senior telling the story of the challenging life of "Eddie" and his First Nations family in subsistence circumstances at the edge of reserve life along the boundary of settler-dominated communities. It touched my heart.

Sharing the Land, Sharing a Future - the Legacy of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. Eds. Katherine A H Graham & David Newhouse. University of Manitoba Press. 2021. ISBN 9780887558689.

A 500-page and 22-chapter tome of commentaries and reflections collated from a Forum held in 2016 to mark the 20th anniversary of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples report published in 1996. The aim was for all Canadians to understand better the motivations, learnings, and impact of the RCAP which declared that "the country has a rare second chance to seize a lost opportunity for reconciliation." In the 20 years, the RCAP "body of work had almost disappeared from public view....[and] Most recommendations had been ignored." (foreword p. x)

Sharing the Land, Sharing a Future updates the impact of the RCAP noting that some of its important

ideas have been accepted. "This volume brings to bear the varied perspectives of contemporary authors and forum presenters as a contribution to the ongoing search for a new relationship based on the principles of recognition, respect, responsibility, and sharing."

For those who are not up to plowing through the 500 page volume, The Institute on Governance based in Ottawa makes available a Summary of the Final Report of The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (April 1997). Website: IOG.ca .

True Reconciliation - How to Be a Force for Change . Jody Wilson-Raybould (Puglaas). Penguin Random House Canada Ltd./McClelland & Stewart. 2022. ISBN 9780771004384. $25.

Mentioned in my previous Pilgrim Praxis post, but worthy of further mention. Puglaas emphasizes Learn, Understand, and Act as applied to individuals, communities, organizations, and governments. It is the concerted effort not only by official government agencies, but by all Canadians - collectively and individually - to bring about the change that will result in a "revitalized vision of Canada" with justice and peaceful sharing for all. The book is an invitation to informed partnership active in realizing the vision. Crucial for readers' learning are pages 52 to 179 containing key quotations drawing on a variety of historical documents from the pre-contact era, in15th century Europe, and leading up to contemporary statements - all relevant to the impact then and now on Indigenous Peoples and settler Canadians.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Footnotes:

# in The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

^Letter to author from Mike DeGagne, CEO of Indspire, December 22, 2022.

Beyond One Percent

Tue, 29 Nov 2022 01:39:50 GMT

Time for Action Is Now!

Cover image: Indigenous Peoples Atlas of Canada

Cooperative Effort between Canadian Geographic and Indigenous Peoples - see end of this blog post for more

four volumes in box set - a perfect gift

Beyond the 1% Indigenous Human Development Fund Proposal

It would give great satisfaction if it were possible to report that the 1% Fund for Indigenous Human Development based on the total of annual real estate sales across Canada had been welcomed and implemented by Indigenous organizations and the Federal government.

It would have meant that as much as $9 billion per year would flow into the coffers of an Indigenous governance body determining Indigenous human development priorities and funding.

It would have meant that the practice of “acknowledging Indigenous territories” was actually connected to substantial public funding, with action carried out by and for Indigenous Peoples transforming their educational and other human development systems.

It would have heartened the Indigenous-led Action Group, which imagined the proposal and encouraged the large number of people who affirmed the 1% Fund as an innovative and transformative funding initiative. Many had weighed the consequences and encouraged its implementation as a major “good faith” step toward justice and “reconciliation”.

Alas! The Fund is not to be. Speculating about the cause of its demise opens up a myriad of possibilities, but the bottom line is that the Action Group’s Proposal did not gain the traction nor the action needed for implementation.

Beyond the Action Group

The Action Group has dissolved and all its members, in their own ways, are pursuing the goals of a new relationship between Indigenous and Settler Peoples. We’re grateful for the people, groups, and organizations who studied, discussed, and embraced the Proposal.

As a Settler, I am profoundly grateful to have been a part of this indigenous-led Group. Our conversations pointed to ways and means of working toward a two-row wampum vision of Canadian society.

In particular, I am grateful, but ashamed, to have learned so much about how poorly Canada has met its human obligations, has disdained legal imperatives, and has failed its treaty and constitutional responsibilities to Indigenous Peoples – particularly in the last 150 years.

By the profound culturally-based racist policies, blinkered theologies, arrogant attitudes, illegal actions of governments, and more, the “honour of the Crown” has been and continues to be impugned. Worse, Indigenous Peoples have experienced centuries of subjugation, dependency, and impoverishment. The hugely unjust gaps between the economic, educational, and social worlds of Colonizing Settlers and Indigenous Peoples have generated valid calls for repentance by the dominant society, and will continue to generate storm clouds over Canada.

The Big Solution

Core Action required: get rid of the vile Indian Act of 1876 - its framework and policies of subjugation. Surely by the 150th anniversary of this evil piece of legislation it could be well underway!? Respectfully negotiate a new way of sharing the land. Take seriously the legal judgements of the Supreme Court of Canada. Honour the many all-too dishonoured Treaties: e.g. learn from the Robinson Huron Litigation process today seeking augmentation of annuities income since 1850 Treaty was first agreed! (https://issuu.com/waawiindamaagewin/docs/rhw_treatytimes_issue3_2022) .

We need a ground swell of Canadians calling for justice and real “reconciliation.” National civil society movements, political parties with courageous leaders, educational institutions, all faith communities, and especially Christian churches need to come together on this key issue. All urgently need to call for and seek justice for Indigenous Peoples. They need to be calling the whole society to take seriously what the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples already proposed in 1996. ( Jean Chretien sought to take seriously the recommendation in his Settler-only way, by proposing to erase the Indian Act and proclaim that assimilation was the way to solve Canada’s Indigenous problem!!)

Not so, insisted wise and grounded Indigenous leaders; not so, Indigenous communities drummed! They persisted in being, in belonging, and in resisting genocide by courageous witness, costly litigation, and dramatic actions. A wholly new dispensation must be negotiated. Just like the flawed Treaties had been negotiated between sovereign nations and self-determining peoples, so respectful negotiations are now required for “reconciliation” to be more than yet another Settler society imposed “solution.”

All Canadians need to recognize that the curse of imperial colonizing is a disease that is global and needs eradication. Russia’s current war on Ukraine is a particularly gruesome and bloody examples of this sickness inhabiting the souls of arrogant humans. The disease is nurtured by greed, by hungering for power, by delusions of grandeur, and with an wicked mindlessness about the disease's impact on others in God’s one human family, and blind to suffering of the Earth.

We see the disease in Guatemala and Colombia, where corporate interests on behalf of shareholders conspire with governments to deprive Indigenous people of their farmlands and waters. What is the lot of Uighurs and Rohingya peoples other than colonizing, depriving, banishing? The Bolsonaros of the world want to build economic empires at any costs. Palestinians lose their homes, their olive trees, and are subjugated in illegally occupied territories by the state of Israel and its “defense” forces. Just a few of the far too many stories to be told about humans dominating "others".

The United Nations, with its many former colonized nations, knows only too well this virus afflicting the human species. It issued the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples with it 46 Articles because neither religious values nor human consciences were capable of convincing far too many governments to treat Indigenous Peoples justly. But now, the international bench marks are printed, and policies and practices can be evaluated, judged. In Canada, the Supreme Court has issued judgements legally requiring more just policies and action – but the Crown's governments continue to find ways to thwart full implementation. How long, oh God?

The Step by Step Journey

So, apart from the "big solution" - the replacement of the Indian Act, there remains the step-by-step journey that each Settler Canadian is called to walk. Individuals, families, groups of concerned citizens, Settlers can contribute to the diminishing this this global disease. But steps must not be confused with arrivals!

Today, we can welcome the appointment of Justice Michelle O’bonsawin to the top Court. We can also celebrate that a BC court takes seriously the rights of courageous Wet’suwet’en demonstrators at Fairy Creek to protest peacefully the devastation accompanying the creation of TMX pipeline though ancestral lands. The court rebuked the RCMP for its brutal attacks and violence as having no place in the Canadian justice system. (Cf. https://mailchi.mp/nationalobserver.com/fallout-at-the-fairy-creek-blockade?e=142990f8e0 ) At the same time, we can recognize how much reform is still needed for Indigenous People to experience justice in the legal and correctional systems.

What follows are a few suggestions among countless possibilities for Settler initiative and for sharing the wealth Settlers have gained from Indigenous lands and resources . As well, I point to several written resources that might open more windows and doors for Settlers to help transform governments and Settler-dominated society into a willing partnership. The vision being pursued remains friendship and a justice-based “two-row wampum” Canada.

Four Ideas for $$$ sharing:

1. Indspire Foundation ( www.Indspire.ca ) offers awards to Indigenous students. Wikipedia says: “Indspire, formerly known as the National Aboriginal Achievement Foundation, is a national Indigenous registered charity that invests in the education of Indigenous people for the long-term benefit of these individuals, their families and communities, and Canada.” Our household contributes to the Foundation regularly.

2. The Nii’kinaagamaa Foundation promoted in a CBC-radio interview (16 November 2022) with Patty Krawec, author of “Call to Unforgetting the Past and Re-imagining Our Future” is worth exploring. The idea suggested is to pay rent for the Indigenous territory we occupy. “One thing that those who are not Indigenous to this place can do is pay rent. Through one time or monthly donations you can help to support Indigenous organizers who are building up their communities while confronting injustice. You can provide material support to Indigenous people who are in need.” ( www.PayYourRent.ca )

3. ReciprocityConnects.ca & ReciprocityTrusts.ca is a Victoria BC based movement seeking to “decolonize” properties owned and/or occupied by Settlers. Through voluntary assessments they strengthen local Indigenous communities through financial contributions.

4. Healing Fund of The United Church of Canada is focused more toward United Church donors, but open to receiving contributions from anyone. The Fund responds to Indigenous requests whether church-based or not. The Fund has been active since the 1990s - post UCC apology of 1986, responding to applications for program support from diverse Indigenous groups. Learn more at:

https://united-church.ca/community-and-faith/being-community/indigenous-ministries/healing-fund .

Five Published Resources to Consider

1. True Reconciliation – How to Be A Force for Change. Jody Wilson-Raybould. Just released.

Says the promo: “For Wilson-Raybould, what individuals and organizations need to do to advance true reconciliation is self-evident, accessible, and achievable. True Reconciliation is broken down into three core practices—Learn, Understand, and Act—that can be applied by individuals, communities, organizations, and governments.”

2. First Nations 101 – Tons of Stuff You Need to Know, 2 ^nd edition. Linda Gray. Vancouver, Adaawx Publishing, 2022. ISBN 978 0986 9640 1 5. $20. Cf. www.firstnations101.com . In 328 pages, Linda Gray shares an immense amount of information about the Indigenous experience. Eminently readable, its seven sections cover: Indigenous Diversity, Who We Aspire to Be Again, Externally-Imposed Interventions, Fallout from Forced Interventions, Toward Health & Wellness, How to Become an Ally, The Way Forward: Paddling Together. About 100 or so 2-to-5-page "chapters" each with a list of where you can find out more – a bonanza of information.

3. Understanding First Nations: The Legacy of Canadian Colonialism. Dr. Ed Whitcomb. Ottawa, From Sea to Sea Enterprises, 2019. ISBN 978 0986 596 742. Cf. books@fromseatosea.com . If you’re looking for modest-sized book to give you informed background to the whole issues of Indigenous and Settler relations, then Whitcomb’s work is helpful. Sympathetic to the Indigenous case for justice, he dispels ignorance and demonstrates how Canadian society as a whole – Settler and Indigenous Peoples – can stand together to claim a better future for all.

4. Indigenous Peoples Atlas of Canada: Royal Canadian Geographic Society in partnership with the Assembly of First Nation, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, the Metis Nation, the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, and Indspire. Ottawa, 2018. ISBN 978 0 986 7516 5 3. Boxed set of four volumes: 1. Maps, Introduction, Glossary; 2. First Nations; 3. Metis; 4. Inuit. This is a beautiful bundle – could easily be deemed to be a coffee table gift volume….until you open it up and you realize it is jam packed with vital information and thoughtful reflections, and helpful visuals revealing Canada’s Indigenous reality. I received this as a very welcome birthday gift mid-summer. At this time of year, it is easy to commend it heartily as a marvelous gift for anyone who understands how important this topic is for the present and future of Canada. Encyclopedic in its scope, the set is validated by the fact that it is the product of a partnership that fully engaged Indigenous Peoples. ( https://rcgs.org/ )

5. The Globe and Mail Saturday edition. To my appreciative surprise, the G&M has been publishing much that supports the “reconciliation” process between Canada’s Indigenous and Colonial Settler Peoples. Whether it is an op ed piece by Jody Wilson-Raybould about her new book, or a retrospective on the Indigenous struggle for justice as in the Oka standoff, Kamloops Residential School atrocities, the Wet’suwet’en land defense, the challenge to include section 35 in the Constitution of 1982, the G&M has contributed frequently and substantially to the credibility of the Indigenous struggle for justice. I hope its editors continue to contribute substantially to the long journey.

Enough Waiting. Act Now!

Mon, 07 Nov 2022 21:02:37 GMT

A Call for Action!

Martin Luther King, Jr. 1929-1968

[Source: Facebook - with thanks.]

“Why We Can’t Wait” is Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 testimony for “why the Negro* can wait no longer for civil rights.” The 160-page paperback with yellowed pages has been sitting on my book shelf for decades. (Publ.: Toronto, New American Library of Canada Ltd., July 1964)

A couple of weeks ago my hand was led to pick it out of its tightly squeezed place. I read it that day and had two strong feelings: “déjà vu” – from my safe perch in Canada, I had been a distant witness to the civil rights struggle of the ‘60s; and, “we can’t wait” – it’s time now for the relationship between Indigenous and Settler Peoples in Canada to be transformed. Far too much of what King described in the African-American situation in the United States of America (USA) was comparable to the experience of Indigenous Peoples here in Canada.

To be sure there are significant differences – especially in their origins - between the experience of Indigenous Peoples in Canada and Black People in the USA.

Indigenous Peoples in both Canada and USA were already present on Turtle Island when European explorers made initial contact followed by migrants settling on native lands. In Canada, the colonial powers simply stole the most precious possessions of Indigenous Peoples – their lands - and handed them over or sold them in large chunks to the newcomers. The theft disempowered and impoverished Indigenous Peoples, but enriched the colonizers.

African-Americans, on the other hand, were trafficked onto the “new world” by slavers who didn’t distinguish between commodities and human cargo. Slave markets near the eastern seaboard offered Black humans for sale to land owners and others seeking cheap labour for financial gain. The economy of the USA relied hugely on the work carried out by Black slaves.

The economies of both countries owe vast amounts to the respective subjugated peoples. Common to both Canada and USA is the virulent racism that deemed both Black and Indigenous Peoples inferior, less than human - savages, and “uncivilized”. History will long call on especially Euro-Christian-North Americans to reflect, confess, and come to terms with their uncivilized and savage anti-human actions.

Emancipation Proclamation 1863 – Birmingham, Alabama 1963

In 1863, Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation gave legitimacy to and launched the hard, ongoing struggle for African-American people to become full citizens protected by the Constitution and by Federal as well as State legislation. Soon after their defeat in the Civil War, segregationists launched their devious, anti-democratic plots to subvert the Proclamation and undermine the human rights of Blacks.

A century later, “moderates” kept asking why King and the company of social activists couldn’t just wait out the Proclamation’s promises? A letter to King from eight fellow clergy espoused a gradualist approach to de-segregation, rebuking him for his “extremism” and “unwise and untimely” activism.

In his courageous and thoughtful Letter from a Birmingham Jail (pp. 76-95) addressed the eight (and the world). King rejects their tolerance of segregation and invokes fundamental values that demand action.

Nothing less than a revolution - non-violent and peaceful – was required for the civil rights to transform the brutal heartland of American white supremacy and violently-enforced racial segregation. After 100 years, there had been more than enough oppression and far too much waiting for conversions and saviours.

Imperatives for Action

Various theological and moral imperatives, as well as the suffering of his people, demanded direct action by King and allies to rid the nation of this fundamental sin.

First, the Gospel of Jesus Christ compelled King to bring the gospel of freedom to Birmingham, Alabama just as the Apostle Paul of Tarsus carried this Gospel to the far corners of the Roman Empire. “Like Paul I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.” (p.77)

Second, legislators’ laws must square with the law of God. If they don’t, they must be resisted. Citing St. Thomas Aquinas as authority, King observes that, “Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.” Hence, “All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority … [it] ends up relegating person to the status of things …. [Therefore,],… it is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and sinful.” (p. 82)

Third, if there is injustice in one area, then that serves as a threat to justice anywhere. “Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” People of faith know that God created only one human family and all are related to all. When one group imposes its power and will – collectively, individually, and systemically - on another group, the injustice awakens the Spirit’s persistent call for resistance and action to end the sin and restore the Divine intention of abundant and just living for all.

Fourth, the violence of the unjust system must not be allowed to fester but be faithfully engaged and resisted with a four-step peaceful campaign. The steps include: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation with others, including adversaries; self-purification as acknowledgement of complicity in causing the injustice; and direct action. (p. 78) Direct action might include sit-ins, marches, and, above all, a commitment to non-violence – e.g. to accept blows without retaliating; to endure unjust jailing. It is the law of love that must overcome.

Fifth, people who abhor “resistance” and seek “order” above all else forget that “law and order” “exists for the purpose of establishing justice”. On the other hand, peace or harmony based only on order fails to acknowledge and address the hidden tensions that are alive underneath the tranquil surface. Peace must be rooted in justice exposing and remediating the injustices and the violence upon which segregation is built. (p. 85)

Sixth, “Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever.” The yearning for freedom cannot remain stifled. Inevitably the freedom impulse manifests itself. King shared this yearning and acted upon it - peaceably. Others might choose violence and bloodshed, but King rejected this way as unproductive of enduring peaceful co-existence.

Some, including fellow clergy, labelled King as an extremist for the cause. King embraced the description and “gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love? ‘Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully us you, and persecute you.’“ (p.87f.) Resilient and courageous love is the “strong, persistent, and determined action” of non-violent revolutionaries to proclaim the divine Gospel of freedom for all who are oppressed.

King understood that this couldn’t and shouldn't be put off. There was no waiting for another generation to do what needed doing. NOW is the right time for faithful action. By word and deed he inspired and empowered Black Americans and White allies to engage in the non-violent action sparking the civil rights revolution of the 1960s.

Christians who have read the Gospels’ witness to the Way of Jesus will assent to the Divine will for justice and understand King’s deeply rooted motivations and convictions in the quest for just peace. But would they take the fourth step to join the action?

King heard his colleagues hesitation and rationalizations and it led him to lament. “In deep disappointment I have wept over the laxity of the church”, its social neglect, and its fear of being accused of not conforming to societal norms. (p. 91)

Moving to Action in Canada

King's lament jumped off the page into my conscience remembering myself to be a person of faith, a retired leader of the United Church, and a fervent and privileged (settler) citizen of Canada?

Too long have we tolerated the apartheid society in which Indigenous Peoples are subjugated, while non-Indigenous Peoples harvest the Creator's abundant gifts of land and sea. Where are the voices of faith calling for a comprehensive end to the racist and genocidal system which has far too long plagued Canadian society?

Are the theological, ethical, and social imperatives any less salient here now than they were in the USA then (or now)? Where are the visionary, charismatic leaders of Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities calling all to address the core issues undermining just and peaceful relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians?

Are currents assumptions, strategies, manipulations, rationalizations, ad hoc -ery, vested interests, and blinkered visions working together to delay the promise of an equitable two-row wampum society based on friendship and sharing in perpetuity?

People of goodwill and justice can no longer tolerate the piecemeal pattern of waiting for things to happen here and there. The fact finding efforts to disclose the pantheon of unjust arrangements have been carried out ad nauseum and are accessible for all to absorb. Few people of goodwill doubt the urgency of seeking more just and equitable ways forward.

So with that understanding, now is the time for negotiating - serious conversation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. The topic? What we can all contribute to a new justice-based, equitable society?

A wild thought!

Could the Crown – through Governor-General Mary Simon – convene representatives of Indigenous Peoples and representatives of Colonial Settler society to develop a vision and a framework which might just become the foundations to bring justice and peace to this core relationship? The Crown has its own problematics - for sure, but it is still the official partner in the treaties with Indigenous Peoples and, for Indigenous Peoples, the crucial symbolic authority beyond elected legislators. For non-Indigenous Peoples, the Crown could be understood as the collective symbol of the entire nation in all it diversity. I believe the Governor-General with all that she brings to the office can be a key person in ending our waiting.

I may be dreaming, but in 2026, the 150 ^th lamentable anniversary of the Indian Act, could we - all Canadians together - in our locales, symbolically and efficaciously burn that repudiated legislation that has perpetuated the subjugation of Indigenous Peoples, disturbed the peace of Canadian society with its horrors, and had as its purpose the genocidal assimilation of "Indians". July 1 ^st , 2026 could be a great reason for all in Canada – Indigenous and non-Indigenous - to celebrate the passing of the old and the embracing of the framework for a renewing society.

I think The United Church of Canada / L'eglise Unie du Canada could play a crucial role in the journey to a new Canada. As a member of this denomination, I affirm our church’s self-purification processes awakened largely in the 1980s and reinforced in the Apologies of 1986 and 1998, and confirmed in the humbling but faithful participation in the Residential Schools Settlement processes. I regard the ongoing effort of our General Council to re-define the relationship between the “Settler” church and the Indigenous church as both a sign of the quagmire that was created and as a sign of hope affirming the quest for a new way.

I also take very seriously the whole Church’s less obvious, but very real, historic and ongoing participation in all aspects of the national regime of subjugating Indigenous Peoples. This requires ongoing repentance and continuation of intentional acts of contrition and reparation by church folk and all Canadians.

But it is the larger societal framework that all Canadians of goodwill need urgently seek to renew. I believe that the United Church could and should spark an interfaith movement involving the Canadian Council of Churches, Kairos – Canadian Ecumenical Justice Initiatives, other Christian churches and organizations, along with Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, and other faith organizations. The collaboration and common voice of faith communities could become a powerful sign for hope and reconciliation. The movement's goal would be to undergird the powers-that-be in their pursuit of that post-Indian Act societal framework.

The nation as a whole and the United Church have long and tested experiences of working with people of goodwill and faith in seeking justice and peace for Canada and beyond. Now is the time to maximize this experience and rally voices for a renewed way of being a just and peaceful society.

As M.L.King proclaimed and I believe, the “revolution” can’t wait any longer. The voices of Indigenous Peoples and their allies in the quest for justice need to be heard and honoured. The Crown’s governments – federal and provincial – need to take seriously the treaties with Indigenous Peoples, the inherent rights which transcend the laws of the land, and the various moral imperatives which require a “reconciliation” effecting the “two-row wampum” vision of ancestors.

Now is the time for revolutionary action – peaceful, non-violent, respectful, imaginative, innovative, humble, and creative, but also determined and persistent - to end what should never have been and to embrace what all Canadians long for and the Creator intends. We can’t wait!

*Ed. Note: M.L.King used the word term “the Negro” in general use in the 1960s. After the civil rights revolutions “African American” or "Black people" became respectful usage. In this post I will use “African-Americans” and “Blacks” respecting the evolution of language to usage reflective of a commitment to greater justice.

The United Church's Prophetic Voice

Tue, 20 Sep 2022 17:34:55 GMT

A Voice Muffled or Gearing Up?

The crest of The United Church of Canada / l'Eglise Unie du Canada

That ALL may be one; ALL our relations.

Does the United Church have laryngitis? Or is it about to reclaim its voice?

The controversial non-theist United Church minister Greta Vosper on Facebook recently wrote:

“Over the years, the UCC has been progressive in its social inclusion but as it has done so, has failed to protect its own theological history and progression. Its open door has meant that those with very conservative theologies have been welcomed into our embrace because their sexuality, or gender identity or expression have refused them ministries in their own denominations, or because their race had little representation in a predominantly white church. This has resulted in a radically more conservative denomination than the one that formed me in the 1960s.”

Conservative

Vosper’s analysis veers pretty close to an objectionable liberal white supremacy thinking. Scapegoating newcomers to the United Church for the Church’s presumed conservatisms is just too easy. It is simplistic and, in my experience, false. I believe the “Song of Faith” is a strong and clear statement and framework of the UCC’s historic and current commitment to a witness and mission that seek transformation for itself, for the one human family, and for all Creation. “Deep Spirituality, Bold Discipleship, Daring Justice!” is the three-part slogan of the Church’s 44 ^th General Council which defies simplistic and objectionable diagnosis of the Church current theological and ecclesiological state.

That is not to say that the denomination has been able to be as prophetic as it once appeared to be. The voice of the church, it is frequently said, has been muted over the last few decades. To attribute that to a growing diversity of the church’s membership is just another “us” vs “them” meme. The reality is that even in the earlier “more prophetic” decades, there was a substantial portion of the church membership which even then held conservative theological and social positions tempering the Church’s voice.

Then

But the Church’s court system was often better informed about social and political issues and did not hesitate to research and address issues from a Gospel perspective. In the decades ’60, ’70, ’80, and ’90 the UCC had a much larger capacity of staff and volunteers able to address the theological and social issues encumbering society. “Church House” – the office of the General Council – was a 9-storey office building on St. Clair Avenue in Toronto sold in the first half of the 90s and from then was housed on 5 floors at Islington & Bloor. Currently the General Councils fills one floor.

Then Presbyteries had their various social action groups and generated resolutions and action to address issues. Conferences had substantial units of volunteers supported by staff working on some of the issues that frayed the common good tapestry of society. And the General Council supported both a substantial staff at the national level researching, pursuing, and addressing theological trends and many of the issues of the day AND this staff provided to and received from ecumenical Coalition groups both support and partnership.

The latter groups provided the kind of analysis which zeroed in on various social and ethical concerns. Groups like the Latin American Working Group; Aboriginal Rights Coalition; Churches’ Council on Theological Education; TICCR; Women’s Inter-Church Council; Interchurch Refugee Group; Inter-Church Council on Africa; Project North; and a number of other joint efforts kept up the pressure on the powers that be – in-church and out – to address the justice and social issues of the era.

The Church also had nine theological schools, plus six church-related colleges and universities, and five lay education centres aiding in the educational task helping to motivate and equip people to speaking up and acting by faith. Now a much smaller educational capacity and a noticeable decline in the number of Canadian UCC folk engaged in scholarly research and educational roles weakens societal engagement. This is a worrying matter in a time when knowledge and information is both exploding and people of faith and goodwill are urgently needed to proclaim truth and justice in larger measures.

Now

“Then” wasn’t sustainable any longer. Numbers tell the tale. The church court system involving laity and ministry-personnel had to be consolidated. “Then” authority and governance was dispersed over three levels of “courts” - 90 or so presbyteries addressing local and district societal issues (and church admin) with the backing of 13 Conferences, and the General Council all - with elected members. Today the United Church is heavily staff driven and only has 16 Regional Councils - too distant from too many local communities of faith & ministry - and the General Council, plus the yet to be defined structure for Indigenous communities of faith.

With general decline and aging membership and corresponding reduced revenues, the national and conference staffs and working groups were reduced in numbers resulting in the significant reduction in the amount of research the institution was able to produce. And without adequate research, the church enters into the socio-political fray at its peril. The truth sets free, but the truth must be true and evidence based.

As well, reducing the number of volunteer committees in the “courts” led to an increasingly hierarchical governance structure, in part caused by a fascination with the Carver model of governance. Combined with this reduction in capacity, there was a noticeable reduction in the willingness of senior leadership to pursue justice in a daring way. It may be that Vosper was picking up this vibe while not being as aware of the capacity pressures plaguing the Church.

At the same time, the Church may have become more aware of its own inclination to be self-righteous and pretentious in its too frequent pronouncements. Humility is one of the virtues the Spirit of Christ awakens in discerning communities, even as the same Spirit awakens holy rage at and resistance to evil carried out in God’s world. But humility and especially timidity should never dampen hearts of the courageous called to bold prophetic discipleship rooted in deep faith.

Today, Kairos Canada, representative of 10-plus denominations and religious entities is the organizational inheritor of 10-plus Inter-church coalition groups. As denominational numbers – people and finances – diminished support for shared social ministry has had to be “rationalized”, simplified, and reduced. The result: the voice of the ecumenical Christian denominations has been muffled and their social focus has been narrowed in large measure limited by the capacity of the Kairos network – itself plagued by insufficient and declining funding from the participating denominations.

To be engaged socially in a responsible way, churches like The United Church of Canada have to research the issues and discern, in the light of the Gospel, what it is that God is calling us to say and do! Not to do the research and discernment risks the Gospel message being held in contempt because the issues appear not to be understood or have been addressed simplistically or reliant on biblical snippets that carry little weight in the general populace.

Reduced capacity means reduced witness. But it does not have to mean that the church voice is dampened – even though courageous and imaginative witness still goes on in various places across the land.

Waiting for ?

We are actively awaiting the 44 ^th General Council’s strategic implementation direction and plan for the Church during the next triennium. Moderator Carmen Lansdowne has already given some clues about vigorous engagement in the issues of our day – particularly in pursuing a more respectful and just relationship with Indigenous Peoples and learning from their experience and wisdom..

In the meanwhile, perhaps we need to find more effective ways of seeking to restore some of the wisdom and strength that came from the many groups and committees that represented dispersed and diverse knowledge, commitment, imagination, and energy in the “old” system.

What about this - as one idea?

Create “Common Good Cell Groups” or “Moderator’s Advocacy Groups” or Exploration Groups that focus on particular subject areas. Decide to work together to research, gather information, develop strategies, address local issues, and recommend action by the larger Church. The groups could be Zoom based, geographically situated, denominational, ecumenical, interfaith, partnered with neighbours of “goodwill”.

Offer supportive links to larger church/faith community entities like Kairos, help create access to educational centres and/or faculty members. Identify a Coordinator of the Moderator’s Groups. The coordinator might advise, point to resources, identify networks, and channel the sharing the groups’ work into the Church courts and administrative systems – both local, regional and national.

Today more than ever God’s world needs less emphasis on institutions, and more bold, deeply rooted friends and companions of Jesus equipped for daring justice. We need more creative thinking to partner with other people of goodwill for the well-being of ALL the earth “All our relations” – in the world of the Spirit and in Creation – await that transformed world of God’s yearning. Maranatha!

A New Royal Proclamation?

Sat, 03 Sep 2022 21:06:23 GMT

Canada Needs a New "Royal" Proclamation

Sovereignty?

So, somewhere in the ambiguous history of northern Turtle Island (Canada) the British Crown became sovereign. There was no discussion with Indigenous Peoples about this novel idea. It simply took place as an assertion by the Crown and its governments.

A key factor was war-fatigue - when the British, French, and Spanish armies fighting for their monarchs decided to call it quits after seven years of warfare. Their political leaders signed the Treaty of Paris (19 February 1763) giving the costly victory to the English monarch George III.

In North America, victory meant effective British control of the eastern half of North America (excluding Mexico, as usual). The Battle of the Plains of Abraham (September 13, 1759) and the surrender to British and allied Indigenous forces by French Governor Pierre de Rigaud de Vaudreuil de Cavagnial, Marquis de Vaudreuil at Montreal on September 8, 1760 ended French rule in New France. The Paris treaty limited France’s interests to some fishing rights and the islands of St. Pierre & Miquelon as a fishing station. Prior to this surrender, the British had negotiated agreements with France’s Indigenous allies.

The Treaty confirmed British supremacy of North America in European terms. The crowns of Europe had fought over the presumed sovereignty prize and the British had won. The Doctrine of Discovery (1493) had given papal approval for the European crowns to claim “undiscovered” and “unoccupied” lands ( terra nullius ) – abhorrent and controversial notions seemingly blessed by the Divine through the Pope of the day, Alexander VI, emphasizing the importance and now opportunity to convert more “heathens” to the Christian cause.

It wasn’t long, however, before these concepts were abrogated as “doctrine’. * The idea, however, had legs and the Seven Years War’s French & Indian (North American) theatre of war was largely fought to determine which “crown” would rule.

Resistance to Sovereignty

But the “inconvenient Indians” complicated what might have been a simple solution. North America had a host of Indigenous Peoples who occupied the spaces with their own languages, cultures, spiritual practices, economies, learned wisdom traditions and governance. These Peoples had fought on the British side or on the French side but now had to relate only to the British crown, specifically George III.

This “Crown” couldn’t afford any more war and certainly didn’t want to wage war with the Indigenous Peoples. So, coming to terms with them was a priority. But there was another complication: the settlers. These migrants had crossed the Atlantic in pursuit of greater freedom to break out of the old norms of European life. They sought a new society and the enticing “vacant” lands and resources seemingly just waiting to really be “occupied”.

The residents of the 13 Colonies and those of the former New France (Quebec, etc.) and later those in the new-born Canada (1867) were keen to expand into the vast lands that lay before them. But their enthusiasm was countered by concern about these visitors occupying and controlling what had long been home and native land for the Indigenous Peoples.

The Royal Proclamation

To keep the peace and bring order to an increasingly turbulent scene, George issued “The Royal Proclamation” of 1763.

The result was three-fold. First, it recognized the reality and the validity of Indigenous Peoples land rights and nationhood. Any land transactions with the Indigenous Peoples were only to be carried out by the Crown. Colonists were only to buy or obtain lands from the Crown after it had obtained these lands from the indigenous Peoples. Such transactions were matters to be handled only between the governors appointed by the British crown and the Indigenous Peoples as nations.

Second, the effect of the Royal Proclamation was to lay the basis for nation-to-nation treaties as the key to good and peaceful relationships between the Crown and Indigenous Peoples.

Third, colonial settlers were to confine their land interests to area east of the Appalachian headwaters. West from there was reserved for Indigenous Peoples only and overseen by the British military – ostensibly to protect westward bound colonists from Indian attacks, and not inconsiderably, to retain the economic benefits of the fur trade.

Fundamental in this Proclamation was the presumption that this monarch had the authority to determine the overall lay of the lands and its native peoples. While the Crown recognized Indigenous rights, it reserved for itself sovereignty and the authority to determine and acknowledge those rights.

Indigenous Peoples might occupy the lands, the Crown might “buy” lands and sell to settlers, but the Crown asserted its sovereignty. The Treaties associated with the name “Niagara” (1764, 1781, 1787) confirmed this arrangement sounding eerily like the original understanding the abrogated Doctrine of Discovery.

[The Royal Proclamation's Indigenous rights and provisions were confirmed in Canada's Constitution Act of 1982.]

Revolution

Whatever else George’s proclamation did, it evoked a volcanic reaction in George Washington and other “American” colonists who felt that their ambitions, dreams, and rights were being curtailed by remote British meddling in the opportunities, notwithstanding “Indian” threats, that called them westward. The Revolutionary War which led to the independence of the 13 Colonies was the colonists challenge against this assertion of Crown authority over the North American territories. Waging war with the British, the revolutionaries no longer had time for any claims of British sovereignty or the territorial control of Indigenous Peoples. The bloody American Indian Wars were also not long in coming.

Re-awakening the Doctrine of Discovery

No one was actually fretting about the Doctrine of Discovery at this point. That came later when the Supreme Court of the United States in 1823 reinstated this invalid concept as doctrine to be regarded as authoritative in American common law. A key point in the Johnson v. McIntosh decision written by Chief Justice John Marshall was that while the original inhabitants' occupancy was acknowledged, their rights to complete sovereignty were diminished on the basis of the original fundamental principle that “discovery gave exclusive title to those who made it”!, i.e. the British Crown.

But the idea inherent in the Doctrine had effectively wormed its way into the mind-set of European imperialists and was received by settlers. With British military successes, economic dominance, racist and religious worldviews and local political control, the Doctrine was officially accepted in the United States, but was already implicitly in place in the minds and hearts of dominant Europeans migrating to the “discovered” lands - including those in what remained of British North America, i.e. Canada.

The British Crown was particularly adept at acting chauvinistically as if it had the right to be the supreme colonizing authority with the mandate to determine and “grant” to Indigenous Peoples what lands they might control as their “reserves” and, eventually to define what authority they might have over their own lives.

Before the end of the 19 ^th century this presumed Crown authority was claimed by the government of Canada in the Dominion Land Act of 1872 (amended at various time subsequently) and brutally codified in the Indian Act of 1876.

The “cultural genocide” referred to by the Truth & Reconciliation Commission (2015) and the undefined “genocide” Pope Francis acknowledged (2022) became the policy of government. This was policy rooted in an all too commonly held conviction of the general population and exercised in a host of racist and unjust legislative and regulatory ways that were to result in erasing “the Indian problem”, including full assimilation with white Christian European-based society.

It failed and is still failing.

So today, when people call for the repudiation of the “Doctrine of Discovery” and of the “ terra nullius ” concept they are not pointing primarily at documents, but exposing a mind-set and a government structure that has no legal validity. Canada’s nation state legitimacy is undermined by this notion that somehow the British and now the Canadian Crown has legal (if not divine) sovereignty.

Sovereignty is “earned” either by purchase of territories from a nation (as some were e.g. Treaties of Niagara), or by conquest of nations/peoples (as in U.S.A. Indian Wars), or by the will of peoples choosing nationhood. Canada has “earned” sovereignty in none of these accepted ways in relation to the Indigenous People of northern Turtle Island. Canada’s Indigenous Peoples continue to claim Creator-given land rights and sovereignty over their own nationhood, and the right to cultivate and shape their own societal realities. Ongoing endless litigation to realize these just claims is the costly and wearying result.

Canada's reality is being challenged on the basis of the horrendous results of the Crown's assertion of sovereignty. The data is clear. Canada’s Indigenous Peoples suffer the consequences of an apartheid culture where the abundance and wealth of the land and seas flow to Settler society and government, while Indigenous People experience the poverty borne of dispossession and racially-based government policy. The statistics revealing this asymmetrical societal injustice are shameful – both in Government of Canada sources and those of the OECD and countless commissioned Canadian reports.

Chief Terry Teegee, regional chief of B.C.’s First Nations interviewed after Pope Francis' 2022 visit, points to the subsequent enslavement and genocide of Indigenous peoples, with wars and disease. “Colonization in many respects equated to the death of Indigenous people, not only physical, but the death of their languages and cultures. So that’s basically the message I conveyed to him,” he said. ( Andrea Smith in the 28 Jul 2022 issue of TheTyee.ca ).

Getting Beyond the Doctrine and the 1763 Proclamation

What is the way forward for Settler Canadians, for Canada?

Yes, do repudiate the explicit Doctrine of Discovery and concept of terra nullius , but acknowledge as well, repentantly, the implicit reality of these cursed concepts still determining our relations with Indigenous Peoples.

Deepen our understanding of Canada's situation by gathering study groups, learning circles, book groups, etc. that inform and awaken us all to the realities of Canada society.

Then, call on the federal government to bring together representative bodies of both Indigenous and Settler wisdom people with the mandate to explore and envision a new way of being a two-row wampum society – a diversity-based society where respectful friendship and generous sharing bring peace to both Indigenous lives and to Settler hearts, as well as reparations to the plundered lands and abused lives. Support actions that aim to share the wealth of the land substantially, e.g. through the 1% Fund for Indigenous Human Development, to remedy and repair the deficiencies and impoverishment Indigenous Peoples have suffered.

Bring this wisdom together and then appoint a body of 100 diverse Canadians – Indigenous and Settler, women and men, old and young, rich and poor, educated and learning, including representative of all the political parties in Parliament – to give shape to a new constitutional framework with infrastructure and provisions such a society requires to ensure that all the Peoples flourish in peace.

None of this will happen overnight. But the knowledge that there are representative people mandated to give rise to a new legitimate expression of Canada in all its rich diversity will give people heart for even a protracted birthing process.

A large task awaits us - one that has been waiting for over 700 years ever since Jacques Cartier and John Cabot visited Turtle Island and drove their sword and cross into Canada’s soil to claim it for foreign crowns when the rightful owners, the Indigenous Peoples, were watching and have continued to watch and wait with grace and patience for a more friendly and just relationships during that whole time.

The waiting must end and the rapprochement must accelerate – together peacefully but fairly and legitimately. Canada’s integrity as a justice-based nation and the honour of the Crown are at stake. I long for a new authoritative Proclamation – the expression of the honourable and vibrant hopes and commitments of all Canada’s peoples – Indigenous and Settler. That would truly make it legitimately "ROYAL" indeed.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Notes

*For a carefully researched, scholarly account of these troubling concepts, the work of the Canadian Catholic Conference of Bishops dated March 19,2016 can be commended: “The Doctrine of Discovery” and “Terra Nullius: A Catholic Response” at https://www.cccb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/catholic-response-to-doctrine-of-discovery-and-tn.pdf .

+ Footnote 2 in the preceding document.

"A Boy Named Tommy Douglas" story book

Thu, 25 Aug 2022 20:18:25 GMT

A saintly politician - children's book

Saintly Canadian Politician?

There aren't many books about saintly Canadian politicians. And even fewer books for children about these exceptional people.

But Beryl Young tells the story and Joan Steacy has illustrated the text about Canada's "greatest Canadian of all time," as established by a national CBC television vote - Tommy Douglas - a Baptist minister, a Premier of Saskatchewan, a leader of the national New Democratic Party, and the father of Medicare for all Canadians.

For learners of any age who want to know more about this Scottish-born Canadian hero, this colourful graphic helps the story come alive. Rooted in his personal experience as a boy, Tommy the injured boy persevered to become the political leader to make the vision happen.

Medicare

The vision was and remains simple: every Canadian is entitled to health care when needed and everyone contributes through taxes to make a healthy populace. Lack of money should never be block people from receiving the best of medical treatment the nation can provide.

Canadians everywhere know the importance of universal Medicare for their lives. It is a core value of the Canadian dream. In spite of ongoing efforts by monied corporate and political interests to nibble away at the universal, single-payer health care system and the lack of political will to include pharmacare, dental care, and mental health care, Canadians tenaciously embrace the Douglas vision.

Tommy knew from personal experience that money obstacles to medical care could result in being crippled, invalided, or dying prematurely. The generosity of a doctor saved him from having his leg amputated confirming that good medical care is crucial for life to flourish. Generosity - of all for all - is at the core of the health care system.

Understanding the Socio-Economic System

His work as a minister in Weyburn during Depression years made it clear to him that people were suffering because of the bottom-lined Capitalist economic system and this was not the Gospel's intent.

Graduate studies in Chicago confronted him with the brutality of the system. Thousands of "hobo jungle residents" were eking out a hopeless existence. As one old railroader told Tommy, "Sonny, you can't do anything to help us, there's nothing you can do. But go back to this school of yours, and work, and see that this doesn't happen again." (cited in John Oussoren, "From Baptist Preacher to Social Gospel Politician: T.C.Douglas' Transition." VST Chalmers Institute monograph #3 1998, p. 33, quoting L.M. Thomas "The Making of a Socialist", U of Alberta Press, 1982. p. 64.)

Social democratic convictions and allies led to political action to prevent "this" happening again. Medicare was for Tommy the crucial point in the ongoing struggle for greater social justice and a more equitable society. Douglas' faith, knowledge, wisdom, humour, energy, and tenacity made it happen.

But there is still a long way to go before social justice reaches the lives of all people. His dream shared with Shirley his then teenage daughter is far from realized: "My dream is for people around the world to look up and see Canada like a little jewel sitting at the top of the continent." (in the postscript of the book).

A Hero's Book

The book is a welcome help for children to get to know this Canadian saint and hero. Perhaps his story will move a child to realize they too could help make our country "a little jewel" of sharing, caring, and justice on the continent contributing to peace and well-being for all.

A great gift for birthdays or Christmas.

Beryl Young, author; Joan Steacy, illustrator. "A Boy Named Tommy Douglas". Midtown Press, 2022. ISBN 978 1 988242 41 5. Available at most book stores. Price 19.95 hard cover.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Thanks to Mary Sanderson for introducing the book to me and appreciation to my brother, Rev. Dr. John Oussoren, for his OISE/U of Toronto doctoral thesis, "From Preacher to Politician: T. C. Douglas' Transition"; and for the VST Chalmers Institute Monograph cited above.

Summer Reading Toward Reconciliation

Sat, 30 Jul 2022 23:01:09 GMT

Reading towards "reconciliation"

"Reconciliation" is bigger than we realize. This summer in particular is an opportune time to read about the concept and what is required. Here are four books that could serve as resources.

1. A Mind Spread Out on the Ground by Alicia Elliott. Anchor Canada edition. 2020. 218 pp. ISBN 978 0 385 69240 3.

Wow! I’ve read a lot about the miserable, unjust, entangled, and life-threatening experiences Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island have suffered at the hands of the colonial migrants arriving to settle since 1490 or so, but instead of a historian’s approach, Alicia Elliott spreads her grasp of this sad tale and its truth out before us with an intimately personal touch.

Poverty born of land dispossession, flimsy and over-crowded housing, diets that breed diabetes and other illnesses, bad water, inadequate health care, racist enforcement and justice systems, and, of course residential schools – the scope in her work is endless and poignantly portrayed. But not as an analytical report. It is personalized in her and her family’s life story with sharp wit and stinging truths well aimed.

The supremacy doctrines and genocidal policies (not unlike those of the Soviets and the Holodomor genocide in 1932-1933 Ukraine) had the aim of subjugating and erasing Indigenous Peoples. “First, remove the means for people to independently look after and support themselves and their community. Next, force them to become dependent upon the very state that wants to destroy them. Withhold basic necessities. Wait.” (p.105) This Indigenous woman wasn’t overcame; now is whistle-blowing.

Elliot understands “the dirt” first-hand having grown up in a Haudenosaunee household with a Tuscarora father and a Euro-background mother. She tells her story in ways that forced me to link my knowing brain to my raging, but compassion-filled heart. Life for Elliott has been an education and she has made the connections and the many conclusions demanding transformation.

Here’s her big call: “True reconciliation with Native peoples requires Canada to stop its paternalistic, discriminatory policies and, most important, stop interfering with our sovereignty over our identities, communities, and lands. These are by no means easy or comfortable actions for Canadians to undertake, but they must be undertaken regardless. Anything else is simply not ‘the real things.’” (p.163)

Once I started reading her succinct prose, I found it hard to put Elliott’s book down. I read it in within two days. It grabbed me and confirmed for me that Canada’s easy talk about “reconciliation” is much more talk than substance, and demands far more commitment than people or governments or churches or corporations are demonstrating. We need to “spread out on the ground” what is holding us all back from walking humbly, seeking justice, and loving kindness that can heal and make whole non-Indigenous and Indigenous peoples alike.

2. The Case for God by Karen Armstrong. Anchor Books edition. 2010. ISBN 978 0 307 38980 0. 400 pp.

I’d renewed Armstrong’s book five times with the Ottawa Public Library website – some books just need more time to read than others! On the sixth try, OPL responded “no!”. I took it both as a nudge to finish reading the volume and to go buy my own copy. So, I did – online at Thriftbooks, paperback for about $5, just over a penny per page. Best buy in the substantial book line I’ve ever made.

It’s not thriller-diller reading as the title confirms. It is simply an amazing trip through earliest human history to the twenty-first century recounting how perceptive humans have grappled with the holy, the sacred, the divine, the transcendent, the ineffable, the holy mystery, the infinite, the Other – with GOD!

Armstrong doesn’t cover all the religious traditions – that would be just too vast a project. Her focus and expertise are primarily on the three Abrahamic/Sarah/Hagar traditions: Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. But extrapolating beyond is unavoidable.

I wish I’d had a copy of the book before I started my academic pursuit of theology in 1963. That’s an unreal wish, of course, because Armstrong’s copyright date is 2009. But it sure would have given me a much better awareness of what I was getting into studying theology and pursuing the limitations of religious thought and practice. It would also have delivered me from the excessive “silo” thinking which has plagued Christianity – as if Christian theological thinking was sui generis – a unique human activity. Armstrong teaches us that it’s been happening a lot longer than 2000 years and the thoughts and ideas about the divine have criss-crossed many-a theological, religious, and philosophical boundary.

Theology – the study of God - is a bit of a misnomer because God is never an “object” for study and trying to describe or define “God” has been humanity’s challenge from the beginning. We’ve been pretty good at saying what “God” is not – the apophatic way of discerning. But trying to define the One God (monotheism) usually results in humans creating a malignant idol. That idol too often demands uniformity, power to suppress “wrong ideas”, moralistic punishing of non-conformity, exclusivity negating the fundamentals of the Divine Way of love. Ideas that are born of hubris – like the "perfection or infallibility of our church” or “the literal inerrancy of scripture” – require repentance and reconciliation with both those scarred by our religious certainties and with the Divine.

Read the Epilogue (pp. 318-332) first. It provides a compact, wise, informed summary of the previous 300-plus pages. Here’s a summary quote to introduce Armstrong's thoughtful and pastoral ways: “From almost the very beginning, men and women have repeatedly engaged in strenuous and committed religious activity. … The point of religion was to live intensely and richly here and now. Truly religious people are ambitious. They want lives overflowing with significance. They have always desired to integrate with their daily lives the moments of rapture and insight that came to them in dream, in their contemplation of nature, and in their intercourse with one another and with the animal world. Instead of being crushed and embittered by the sorrow of life, they sought to retain their peace and serenity in the midst of their pain…..”

This is a book which reveals the unending common desire to be awake human beings relishing the fullness and abundance of our lives – gifts of the Creator

3. Standoff, Why Reconciliation Fails Indigenous People and How to Fix It by Bruce McIvor. Nightwood Editions, Gibsons BC. 2021. 201 pp. ISBN 978 0 889714205.

Bruce McIvor is a Métis lawyer based in Vancouver committed to challenging Canada’s colonial settler legal foundations and consequences derived from the 15 ^th century Vatican’s politically-motivated Doctrine of Discovery and terra nullius dogmas (see Globe & Mail folio p. A12, Saturday, July 23, 2022 - https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-pope-visit-doctrine-of-discovery/)

While we can readily admit that Pope Francis’ penitential journey to Canada is an action graced with personal empathy and appreciation of the horrors of the racist apartheid system by which Turtle Island’s Indigenous Peoples were diminished and subjugated as less than human, there is a gap many have noticed. Observers – both Indigenous and non-Indigenous – easily recognized that the Roman Catholic Church, as institution represented by the Pope, was not able or willing to confess and repent of its sin in conceiving, perpetuating, and practicing this aberrant system. Instead, Pope Francis is compelled (by which pressures internal to the Church?) to condemn “unfaithful Christians” carrying out evil deeds, but not to admit that inherent in Roman Catholic ecclesiology is an assumption of divinity blocking confession and repentance for its failed human institutional nature. It makes me wonder WWJD – what would Jesus do?

McIvor understands that now it is up to the federal and provincial governments of Canada to do more than apologize, more than legislate UNDRIP, more than consult-inform and seek consent of Indigenous peoples when land and sea “development proposals” – too often simple extraction projects - are being promoted by corporations and governments.

The inherent rights of Indigenous Peoples borne of their relationship with the Creator-given lands and protected by section 35 in the Constitution Act 1982 require more than token and grudging acknowledgements. They require a repudiation of the umbrella Indian Act rooted in those now too familiar and controversial Doctrines and a re-negotiated perpetual relationships based on mutual respect (friendship) and sharing.

None of the governments seems ready to pursue that obvious course of action substantially. So, McIvor and other justice seekers continue their courageous and honourable, but necessarily piecemeal efforts to chip away at the systemic and operational malignancies of the current governance framework of Canada.

“Reconciliation” at this rate will require generations of persistent analysis and challenge. Too bad, really! We could be working positively together at creating something better for us all – true reconciliation.

Visit McIvor’s law firm website: https://www.firstpeopleslaw.com/ and benefit from his various publications, including weekly Reports and regular “Indigenous Rights in One Minute” commentaries. It’s a magisterial way to keep abreast of the legal struggle.

4. The Reconciliation of Peoples, Challenge to the Churches by Gregory Baum & Harold Wells (eds.). WCC Publications, Geneva & Orbis Books, Maryknoll. 1997. 195 pp. ISBN 2 8254 1217 1.

Just finished reading this entire volume focused on reconciliation! I confess that I hadn’t read most of this just under 200-page book earlier. I can’t blame this neglect on not finding it sooner. Two copies of it have graced my bookshelf since 1997. They were gratis copies because I authored one of its articles: viz . chapter 13, entitled “Understanding with New Hearts – A Protestant Church and the Aspirations of Quebec.” (pp. 158-171) It focusses on an effort at rapprochement involving The United Church of Canada and the people of Quebec.

But with “reconciliation” so freely bandied about and given the book’s title, it seemed prudent at this time to read more about the topic. Against the background of the “colossal tragedy of Rwanda and then the raging violence in Bosnia”, the editors decided to remind Christians of their calling to be about the task of reconciliation and peacemaking – for churches, Christian organizations, and Christian individuals, and to raise awareness of the painful truth that Christians have been “a contributing presence in many circumstances of violent conflict…”

Harold Wells, now retired Professor of Theology at Emmanuel College in U of Toronto, leads off by reviewing biblical perspectives on forgiveness and grace. This is followed by thirteen chapters describing Christian reconciliation efforts in various settings - South Africa, Chile, Palestine/Israel, Fiji, Rwanda, Korean, and Germany. Canada is not forgotten: former United Church of Canada Moderator, Stan McKay, and theologian Janet Silman are interviewed about “A First Nations Movement in a Canadian Church” and my article cited above.

Two things stand out for me as I read the various chapters. First, the Christian Church (people and institution) have contributed substantially and in diverse ways to destroying the unity and breaching the peace of God’s one human family. Hubris and fantasies of supremacy and claims of captured truth are at the core, but too often linked to political, economic, and military allies. This type of arrangement is, of course, a clear contradiction of the persistent and irresistible calling of the Spirit of Christ to confess this sin and its injurious consequences to humanity, Creation, and to the holiness of the Divine.

Second, the Christian Church (people and institution) and all faith communities of whatever tradition have a calling, a duty, an inherent “genetic makeup”, and sacred gifts of the ubiquitous Spirit to go beyond confession to actions that contribute to restoring the unity and peace of the Creator’s human family - reconciliation.

As one example, Gregory Baum (d. 2017), Roman Catholic theologian at both Toronto and McGill Universities, reflects on the ability of post-war Germany and Poland to transcend a history of fierce animosities climaxing in the Second World War. A key factor in the “reconciliation” effort was the work of church leaders of both nations to break out of historical silos of self-understanding by cooperating “to try to write a common story, that in the definition of their own self-identity they make room for the self-definition of the other.” (p. 191)

In Canada, the re-writing of our history is no less urgent to achieve reconciliation (see my blog post on this at: https://www.minister.ca/ignorance-is-not-bliss ). A more comprehensive and truthful shared history could serve as one of the many innovative stimuli needed for “reconciliation” to have a chance.

Other ideas – both successes and failures – make the volume a useful resource for Canadian churches in their desire and effort to transcend the “walls that divide” Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples.

Four books

I am grateful for the truth, wisdom, and talent so many authors have shared in these four gifts. I have experienced these gifts as a call of the Spirit to both seek a larger, more comprehensive understanding of the dilemmas and brokenness of contemporary life and to seek more effective, humble, and magnanimous ways of contributing to and calling for a world where justice, peace, and unity are embraced and all Creation has a better likelihood to thrive as the Creator intends.

Trees - Sign of Life

Tue, 26 Jul 2022 19:13:42 GMT

Trees Are More Than Things to Exploit

(photo credit: My/Casey Horner)

On July 17, 2022, Harry Oussoren and Glenys Huws led worship at First United Church, Ottawa. Here is an abbreviated version of the service.

Intro:

People of faith have a longing for a utopia – where all is well and all are well. Today we want to reflect on the role trees play in this world – as both survivors of harm, and as signs and bearers of hope-filled life.

Hymn 713: vs. 1 & 4. “I See a New Heaven” in VU (Voices United)

Prayer of Intention and Longing

Life-giving Creator, perhaps if we were more like trees, we could be even more faithful companions of Jesus.

Help us to be more rooted in your love, to lift our arms heavenward in yearning and praise, to provide life-giving oxygen to those who feel faint, to shade the weary and vulnerable and to shelter the sparrows and other little ones.

Open us to the possibilities of growth, beauty and fruitfulness. Strengthen us to lead a greener, sturdier, more self-giving life. Amen (source: Glenys Huws, in “Where the Spirit Dwell, Lenten Reflections on Home”, Toronto, UC Publ.House, 2007. P.55 revised)

Listening to Wisdom from the Ancestors in the Faith (two voices)

The Bible has lots of time for trees. A whole variety of trees are mentioned but a few stand out. In the first Creation story, trees emerge from the Earth bringing beauty as well as food in the form of seed and fruit. The trees are all part of Creation’s complexity, beauty, and earth’s generosity.

Genesis 1: 11-13

Trees become living things and serve to compare human character traits. Two examples: Palm trees flourish like righteous people. Cedars of Lebanon, chosen to build King David’s house and Solomon’s temple are sturdy and strong – they even reveal something of the Creator’s reliability.

Psalm 92: 12-15

In a desert setting, seeing trees, tells you there is water – an oasis. A refuge for the thirsty who know that without water they cannot live. So, trees are welcome signs of life with roots running deep into the waters of life.

Isaiah 41: 17-20 (alternate Genesis 18:1-3)

Jesus used the image of tree and large plants in his teaching with his friends. He talked about a barren fig tree, but instead of allowing it to be cut down, he asked the gardener to give it some tender loving care to bring on the fruit. And Jesus spoke of the tiny mustard seed growing into a huge busy tree to be a place of refuge for birds. Jesus startled his friends into saying: hey, this is what God is all about!

Luke 13: 6-9, 18-19

Spirit Conversation

1. On trees as example/symbol (Glenys)

As I prepared for this Spirit conversation, I was both amazed and pleased to

discover that, next to humans, trees are the most mentioned living entity in the

Bible.

In fact, it is two trees that bookend the entire Biblical drama – there’s the

Tree of life in the Garden of Eden in Genesis and the Tree of Life on the river

banks in the Book of Revelation. In between, trees of many kinds and species

make hundreds of appearances on the Biblical stage. They play different roles.

In Genesis, trees are commanded to feed and nurture human life through the

fruit they produce and today we know that trees nurture and sustain human

life in many crucial ways beyond providing us with oranges and almonds.

Biblically, trees are often a symbol for eternal life given their power to reseed

themselves and to regenerate through so-called n,urse logs, stumps that feed

new tree growth as they decay. In depictions of Jesus’ family tree, Jesus is

sometimes characterized as the new branch arising from the stump of his

ancestor Jesse.

Many major events in the Biblical story have trees associated with them, like the

leaf of the olive tree that signaled the end to the great flood, the burning bush

of Moses and one might even include the wood that was used to make crosses

for execution in Roman times. The reference in Scripture to these wooden

execution crosses has led to legends and poems about both the dogwood tree

and the aspen tree, each implicated by different poets and storytellers as the

tree of Jesus crucifixion.

Humans and trees are often paired in Scripture, with the righteous, fruitful,

justice- seeking person being compared to a fruitful thriving tree and, equally

telling, when groupings of trees in the Bible thrive and are fruitful, this is often

a metaphor for the well being of society as a whole. And, as exemplified in

parables told by Jesus, stories about trees are used to teach and inspire. You

could say that, all in all, the tree is the most useful and the most favoured of

divine metaphors.

This favoured status, this respect and reverence for trees, goes beyond the

Biblical and is shared widely in the human community. The presence of trees

has marked significant political and social events, like the mighty white pine, the

great Tree of Peace that presided over the formation of the Haudenosaunee

confederacy.

In faiths like Hinduism, in many indigenous spiritualities, in Celtic

religion, trees – banyan, oak, cedar, ash, and others – are considered sacred

and often signify those thin places where humans might experience the touch of

the divine more directly and deeply.

A Welsh folk song about an ash grove that I learned as a child and still sing to my grandchildren at bedtime, starts with these lines,

“ The ash grove how faithful, how plainly tis speaking, the harp

through it playing has language for me. Whenever the light through its

branches is breaking, a host of kind faces is gazing on me”.

I think most of our souls could benefit from having a host of kind faces gazing on us from time to

time.

If there is a message, a take away, as they say, from these Biblical and other

storytellers, poets and authors, I think it is this. Pay attention to trees. Be

mindful of their presence and their wellbeing.

2. On trees as objects or living entities. (Harry)

Trees, forests, woodlots, clear cuts, logs, sawdust, rain forests burning, old growth, we hear a lot about this subject today.

And then there’s Johnny Appleseed (sing: Oh, the Lord is good to me, and so I thank the Lord, for giving me the things I need, the sun, the rain and the apple seed, the Lord is good to me. )

John Chapman (Appleseed) was an American 19 ^th Century eccentric who walked about in frontier states peacefully putting apple seeds into the ground. A fruitful habit!!

Do you know about Hikmet Kaya, a retired forest engineer in Turkey? As a young man, he came to a barren scrubland area in his country. Something made him believe it could be better. So he started reforesting the wilderness. Now after 41 years of planting, it’s a hilly forested country, green with healthy tree life.

We Christians have a history of looking at plants and trees and forgetting that they have a life of their own – Earth’s Creator brought it all to life. Do we see Earth simply as inanimate objects - things, as if Earth were a only storehouse full of goodies, just waiting for us to fell, plunder, pillage, extract, process, consume, and throw away without consequences?

When we “harvest a forest” by the violence of clear cutting, do we remember that countless creatures invisibly small and dramatically large make their home here? Do we remember that it takes a generation to grow a forest? Are we conscious that natural forests are seldom just one genus of trees? They are wonderfully diverse but connected mysteries of growing life. Not just “things” but miracles of life.

Imagine yourself standing like Lilliputians before a massive old-growth red-cedar in BC’s Lynn Valley. The tree is well over 1000 years old. It has a base of almost 6 metres across! Imagine just trying to count all the growth rings! Remember how this tree to started as a tiny seedling! How do we respond to this venerable towering giant?

Do we stand before it with “awe and wonder, marveling at Creation’s majesty and mystery?” Or do we ask ourselves: hmmmm, I wonder how many cubic metres of lumber can be extracted out of this monster? How much money can we sell it for? One log of about 45 cubic metres, would be worth about $30,000, timber-wise? How many logs could we cut from the giant?

When we regard a forest full of trees as just another crop to be “harvested” for cash, then we break the relationship we have with Creation’s forests of trees. Trees are not just “things,” they are the habitat of other creatures, trees are living entities that deserve our respect, our frugal and care-filled stewardship, our gratitude. They are our relations in Creation.

(show acorn)

The tiny acorn is a sacred object – it carries within it a memory of billions of years of wisdom, development, and growth encapsulated as a seed to give birth to a living tree. The tree born is a miracle of creation. It has so much more value and meaning than to reduce it to a potential plank, some wood pellets, sheets of paper, a box of Kleenex or a bag-full of money ? Any tree and especially old-growth elders call us all to recognize the Creator’s amazing gift and steadfast care for all Creation – including the human family.

3. Further reflection on friends, companions, community and conclusion (Glenys)

There is so much that can be said about trees. I would like to wind down this

joint reflection by encouraging us as people of faith to look on trees as friend,

healer, teacher. Some of you may already be doing that. As friend, trees

definitely have our back.

Even as wildfires threaten across the globe, we know

that trees are not the enemy. Trees, rather, provide the essentials of life to

humans and to many of our relations, even as they beautify our world and

provide us with an endless variety of wood products.

Then there’s forest

bathing, a practice that originated in Japan, whereby people are encouraged to

spend time in a natural setting and to experience that setting using all their

senses. Spending this kind of time with trees has been shown to reduce stress,

lower blood pressure, boost our immune systems and even help us sleep better.

In his book The Universe is A Green Dragon, cosmologist Brian Swimme has a much

more poetic even mystical description of what happens when you spend time

with trees.

When you walk into a forest, learn to tremble with the magnitude of what you

are about and you will never walk out the same person…you will be new, you

will bear the (healing) presence of the forest with you. Forests are alive with

music on all sorts of hidden levels and when you hear this music, you will know

that the forest has permeated every cell of your body.

There continue to be societies and cultural groups, like the Kuyukon people of

Athabasca who have close relationships with trees, experiencing them as

animated and even communicating with them in some fashion. Whatever we

might make of the idea of human to tree conversation, through the work of

ecologists and foresters like Suzanne Simard and Peter Wohlleben, we are

learning more and more about tree to tree conversation, the amazing ways that

trees communicate and cooperate with each other and with their environs.

Simard’s and Wohlleben’s research and observations have shown that there is a

vast subterranean fungal internet in the woods, a communication arrangement

among trees that contributes to the wellbeing of individual trees while enabling

then to help the trees around them. There is also some evidence that trees can

remember and can learn. I can’t claim to even begin to understand the biology

and chemistry involved, but I find the phenomenon utterly awe-inspiring and

instructive. Even perhaps a bit eerie. There is so much more going on in the

woods than the teddy bears having a picnic. As Brian Swimme writes, “tremble

with the magnitude of it all”.

To harken back to the prayer of intention from earlier in the service, perhaps we

might be more faithful friends of Jesus if we worked on strengthening our

friendship with trees, perhaps becoming more like them in the process – sturdy,

nurturing, fruitful, self-giving. May it be so.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Sing : as preparation for prayer: #81 vs:1 (More Voices) "Love us into Fullness"

We Give Thanks and Offer Our Prayers for Others …

The United Church Creed - VU p. 918

Closing Hymn VU 884 “We shall go out….")

Benediction

Leave this place to be blessed by the trees growing in the courtyards, in the parks, along the streets.

Go and be a blessing to all our relations – family, neighbours, friends, strangers – fauna and flora: trees and plants.

May all Creation thrive and cry: Glory to the Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer of all! Go in peace.

Sung Amen

The Way towards "Reconciliation"

Mon, 20 Jun 2022 16:19:13 GMT

The Way toward "Reconciliation"

"...changing its crest to reflect the participation and contribution of Indigenous peoples since Union" - the colours of the four directions and the motto "ut omnes unum sint" ("that all may be one") supplemented in Mohawk with "Akwe Nia'Tetewá:neren" ("All my relations")

Ed. Foreword:

This "guest post" was written by Rev. Dr. Jamie Scott for the worship service on National Indigenous Peoples Day held on Sunday, June 19th, 2022 at First United Church, Westboro in Ottawa. It was part of a three part witness involving two other members of the congregation all reflecting on the necessary and challenging journey towards reconciliation between colonial settler peoples and the Indigenous peoples of Canada. Thanks to Jamie for sharing these reflections and faith convictions from his vast experience of guiding the United Church on paths leading towards justice- and friendship-based reconciliation with Canada's Indigenous Peoples.

The prayer "Remembering the Children" concluding this part of the service is also published here. The Rev. Lillian Roberts composed the prayer for the 2008 Church and Aboriginal Leaders' Tour in preparation for the Truth & Reconciliation Commission. H.O.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Listening to Wisdom from the Ancestors in the Faith

Scripture: Matthew 5:23-24 (NRSV)

“So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.”

Reflection on the Word

This teaching about reconciliation, attributed to Jesus, guided my 12 years as the

national staff for the United Church responding to the devastating impact of the

Indian residential schools system, a system in which we were complicit.

It is a succinct but rich text about what to do when relationships have been broken.

For me, this teaching offers four key insights to us as individuals and to the church as

a whole. The first is that our spiritual life is not separate from the rest of our life.

When you worship, Jesus says, think about your life. If you know that things are

not right with others, go and make them right. Spiritual practice requires reflection

about the health of our relationships with other people. In that reflection, we may

recognize that some relationships are broken, and need repair.

The second insight is that recognizing that a relationship is broken requires a

response. It requires accountability, “stepping up to the plate”, so to speak. We

are called to be pro-active, to take the initiative to own our responsibility by

engaging with the other party. Simply remembering, or even feeling regret, is not

reconciliation. “Leave your gift there before the altar and go!”

Thirdly , we are called to make things right. “Be reconciled!” The neighbour who

has been harmed must be attended to, must have a voice in what is required to

make things right. Perhaps this will mean a change in our attitude, or in our

perceptions, or in our behaviour. It often means repairing the damage, making

reparations. What does this look like for us as a church?

The fourth insight is that reconciliation is a spiritual act. The health of our spirit is

interdependent with the health of our relationships with others. Indigenous

spirituality speaks about balance, being “in balance” or “out of balance” with the

land, with oneself, with others and with the Creator. If we are “out of balance”

with any, we are out of balance with all of them. Making things right, coming back

into balance with others is a spiritual act of regaining balance with the Creator.

It’s been seven years since the release of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s

Final Report which described the wrongs done to Indigenous peoples by settlers

and colonization as a mountain, and offered 94 Calls to Action as a roadmap to

accountability, to “making things right”. The Calls addressed not only the legacy

of residential schools but also a wide spectrum of injustices that continue to impact

the lives of Indigenous peoples. It challenged all Canadians to climb the mountain.

Remembering

The United Church began to “remember” that Indigenous people had

“something against us” in 1984 when Elder Alberta Billy (who sadly passed away

this past week) stood at a General Council meeting and called on the Church to apologize

for how it had treated Native people. The Church acknowledged the harm in an

Apology to First Nations Peoples in 1986 which said, in part, “(W)e imposed our

civilization as a condition of accepting the gospel of Christ. We tried to make you

be like us and in doing so we helped to destroy the vision that made you what you

were.”

Wise Elders received the Apology but did not accept it, preferring to wait

until the Church lived out its’ words in action. In 1998, the United Church offered

a second apology, specifically to Former Students of United Church Indian

Residential Schools, their families and communities, for its role in operating thirteen

schools.

Canadians, as a nation, began to “remember” the history and impacts of Indian

residential schools in 1990 when former National Chief Phil Fontaine disclosed on

national media that he had been physically and sexually abused at the residential

school he attended. Other survivors came forward with horrendous stories of their

experiences at government-mandated, church-run schools which, for over 120

years until 1996, tried to assimilate Indigenous children into settler culture. It’s a

history most Canadians were not taught in our educational system.

As the truth came out, some tried to claim that the abuses experienced by some

150,000 children who were taken from their families and forced to attend the

schools were the actions of “a few bad apples” among the staff. But as survivors

continued to speak up, through individual lawsuits, a class action and the Truth

and Reconciliation process, the churches, the government and the country as a

whole “remembered” that a systemic harm had been perpetrated on Indigenous

children, their families and communities. Prime Minister Harper “remembered”

this in the 2007 national Apology, saying that the residential school “system” was

based on the assumption that “Aboriginal cultures and spiritual beliefs were

inferior and unequal”. It was “designed to remove and isolate children from the

influence of their homes, families, traditions and cultures, and to assimilate them

into the dominant culture” , effectively “to kill the Indian in the child”. We all

heard the truth that the Indian residential school system was an intentional and

systemic attempt to eradicate a people by our churches and government.

In the years since, Canadians continue the process of “remembering” what our

sisters and brothers have against us as we confront the horror of thousands of

deaths at the schools and hundreds of unmarked burial sites on the grounds of the

schools – children who died far from home, buried without recognition and often

without their parents being informed of what had happened to them.

Our “remembering” has also expanded to recognize that the residential school

system was only one colonial tool among many to disempower, dispossess and

assimilate Indigenous peoples. The imposition of the Indian Act, the outlawing of

Indigenous cultural and spiritual practice, the impact of the 1960s Scoop removing

Indigenous children from their families to be raised in non-Indigenous homes, the

abrogation of treaties, the underfunding of the health and social needs of Indigenous

communities, and racism continue to inflict damage. The mountain of harm is

huge.

Climbing the Mountain

The United Church as an institution has begun to climb the path to reconciliation.

It put action behind the words of it's Apologies by settling claims quickly and

fairly, submitting all of its records to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission,

increasing its funding for Indigenous ministries, changing its crest to reflect the

participation and contribution of Indigenous peoples since Union, repudiating the

Doctrine of Discovery and embracing the UN Declaration on the Rights of

Indigenous Peoples, and last year setting aside $3 million dollars to support the

work to locate of unmarked burial sites and the identification of unnamed children.

This is a start but we still have a long way to go.

[Reflection continued as another member of the congregation described her journey of growing awareness and action to "climb the mountain", and another sharing action ways leading toward "reconciliation".]

The Prayer: Remembering the Children

God of our Ancestors,

who holds the spirits of our grandmothers and grandfathers

and the spirits of our grandchildren,

Remembering the Children,

we now pledge ourselves to speak the Truth,

and with our hearts and our souls

to act upon the Truth we have heard

of the injustices lived,

of the sufferings inflicted,

of the tears cried,

of the misguided intentions imposed,

and of the power of prejudice and racism

which were allowed to smother the sounds and laughter of

the forgotten children.

Hear our cries of lament

for what was allowed to happen, and for what will never be.

In speaking and hearing and acting upon the Truth

may we as individuals and as a nation

meet the hope of a new beginning.

Great Creator God

who desires that all creation live in harmony and peace,

Remembering the Children

we dare to dream of a Path of Reconciliation

where apology from the heart leads to healing of the heart

and the chance of restoring the circle,

where justice walks with all,

where respect leads to true partnership,

where the power to change comes from each heart.

Hear our prayer of hope,

and guide this country of Canada

on a new and different path.

Amen

(attribution: Rev. Lillian Roberts)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Ed. Postword :

This post is one of more than a dozen Pilgrim Praxis reflections on the Canadian experience of colonialism and settler domination of northern Turtle Island - politically, religiously, economically, culturally, and territorially. Browse in www.minister.ca for other reflections, including the work of the 1% Fund Action Group proposing a substantial and tangible sign of government and societal desire for a new way of being in relationship with Indigenous Peoples - the path toward "Reconciliation". A second iteration of the Action Group's Proposal will soon be published.

Dewi Sant's Farewell

Sat, 18 Jun 2022 21:07:20 GMT

Dewi Sant Community Says Farewell to Church Home

Dewi Sant Window "Do the Little Things in Life"

Saturday

The Welsh diaspora in Canada is grieving. On the weekend of June 11 and 12, its southern Ontario branch said “good-bye” to its home located in the Dewi Sant Welsh United Church building located in North Toronto’s Melrose Avenue at Yonge Street. Several hundred Welsh and their friends gathered over the two days to mark this emotion-filled occasion. The Toronto congregation was the last of the Welsh churches of Canada.

On Saturday, the Toronto Welsh Male Voice Choir, conducted by William Woloschuk and, accompanied as usual by the Church’s gifted musician Matthew Coons, sang a medley of Welsh songs and hymns in a resounding paean of praise confirming the place of vibrant singing as both integral to preserving the Welsh language and to professing the faith. The Choir regularly practiced at the church.

The program (of course!) included Cwm Rhondda (Guide me, O Thou Great Jehovah) as well as O Gymru (O Wales), Calon Lan (A Pure Heart), and the national anthems of both Canada and Wales, choking up not a few participants. Commissioned by the congregation for the occasion was a new benediction, Y Fendith (The Blessing) created by Robat Arwyn.

The (world!) premiere performance of “The Ballad of Dewi Sant: The Journey” a play of words and music created by Minister Emeritus Cerwyn Davies recounted the emotionally laden story of Welsh migration to North America and especially the Toronto region. Merched Dewi (David’s daughters), the women’s choir of the congregation led by Betty Cullingworth, sang refrains confirming that for many-a Welsh immigrant individual or family settling into the Greater Toronto Area since 1907 “The Welsh Church” congregation served as the “home away from home”. A gala dinner in the church hall rounded out the afternoon’s festivities.

Sunday

On Sunday, “the final” worship service and social time took place in the building. Two endings marked the day. First, the ministry of the Rev. Liz Mackenzie was formally concluded. Her role as able pastor and experienced interim minister included helping the congregation to discern and decide on its future. In her final sermon she recalled that “In the first sermon I preached in this sanctuary, on St. David’s Sunday, 2019, I made this promise to you – ‘I will endeavour to speak and show the hope that is in me and listen and watch as you endeavour to speak and show the hope that is in you, as we discern God’s…hope for us as the people of Dewi Sant Welsh United Church.’”

That hope evoked the courage to recognize the realities that the congregation was no longer receiving new immigrants from Wales, that the earlier immigrant families had spawned children now well integrated and dispersed throughout Canadian society and beyond, and that the aging congregants were no longer able to continue independently. The congregation expressed its hope by deciding to amalgamate with the congregation of Toronto’s Timothy Eaton Memorial United Church, located on St. Clair Ave. W. near Avenue Road. That decision culminated in the festive “farewell” weekend bidding the building “adieu” – the second ending.

The "Home"

Since October 16, 1960, the Melrose Avenue church building had been the “home” of the Dewi Sant (St. David) Welsh United Church congregation, formally constituted in 1907 as a Presbyterian congregation. Previously it had been housed in rented quarters and then in a well-used building on Clinton Street. Growth of the congregation and need for more spacious accommodation led to the decision to buy property and build. With the gracious and steady leadership of the Rev. John Humphreys Jones, the congregation’s dream of creating a new, more adequate “home away from home” came true.

For almost 62 years the building served the Welsh community of the Greater Toronto Area as the centre of Welsh community, worship, music, and service. Sons and daughters of the congregation had weddings in the church – as did Glenys Huws and I in April of 1970; Good Friday Gymanfa Ganu hymn fests brought together exuberant singers from far and near; lives were celebrated and commended to the eternal care of the Creator; Welsh culture and history were celebrated in competitive poetry and music Eisteddfods and advocated by regular meetings of the St. David’s Society, including St. David’s day (March 1 ^st ) festivities. Welsh language classes attracted children and grandchildren of Welsh immigrants.

In his “Ballad of Dewi Sant”, Cerwyn Davies gave voice to the congregation’s sentiments about its building:

To you, our homestead for sixty-two years,

With hearts full of hiraeth and eyes full of tears,

The time is upon us to say our “goodbyes”,

What future awaits you we can but surmise!

For as of tomorrow we must close your door

And the church here on Melrose will be here no more,

No sermons again from this pulpit we hear

And the sound of the organ will too disappear!

Cwm Rhondda and Rachie will never again

Pulsate through your rafters with joyful refrain!

Alas as a chapel you now come to an end,

We’ll never forget you, our dear faithful friend!

But whatever the shape your future will bear

We’ll raise here a cairn, “Dewi Sant once lived here!”

For ‘service above’, which none can refute,

We throw you a kiss with this one last salute!

[An Epilogue continued:]

As we face the future when Melrose is gone,

The spirit of Dewi will still lead us on,

Though close be his chapel, his spirit still rings,

“To glorify God and to do little things’.

The Window's New Home

The spirit of Dewi is captured in the stained glass window which graced the east wall of the “chapel”. It will be removed from the Melrose building and given a prominent place in the TEMC facility. The Welsh community gathers for Sunday worship with TEMC and will hold monthly bilingual Welsh-English worship services in the chapel. A newly dedicated “Dewi Sant” room will be furnished with some of the Dewi Sant’s stained-glass window, icons, and other historic items communicating the “spirit of Dewi” “to glorify God and to do little things”.

Except for Indigenous peoples, Canada is an immigrant nation with faith communities that both maintain and move beyond their background cultures and heritage traditions. Experience shows that sustaining a heritage community beyond the third or fourth generation is challenging. The Welsh congregation had a life-span of 115 years. The Dutch immigrant community of which I am a part is also losing its younger generations noticeably. With few exceptions, the third and fourth generations will lose their mother tongue.

Canada has demonstrated its willingness to foster cultural diversity enabling immigrant communities to persist even beyond the last immigrant wave. But Euro-based immigrant communities tend toward inclusivity vs exclusivity – building more bridges than walls, often at the expense of the heritage identity.

Amalgamation and ...?

Will the amalgamation with TEMC result in maintaining a sense of Welsh identity and community - integration, or will it become the first step toward eventual assimilation? Ultimately there is, of course, only one human family. Some branches of the family in some places will more easily retain their distinct identity, language, and community than others. The Holy One does have a soft spot for the richness of diversity. A more homogeneous population does run the risk unleashing of Babel hubris (Genesis 11:1-6).

The two-day festivities ended with tears and hopes that, as Liz Mackenzie wrote to participants, “This weekend is a labour of love and a love song to all that Dewi Sant has been and will continue to be in the hearts of the Dewi Sant faith family.”

Diolch i Dduw. Thanks be to God.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~

(Communicate with Dewi Sant community at: TEMC, 230 St. Clair Ave. West, Toronto ON M4V 1R5. Tel. 416 925 5977. https://temc.ca/ )

The first Bilingual/Welsh worship service will be on September 18, 2122 at 2 p.m.

Distinguished Alumni-ae Award

Tue, 10 May 2022 00:19:36 GMT

Emmanuel College Honours Two Grads

On May 9th, Harry Oussoren (MDiv 6T8) finally caught up with his spouse Glenys Huws (MRE 6T8), in receiving the Emmanuel College Distinguished Alumni/ae Award at the annual Alumni/ae Association gathering.

In 2010, Glenys received the award at an elegant luncheon held in Alumni Hall of Old Vic Nancy Hardy a former classmate in the Master of Religious Education programme, introduced Glenys to the assembled guests Glenys spoke to the alumns and dignitaries about some of the challenges women faced (and stared down) at Emm in the late 60s. (She was given the award anyway!)

This year's gathering was by Zoom and limited to one hour and 45 minutes. There was just enough time for presentations on Land Acknowledgement (Jonathan Hamilton-Diabo) and mental health ministry (Anne Simonds); greetings by Vic President Will Robbins completing his term of office, and by John Young, completing his interim Principalship at the end of June. The Executive of the AAEC was introduced to the Alumns and the award winners (5 for the Service Awards and one for Distinguished Alumn Award) were briefly acknowledged. Bios for those honoured had been published in the on-line Emm College Connects publication (April 2022).

With thanks to the Vic Alumni/ae office, the bio for Harry is reproduced slightly edited here:

T his year’s winner of the prestigious Emmanuel College Distinguished Alumni/ae Award is A H Harry Oussoren Emm 6T8. The Emmanuel College Alumni/ae Association selects the recipient annually to honour and bring attention to graduates of the College whose vision and leadership have distinguished them through extraordinary and exemplary ministry to the church, academy or society at large.

Harry Oussoren was born in 1944 in Middelburg, the Netherlands, to the sound of bombs dropping in and around the city. Despite the turbulence of early years, he went on to serve as an influential and impactful leader in the United Church of Canada (UCC) and mentor and teacher at Emmanuel College.

Since his ordination in 1968, Oussoren has served several five pastoral charges in both solo and team ministries (always with students in field ed or internships) and also given leadership at the General Council level, first as secretary for theological education and later as executive minister for congregational development and support to local and educational ministries. He also served on the Council of Emmanuel College and the Senate of Victoria University. He was adjunct professor at Emmanuel College for Canadian contextual theology teaching in partnership with professor Harold Wells (Emm 6T6).

At the General Council, Oussoren led in a number of crucial areas. He and his job-sharing spouse co-staffed a report, in 1984, the first UCC report recommending the eligibility of gay and lesbian members for the order of ministry. He authored the 1986 Learning on the Way report advocating theological education for lay members; was a key support for ministries in French; stabilized theological college funding; and kick-started the process which led to Rendezvous, the national UCC gathering of youth and young adults.

In his work as a pastoral minster, he nurtured congregational growth as well as encouraged outreach to the community, resulting in community service awards in both Scarborough and Mississauga. In an innovative approach at one congregation, Oussoren insisted that teenage skateboarders using the church parking lot were to be welcomed rather than banned, which led to the development of a thriving community youth program which has since been separately incorporated as a community ministry of the UCC.

Oussoren has been committed to interchurch/interfaith activities in every setting where he has worked. He was an active participant for many years in the UCC exchange with the EKU Protestant Church of the Union in the German Democratic Republic (DDR) . In retirement, Oussoren was the chief organizer for an annual interfaith festival in Etobicoke South leading to an award from the National Muslim Christian Liaison committee.

Writing has been another activity woven throughout Oussoren’s ministry. In 1972, he became the first editor of Insight, the Toronto Conference newsletter. In the early 80s, he helped to found the Practice of Ministry in Canada journal, chairing the board and writing the regular Upfront columns for 15 years. Over the years, he has written for Touchstone, the Observer and Mandate magazines. Post-retirement, he writes on his Pilgrim Praxis blog at www.minister.ca .

Arguably, the major writing project of his ministry was his thesis on the place of baptism in church and society for his ThD degree from the University of Geneva. Oussoren began learning French in 1978 only a few months before beginning his studies in Geneva. He persevered linguistically through the two-year, French-only doctoral program, then returned to Canada to write the thesis in English, which he successfully defended in French in 1983. [Francophiles will never forgive him for the way he butchered their language!!, ed.]

Though he retired at the end of 2009, Oussoren has been active in re-purposing and renewing church properties, including Wesley Mimico Church, the UCC's Albright Gardens Retirement Community in Beamsville; he is actively involved in supporting growth of the new Ministere Protestant Francophone de Toronto; and is advocating for a 1% tax on real estate sales to fund an Indigenous Peoples Human Development Fund stewarded by and for Indigenous leaders.

Oussoren’s career emerged from a deep commitment to education. His family emigrated to Hoboken, NJ, when he was six and later moved to Vancouver, BC. Harry did his undergraduate work at UBC, including a year studying theology on a WUSC exchange scholarship at the University of Hamburg, then theological studies at Emmanuel College where, in his graduating year, he was the recipient of the Sanford Gold Medal. He pursued further liturgical studies at St. Michael’s College (MA) while simultaneously earning an MEd degree in adult education at OISE.

Oussoren is married to Glenys Huws and they currently live in Ottawa. They have two sons and four grandchildren [and two grand-dogs], all of whom give them joy.

“We need to keep doing theology humbly, partly because theology has to change as the context changes. Theology is always a moving enterprise. We have to connect that story of Jesus as friends and companions of Jesus, in that changing context. We can never fully comprehend the Divine story. We can only apprehend the story, which is why humility is important,” says Oussoren.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Because of the shortage of time at the Alumni/ae gathering there was no time to respond upon reception of the award. Here are the words that Harry would have spoken then:

Friends:

It is a humbling pleasure to receive this Distinguished Alumni/ae Award. My sincere thanks to the Association and the College for this blessing.

I’m happy to accept it as an opportunity to recognize that along the way, there have been many persons encouraging, challenging, appreciating me, and, in relationship with them, awakening within me gifts of the Spirit strengthening me to become more of the human being the Creator intended.

I’m thinking of family – esp. Glenys Huws, my beloved life partner, and our sons & their loved ones, and my brother John (MDiv 6T6)- like Glenys and me a graduate of this College;

I think of professors like John Webster Grant, Doug Jay, Earl Lautenschlager (EMM), Leonhart Goppelt (UHamburg ), Jean-Marc Chappuis (UGeneva), Don Brundage (OISE), Gregory Baum and Ernie Skublics (St. Mike's/TST) and others.

I think of colleagues in various settings of ministry: Yvonne Stewart & other members of our 50-year Harry Birch Society peer support group; colleagues over the years like Kathy Toivanen, Ross White, Dick Davidson, Howie Mills, Mary Sanderson, Albion Wright, Jordan Sullivan, David Hallman, Marion Best, Pierre Goldberger, Garth Mundle, Jim Sinclair, Anne Squire, Hal Llewellyn, Rob Dalgleish, Bev Robinson, Isaac Kamta, Peggy Monague, Carmen Lansdowne, Kofi Hope...... – generous sisters and brothers sharing their accrued wisdom and modelling informed courage.

I think of many participants in congregations I served in Toronto, Mississauga, Vancouver, and on Manitoba mission fields (Whiteshell and St. Rose du Lac). They risked venturing with me to discern and to envision what the Holy One was calling us to become and to do in our time and place.

I think of many goodwill neighbours who generously linked arms for mending the hurting world – Rabbi Chuck Feinberg, Tim Ellis, Judith Rutledge, Martin Gerwin, Carole Goyette, Stan Beardy, Imam Nedzad Hafizovic, Peter Shepherd, Arliene Botnick, Rabbi Larry Englander, Russ Ford.

Apologies to those I have not named. To them all – named here and not, I say “Thank you! Thank God! For walking with me on the Way of faithfulness. In my mind and heart, I share with you all this award for the Good News miracles and blessings we have been privileged together to co-create in the Spirit of Christ. I am blessed!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

BIG THANKS TO ALL WHO SENT CONGRATULATORY MESSAGES UPON READING OR HEARING OF THIS AWARD. YOUR ENCOURAGING WORDS WARMED MY HEART AND CONFIRMED MY VOCATION. Harry

The Pope's Apology

Thu, 14 Apr 2022 19:44:30 GMT

What Kind of Apology Is Needed?

Pope Francis' April 1st, 2022 Statement

It is indeed “good news” that the Indigenous Peoples delegation felt some relief and consolation from the words Pope Francis spoke in the Vatican on April 1 ^st . There are never enough words of regret, sorrow, shame, and guilt Indigenous Peoples deserve to hear about the way they have experienced from “contact,” aka colonial imperialism, by European explorers, settlers, and religious leaders over the last five-plus centuries.

Pope Francis spoke with heartfelt sincerity to the many “stories of the suffering, hardship, discriminations and various forms of abuse that some of you experienced, particularly in the residential schools. It is chilling to think of determined efforts to instill a sense of inferiority, to rob people of their cultural identity, to sever their roots, and to consider all the personal and social effects that this continues to entail: unresolved traumas that have become intergenerational traumas.” ( https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-pope-francis-apology-residential-schools-full-text/ , printed April 2, 1922 Globe & Mail, p. A5)

The moving statement included the term “evil”, which made the Pope feel “indignation” and “shame”.

“I feel shame – sorrow and shame – for the role that a number of Catholics, particularly those with educational responsibilities, have had in all these things that wounded you, in the abuses you suffered and in the lack of respect shown for your identity, your culture and even your spiritual values. All these things are contrary to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. For the deplorable conduct of those members of the Catholic Church, I ask for God’s forgiveness, and I want to say to you with all my heart: I am very sorry. And I join my brothers, the Canadian bishops, in asking your pardon.”

For all the sincerity and humility of Pope Francis’ statement, I give thanks as a fellow Christian. For his clear understanding that in the Residential Schools and over the 500 year since contact, disrespect and subjugation experienced at the hands of Catholic Settlers were contrary to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, I applaud the Pope’s unvarnished candor and compassion.

What's Missing?

Nevertheless, as a Christian and religious leader, I am not satisfied – though my feelings are far less important than the fact Indigenous sisters and brothers can feel comforted and blessed by Francis’ statement.

What troubles me, however, is that in customary fashion, the Pope has attributed “the evil” to “a number of Catholics” with “deplorable conduct”. Roman Catholic Church leaders tend to lay the blame for these and other sins (e.g. priests sexually abusing children) on the shoulders of individuals, but they fail to acknowledge the systemic nature of the “evil” being considered. Generally, they fail to attribute this “evil” to the institution – the Roman Catholic Church itself - and its teaching, resulting in avoidance of the systemic dimensions of the "evil".

Papal Bull Inter Caetera 1493

We need to remember that it was the Vatican as the principal authoritative voice of western Christianity, which, in the 15 ^th century, set the directions for what happened to Indigenous Peoples on Turtle Island – the Americas - in the following centuries. Pope Alexander VI, doubtless seeking to solve political problems among competitive kings of the Holy Roman Empire, issued the Bull “ Inter Caetera ” on May 4, 1493, now referred to as “The Doctrine of Discovery”. This Bull, plus the “ terrae nullius ” concept (transl.: no one’s lands ) were pronouncements cloaked in the Church’s presumed divine authority. They delegated to Christian monarchs the right to claim lands “discovered” by their explorers. Incredibly, these “legitimations” still form the de facto base upon which the dominance of Settler Colonial government in Canada is sustained. The government has not formally repudiated this legal base.

If this wasn’t enough presumption, the Vatican also issued the racist and intolerant mandate to religious leaders to convert to the “true faith” indigenous peoples, "saving" them from their barbarian and pagan – sub-human - ways.

Systemic Sin and Evil

These were not simply the actions of some “members of the Catholic Church”. These were decisions and policies promulgated by the Church’s institutional hierarchy claiming divine authority to empower Settler Colonial governments and Christian churches in their relationship with Indigenous Peoples. At the core of this fraught relationship, “evil” were systemic and institutional legitimations, corrupting all that was entailed in the “contact” between Colonial Settlers and Indigenous Peoples.

This systemic evil adversely affected both Settler and Indigenous peoples. Settlers internalized the racist superiority and illegitimate authority, by which Settler Colonial paternalistic attitudes, dependency creating policies, and assimilation strategies appeared “justified”.

For Indigenous Peoples, it meant 500 years of disrespect for their humanity, identity, spiritual values, and rights, especially their rights to the land – their mother and home. The consequence of systemic evil was subjugation and dependency, dispossession and plundering of land resulting in poverty, abuse, intergenerational trauma, and attempted genocide.

“This was more than abuses by a few individuals,” said Union of BC Indian Chiefs president Grand Chief Stewart Phillip. “It was, in its entirety, a massive human rights violation and part of a systemic and institutionalized attempt to destroy our communities that left deep intergenerational emotional damage and harm that continues to date.” (cited in The Tyee, “The Pope’s Apology Must Come with Real Change” by Jackie Wong, 4 April 2022 – on line)

More Than Individuals

Settler Colonial peoples, in general, and Settler Colonial Christians of which I am one, in particular – all have benefited and still benefit from the heritage of ancestors, and therefore, we all have much to confess about the privileged position we have occupied and still occupy in Canadian society.

The Spirit is calling us to repent and share in the penitential work we must do toward a new relationship with Indigenous Peoples and a healthier Canadian society. An apology by itself is not enough; nor is the symbolic acknowledgement of Indigenous lands enough. The repudiation of the Doctrine of Discovery and terrae nullius is essential and shared efforts toward a more just and equitable sharing of land and resource is indispensable.

So, for me, a personal apology for the Residential Schools saga by Pope Francis can only be considered as a partial – albeit significant – step for the Roman Catholic Church. But it doesn’t do justice to “the evil” Indigenous Peoples have suffered.

The Churches

The Roman Catholic Church has been slow to assume its full responsibility, Pope Francis’ statement, notwithstanding. The other Christian Churches involved in the Residential Schools debacle have gone a long way towards taking responsibility for the “evil” they participated in. The Anglican Church, the United Church, the Presbyterian Church through their governance structures have all issued apologies and renunciations of the Doctrine of Discovery and the terrae nullius concept. They have also sought, consistent with the Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, tangible ways and means beyond words to live out their apologies, including financial compensation agreed to in the settlement agreement of 2007 involving the Government of Canada, the Churches, and residential school survivors – all with the intention of nurturing a new relationship with Indigenous Peoples.

In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission called all the Churches to develop ongoing education strategies “to ensure that their respective congregations learn about their church’s role in colonization, the history and legacy of residential schools, and why apologies to former residential school students, their families, and communities were necessary” (Call to Action 59) . Educating leaders of faith groups should involve Indigenous elders so that Indigenous spirituality and history are respected ( Action 60 ). And permanent funding should be established for Indigenous Peoples for healing and reconciliation, to foster culture and language, to enhance education and relationship building projects for Indigenous people.

Call to Action #58, however, specifically addresses the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church. It calls for an apology issued by the Pope “for the Roman Catholic Church’s role in the spiritual, cultural, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse of First Nation, Inuit, and Metis children in Catholic-run schools. We call for an apology to be similar to the 2010 apology to Irish victims of abuse and to occur within one year of the issuing of this Report and to be delivered by the Pope in Canada.” (my emphasis)

The Irish apology was issued in a lengthy pastoral letter by Pope Benedict XVI to the Irish people and Church and especially to victims of abuse. Significantly, it addresses Church authorities and religious leaders in official roles in the Church. It outlines in detail many penances and reforms needed to give substance to an apology. The quotes following are from the letter found at: (https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/letters/2010/documents/hf_ben-xvi_let_20100319_church-ireland.html )

“ I have been deeply disturbed by the information which has come to light regarding the abuse of children and vulnerable young people by members of the Church in Ireland, particularly by priests and religious. I can only share in the dismay and the sense of betrayal that so many of you have experienced on learning of these sinful and criminal acts and the way Church authorities in Ireland dealt with them .”

The Letter identifies “… among the contributing factors…: inadequate procedures for determining the suitability of candidates for the priesthood and the religious life; insufficient human, moral, intellectual and spiritual formation in seminaries and novitiates; a tendency in society to favour the clergy and other authority figures; and a misplaced concern for the reputation of the Church and the avoidance of scandal, resulting in failure to apply existing canonical penalties and to safeguard the dignity of every person. Urgent action is needed to address these factors, which have had such tragic consequences in the lives of victims and their families, and have obscured the light of the Gospel to a degree that not even centuries of persecution succeeded in doing.” “To the victims of abuse and their families: You have suffered grievously, and I am truly sorry. I know that nothing can undo the wrong you have endured. Your trust has been betrayed and your dignity has been violated.”

The Church's Sin

Benedict acknowledges the sins of individuals, but goes beyond that to address Church authorities and the Church in Ireland itself for their collective responsibility in this abuse of people and the need to confess and for the Church to be reborn to new ways of being faithful. “I am praying earnestly that, by God’s grace, the wounds afflicting so many individuals and families may be healed and that the Church in Ireland may experience a season of rebirth and spiritual renewal.” “ …The Church in Ireland must first acknowledge before the Lord and before others the serious sins committed against defenseless children. Such an acknowledgement, accompanied by sincere sorrow for the damage caused to these victims and their families, must lead to a concerted effort to ensure the protection of children from similar crimes in the future.” (my emphasis)

What Will Pope Francis Bring To Canada?

In August 2018, Pope Francis re-affirmed his predecessor’s apology “for the crimes committed”, the negligence of church authorities in dealing with these crimes, and the suffering of women and children. He knows what Benedict was willing to risk saying.

No news has been published about the when and what of Pope Francis’ summer visit to Canada. We don’t know whether it will go beyond what he has already said personally; will he speak authoritatively as Benedict did as the Pastor of the universal Church; repudiate the theological and ecclesiological doctrine that legitimized the evil; acknowledge the systemic nature of the crimes and sins against Canada’s Indigenous Peoples; add to his words, actions of contrition, including financial, and a plan for the renewal and healing of the Church and its relationship with Indigenous Peoples; launch a theological revolution that calls for more faithful Spirit-led observance of Jesus' Golden Rule and Great Commandment?

I believe that Pope Francis has the spiritual and moral fibre to move in such directions, but whether he is willing to risk bravely or whether he can, considering political forces in the Church that still adhere to the Constantinian, imperialistic, triumphant, male-dominated version of Christianity – we’ll have to wait and see.

Whatever Pope Francis can do, it will be long overdue. It is high time for confession, repudiation of false teaching, penance, and acts of contrition that move the Roman Catholic Church closer toward a shared pan-Christian Canadian Settler Peoples' understanding that we have sinned.

We need to confess and receive the Spirit’s redeeming blessing of forgiveness to free us to pursue just and respectful relations with Indigenous Peoples. I pray that it might even enable these sisters and brothers of the one global human family to forgive what has been so unjustly laid upon them over the centuries.

[For more reflection on this theme visit my blog post: https://www.minister.ca/apologies-and-reconciliation]

Cities: Wholly Destroyed - Holy

Thu, 24 Mar 2022 14:52:36 GMT

The Destruction of Cities in Ukraine

De Verwoeste Stad (The Destroyed City), Rotterdam Memorial by Ossip Zadkine.

Photo credit: Comanici, P., 2017. Source: city of Rotterdam.

Rotterdam 1940

The brutal bombing of Rotterdam on the Maas River on May 14, 1940 was Hitler’s unprovoked villainous attack carried out by one hundred bomber airplanes. Creating a sea of flames and rubble, about 600 acres of this historic urban centre were destroyed, killing 900 residents, injuring far more, and obliterating schools hospitals, banks, department stores, consulates, museums, churches, cinemas, 517 restaurants and cafés and thousands of homes.

In Westminster, Winston Churchill condemned this criminal act saying, “the peaceful city of Rotterdam [has been] the scene of a massacre as hideous and brutal as anything in the Thirty Years War (1618-1648).”

To commemorate this airborne downpour of terror, sculptor Ossip Zadkine (1888-1867), born in Belarus but living in Paris, created “De Verwoeste Stad” – The Destroyed City – a six-metre tall, monumental bronze sculpture formally dedicated on May 14, 1953 at the city’s 1940 Square. With arms towards heaven and a soundless howl of raging grief, this Picasso-esque human figure with a gaping hole where the heart should be, memorializes the place where the heart of Rotterdam (and the Dutch nation) was ripped out in the bombardment.

Hitler’s desired outcome was realized – for a time. The Netherlands capitulated within a week of fighting. The royal family and government fled into exile in London and Ottawa, and five years of Nazi occupation, oppression, and increasing terror followed. By the time of Liberation Day on May 5 ^th , 1945 over 237,000 Netherlanders had lost their lives, including 104,000 Jews.

[see Coates, Ben: Why the Dutch Are Different”; London, Nicholas Brealey Publisher. 2015 p. 137f. and Henri van der Zee, The Hunger Winter. London, U of Nebraska Press.1982, p.305].

Other Cities

The world has had many years to reflect on the catastrophic obliteration of Rotterdam, but also on the many other cities that are noted for being destroyed without mercy – Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad) on the Volga River, London on the Thames and Liverpool on Mersey, Dresden and Hamburg on the Elbe, Cuernevaca on the Oka, Baghdad on the Tigris, Aleppo on the Queiq (or Aleppo River), Hiroshima on the Kyuota, Gaza on the Mediterranean Sea, and too many more.

Ukraine's Cities

Have we learned anything? It appears not, now as we witness this annihilating evil being carried out yet again in Ukraine. The bombs and missiles of Russia’s military do their worst on orders of the terrorist Putin and his Siloviki (strongmen), the intimate sociopathic circle actively and mercilessly adding new names to the annihilated cities list.

Random and targeted acts of murderous destruction are delivered to Mariupoll (430K), Kharkiv (1.4M), Liviv (720K), Kherson (280K), and, of course, Kyiv (2.8M) and who knows where else. Discriminating military target from civilian is yet again on pause – criminal acts of war - in the frenzy to avenge, to destroy, to kill, to annihilate persistent patriots – young, old, and in between, along with vital institutions like hospitals, schools, government, and churches, industries, and the nation itself.

Cities are not the only places of culture, religion, education, industry, and community. But because of their population density, they are the largest producers of these human activities. So, for murderous war mongers they provide a target to large to pass up.

Putin knows it. Like Hitler and Stalin he rages against and persecutes all who resist his imperial fantasies, launching all manner of destruction to tear the heart out of his supposed “enemy”, to kill the spirit. There are no limits to his evil - not even considering nuclear and biological weapons.

The United Nations Development Program on March 16 ^th , 2022 reported that according to government estimates, at least $100 billion worth of infrastructure, buildings, roads, bridges, hospitals, schools, and other physical assets have been destroyed. The war has caused 50% of Ukrainian businesses to shut down completely, while the other half are forced to operate at well below capacity. The hole is big and the report doesn't even count the lives lost, maimed, or humans dispossessed of home and hearth.

Heartfelt Resistance

But both at home in Russia and in Ukraine, hearts and spirits are not capitulating to Putin's merciless invasion. His domestic opponents keep demonstrating, resisting, sending messages on social media, listening (at great risk) to unauthorized voices! The truth of young Russian P.O.W.s and Alexei Navalny flows like water wherever there are holes and spaces. Another sentencing by trained seal-like judges adds another nine years imprisonment to his prison exile publicly revealing the need for integrity and honour in the system.

Putin’s “little brothers” in Ukraine have dared to denounce “big brother's” terror, debunk and fight his imperial designs. They have refused to surrender Mariupol and any other city he is busily annihilating. Ukraine has, paradoxically, gained from its paranoid enemy the vital gift of popular unity and a resurgent love of home on distinctively native land.

The United Nations General Assembly has spoken to condemn Putin’s unprovoked invasion and terror. Will it say and do more when it next meets? Will the Security Council's vetoes ever be vetoed? Will the General Assembly raise R2P – Responsibility to Protect doctrine – to save Ukraine from Putin's vicious, toxic potion to restore Russian subjugation or to erase the nation city by city.

R2P is a version of “love your neighbour as yourself” and requires nations not only to care about the way global neighbours are treated, but also to take action to stop criminality like Putin’s Ukrainian invasion. Will that commandment ever be implemented?

Divine Intention for Cities

The Bible holds before people of faith a vision of the divine intention for cities It is a particular Good News message for the cities mentioned above, located on a river or sea; all of which have suffered unbelievably. The raging howl of the Zadkine figure can be recognized in every one of these cities and too many others. The heart must be restored and the Divine Spirit, who has suffered with all who dwell(t) in each of these cities, must be heard calling for shalom, salaam, mir, peace, vrede, Friede, paix, heddwych, heiwa!!!

Revelation 22:1-5

“Then the angel showed me the river of life-giving water, clear as crystal, which issued from the throne of God and of the Lamb and flowed down the middle of the streets of the city. On either side of the river grew the trees of life which produce fruit twelve times a year, once each month; their leaves serve as medicine to heal the nations. There will no longer be any curse.

The throne of the Almighty and of the Lamb will be there, and God’s subjects will serve faithfully. They will see the Most High face to face, and bear God’s name on their foreheads. Night will be no more. They will need no light from lamps or the sun, for our God will give them light, and they will reign forever.”

[The Inclusive Bible translation, Boston, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc., 2007]

May this vision of the holy city come closer to reality in our time and deliver us all from the evil that causes humans to create iconic memorials to humanity’s persistent inhumanity.

Sunflower Reflections

Sat, 12 Mar 2022 21:52:27 GMT

Let the Sunshine in!

Vincent van Gogh and I share a love for sunflowers. It has nothing to do, I think, with the fact that both of us were born in The Netherlands. Maybe something to do with the fact that both his father and mine were ministers of the Dutch Reformed tradition. Unlikely! But probably some inklings to do with theology - something about Gospel and fecundity; something about generosity and joy; something about rooted in earth, but aspiring to more Who knows?!

I'm glad that Ukrainians have a love for sunflowers as well. The photo above comes not from Ukraine - its setting is in the Almaguin Highlands near Powassan, Ontario. It wouldn't be hard to imagine these being fields of sunflowers dotting Ukraine's central and eastern steppes.

Sunflowers come in various sizes. I especially like the bigger ones The yellow petals radiate light and joy like the sun. But they also follow the course of the sun - cleaving to its brightness, its warmth, its generativity. They seem to claim the relationship for a much larger purpose that just being in the now.

One reason I especially like big sunflowers is for their seeds. Sure, they're vital for cooking oil, but also fun and healthy to eat. What would a baseball game be without chawing away at sunflower seeds (a lot better that chawing tobacco, I'm told!!).

But more than that, each sunflower seed multiplies its own kind 20-fold, 50-fold, 100-fold and the big ones produce far more. Every flower hands on to next seed generations a resilient and worthy heritage: the capacity to produce more flowers, more bright petals, yet more seeds to overcome earth's grayness and discordant ways, to fill the earth with light and joy, with luminous hope of transcending mortality. (See William Blake's poem, "Ah, Sunflower.")

There is Gospel in sunflowers - a God-given sign for the healing of the human spirit and a potion for the healing of nations discerning its Gospel truth.

I'd like to think this might have been factored into Ukraine's choice of national flower. It is certainly being factored into support for Ukraine and its people as they are terrorized by Putin's killing machines and obedient soldiers destroying homes, hospitals, schools, and murdering people.

Sunflower seeds were the core of an elderly Ukrainian woman's testimony to Russian soldiers as she handed them seeds and exclaimed, "at least sunflowers will grow when you all die and lie here."

In London, protesters have been weaving sunflowers into the iron-curtain fence of the Russian embassy.

All who have a patch of earth and who deplore Putin's terror might plant an excess of sunflowers as ongoing signs both of resistance and of the divine intention. Symbolic for sure - richly so!. More "practical" life- giving and -saving responses are well known and await the action of all who condemn Putin's evil and terror.

Forgive?

Tue, 08 Mar 2022 18:40:43 GMT

Treat Others the Way You Want to Be Treated

As Putin’s Russia drags the world toward the abyss of a third world war, people committed to just peace and actively engaged in activities to block powers resorting to warfare can only be discouraged.

Powerful bully states fabricate reasons why war is unavoidable and send their bombs , missiles, and bullets into building and homes, and into lives of children, adults, and elders (destroying much of the natural world as “collateral damage”). There is a history.

The USA explodes Iraq and leads obedient “allies” to more war in Afghanistan and can’t rid itself of Guantanamo as an accusing symbol of its deadly hubris; China has done its vicious work in Tibet, carries out its policy of cultural genocide in concentration camps filled with Uyghurs, while setting the stage for an eventual invasion of Taiwan; Myanmar burns villages to force Rohingya peasants from their homes across the border to Bangladesh; and now we have Russian invasion – again.

Michael Ignatieff helps us remember that Russian has long, historic experience in subjugating neighbouring peoples. [“History Got Us Here” article in Globe & Mail, March 5, Opinion Section pp. 1, 6-7. See his new book: "Finding Solace in Dark Times"]

In my personal memory, about 70 years of history confirm Russia’s unwillingness to have “free”, self-determining states on its borders. In the 1940s, Finland lost a good part of its land to Russia and Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were just absorbed into the Russian hegemony as “republics” but all subject to the Soviet Communist Party, personalized by the sadist Joseph Stalin and his brutal KGB to ensure that no “alien” influences might tempt the vassal states to wander from their totalitarian hegemony. Soviet-occupied East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and to a lesser extent, Yugoslavia, came under Russian military and political control – the Iron Curtain, the Warsaw Pact, the Berlin Wall – the Bear hugs eastern Europe.

Since then efforts to lift the Curtain and remove the Wall have cost rivers of human blood. In 1956, Hungary’s bravest fought fiercely to defang the Bear's tanks; in 1968, the Czechoslovakia's “spring” - the flowering of democratic aspirations - was assaulted and crushed; in 1981, in Warsaw Lech Walesa’s shipyard co-workers were disarmed on Russia's orders to Polish tank crews. NATO and democratic nations watched as tyranny triumped.

A new possibility for more humane relations with neighbours came with Perestroika in 1989 when the Berlin Wall became chips of concrete, serving as souvenirs of totalitarianism for many-a home (including mine). The Soviet “Republics” discovered new possibilities of self-determination. Regrettably Russia itself couldn’t achieve the transition into democracy. Putin with his well-honed KGB skills was pressed into service. The Kremlin with its vast political, military, and economic opportunities became his. Cronies and sycophants "stewarded" the wealth and Putin retained the levers of enforcement power.

Chechnya and Georgia were the first to lose self-determination. All the other “republics” felt the pressure. Many had a new connection to western Europe and NATO to protect their freedom. Ukraine, still unconnected became the mania of the megalomanical quasi-Czar. Donbas was the testing ground, and Crimea the prize in 2014. And now Ukraine is the innocent victim of criminal assault. A morally-bankrupt effort to destroy the state and subjugate the people into “peaceful” relatives of their Russian big brothers is the vicious goal.

It reminds me of the Nazi’s wishful thinking as they invaded The Netherlands in May 1940. It took but five days then to force a capitulation of the Dutch armed forces. To avoid arrest of the Queen and government, the Royal family and most of the government cabinet fled to safety in London and some beyond to Ottawa. The departure was initially regarded as a sign of defeat, but eventually the government-in-exile came to represent freedom and provided opportunity for Queen Wilhelmina to speak freely via Radio Oranje to the people as “Mother of the Country”, The free monarch inspired the Resistance to take on the occupiers.

The Nazis had the vain belief that the Dutch, with their National Socialist Alliance (Nazi sympathizers of some 50,000 members), would just gradually come to amenable terms with the new regime. Hitler reportedly was convinced that “the Dutch had never lost their good qualities and that with a little persuasion they would soon discover that their future was in a strong Europe – his Europe.” (Henri A. van der Zee, The Hunger Winter – Occupied Holland 1944-1945. Lincoln NE, U of Nebraska Press. 1982. P.99)

Ten days after the capitulation, Hitler appointed Arthur Seyss-Inquart, a loyal Austrian lawyer who had helped Hitler’s efforts to implement the Anschluss (annexation) of Austria to the Third Reich. In his inaugural speech to the Dutch parliament, he “explained that the Germans had been forced to invade Holland in order to prevent it becoming an Allied base. He emphasized the communal Germanic blood that made the Dutch such good sailors and the Germans such good soldiers, and he finally assured the Dutch that Germany had not come "to enslave a nation or destroy it, nor take away its liberty.” (idem.)

Lies! By the time liberation came to the whole nation on May 5 ^th , 1945, “the persuasion” had been experienced as bloody tyranny for five years. Hundreds of thousands had been worked to death in forced labour, or killed in battle, executed in reprisal or as punishments, and Jews, gays and lesbians, Roma, and others minorities simply murdered for being who they were. The Netherlands had discovered what’s involved when a barbaric megalomaniacal dictator employs political and military forces to subjugate, plunder, and wipe out opposition.

In Ukraine we see the pattern the potential of this pattern being repeated. Putin sees Ukraine as part of the Slavic family – an unwelcome assessment in most Ukrainian households, I’m sensing. Ukrainians do not seem inclined to include Putin in their family. His version of “family-life” is to wield power and control as the autocrat who dictates to and controls by force Slavic peoples, as Hitler claimed for his Aryan family!

Do we again have to revert to full-scale war to stop the evil invader? Will the multi-lateral international bodies be able to effect Russia’s disempowerment? The General Assembly has spoken clearly in judgement. But to whom does that give license to act? No one!? Then the United Nations needs to rethink its operations and the place of the Security Council. Will the International Criminal Court be able to do anything, or will that also take a decade after Putin’s reign ends?

As a fellow human being and as a Christian, I watch the aircraft bombing apartment buildings and missiles destroying village homes; I hear the naval guns blow up ships and coastal facilities; I see massively armed convoys of military might (blessedly being resisted by courageous Ukrainian warriors) trying to blast their way into the capital; I see parents weeping with their children while dads go to war and mums & kids flee to God knows where; I hear Putin spreading copious lies about phantom Nazis in Kyiv and claiming to purge the capital of them – presumably also of the Jewish President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who stands as a stark contrast with moral integrity and authenticity over against the coward who separates himself by long tables from his cringing “advisors” - the epitome of a Nazi totalitarian sociopath.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the protestant German theologian who was executed by the Nazis just before the end of World War II, wrestled with the question of judging and acting to stop evil. In his “Letters and Papers from Prison” – his prison diary as letters – he can’t, understandably, reflect directly on the events of July 20, 1944 when a group of very courageous officers and civilians including Bonhoeffer conspired to place a bomb near Hitler where it exploded and – disastrously – only wounded the dictator. But Bonhoeffer without guilt can say, in suggestive code, “…I am grateful and content with the past and the present. … above all may God lead us to Himself.” (sic)

When faced with the suffering and grief of so many innocents in Ukraine caused by the illegitimate, amoral, self-interested, psychopathic actions of a totalitarian tyrant, it may be hard not to justify conspiratorial action to end his reign of terror.

“Love your neighbour as yourself”; "Treat others the way you want to be treated” - these text bubble up to remind us who and whose we are . But “who is my neighbour?” is the eternal question and is there a priority order?

If I were possessed by a sociopathic killer demon and driven by amoral lust for power and greed at the cost and suffering of countless other “neighbours,” I think a faint part of me – the part of the Spirit endowing me and all humans with gifts and fruits – just might, in a vulnerable moment, make me believe that my assassination would be justified.

I also believe that the righteous Holy One would convict my assassin(s) of murder, but embrace them with tearful lamentation and steadfast faithfulness, and sentence them “to be loved by Me forever” for defending My human family and Creation.....

PEACE, SHALOM, SALAAM, MIR, VREDE, FRIEDE, PAIX, PAX – for God’s sake - the One immersed in suffering humanity and groaning Creation.

Criminal Invasion of Ukraine

Sat, 26 Feb 2022 17:32:31 GMT

Putin's Criminal Action

“There is no purgatory for war criminals like Putin – they go straight to HELL,” states the Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba to the media reporters. “Hideous and barbarous,” is Boris Johnson’s description of Putin’s orders to the Russian armed forces – air, sea, land, and cyber assaults against the people and nation of Ukraine.

I refuse to call this “war.” The unprovoked and unwarranted assault on Ukraine is like a house invasion by a swarming gang of well-armed thugs following orders of their criminal boss. Calling it a “war” gives it more contradictory integrity than this crime warrants.

Putin is living out his fantasy via the young armed personnel and their officers in the Russian forces. He wants to restore Imperial Russia and the extensive reach of the erstwhile Soviet Union. He has efficiently and brutally controlled the information media; he has virtually wiped out organized opposition and killed or tried to kill opponents. He regained Russian subjugation of Georgia, Chechnya, Crimea, Donbas' Lugansk and Donetsk regions, and now he not only wants to gobble up the rest of Ukraine - effect regime change - but also wipe out the nation and culture. And if he achieves the regime change there, can there be any doubt he will press the case in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia by sending 5 ^th columnist Russians into those democracies? And where else?

History should have taught us. Hitler’s 1938 takeover of the Sudetenland is a model that tyrants seem to follow assuming impunity. Xi Jingping eyeing Taiwan wants Putin to succeed so he can follow suit, continue the pursuit of cultural genocide in Uighur regions, after effectively absorbing Tibet into Han control. Myanmar’s military expulsion of Rohingya people to Bangladesh is yet another example of totalitarian control.

Ukrainians have historic reasons to feel threatened by Putin's Russian bear and its criminal leader. In the 1930s millions of Ukrainians died because Stalin, the then murderous dictator, forced collectivization on the farming people and starved them into submission. Then came Hitler’s forces to “liberate” the people for Nazi occupation and brutalization. Any wonder that Ukrainian people are willing to die defending themselves against the imposition of a Putin-controlled puppet government pursuing Moscow’s interests at the expense of Ukraine’s people and resources. Courageous President Zelensky understands his people’s fears and their aspirations and there is little room in that vision for an imperial Russian brute and criminal thuggery.

There may even be a theological or better, ecclesiological dimension to this criminal action. Diana Butler Bass’s article suggests that Putin wants to top off his criminal murder of Ukraine by replacing Kyiv as a key centre of Orthodox Christianity and replacing it with the Russian Orthodox Church as part of his Imperial vision of political, financial, social, military, and religious domination. See her article here: https://dianabutlerbass.substack.com/p/next-year-in-kyiv?utm_source=url

We can all imagine how Putin is influenced by Jesus’ Gospel! Not…! But if he can wrap an ecclesiastical cloak over his dagger and imperial pretensions, then why not! The Russian Orthodox Church and its leadership in Moscow have no great record of fostering justice and abundant life for the people of Russia. The 1917 revolution was as much against the Czar as against the supportive ecclesiastical hierarchy. The prelates seem to be going along with the idea of replacing Kyiv and Constantinople as centres of eastern Orthodoxy with a Moscow-centred ecclesiology, doubtless accountable to the Kremlin.

My article has a bellicose tone – I admit it. But there is no doubt in my mind that very strong action is called for in the face of Putin's dominating vision and criminal action .

I’m confirmed in the need for strength in this situation by the story Jesus tells in Luke 16 (verses 19-31 – The story of Lazarus and Dives, the Rich/Powerful Man” (the man is often called Dives, which is Latin for “rich man”.) Lazarus has very little: homeless, eating food that falls on the floor under tables and dogs licking his sores. When Lazarus dies, angels come to carry him "home" - away to be with Abraham, the father of the faith.

When rich man dies, he is buried and left in Hades, tormented, agonizing in flames. He begs Abraham to have mercy on him by sending Lazarus with some cooling water. But says Abraham, the chasm between Dives and them is too great – “no one can cross from there to us.” Even pleading for his siblings’ salvation doesn’t work for Dives, because they too wouldn’t list even “if someone rises from the dead.”

Says a commentator: “The moral quality of Lazarus is passed over to illustrate the fatal deficiency in the life of the other and the impossibility of changing his condemnation.” [The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha, 1991. P.108NT] Foreign Minister Kuleba may have had more biblical insight than he realized. Perhaps he too had read Jesus’ Gospel story and realized that without repentance or turning away from evil and criminal ways people like Hitler, Stalin, and other bullying, criminally-driven autocrats like Putin can only experience condemnation – in history and beyond.

We can imagine that the people of Russian will come to realize that Putin is not their friend, benefactor, restorer, or saviour. He is a rapacious, greed-driven, power-hungry criminal dictator, whom the Russian people need to disempower and bring to repentance and conversion. That is my hope for the conclusion of this violent invasion. But I fear that only death will come from all this evil.

By strength I do not mean violence. I’m not proposing armed, declared warfare, although I must admit that my “reptilian” self would take me in that direction, but the divine Spirit holds me back from that impulse. But I am supporting every effort – economic, social, political, theological, psychological, digital, moral, etc. - to undermine the Russian criminal dictator, his obedient military leaders, and his oligarchy of sycophants [who are his arms-length trustees for the vast wealth Putin has stolen from the Russian people.]

Everything!! possible within the boundary of non-violence must be done to disempower and stop the criminal sociopathic bully ordering Russian forces to blow up, murder, erase, and dominate Ukraine – people and nation. The United Nations Security Council, crippled by the Russian veto, may not be able to act expeditiously and effectively - perhaps the General Assembly can, but governments and peoples around the world need to express their revulsion and commit to ongoing, imaginative resistance against this barbarous criminal Putin action. May his day in the International Criminal Court come soon.

God by your Spirit turn the forces of evil away from their criminal pursuits and restore the ways of peace, based on justice, truth, and the aspirations, yearnings, and hope of Ukraine's people. AMEN

Indigenous & Settler Peoples

Thu, 10 Feb 2022 19:31:00 GMT

Transforming Canada’s Indigenous / Settler Relationship

Toward Just and Peaceful Coexistence: A Proposal

Dear Reader:

This Proposal is being circulated widely after much consultation with many – Indigenous and Settler folks – who often asked, “what can we do?”. We hope that Proposal may start conversations in your personal and professional circles or organizations and lead to action. Action might include: feedback to our Group; sharing the Proposal in educational events; endorse and commend the direction and goals of the Proposal to public leaders; correspondence with leaders in society, including MPs, MLA/MPPs, municipal councillors; conversations with neighbours – Settler and Indigenous, etc. We encourage you to read the Proposal and some of the resources pointed to in the document.

Responses to the Proposal can be sent either to a Group member listed below or to “administration” (see below). Your interest in and support for the Proposal is welcome. Thank you!

Action Group for the 1% Indigenous Peoples Human Development Fund:

Stan Beardy – stanbeardy@yahoo.ca Muskrat Dam First Nation, NW Ontario, where he learned to hunt, fish, live and work in the ways of Oji-Cree ancestors. A life-long leader and strong advocate for First Nation rights at local, regional, and national levels, Stan has served as Chief of Muskrat Dam for a total of 15 years, Nishnawbe-Aski Nation Grand Chief for 12 years, and Ontario Regional Chief for 3 years. He has represented First Nation interests at the United Nations and in other international forums. Now retired, he is an advisor to many First Nation and non-First Nation entities. His diverse accomplishments in politics, social justice, education, and business, were recognized with an Honorary PhD from the University of South Florida at a conference on ancient cultures and traditions in Haridwar, India in 2012. Nipissing University conferred an Honorary PhD in Education in 2011.

Laverne Jacobs – vbjacobs@gmail.com Walpole Island First Nation on Bkejwanong Territory, ON. Anglican priest, Laverne has served Walpole Island’s United and Anglican parishes in shared ministry for 12 years. For 9 years he was coordinator of Native Ministries in the Anglican General Synod office and for 7 years as coordinator of Aboriginal Ministries for the United Church of Canada General Council.

Maggie Dieter – mldieter2018@gmail.com Kitchener, ON. Resides in the traditional territory of the Neutral, Anishinaabeg and Haudenosaunee Peoples; Cree nation from the Treaty 4 Area (Peepeekisis First Nation, SK); mother, grandmother, and a United Church of Canada (UCC) minister currently serving in New Hamburg, ON and formerly, as Executive Minister for Indigenous Ministries and Justice (UCC).

A H Harry Oussoren – ahharryo370@gmail.com ("administration") Ottawa, resides in unceded Algonquin territory. Dutch-Canadian settler; father & grandfather; retired ordained pastor of faith & mission communities in Vancouver, Toronto, Mississauga; former Executive Minister in the General Council of The UCC; Co-initiator of community InterFaith Organizations and Fests. Blog: Pilgrim Praxis at www.minister.ca

~~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Transforming Canada’s Indigenous / Settler Relationship

Toward Just and Peaceful Coexistence: A Proposal

A. A Story –– Two-Row Wampum – Gä•sweñta’

[thanks to the Onondaga Nation for this account, slightly edited: https://www.onondaganation.org/culture/wampum/two-row-wampum-belt-guswenta/ ]

Among Turtle Island’s many stories, this Onondaga parable offers keys to energize all in Canada into action creating a relationship of fairness between Indigenous and Settler peoples.

In the early 17 ^th century, the Haudenosaunee peoples and Dutch settlers discovered much about each other. An agreement was made as to how they were to treat each other and live together. Each of their ways would be shown in the purple rows running the length of a wampum* belt. “In one row is a ship with our White Brothers’ ways: in the other a canoe with our ways. Each will travel down the river of life side by side. Neither will attempt to steer the other’s vessel.” [*”Wampum” — comes from a Narragansett (Algonquian language family) word meaning a string of shell beads.]

The Haudenosaunee and the Settlers agreed on three principles to make this treaty last. The first was friendship; the Haudenosaunee and their white brothers will live in friendship. The second principle is peace; there will be peace between their two peoples. The final principle is forever; that this agreement will last forever.

The Settlers recorded this agreement on paper with three silver chains. Iron chains would not do because iron rusts and breaks over time. Silver, on the other hand, can be polished and renewed when the siblings meet. The Haudenosaunee and the Settlers agreed to call this the Silver Covenant Chain of Friendship.

The Haudenosaunee explained to the Settlers that they did not use paper to record their history. They would make belts made of white and purple wampum shells. The Haudenosaunee made a belt to record this agreement. The belt has two purple rows running alongside each other representing two boats. One boat is the canoe with the Haudenosaunee way of life, laws, and people. The other is the Settler ship with their laws, religion, and people in it. The boats will travel side by side down the river of life. Each nation will respect the ways of each other and will not interfere with the other. “Together we will travel in Friendship and in Peace Forever; as long as the grass is green, as long as the water runs downhill, as long as the sun rises in the East and sets in the West, and as long as our Mother Earth will last.”

Importance of Gä•sweñta’ Today

The Haudenosaunee see the Two Row Wampum as a living treaty; a way that they have established for people to live together in peace; that each nation will respect the ways of the other as they meet to discuss solutions to the issues that come before them.

B. Vision

The time has come to transform the relationship between Indigenous Peoples and Settler Peoples:

- A past dominated by racist superiority, disrespect, dispossession, exploitation, failed treaties, impoverishment, subjugation, dependency, suppression of rights, attempted cultural genocide, conflict, and litigation;

- A future where new, fairer ways of side-by-side living are implemented. A new spirit - awakened by truths shared and suffering acknowledged, by apologies offered and calls for justice heeded, by false doctrines repudiated and degrading assumptions rejected, by inherent rights and legal judgements honoured, treaties renewed and observed - has created a new lasting friendship and peace.

- A transformed relationship , modeled upon ancestors’ wisdom, motivating Settler and Indigenous Peoples to actively embrace just and peaceful co-existence, implement respectful distribution of resources and wealth creating prosperity, and foster the growth of a more whole Canadian society – a relationship transformed, benefitting the global human family and Mother Earth herself – all our relations. Indigenous Peoples, “steering their own vessel”, access previously denied resources to foster self-determination, human development, and quality of life as full participants in the new society.

C. Concept Proposal to Strengthen Indigenous Communities

The Proposal includes three key actions contributing to full Indigenous participation in an emerging new society:

1. A one percent tax on the sale of all properties in Canada – The Indigenous Peoples Fund (IPF) .

In 2019, a total of 488,093 residential units valued at $245 billion were sold, according to the Canadian Real Estate Association. With the recent surge in prices and by combining that with commercial, industrial, and institutional property sales, $500 billion would be a reasonable base number for annual real estate sales. One percent of this amount could generate about $5 billion per year. Further research to verify numbers, especially for non-residential sales will be required.

Article 28 of United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) declares: “Indigenous peoples have the right to redress, by means that can include restitution or, when this is not possible, just, fair and equitable compensation, for the land, territories and resources which they have traditionally owned or otherwise occupied or used, and which have been confiscated, taken, occupied, used or damaged without their free, prior, and informed consent.”

This Proposal is not recommending restitution to replace the immense value of properties the Crown illegitimately appropriated to itself for Settler society. What is proposed is a special symbolic levy related to the vast lands of which Indigenous Peoples were dispossessed.

The 1% tax takes seriously Colonial Settler governments’ persisting failure fairly fund Indigenous needs. [For a critical analysis of simplistic claims by Fraser Institute about federal funding for Indigenous Peoples see: https://www.oktlaw.com/fraser-institute-first-nations-just-glad-not-1947 .]

The metrics are clear. While Canada ranked number one out of 78 countries in 2021 for quality of life reflecting political and economic stability, public safety and a good job market – and social purpose including social justice, human and animal rights, racial equity, gender equality and religious free, its track record for Indigenous peoples’ quality of life is shocking. [ 2021 Best Countries Report from US News & World Report. https://www.ucanwest.ca/blog/business-management/Canada-ranked-best-country-in-the-world .

One in four indigenous people live in poverty as do 4 in 10 or 40% of Canada’s Indigenous children. Consequences include poorer health, lower educational levels, low quality housing with crowded living conditions, and high rates of suicide. [see https://borgenproject.org/indigenous-poverty-in-Canada/ .]

Similarly. the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) reports that Canada’s Indigenous population is younger, growing faster, and is mainly rural, but the pace of improvement lags well behind the Settler population and gaps in well-being have increased. [ https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/e6cc8722-en/index.html?itemId=/content/component/e6cc8722-en ].

Even the Canadian government, while claiming some improvement, admits its overall dismal record in Indigenous human development:

While overall Canada ranked 12th internationally in 2016, the Registered Indian population would have ranked 52nd among countries with "very high" human development, compared to a ranking of 63rd in 2006. The off-reserve Registered Indian population ranked 42nd in 2016 among countries with "high" human development, compared to 47th in 2006. The 2016 on-reserve Registered Indian population ranked 78th, while the 2006 on-reserve population ranked 89th among those with "high" human development.

[https://www.sac-isc.gc.ca/eng/1579883155069/1607442298277.]

These statistics reveal the brutal reality, but little of the personal loss and missed personal and social development opportunities oppressing the lives of Indigenous People. Reality demands action to end colonialism’s brutal impacts.

In his book “The Inconvenient Indian” Thomas King states: “Land. If you understand nothing else about the history of Indians in North America, you need to understand that the question that really matters is the question of land. Land has always been a defining element of Aboriginal culture. Land contains the languages, the stories, and the histories of a people. It provides water, air, shelter, and food. Land participates in the ceremonies and the songs. And land is home.” (p. 218)

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in its detailed report on economic development for Indigenous communities makes very clear that “Land is a fundamental asset for sustainable economic development for Indigenous Peoples, and land rights are critical for self-determination.” Deprived of land, far more than economic development and self-determination is lost; human development and cultural identity is threatened – consistent with colonial intent.

(https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/fc2b28b3-en/index.html?itemId=/content/component/fc2b28b3-en)

History shows that as the Crown removed Indigenous Peoples from vast traditional lands into reserves, they were deprived of control and responsibility for the lands and were left with only a tiny, fragmented land base that harvested poverty and dependency. Seeking restitution, restoration, and reclaiming lands of which they were dispossessed has been and continues to be a lengthy, ongoing litigious nightmare for Indigenous Peoples. Litigation has served as a costly quest attesting to governments’ lack of will to recognize Indigenous rights and claims – notwithstanding legal judgements affirming their inherent rights. Federal and provincial Crown governments must end strategies which seek to extinguish inherent and treaty land rights.

The proposed one percent tax is a land-related, limited, but significant action step that has three important benefits, concurrent with its intended beneficial impact on Indigenous society (see c. below):

First, the tax would serve as a sign of good faith and an encouraging act revealing the federal government’s decision to validate and honour Indigenous traditional land rights, and to implement the consequences inherent in legal judgements and understandings about Indigenous land rights.

Second, the one percent tax does not replace current federal government treaty and other fiduciary funding responsibilities but marks the first step toward providing Indigenous Peoples direct, ongoing revenue sources rooted in land rights.

This initial action would signal the intent to eventually free Indigenous Peoples from reliance on the humiliating, paternalistic special request “hand-outs” regime which federal governments have employed as legislated by the Indian Act.

A new, respectful fiscal regime based on Indigenous self-determination waits to be developed. Excessive staffing and litigation costs incurred by administering the Indian Act must be curbed and redirected to more effective social and economic goals.

Third, the 1% revenue related to Indigenous land heritage would serve as a liberating stimulus for self-determined Indigenous objectives. Substantial revenue sources can break through the blockade preventing new and imaginative initiatives to enhance Indigenous community development capacities.

To create the IPF, Parliament mandates the one percent tax and supplies the IPF with the revenue. The one percent tax might be an excise tax, analogous to the Goods & Services/Harmonized Sales Tax, on all real estate sales in Canada. Efficient ways and means of collecting the tax would require careful study and negotiation.

Control and stewardship of the IPF would not be lodged with the government of Canada, but the government would mandate standards and best practices to ensure public accountability and transparency in the management and disbursement of the IPF moneys.

We – the Citizens Group - understand and share the concern that a 1% tax on property sales has an adverse impact on the price of housing – especially for lower income Canadians both off-reserve Indigenous and Settler. We also recognize that vendors and sales agents of increasingly expensive urban and rural properties are reaping huge financial benefits from properties sales. Motivated by the urgent need of just relations with Indigenous Peoples, governments will want to adopt measures to mitigate causes widening the gap between higher income Canadians and those of modest incomes and means.

2. A Representative Pan-Canadian Indigenous Authority (PCIA) governing the use and management of the Indigenous Peoples Fund.

“Indigenous Peoples” as a concept and reality is as diverse and varied as “Settler Peoples”. The diverse interests of the totality of Canadian population and communities are considered in the one Parliament of Canada.

At this point, there is no single forum where the interests of all Indigenous Peoples can be weighed and addressed. There are numerous Indigenous organizations which represent First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples. This variety and the large number of organizations risk Indigenous agendas falling prey to the “divide and conquer” strategies.

Unity among Indigenous Peoples is an essential factor for any process seeking to transform current societal patterns of Settler paternalism and injustice hobbling Indigenous Peoples’ self-determination. These debilitating conditions must be addressed together and transcended if Indigenous Peoples are to be fully participating members of the body politic and society as a whole. Creating the PCIA or its equivalent is a major step in this direction calling forth much Indigenous leadership talent and deeply rooted wisdom for its implementation.

The proposed one percent tax is meant to benefit the widely scattered and diverse communities of people that compose “Indigenous Peoples” – First Nations, Inuit, and Metis. To achieve this objective, the PCIA, representative nationally of the Indigenous reality, would assess needs to be appropriately funded by the IPF, establish priorities and standards for administration, and decide on the disbursement of IPF resources.

Regional expressions of the PCIA would likely evolve as experience is gained.

The PCIA would be ratified by Act of Parliament to be a self-determining organization of, for, and by Indigenous Peoples.

3. Human Development as the priority goal of the IPF.

Human Development is an over-arching need among Indigenous Peoples. Current educational and human development capacities have been unable to maximize Indigenous potentials nor achieve goals that compare favourably with those in Settler society. Hence the primary goal of the IPF is the implementation of human development objectives, with education as primary means for achieving them.

Indigenization of education is a high priority. Indigenous Peoples have a long history of effectively transmitting Indigenous knowledge and wisdom. This “system” must be maintained and strengthened. Settler educational systems must validate and learn from Indigenous knowledge. They must respond to Indigenous needs and younger generation Indigenous people must be afforded the opportunity to excel in addressing those needs. Elders sharing wisdom, knowledge, and traditions particular to Indigenous communities are a key resource. Settler domination and evaluation of Indigenous education must be curtailed so that culturally relevant learning can thrive. Educational programs, institutions, and curricula in both Indigenous and public educational institutions must find ways to bridge and complement the diverse worldviews.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) reported how destructively Indigenous Peoples were served by federal government policies and the churches-operated “Indian Residential Schools” system. In its recommendations - Calls to Action - numbers 6 to 12, the TRC summarizes areas of need for more effective Indigenous education.

[Number 6, based on the brutal experiences of children in Residential Schools, calls for the repeal of Section 43 of the Criminal Code of Canada – use of force in the classroom.] [Other calls to action include enhancing Indigenous (and Settler) professional competencies: e.g. 23 & 24 (health-care); 28 (legal); 55 research re comparability in services; clergy education; 62, 63, & 65 education for reconciliation; 64 comparative religious education; etc.]

Numbers 7 to 12 and 16 are reproduced here to indicate the TRC’s analysis of the importance and scope of educational reforms and improvements required by Indigenous Peoples. Economic and social gaps that separate Settler and Indigenous communities must be closed by substantial investments in Indigenous human development – cradle to grave.

“We [The TRC] call upon the federal government

7. to develop with Aboriginal groups a joint strategy to eliminate educational and employment gaps between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadians;

8. to eliminate the discrepancy in federal education funding for First Nations children being educated on reserves and those First Nations children being educated off reserves;

9. to prepare and publish annual reports comparing funding for the education of First Nations children on and off reserves, as well as educational and income attainments of Aboriginal peoples in Canada compared with non-Aboriginal people.

10. to draft new Aboriginal education legislation with the full participation and informed consent of Aboriginal peoples. The new legislation would include a commitment to sufficient funding and would incorporate the following principles:

i. Providing sufficient funding to close identified education achievement gaps within one generation;

ii. Improving education attainment levels and success rates;

iii. Developing culturally appropriate curricula;

iv. Protecting the right to Aboriginal languages, including the teaching of Aboriginal languages as credit courses;

v. Enabling parental and community responsibility, control, and accountability, similar to what parents enjoy in public school systems;

vi. Enabling parents to fully participate in the education of their children;

vii. Respecting and honouring Treaty relationships.

11. to provide adequate funding to end the backlog of First Nations students seeking post-secondary education;

12. We call upon the federal, provincial, territorial, and Aboriginal governments to develop culturally appropriate early childhood education programs for Aboriginal families. …

16. We call upon post-secondary institutions to create university and college degree and diploma programs in Aboriginal languages.”

We - the Citizens’ Group - regard the concern for more intentional resourcing of human development initiatives as an essential ingredient for the empowerment of Indigenous people. Equipping learners and leaders for analysis of, engagement with, and sharing in the dominant Settler culture, while growing and retaining their awareness and knowledge of Indigenous heritages and cultures is crucial for renewal.

What is needed above all is the will to implement these calls to action and the resources to make it happen. Governments already have far too many reports and studies gathering dust on shelves. We propose that human development be the primary purpose of the IPF as a key initiative to remedy the centuries of neglect, under-funding, and disdain for Indigenous ways and cultures. Pride of heritage and informed identity awareness are essential aspects of human development and personal wholeness that can be strengthened by education.

Settler society is incapable of addressing these qualities on its own, but education with, by, and for Indigenous Peoples can and must. Among the diverse gifts to share, Indigenous Peoples’ careful respect for and stewardship of nature’s gifts is an area of learning that has great potential for benefitting not only economies, but also domestic and international efforts to live peaceably with respect for Creation.

The primary means toward Indigenous human development is education, ensuring that all ages – from cradle to grave – have access to diverse learning opportunities to equip them for the full and varied life that gives Indigenous Peoples meaning and purpose, while also contributing to the well-being of the entire society. The IPF would help make this level of investment possible and would, we believe, reap benefits far beyond the actual dollars collected – for all Canadians.

D. Transcending Past and Present Realities

Today and for the past several hundred years, reality has fallen far short of a vision that motivates and inspires.

Based on the illegitimate Doctrine of Discovery and the concept of terrae nullius (no one’s land), Colonial Settler governments claimed sovereignty over land and people. Taking that legal fiction as fact, governments negotiated treaties and legislated race-based policies, subjugating Indigenous Peoples generally regarded as less than fully human. The Indian Act (1876) was proclaimed to control all aspects of indigenous life enforced by Indian Agents and armed RCMP officers. [See “21 Things You May Not Know about the Indian Act” by Bob Joseph.] Claiming the resource-based wealth of northern Turtle Island and restricting Indigenous use of their lands were crucial goals in the federal government’s pursuit of becoming a Settler nation and economy.

The over-arching Indigenous policy goal was to erase “inconvenient Indigenous” land titles and claims, governance, economies, culture, languages, values, and spirituality. Genocidal assimilation of Indigenous Peoples into the Euro-Settler mainstream was how the illegitimate expropriation of land and resources might finally be rendered moot. Residential Schools run by Churches were brutal and unhealthy re-education centres to erase “Indian”. Subsequent social policies forcibly “scooped” Indigenous children into Settler homes and culture – uprooting them from their Indigenous families and heritage.

Dispossessed of lands and resources by mandated settlement on scattered Reserves, Indigenous economic opportunities were limited. Dependency on federal funding and provisioning undermined economic development and possibilities of self-determination. Meanwhile the Crown, in the Dominion Lands Act of 1872, created the framework to sell, lease, give away, and retain land without consent or benefit to Indigenous Peoples. The wealth of the lands was vested in Settler society, while Indigenous Peoples were impoverished.

Revenues from land sales by Indigenous people to the Crown were to be held in the Indian Trust*, but this Trust was used for various government purposes and bore no resemblance to the actual value of the lands taken by the Crown. Indigenous Peoples’ loss of land and resources can be calculated in many trillions of dollars. The wealth gained by Settler society exceeds even this incomprehensible amount. [*See the Yellowstone Institute’s “Land Back” and “Cash Back” Red Papers at www.yellowheadinstitute.org . For more on the Indian Trust Fund visit: https://cashback.yellowheadinstitute.org/indiantrustfund/ ]

Dispossession has resulted in Indigenous poverty and loss of financial resources to carry on the struggle for justice effectively. Governments and corporate interests continue to seek policies and strategies that lead to extinguishment of land titles and resource wealth, while Indigenous Peoples are forced to litigate against every infringement - small and large - of their rights and claims. Federal advances of cash to finance Indigenous litigation to seek justice become liabilities undermining Indigenous ability to pursue claims. Indigenous Peoples need revenue sources giving them the freedom to pursue their right to real “law and order” and to implement policies that strengthen Indigenous communities.

E. Signs of Hope

Canadian Settler society appears to be moving towards a better understanding of its dehumanizing and subjugating ways with Indigenous Peoples.

Various studies, investigations, and Supreme Court judgements based on the Royal Proclamation of 1763, the Charter of Rights & Freedoms and the Constitution Act (1982) have contributed to moving the needle of public opinion from ignorance and apathy towards awareness of and empathy for the oppression experienced by First Nations, Inuit, and Metis Peoples. It has not yet created a popular movement for justice.

The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (1996), The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (2015), the report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (2019), the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007; ratified by Parliament 2021) (UNDRIP), the ongoing discovery of remains of children at Residential School properties (2021), etc. – all these and many other findings have confirmed that the unjust and racist policies and laws imposed upon Indigenous Peoples by Settler society breached universal standards of “law and order”. The need for a new legal framework informed by Indigenous rights is obvious.

Apologies by churches (United, 1986 and 1998), Anglican (1993), Presbyterian (1994) and the federal government itself (2008) have also confirmed the unjust situation for Indigenous Peoples. They acknowledge the part all these institutions have played in oppression. They make clear Settler society’s need to embrace new, more respectful and just ways of relating.

The attitudinal shift in Settler society is modestly symbolized by the now familiar “acknowledgement of Indigenous territories” declared by various persons and organizations at public meetings – secular and religious.

Unfortunately, there have been far more good words than substantial implementing actions. Little has really changed. The statistics cited above reflect the urgent need for large scale renewal, but words and numbers have not triggered transformative action. The day-to-day lives of Indigenous Peoples have seen very few improvements. Too many still have long standing “boil water” warnings – a symptom of government neglect or inability to address the necessities of Indigenous life. What Settler society can take for granted is still a distant objective for Indigenous Peoples.

Underlying this reality is the fact that there have been no acknowledgements by official bodies and governments of their reliance on the core colonial mandate. The false Doctrine of Discovery and the terrae nullius heresy remain at the heart of our national malaise. When its entire legal framework continues to be embedded in edicts issued in the name of God by the 15 ^th century Vatican, then Canada has clearly not come far enough on the way toward renewal, let alone toward the vision of reconciliation.

True words must trigger actions to change unacceptable realities. To be sure, Settlers cannot be sent back to “where they came from.” Indigenous peoples will not easily return to their less settled lives prior to treaties and reserves. And the entire Canadian legal structure – Settler and Indigenous - cannot simply be jettisoned for a new constitution and legal framework. Nor can Indigenous voices be inserted after the fact into proceedings to develop the Constitution Act of 1982. Now is the time to undertake radical change and to ensure that Indigenous voices are heard and taken seriously.

Some meaningful action, as reported in the media, is, nevertheless, underway. Frequently it is the result of persistent Indigenous energies, actions, and litigation. The social care of children and youth is finally being addressed by restitution for past failures and by remedial planning for future successes; an apology from the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church is being pursued and restitution related to Residential School abuses is demanded; boil-water advisories are too slowly being phased out as embarrassing injustice; various social and environmental justice organizations connect climate change with loss of respect for Creation; Church denominations, having apologized, now require that a portion of proceeds from sale of church properties must contribute to Indigenous governed renewal work; hereditary governance models are beginning to be honoured, while band council governance is clarified. Voluntary local tax contributions to local Indigenous communities are being proposed in experiments like that of “Reciprocity” based in Victoria. [www.reciprocityconnects.ca]

Of potentially great significance is Bill C-15 proclaimed by the federal Crown in 2021. This legislation requires a review of all federal legislation to ensure alignment with UNDRIP articles. It includes government responsibility to ensure that “free, prior, and informed consent” of Indigenous peoples (Articles 28/1, 32/2) is obtained when dealing with their land, territories, and resources traditionally owned, occupied, used, or acquired.

UNDRIP now lays responsibility on the federal government to deal justly, potentially freeing Indigenous Peoples from the demoralizing burden of self-justification and costly litigation to claim land, resources, and human rights that are universally declared to be theirs. Governments must now acknowledge their liability when Indigenous Peoples seek to rectify the unjust and illegal actions affecting their lands and resources and that have deprived Indigenous Peoples of huge amounts of money and much more. Will governments take these responsibilities seriously? Will citizens’ awareness prod governments into action?

The goal of renewal could be aided by a formally mandated all-party Parliamentary Task Force working closely with Indigenous leadership to guide processes leading toward actions building an honourable relationship between Settler and Indigenous Peoples. Abolition of the Indian Act and creating a new governance framework recognizing the Indigenous reality and Crown fiduciary responsibilities is unavoidable. Creating such a Task Force would be another strong indicator of Settler intent to work towards friendship and peace that last.

A cadre of courageous and effective Indigenous professionals, leaders, scholars, and elders has persevered with limited resources and in trying circumstances to seek justice for their peoples. Statistics reveal that much needs to be done to increase the pools of informed and effective Indigenous leadership. Experience indicates that with heart and mind Indigenous leaders will pursue the Vision for strong Indigenous presence in a new relationship between Indigenous and Settler peoples.

F. Action to Implement a Transformed Relationship

We – the Citizens’ Group – believe that it is time to transcend the painful past and welcome the emerging spirit for nurturing a transformed relationship between Indigenous and Settler Peoples – friends on a common quest for justice-based peace to benefit all Canadians. We believe our Proposal merits implementation as a contribution to this Vision.

End.

Trucks, Freedom, and Liberation

Mon, 07 Feb 2022 16:11:58 GMT

Trucking for ????

Trucking for Liberation of The Netherlands - September 1944 - near Arnhem

Reflecting on Trucking

I was born just before the tyranny of Nazi occupation came to a bloody end in my part of The Netherlands. For more than four years our city and province had to put up with Nazi controls, propaganda, threats, arrests, executions, and even army officers quartered in our home. My pastor father’s secret house telephone system connected to a radio hidden in the church ceiling next door enabled him to listen “illegally” to the BBC radio news. Potential penalty: death! There was nothing in this occupation that was for the benefit of my family and other Dutch folk. It was all loss - thousands died and were killed, especially, of course, Jews and others marginalized by Nazi ideology. The aim was to increase Nazi interests - terror and tyranny for control and power.

Thank you, Canadian and British soldiers who fought valiantly and heroically to end the brutal occupation. The Nazi occupation was a real and evil loss of freedom. Canadian soldiers gained for me and other occupied peoples the right and the freedom to demonstrate and advocate for the well-being of diverse peoples oppressed by regimes and dangerous systems.

So now in Canada we are confronted by a libertarian crew driving oppressive trucks. They are willing to hold residents of cities hostage so that they can have their way of demonstrating. They’ve occupied Ottawa and its citizens. They want the Public Health agencies to be silenced by governments foolish enough to remove all the safeguards that protect against Covid. Some in the crew “just want freedom” calling for toppling the elected government – about as maturely as a four year old howling at weary parents to have his way.

Libertarian Denial of Human Need

In whose interest is this call for “freedom”? Just what kind of freedom do they have in mind? Would their “freedom” quest be satisfied to be on an island where they are self-sufficient and have no impact on anyone else and they can do whatever they want? Total libertarian individualism hasn’t satisfied many in the millennia of human existence. Some hermits may have tried, but even they had to rely on supplies and services, burial or cremation by others.

No human can do without others. Infants without others die. They must have someone to care for them – to love them to life. Children learn the ways of life from others – the more is better so that they turn out to be whole. Young adults seek human community for companionship, friendship, and sexual relationships. Even self-made individuals have to recognize on whose shoulders they are standing. Throughout our lives humans depend on others – one way or another.

But we also know that humans don’t just rely on others they also affect others. Most often for good – parents, teachers, medical people, advisors, emergency service people, friends, loving partners, and countless others intentionally give of themselves for the well-being of others. Our lives are enriched.

Too often others have bad or dangerous effect – you can fill in that list.

To impede bad or dangerous behaviour, guidance takes the form of rules, commandments, regulations, proscriptions, edicts, laws, and other forms of control are necessary. The Ten Commandments are among the best known rules for living – but that hasn’t stopped too many from stealing, dishonouring parents, coveting things and others, serving false gods, etc.

We have international declarations extolling human rights and proscribing criminal warfare, laws to stop illegal financial processes, and health mandates to protect well-being. Since that isn’t enough, we have for Canada a wide-ranging criminal code, provincial laws about vehicles and health measures, and we have municipal by-laws – all designed to protect residents from the “bad” – from people who would in varying measures negatively affect the lives of others.

Anarchy's Opportunity for Dictatorship

Would we have “perfect freedom” if we dropped all those various types of “guidance”. Of course not! Anarchy would be the result – no person or code would “rule” (-archy) – lawlessness. People and organizations with power might like that as a great way to fill the void with their self-interest. Would-be dictators love anarchy crises as a chance to grab power. Most intelligent people understand that with anarchy suddenly everyone becomes vulnerable.

For example, the rule in Canada is to drive on the right side of the road and to stop at red traffic lights and stop signs. Agreed, these controls can be a nuisance at times, but rational people will conform because the risks of injury and death become too great when disregarded. Similarly, we agree that attacking people is unacceptably dangerous behaviour, so we charge those who do so with various degrees of assault – a criminal offense. Thank goodness.

Do we agree that having sexual relations with another while knowingly not informing them that you are contagious with syphilis, or are H.I.V. positive, or have tuberculosis or other contagious disease causing sickness or death is also a criminal offense? Of course, the Criminal Code covers that negligence and people have gone to jail when convicted.

Freedom in Community

Freedom has to be balanced with community responsibilities? Dictatorial rule doesn’t care about community well-being. It’s goal, as we have seen from the U.S.A.'s 45th President, is power, control, obedience. Associating with others, especially vulnerable others, requires responsible limits to freedom. So when you know or don't know whether you carry the Covid Omicron virus and you won’t get vaccinated or wear a mask or limit your social intercourse – how liable and responsible are you? If someone is infected and hospitalized or dies as a result of your unwillingness to observe the most basic of preventive measures, should you be held liable? Should the person infected or the deceased’s family charge you with negligence and launch a civil suit for contributing to their loss of a beloved’s life? Should you be charged with criminal negligence? Or just carry the guilt associated with you negligence throughout the rest of your life?

You don’t have to be a Christian to empathize with and respect others. It’s a core human value and fundamental for most world religions . But if you have any appreciation for Jesus’ Way – and White “Christian” Supremacists don’t - you will know where Jesus chooses to be. He calls for boundless empathy for the neighbour - compassion, caring, respect, and love!! Jesus’ Good Samaritan – an alien – goes freely out of his way to help the mugged settler into safety and healing. Jesus says simply: you are freed as a human being “to love God above all and your neighbour as yourself.” Would you want another’s infection, virus, communicable disease? Would you want vulnerable loved ones in your family to risk health and life itself, just because you won’t accept some responsibility for curtailing the impact of the virus?

By word and deed, Jesus’ core Gospel and convictions of world faiths is “treat others as you want to be treated.” Anything less than that is failed religion. No one who claims to be “religious” is worth listening to if “freedom” is valued over compassion, caring, and love. From beginning to the end of life, love is the principal sign of the divine presence (see Bible’s 1John 4:7 and many other texts). When freedom risks embroiling other with negative effects, then LOVE MUST TRUMP THAT VERSION OF FREEDOM.

Bottom line: humans are made for community. In community we care about and for each other’s well-being even when it may be an inconvenience and a wearying necessity. Covid will end or it will decline so that we learn to live with it. Neither this wearying pandemic nor other life-dangers give us “freedom” to disregard, abuse, threaten, terrorize, intimidate or infect our neighbours near and far.

Whom to Trust?

At this point I trust Public Health officials and informed government leaders more than the motley crowd occupying Ottawa, shouting expletives, displaying Nazi signs and racist flags, threatening politicians and police, harassing medical staff and visible minorities, blocking access to services and hospitals, disrupting innocent residential life, killing small businesses. I have no time for truculent bullies using trucks as weapons to occupy and control city cores, intimidate residents, devastate businesses, shouting - in effect - for Covid to be given free rein in communities. There is no real "freedom" in this. It is all loss.

I have gratitude for the 90% of truckers vaccinated supplying basic needs for people and industry. I have time for peaceful and short term demonstrations fostering fairness and human well-being. And I have great respect and gratitude for the Canadian and British military truckers who risked all to liberate me and my family and natal nation in 1945.

The intimidating truckers using their trucks as weapons to occupy our city today have nothing in common with those liberating military truckers and the others who continue to respect and serve.

apologies and reconciliation

Wed, 19 Jan 2022 17:48:28 GMT

Repudiation, Apologies, Reconciliation

The Reconciliation Vision

Reconciliation is a theological concept with profound human implications. Christians believe that the Creator has created humanity in its entirety – sisters and brothers – the global human family in all its diversity. People of faith will recognize that this as a core theological conviction challenging any and all racism. Commitment to the Creator's vision evokes love and respect, care and compassion, justice and truth, dialogue and healing work. Practically we seek to realize the Golden Rule to "treat others as you would want to be treated." We are called to know and care for "all our relations."

But the reality of human existence is that humans have not been faithful to the Creator’s hoping, yearning, and loving. Humanity in many ways breaks the bonds of mutual respect, caring, and justice. It has grasped for itself many reasons to dominate, hate, abuse, use, exploit, subjugate, and deprive the other – people, other creatures, and the Earth itself.

The Creator keeps calling people to faithfulness and provides the Way of Love and various means that lead towards reconciliation that ends brokenness and restores the global family in all its diverse manifestations to wholeness. This is the global meta framework within which all efforts to renew the relations between Indigenous Peoples and Colonial Settler power is set.

Canada’s Broken Family

In Canada, the relationship between Indigenous Peoples and the Colonial Settler peoples was broken from its earliest beginnings. Even before European explorers and their successors crossed the Atlantic, they had in hand and mind a 15 ^th Century illegitimate and imperialistic Papal mandate. It allowed them to claim for their monarchs all “discovered” lands and resources and the right to subjugate and force conversion upon Turtle Island’s Indigenous Peoples.

From day one, Indigenous inhabitants experienced the explorer/settler as superior and dominant, treating Indigenous peoples as inferior and not fully human. The home of the Indigenous Peoples - lands and waters - were little more than commodity storehouses for European/settler exploitation, initially as traders and later as proprietors.

Indigenous peoples themselves were no longer "at home" in their own environment. Instead they became subjects of Crowns and their governments from whom Indigenous Peoples were required to seek rights, privileges, and benefits. Self-determination ended and assimilation into the Settler way became the colonial goal. Cultural genocide.

This asymmetrical relationship has continued since day one. The Indian Act of 1876 and its many amendments codified the arrangement now administered by two ministries of the Federal Government. Even though there is increasing clarity that the legal base to maintain this broken relationship is crumbling, it continues. Governments have been unable or unwilling to repudiate the faux theological validation of their dominating sovereign role. The Doctrine of Discovery and terrae nullius are the implicit foundation of Settler / Indigenous brokenness.

Settler Canadians must now decide whether to just live apathetically with an evolving, turbulent status quo , or to resist change altogether choosing assimilation, or to enter into the fray that seeks to renew the relationship between Indigenous Peoples and Settler Peoples. I believe that the Creator and humanism’s highest aspirations call us all to the third alternative – the dream of equality, shared needs and resources, and justice for all fulfilled.

Thisi s no easy task. “…The process is about relationships and therefore will be more like a spiral than a once-and-for-all solution. For another, every community has a different context and different challenges to address.”* But it is the task that has integrity and it aligns with the vision of Reconciliation for the entire human family and all Creation.

Apologize

An early step in this process is to apologize. During the last four decades, numerous apologies have been issued about the harm-filled ways Settler peoples have dealt with Indigenous Peoples.

In 1986, The United Church of Canada through its General Council apologized to First Nations Peoples for having

“confused Western ways and culture with the depth and breadth and length and height of the gospel of Christ, … imposed our civilization as a condition of accepting the gospel; tried to make you be like us and in so doing we helped to destroy the vision that made you what you were. As a result, you, and we, are poorer and the image of the Creator in us is twisted, blurred, and we are not what we are meant by God to be.”

In line with the Vision above, the apology concluded by requesting Indigenous People “ to forgive us and to walk together with us in the Spirit of Christ so that our peoples may be blessed and God’s creation healed.”

In 1998, the General Council Executive issued another statement of apology, “To former students of United Church Residential Schools, and to their families and communities.” Spoken by the then Moderator, the Rt.Rev. Bill Phipps, the Executive apologized for the pain and suffering that the church’s involvement in the “ill-conceived system of assimilation has perpetrated on Canada’s First Nations peoples.” The Executive committed “to work toward ensuring that we will never again use our power as a church to hurt others with attitudes of racial and spiritual superiority.” (https://united-church.ca/sites/default/files/apologies-response-crest.pdf)

In 1993 Archbishop Michael Peers of the Anglican Church of Canada offered his apology on behalf of the denomination to native peoples.

“… I accept and I confess before God and you, our failures in the residential schools. We failed you. We failed ourselves. We failed God. I am sorry, more than I can say, that we were part of a system which took you and your children from home and family. I am sorry, more than I can say, that we tried to remake you in our image, taking from you your language and the signs of your identity. I am sorry, more than I can say, that in our schools so many were abused physically, sexually, culturally and emotionally. On behalf of the Anglican Church of Canada, I present our apology…." (https://www.anglican.ca/tr/apology/english/)

In 1994 the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Canada confessed its part in the Residential School system and sought the forgiveness of those affected, acknowledging the arrogance of both Government and Church that was part of the entire Schools program. ( http://www.presbyterian.ca/ministry/canada/nativeministries/confessions )

The Roman Catholic Church leadership has not yet made a formal apology, though pressure from both the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC, Call to Action #58) and the 2021 discovery of children’s remains in many School yards has heightened the public awareness of this large gap in apologies. The Conference of Canadian Catholic Bishops is organizing a trip for Pope Francis to come to Canada with an apology. It is not known whether the presumed apology will go beyond the denomination’s participation in the Residential Schools system and include an apology for the two key Papal edicts undergirding colonialism and subjugation of Indigenous Peoples.

Finally, in a special ceremony in the House of Common on June 11, 2008, then Prime Minister Stephen Harper offered the Apology of the Government of Canada for the “sad chapter in our history” – the treatment of 150,000 children forcibly removed from homes to into 132 federally-supported schools. The system sought “to kill the Indian in the child” because “being Indian” was deemed inferior and unequal in Canadian society.

“The Government of Canada recognizes that the absence of an apology has been an impediment to healing and conciliation. Therefore, on behalf of the Government of Canada and all Canadians, I stand before you, in this Chamber so central to our life as a country, to apologize to Aboriginal peoples for Canada’s role in the Indian Residential Schools system.” … “There is no place in Canada for the attitudes that inspired the Indian Residential Schools system to ever prevail again.”

In the Apology, the Prime Minister specifically referred to the work of the TRC as an educational resource for all Canadians to renew the broken relatioship.

“It will be a positive step in forging a new relationship between Aboriginal peoples and other Canadians, a relationship based on the knowledge of our shared history, a respect for each other, and a desire to move forward together with a renewed understanding that strong families, strong communities, and vibrant cultures and traditions will contribute to a stronger Canada for all of us.”**

Apologies, Symptoms, Reconstruction

There are more apologies, including one for Newfoundland and Labrador Indigenous people not included in the 2008 apology. One could even consider the "land acknowledgements" widely expressed in public gathering as a form of apology recogizing Indigenous dispossession of their lands. Reasons for apologizing to Indigenous Peoples are many.

What has surprised me is that these apologies do not address the Doctrine of Discovery or the terrae nullius concept. Both of these historic relics lie at the heart of the broken relationship between Canada’s Indigenous Peoples and the Settler society and its government. They launched in Turtle Island an alien and unwelcome assumption and a mindset that placed Explorer/Settler humanity above and in control of all that had long been Indigenous humanity and organized Canadian society around those key concepts.

Apologies have addressed not the foundational basis that subjugated and oppressed Indigenous Peoples, but mainly the symptoms which result from the founding concepts. The countless symptoms which burdened Indigenous Peoples are the direct result of the heretical theology and mindset articulated in the arrogant and politicized Papal Bull issued in 1493.

Repudiating these two concepts and dismantling the sandcastles built upon them were not addressed by the apologies. Repudiation came only decades later, when in 2010 The Anglican General Synod followed in 2012 by the United Church and the World Council of Churches, and in 2019 the Presbyterian Church in Canada repudiated these false doctrines! The government of Canada abandoned the concepts as a legal basis in the 1990s, but in practice maintains the structures built upon the concepts - implicit validation.

Repudiate

The Doctrine of Discovery and the terrae nullius fiction did not fall from heaven’s sky as revelations waiting to be promulgated. They were the result of Papal politics in Europe to keep “Christian” monarchs from warring against each other over “discovered” lands and their resources - power and greed. It was Pope Alexander VI's way to maintain peace in Europe, while creating hell in far off Turtle Island.

Whether the Pope gave any thought to human rights, national sovereignty, and freedom of religion will require research, but McGill scholar Peter Leuprecht reports that scholars, like Francisco de Vitoria at the University of Salamanca in the early 16 ^th century, were discussing the validity of forced conversions and the Pope’s presumed power to permit explorers to dispossess and convert “barbarians”. After all, even these “barbarians” were masters of their own domains and had the right to govern their territories and people!< Only centuries later did these conversations issue in universal declarations; but even the declarations are far from being implemented globally.***

As long as these heretical and racist Vatican edicts are maintained implicitly as core concepts, there can be no lasting and honourable reconciliation between Indigenous and Settler communities in Canada. Their false principles must not only be repudiated, churches and other communities of good faith must press governments to explicitly and implicitly abjure the validity and authority of the edicts, AND reassess the "fruits" that issued from their superiority and hubris. What was constructed and implemented by colonial governments upon these conceptural frameworks has created immense evil, injustice, and suffering for Indigenous Peoples.

Build Together Towards Reconciliation

Apology and repudiation are still only essential first steps on the way to the reconciliation vision. Really required is settlers with a new humble, contrite heart s - reflective of the apologies, working as equals with Indigenous people committed to deconstruct the unjust sandcastles built and to develop real plans for a house in which all Canadians can flourish. Visionary, courageous and informed leaders of both Indigenous and Settler communities need to work together in good faith to create a new society based on shared human values and assumptions. Respectful relations, equitable sharing, and gracious caring together can move Canada toward a thriving and just society

Will it happen? The Creator is beyond our comprehension, let alone control, but continues to call the diverse human family toward healing and wholeness - reconciliation. Miracles happen when love – the principal sign of the Creator’s presence – permeates all the nooks and crannies, hills and dales of living. May it be so.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

* Justice and Reconciliation – The Legacy of Indian Residential Schools and the Journey Toward Reconciliation: a Resource for Congregations. " Toronto. The United Church of Canada/L’Eglise Unie du Canada. 2001. P.5

** Regrettably in the next year at the G20 meeting, Stephen Harper hollowed out his words by stating publicly: “We also have no history of colonialism. So, we have all of the things that many people admire about the great powers but none of the things that threaten or bother them.” Cited in Joesph, Bob, 21 Things You May Not Know about the Indian Act . P. 88.

***Peter Leuprecht, “Reason Justice and Dignity – a Journey to Some Unexplored Sources of Human Rights” Leiden, The Netherlands. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. Copyright: Koninklijke Brill NV, 2012. Chapter 3.

Ignorance Is Not Bliss

Mon, 03 Jan 2022 21:59:39 GMT

Bliss for Some; Hell for Others

My last Pilgrim Praxis blog post ( http://www.minister.ca/beyond-ignorance-a-personal-journey ) told the story of my awakening to the reality that Indigenous Peoples in Canada have long been unjustly treated and, in fact, became a subjugated minority of Canadian population. I apologized for my ignorance and apathetic blindness, and undertook to continue actively seeking greater justice in the Settler – Indigenous relationship.

Further Reflection - the 1967 Canada Yearbook

After posting, I continued wondering how I was able to be so ignorant for so long given the years I’d spent in education and informed, active living. So, I undertook some research. I went back to the Canada Yearbook issued in 1967. It was a special edition to celebrate the centennial of Confederation. The book, acquired just before my ordination, has had a much-neglected place on our bookshelves since that time.

The section focusing on Indigenous Peoples (then: Eskimos and Indians) reported bureaucratically that much was being done to benefit these Canadians, enabling them to cope with the transitions caused by government policy advancing sovereignty, settlement, and resource development. These transitions were, to be sure, imposed on all Indigenous Peoples – Inuit, First Nations, and Métis – and difficult, but they were resulting in “growing mutual understanding and appreciation.”

While concern about the transitions was noted, no consequences were listed., but an “Eskimo” leader Abraham Okpik was quoted about his concern to keep “Eskimo” culture alive:

“We are living in the present times without observing what we are losing, and that is our own Eskimo Inuk culture…. We should learn as much as we can from this new culture, but we must not forget our own culture….” (p. 61) Without naming it, Okpik was raising alarm about the government’s assimilationist (cultural genocide) policies and practices. The Yearbook reported no strategies to counter this threat.

The Yearbook went on to report without critique that the Indian Act of 1876 (updated in 1951) formed the basis of Indian policy, and “was mainly oriented towards paternalism and protection.” Between 1871 and 1877 seven treaties with First Nations of the west and north-west were concluded. “In return for certain considerations the Indians relinquished their rights to the lands from Lake Superior to the foot of the Rocky Mountains. The treaties, in general, gave the Indians the right to hunt and fish in the ceded territory as long as it remained the property of the Crown.” Nothing was said about lands that were sold or licensed to third parties. Reserves for Indigenous people were created for their homes and agricultural purposes and educational facilities were promised. P.66

The Yearbook does not report that the principal policy of the government was to erase the “Indian” from lives of the people and to transform them into Euro-Canadian Christians assimilated into the dominant and dominating cultures – French and English. But given the generally benign description of government policy in the Yearbook, one could easily conclude that matters were in relatively good hands and no particular alarms need be raised.

I was confirmed in the idea that the society I inhabited gave little thought to Indigenous peoples. in the creation of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism (1963), there was no reference to Indigenous Peoples. Speaking of the “founding peoples of Canada”, only French and English cultures were acknowledged; and even when the mandate was enlarged to “report on the cultural contribution of other ethnic groups and how to preserve this”, Indigenous Peoples were again not mentioned. Colonial settler culture had blinders firmly in place when it came to Indigenous Peoples.

Donald Creighton's "Canada's First Century 1867-1967

I pursued my research by turning to another book that had been on my shelf from the early seventies. Donald Creighton, a pre-eminent and much-lauded Canadian historian teaching and researching at the University of Toronto, wrote his “ Canada’s First Century 1867-1967 ”, a highly acclaimed work published in 1970. If I had chosen to take a Canadian history course in my UBC Arts program, I would certainly have been assigned readings from Creighton’s highly regarded history books.

I browsed this book and then went to its index to search for references to “Indian” (“indigenous” was not in use in the early 70s). I was stunned to find two lines only: “Indians: exchange land for reserves, 26; and Riel, 53-55.” No other page references to First Nations or Inuit Peoples could be found and flipping through the pages, the word “Indian” hardly appeared. Mention of the Riel and Red River Métis debacle was apparently deemed unavoidable – so it was given a couple of pages in the section describing the extension of Canadian government into the west. The ceding of Hudson’s Bay Company lands – Rupert’s Land and the North Western Territories – was reported as the Canadian government’s efforts to organize “its nearly empty domain.” Echoes of terrae nullius (lands of no one), we can assume, as if the presence of Indigenous and Metis people was hardly worth mentioning. (p. 17)

This primary record of the history of Canada as a nation didn’t have time or space for the Doctrine of Discovery - the core notion for dispossessing First Nations of their lands by colonial governments; no reference to the Indian Act - the over-arching legislation to address the Indian “problem”; nor governments’ uninterrupted efforts to subjugate Indigenous Peoples by seeking their assimilation into Euro-Canadian culture. Investigating further, I looked up some reviews of Creighton's writings and discovered that he was highly dismissive of Indians, emphasizing their primitive, nomadic ways.

My conclusion: Creighton’s approach to history was to intentionally sideline Indigenous peoples and write history from the perspective of the “victor”, willfully blind to crucially important Indigenous factors (and opportunities) in Canadian history. For his many contributions, Creighton was honoured by the government with the Order of Canada! Dominant cultures honour their intellectual champions, while oppressed minorities remain on the margins or on the underbelly of the culture..

Collective Responsibility and Mine

It is tempting to evade personal responsibility by only pointing blamefully at the Canada Yearbook of 1967 and Creighton’s partial history, and by projecting onto the dominant culture my own personal lack of awareness of and failure to research Indigenous matters back then. In those formative decades of my life, however, the culture did little to spark concern about the flawed foundations of Canadian sovereignty and the unjust policies dispossessing and assimilating Indigenous Peoples into the dominant culture. But as a privileged Euro-Canadian student of both history and theology, I failed to probe beneath the far too conventional cultural surface to turn up truth and justice.

I do wish there had been then access to the writing of Bob Joseph’s “ 21 Things You May Not Know about the Indian Act ”, of Thomas King’s “ The Inconvenient Indian ”, of Arthur Manual’s “ Unsettling Canada ”, of Bruce McIvor’s “ Standoff – Why Reconciliation Fails Indigenous People and How to Fix It ”, and of many other Indigenous story tellers, scholars, and communities, documenting the injustices perpetrated against Indigenous Peoples and society's rejected opportunities to benefit from Indigenous wisdom and experience.

It’s not as though neglect, injustice, and suffering were not taking place and hadn’t happened for a century or two or three! But truth had a tough time penetrating the opaque fog of calculatedly cheery government reports or the willful conventional blindness of the era. And even when Indigenous poverty was made known, charity – not justice-based facts and action – too often soothed troubled spirits.

In 1747, English poet Thomas Gray, in his Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College , contradicting the witness of Ecclesiastes that wisdom is better than folly and light preferable to darkness, mused: “ Thought would destroy their paradise. No more; where ignorance is bliss, ‘tis folly to be wise.” (my emphasis) The apparent Settler-Indigenous harmonious status quo of the day muffled the wailing and stifled the lament of Indigenous suffering. Researching and thinking about it might just taint Settler tranquility.

Thought Forgone

Few people sought to hear about Indigenous Peoples Illegitimately dispossessed of land and their inherited poverty and welfare. Treaties between the Crown and First Nations were regarded as acceptable surrender documents. Self-determining liberty was ostensibly exchanged for dependency and the dictates of Indian agents. Education meant “saving” children out of their “primitive” family environments and "generously" offering them opportunities to learn Settler ways in costly, but poorly-funded, unhealthy residential schools, where they could cleansed of their barbarous ways and brain-washed into Euro-Christian ways and ideologies. We did not hear about physical, psychological, and too often, sexual abuse – though as early as 1907 Dr. Peter Bruce had officially and publicly warned (at great personal cost) of the hazards claiming Indigenous children’s lives. We didn’t then know (or want to know) how many thousands of these children died from neglect and violence.

I didn’t learn about all that from the Yearbook or from Donald Creighton or from the libraries, where I borrowed books. I just assumed that the Crown had a right to control the vast lands of our country. I never thought to question the fact that for over 200 years till 1870, the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) had “owned” Rupert’s Land and the North-Western Territory under license from the British crown. I didn’t question that, in 1874, the Company was paid £300,000 from Canada via the British government for the land tract, while one-twentieth of the fertile areas could be opened for settlement – a generous “gift” of Indigenous land for a head start in the property development business for Settler shareholders of HBC and later Markborough properties, while Indigenous Peoples were impoverished.

Thought and Knowledge "Destroys Paradise"...

Once we ask questions and start researching what’s really going on, then bliss vanishes and we discover we’ve been living in a fantasy world. About Canada’s Indigenous Peoples, the data take us out of wonderland and out of the make believe world into hard and cruel reality. What may have been bliss for Settlers, was hell for Indigenous folks.

Today we have the information. We know governments whittled away at traditional Indigenous lands and are still doing so. We know that corporations plunder traditional lands for shareholders’ benefit - the minerals, the trees, the fish, the waters, the oil and gas, and all the other benefits of the lands that make the Crown and Settler society wealthy at the expense of the Indigenous Peoples. We know that the legal basis of this lop-sided arrangement is not just flawed, but non-existent – the Treaties, the Courts, Commissions and Investigations, international understandings like UNDRIP, the Constitution Act, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms – all are clear about the inherent and inalienable land and resources rights of Indigenous Peoples that the Crown must honour. We know what has happened in Residential Schools, we know about missing and murdered women and girls, we know about Jordan’s unobserved Principle, we know about water boil advisories – we know too much to be able to shelter behind ignorance or apathy.

...And Calls for Just Action.

All this – ethical, moral, legal, historical, sociological, educational, structural, natural – knowledge cries out for action to end the cursed Indian Act and finally, to resource Indigenous leadership and empower political leadership for the creation of new structures and transformed, justice-based relationships so that all Canadians may be blessed. We can’t go on acting as if all is okay. A return to ignorant bliss is inconceivable because it is illegal, criminal, and sinful.

The way to justice and peace in Canadian society is informed, courageous and imaginative action on the part of visionary leaders – Indigenous and Settler - supported by an informed population that nurtures respect, seeks justice, and walks humbly to ensure equitable sharing for all. Now is the time - the Kairos moment - for a new, justice-based relationship between Settler and Indigenous Peoples..

Down to Earth Love

Tue, 21 Dec 2021 19:58:46 GMT

Incarnation's Way - Humility, Compassion, Courage

The Lowly Creche

These musings sparked by the lowly creche scene above are shared as a Christmas greeting and as a longing for a world that is healthier, more whole, at peace, with fewer imperious tyrants and more courageously humble, wise leaders with a vision for the well-being of Earth and its peoples.

So, this is my Christmas wish for you – dear reader – with hope, joy, love and the blessings of just peace for ALL our relations! Harry Oussoren

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Luke 2

Taking seriously the Nativity Gospel as communicated in chapter 2 of St. Luke's Gospel is a complicated, but worthy affair.

On the one hand, we hear about the Almighty using this particular time and place to “invade” the earth. This era is when the mighty Roman Emperor reigned supreme in the Mediterranean world and further; when legions imposed the "Pax Romana" - oppressing challenging individuals and tribes and nations; when Augustus' decree sent local folks scurrying to their provincial hometowns to provide data confirming the emperor's reach; when throughout the Empire tribes “walked in the darkness” of mental, spiritual, and political subjugation and poverty.

On other hand, the divine "invasion" came to liberate not with spears and swords of challenging warriors ready to battle for power, nor with coercive measures to force obedience. No! The Gospel report portrays this "invasion" as the birth of an infant, not in a Jerusalem palace or a five-star hotel, not in military barracks, not even in a village inn. The setting is just a rude stable surrounded by domestic animals - a donkey, a cow, some mice, a feral cat or two, and a tired human couple [with a local midwife], all hoping the child a-borning will be safe and allow them to rest.

To reinforce for faithful readers the down-to-earth nature of this event, Luke includes in the scenario some shepherds. They abide in the fields and reside at the bottom of the social pecking order. This was the incredibly modest, lowly, and insignificant milieu where the Way of Jesus was launched. “Humble” doesn’t quite capture the essence.

Luke then goes on to paint a picture of a host of angels complementing with a heavenly chorus Gabriel's mystifying message to Mary (chapter 1:39 ff.). The point: to acknowledge that this little drama is no accident, no failure of protocol, no neglect of the divine arrangements committee.

Revelation

To the contrary. It’s Gospel. It is an event to reveal the nature of God. The self-giving, unconditionally loving One identifies with the homeless, the vulnerable, the weary, the marginalized, those with empty hands, and with those open to the Spirit’s leading the worn human family towards peace and good will on Earth.

Jesus’ lowly down-to-earth birthing has its origin and is orchestrated by the Holy One whose sole purpose is to love – to be Good News for all Creation. Not just for people labelled “Christian,” but for the entire human familyl: atheists, agnostics, doubters, secularists, faithful folks who call themselves Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, Zoroastrians, Baha’is, or a plethora of other “brands” of religious or ideological persuasion.

And the point of this unconditional love story is that the wonderfully diverse creaturely world will be led by the Spirit dwelling in Jesus into ways that bring peace and good will. So, the birth story starts readers and hearers on a Way further modelled clearly and poignantly by the all too short story of Jesus’ life.

Jesus' Way

Some of the Way is what he taught – the Beatitudes, the Golden Rule, the Great Commandment. (Google those key words, they’re easy to find).

Some of it is told in little stories: like the Good Samaritan responder, where religious boundaries are challenged by active love; or Jesus’ response to the trick question about paying taxes – all our wealth is a gift of the Divine and paying even the emperor’s taxes can be the sharing of that gift; and the parable of the self-satisfied rich man gloating over his barns on his last day; and the cautions about convicting others – pull “the log out of your own eye”, if you’re without sin then “throw the first stone”, or the grasping “first shall be last”; can you “welcome the little ones”, or “visit, feed, clothe the marginalized and realize it’s visiting me (Jesus)”, can you be my “friends” and get rid of the idea of being my servants.

Jesus lived diving deeply into the gifts of the Spirit with which all humans are endowed by the Creator for the well-being of All.

But Jesus was killed on the cross. “Will good always be erased out by evil?” we ask in desperation! Perhaps, but good people and even the apathetic have a mandate to resist evil. Thanks be to God, Luke testifies to that in the closing chapter of his gospel - the “resurrection” of Jesus. Even where evil and death seem to rule, the divine Spirit will not, cannot be snuffed out. The tomb is emptied. New life is awakened. God’s love story with all Creation continues and will come to completion.

Down to Earth Love

Wherever individuals, families, groups, and communities live the love story – continue the divine “invasion”, there the resurrected Spirit of that humble baby is alive. No spirit of superiority, domination, manipulation, self-righteousness - this infant, this Human One. Such costly hubris has too often been associated with the institutions that bear the name of Christ.

Instead, both the lowly birth and the resurrection proclaim the ubiquitous Spirit of courageous humility, respect, compassion, grace, gentleness, kindness, justice, hope, and all-encompassing love as the divine Way for the healing of the Earth.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Thanks to John Sullivan, an experienced and practiced creche designer and creator, for gracing the front lawn of the family home in Etobicoke with this humble, but beautiful creche.

Beyond Ignorance - A Personal Journey

Sun, 12 Dec 2021 19:56:47 GMT

Opening Eyes to See Clearly

The Parliamentary Library - a Treasury of Information to Be Learned

1950s

In 1955, four years after emigrating from The Netherlands to live in the USA, I crossed the border at the Peace Arch into Canada with my parents and sibs. We settled in Vancouver at 49 ^th Avenue and Fraser Street – the start of a lifetime as Dutch Canadian Christians. As an 11-year-old, I just assumed that we, like the others in our neighbourhood, were sometime immigrant settlers. There were people from India, China, Germany, Italy, Ukraine with varying cultural traditions and religions.

At that stage I didn't notice in that urban setting any “Indian” population, who were actually close at hand at the Musqueam Reserve on the University Endowment lands, on the shore in North Vancouver, or south of us at Tsawwassen. My only reference to “Indians” was when chums and I played at being cowboys and indians. Our family was aware of the downtown east side as skid row where poor, addicted people – of varied backgrounds – survived or not, but not yet as a place where many urban Indigenous folk subsisted.

1960s

By the mid-1960s, I’d graduated from Gladstone High School and got a B.A. degree in history and German from UBC. In all that learning, there was hardly a thought about how Turtle Island became Canada and even less about the Indian Act’s brutal impact on Indigenous peoples. In 1965, I moved to Toronto to study theology at Emmanuel College and spent two summers as a student minister in Manitoba. In Emmanuel as in UBC, I was a history buff; but, hard to credit, I spent no time learning about the crucial relationship between colonial settler culture and Indigenous people – not even about Canadian church history! I hadn’t learned to explore our own Church’s role in contributing to the presumed superiority of Euro-based settler culture.

In May of either 1966 or 1967 while serving on student “mission fields” in Ste. Rose du Lac and Whiteshell Provincial Park, I attended the Annual Meeting of the United Church’s Manitoba Conference. There I encountered, memorably, real “Indians” – Indigenous persons from northern reserves like Norway House or Cross Lake hovering at the edges of the gathering, I remember no effort – either personally or programmatically – to bring us together for conversation or understanding. It still haunts me.

1970s

In the 1970s, as an ordained minister in a downtown Toronto church, I remember well the heroic efforts of one leading woman with others regularly gathering up clothes and equipment, like sewing machines, to help reserve “Indians”. These were acts of generously motivated charity to address immediate conditions, but with little effort to grapple with causes Indigenous social and economic deprivation.

It was also the time I became aware of “scooped” Indigenous children adopted by settler families, doubtless motivated by the desire to “better the lives of Indigenous children.” We didn’t ask much about the why and how these Indigenous children needed such intervention, whether they would lose their family heritage, or why it was that “Indians” were living in poverty when most of us Euro-Canadians weren’t.

1980s

In the 1980s, there was in me and our little family as well as in the church as a whole, a turning of tides. My spouse, Glenys Huws, assumed several staff roles in the United Church’s Indigenous initiatives, bringing our family into close relationship with numerous Indigenous leaders – like Gladys Taylor, Murray Whetung, John Williams, Dolly Lansdowne, Peggy & Neil Monague, Bob Patton, and others.

The Church launched consultations for Indigenous church people to gather nationally to tell their life stories under the colonial settler-dominated church and nation. In emotionally-laden talking circles, Indigenous people shared stories of their experience of marginalization, racial injustice, imposed dependency, and poverty. They spoke of the political domination and presumed church superiority in matters spiritual; but they also shared their courage, generosity, determination, and hope.

The settler United Church was listening: on advice of Indigenous leaders, it created theological schools by and for Indigenous people to learn and lead their faith communities; organized church life for greater autonomy of Indigenous faith communities; fostered links and gatherings that enabled Indigenous folk to make their case and challenge racist ways.

In 1985, a courageous representative woman, Alberta Billy, called for the Church to apologize for the way it had related to Indigenous peoples in its midst. In August 1986, the General Council meeting in Sudbury acknowledged the Church’s sins of the past in an Apology to Indigenous peoples of the United Church. (A further apology to students of residential schools and their families was offered in 1998. https://united-church.ca/sites/default/files/apologies-response-crest.pdf)

Remarkably, there was still no recognition of the historical political context which had led to the theft of Indigenous lands by Canada’s government to grant possession to waves of new settlers and licences to corporate interests plundering the lands. I and the Church still hadn’t fully understood, acknowledged, or condemned as a crime against humanity the Canadian “apartheid” system - the Indian Act - proclaimed as law by the Crown in 1876, even as we were all clear and vocal about the evils of the system in South Africa. Even the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples report generated but small waves.

1990s

In the 1990s, the entire Indigenous Colonial-Settler relationship came under intense scrutiny when the horror of Residential Schools became general knowledge. Early stories of abuse, deprivation, violence, sexual assaults cast huge shadows on the story of these government initiated and Christian-church-run compulsory institutions. Ostensibly, they were designed for the educational benefit of Indigenous children, but in reality, the policy which created them aimed at deleting the “indian” out of children and assimilating them into European and Christian modes of being – a genocidal system.

2000s

These “schools” modelled white and Chrisian superiority, along with merciless, abusive power over Indigenous children and families enforced by the Indian agents and the RCMP. The last school was finally closed in 1996. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission report of 2015 recorded for the nation and the world the system’s devastating impact. It called for 94 “Calls to Action”.

Yet another investigation focused on murdered and missing Indigenous women and girl and produced a report with recommendations in June 2019. Its finding were documented in Reclaiming Power and Place: The Final Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (https://www.mmiwg-ffada.ca/timeline/).

There are no end of reports, recommendations, and resources to study and address the problematics of the Colonial Settler and Indigenous relationship. Lack of information and data is not the failure. But what I can now admit (and perhaps others too) is that it really escaped my notice that there was an unaddressed problem at the heart of this substantially malignant relationship between Settler and Indigenous peoples.

The fact was that the acquisition of the Turtle Island lands, resources, and waters and the unfounded pretensions of Crown sovereignty over Indigenous Peoples underlay most problems and had no basis either in conquest or in law.

This reality was all based on a phony Papal claim to speak on behalf of the Divine, declaring that any lands “discovered” and found to be “vacant lands” ( terrae nullius ) could be claimed by explorers for the European sovereigns who had commissioned them, e.g. Cartier for France and Cabot for England, etc. (see my blog posts at https://www.minister.ca/beyond-the-doctrine-of-discovery ; https://www.minister.ca/towards-a-new-way-for-canada )

2020s

I’m embarrassed to admit that I only really stared this startlingly obvious presumptuous fact in the eye in March last year when I watched the “Doctrine of Discovery” film produced by the Anglican Church of Canada. With the Covid 19 social shut-down, I had time to explore the sordid history, increasingly from the vantage point of the marginalized and oppressed Indigenous Peoples.

There has been much to learn and much reality to deplore. But I have benefitted much from the reams of factual information, knowledge, and wisdom which Indigenous researchers and scholars have been generating to help settler folk, like me. I discovered how much we settlers have gained from the theft of Indigenous lands, and how steadfastly Indigenous peoples have sought truth to be revealed and justice to be served. For more than a century and a half, the governments of Canada have been parceling out properties and assets on land and sea to settlers and corporations, or retaining land as “Crown” properties at the expense of Indigenous people and largely without their consent.

The discovery of the many children’s bodies buried – initially in Kamloops and since then in so many other Residential School yards – has touched Canadian hearts, opened minds, and awakened demands for justice. Justice – yes for the children buried, but also for the succeeding generations injured by the whole campaign to erase “Indian” out of Indigenous lives; justice in recognizing Indigenous claims of land and resources; and justice to transform the settler / Indigenous relationship.

What I have really learned all too recently is that the costly, wearying, malignant, and unjust relationship will continue unless the federal and provincial governments acknowledge the fatally flawed foundations of Canadian sovereignty.

Governments must acknowledge the urgent need to invite a representative assembly of Indigenous leaders together to negotiate a new way of being together on the Turtle Island lands. Governments must relinquish manipulative policies that require costly litigation rather than authentic negotiation. Governments must acknowledge the legal right of Indigenous peoples to consent or not to proposals affecting their traditional territories and resource rights (see UNDRIP articles 25 to 32: https://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/DRIPS_en.pdf ).

Governments and all Canadians must acknowledge that Indigenous Peoples have sovereign rights that have never been extinguished and must be honoured. (See the Yellowhead Institute's two informative reports: "Land Back" and "Cash Back" at https://yellowheadinstitute.org .)

I have also learned that by my ignorance and lack of attention to the systems burdening Indigenous Peoples, I am part of the problem and have contributed to a status quo which benefited me and harmed Indigenous Peoples.

I apologize for that apathy and hope that my activism toward a more just relationship is neither simply another Indigenous-washing approach nor an empty, temporary noise. Rather. I commit to a shared informed activism that leads to more just relationships, greater partnership, and a transformed vision of Canada, where my relations with Indigenous people are based on respect and justice, on generosity and sharing, on appreciation of diversity and on other-affirming humility.

The Golden Rule and the Great Commandment which I - as Christian - profess have far-reaching implications!

More to come……

Sinterklaas - St. Nicholas

Wed, 01 Dec 2021 21:08:39 GMT

A Generous Saint

Sinterklaas or Saint Nicholas is the legendary figure Dutch children come to rely on for candies and gifts (if they're good) and lumps of coal (if they're bad)! The good saint comes around to Dutch homes in the weeks before December 5th to listen at the household chimney about the comportment of the children.

Then on the special night (Dec. 5/6) he comes to deliver the goodies (I've never heard of any Dutch children getting lumps of coal, which must be a consequence of their generally excellent behaviour!)

The good saint was born around 270 A.D. of wealthy parents in a Turkish town. Upon the death of his parents, Nicholas, inherited their wealth and, St. Francis-like, gave it all away to people in poverty and need. Later he became the Christian archbishop of Myra.

By Dutch lore Nicholas comes with his white charger to The Netherland by boat from Spain. There are songs about this arrival. Here's one verse:

Zie ginds komt de stoomboot uit Spanje weer aan. (see there comes the steamship again from Spain)

Hij brengt on Sint Niklaas, ik zie hem al staan. (It's bringing us St. Nicholas, I can see him standing)

Hoe huppelt zijn paardje het dek op en neer. (How his little horse is skipping up & down on the deck!)

Hoe waaien de wimpels al heen en al weer. (How streamers are waving back & forth!)

(The poetry works better in Dutch!!)

I can remember being in Grade 1 at the local Christian school and we were treated to a visit of the good Saint with his servant Piet. We didn't get presents, but Piet would throw "peepernoten:" (peppernuts) into the classroom for us to gather.

Piet - Zwarte Piet - has become a controversial character in this Dutch tradition. His origins may go back to the days of the Moors in Spain to come north with Spanish sailors during the time of Spanish domination of The Netherlands. Who knows exactly! As I was growing up and even today, "black Peter" is still (too often) portrayed by a white person with "black face".

Canada knows well how much "black face" creates justified controversy. About a decade ago I wrote to the editor of the Dutch newspaper in Ontario to urge him to edit away that part of the tradition. He refused. We cancelled our subscription. There are too many vestiges of slavery, anti-black racism, and stereotypical allusions to retain that part of the tradition.

To learn more about Sinterklaas arriving by boat in Amsterdam and its traditions (and controversy), go to: https://www.amsterdamsights.com/events/saintnicholas.html

In our household we continue with remnants of the Sinterklaas tradition. We send chocolate letters or hagelslag (chocolate sprinkles) on behalf of Sint Nikolaas to the Canadian nephews, nieces, and grandkids, sons & partners; small Dutch gifts to siblings and partners; put our wooden shoes and a carrot near the fireplace or substitute; and play the aging vinyl recording of Sinterklaas songs learned as a child.

December 6th is the Saint's "birthday" - the day when he journeyed to the new life in God in the year 340 A.D. Blessings of the day to one and all.

Remembrance Day Reflections 2021

Fri, 12 Nov 2021 03:18:09 GMT

The High Cost of Evil Leadership

The ruins of Middelburg's City Hall after May 17, 1940

In early November 1944, I was two and a half months old, when Middelburg, the capital of the province of Zeeland located on Walcheren Island in The Netherlands, was under artillery and bomber attack. British, Belgian, Norwegian, French, and Canadian armed forces, including Le Regiment de Maisonneuve, the Calgary Highlanders, the Black Watch (RHR) of Canada, and the 5 ^th Canadian Infantry Brigade, were aiming to wrest the strategically located island out of Nazi Germany’s malevolent control.

The enemy occupiers had fortified the island with bunker, heavy artillery, tank traps. and well-armed soldiers – all part of the Atlantic wall - to prevent Allied forces from landing on the island’s beaches. But more important, the Island was strategically located enabling the occupiers to block Allied freighters laden with war materiel from sailing up the eastern Scheldt River to the newly liberated port of Antwerp. The port was key to provisioning the Allied forces headed east for Germany.

To keep the family safe from the bombardment, our parents vacated the house where I was born and sought safety in the neighbouring church’s coal cellar accessible by a side door from our yard. Going underground provided a measure of ambiguous safety for the seven of us to settle for the night. My eldest brother tells me that I was left in the baby carriage set on top of the coal heap which fed the hungry furnace heating the building.

Mercifully, no shell or bomb fell on the church, though shrapnel did fly in the yard, and happily, no flames erupted to roast me or the rest of the family.

The munitions were aimed at the German armed forces, which had been occupying our city for four and a half years, but, collaterally, threatened residents with a “friendly fire” death.

Around the city, the agricultural lands normally protected by sea dikes had been drowned. Allied bombers had blown holes in the sea wall allowing the North Sea waters to burst through great gaps and inundate most of the Island. The aim was to make the occupation and defense operations difficult for the German forces now confronted by the spectre of being isolated by Allied forces.

In 1940, Nazi Germany’s forces on Hitler’s malignant orders had overrun Dutch defenses and begun an occupation that grew increasingly repressive and dangerous. Our city, on May 17 ^th of that year had suffered tremendous damage in the battle between German and French forces for control of the city. Much of the city’s core, with its City Hall built in 1452, great churches, abbey, and the Lange Jan (Long John) tower, was left in ruins. Dozens of citizens had been killed and wounded.

The invaders gained control and the island was transformed into a fortress with bunkers and heavy guns facing south and west. Occupying soldiers filled the barracks while officers were quartered in local homes – include two in our house, turning our dining room into their home away from home!

My father was one of the ministers of the local Re-reformed Church. Although not a member of the underground resistance, he contributed to the effort. In the roof joists of the church a radio was hidden and connected next door to our house-phone system. Turn on the right light, lift up the phone receiver, and voila! the radio would supply news from the BBC in London. More than one Dutch person had been executed for similar disobedience, but this radio was never discovered during the occupation.

The tyranny took its toll. To get a sense of the terror, the current Netflix film “The Forgotten Battle”, depicts the scene on Walcheren and its shores, leaving viewers with graphic and heart wrenching accounts of what it was like to live under armed occupation on Walcheren island. Resistance took courage and battles to rid the occupiers were costly. The attack to control the Sloe Causeway was particularly bitter for Canadian troops.

On November 7 ^th , 1944, the occupiers’ defenses were crumbling. With no relief in sight, the German command realized that further fighting was hopeless. Lieutenant General Wilhelm Daser, the officer in command in Middelburg, was presented a demand for unconditional surrender by British Captain D W Jones of the 155 ^th Infantry Brigade.

Insulted by the demand issued by an officer with only the rank of lieutenant, the General refused to surrender unless an Allied officer with a rank not less than colonel presented it!! A major arrived finally and was immediately, magically transformed into a colonel. The surrender took place and thousands of German soldiers became POWs and the Zeelanders were liberated.

Meanwhile in the northern urban part of the country, the occupation continued, and conditions worsened with as many as 20,000 Dutch citizens dying of starvation. The total liberation of The Netherlands finally took place on May 5th after much more fighting. Canada’s Lieutenant General Charles Foulkes presented the terms of unconditional surrender to General Oberst Johannes Blaskowitz in Hotel “De Wereld” (The World) in Wageningen. The war and the occupation of The Netherlands ended. As many as 237,000 people, including 104,000 Jews, had died during the five-year ordeal.

The price to liberate Walcheren Island and the city of Middelburg was also extremely high. Killed were 3231 Allied soldiers of which Canadians made up a large percentage, and 2283 civilians. The German death toll was 4250 people.

It would take years to return to “normal” life, to restore the dikes and pump the salt water back into the North Sea, and to restore so much of the cultural heritage that had been destroyed or severely damaged.

Our family decided to emigrate – as did many other Dutch households, to begin a new life in the “new world.” In April 1951 we sailed past the Statue of Liberty and settled in Hoboken, New Jersey for four years. Then, in 1955, the family now of six, with the eldest son married and staying in New Jersey, travelled another 5000 km – this time by car - to settle in Vancouver as immigrants to Canada.

Here, I have been able to say – as a Dutch person, “As a baby, I was liberated from tyranny by the heroic and self-giving efforts of Canadians and other allies committed to freedom and justice for all”, and, as a Canadian, “our military service people were ready to sacrifice for The Netherlands because the power of evil must be resisted with truth, strength, courage, generosity, and love so that all humans can thrive and Creation is respected.”

Thanks be to the Spirit who gave and gives life and calls ALL to embrace generous and compassionate life in all its fullness, while resisting the ways of evil and death.

The high level lesson of World War II for me is that when megalomaniacal narcissistic ideologically-driven bullies are given power to rule nations and brainwash their people, then the way of death and destruction is on the horizon. Democracy is fragile and the institutions sustaining democracy are essential, but entrusting any nation’s future to evil sociopathic self-centred autocrats leads to disaster.

The 11th of November has another reason for me to remember and reflect.

In Beamsville, Ontario at 11 p.m. on the 11 ^th day of the 11 ^th month in 1968, my father, Rev. Dr. A. H. (Arie) Oussoren, breathed his last breath and left behind cancer’s pain and suffering for peace and fulfillment beyond life. Into the loving arms of the Holy One, I continue to commend his life and work and soul.

Holy One, support us all the day long, until the shadows lengthen and the evening comes, and

the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done.

Then, in your great mercy, grant us and all a safe lodging and a holy rest and peace at the last.

Through Jesus Christ your beloved one. AMEN

A Proposal Towards a Two-Row Wampum Society

Tue, 19 Oct 2021 15:12:26 GMT

The Indigenous Peoples Fund - A Proposal

[Use the following link for a brief explanation of the Two-Row Wampum concept. https://briarpatchmagazine.com/articles/view/a-short-introduction-to-the-two-row-wampum source.]

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A Concept Proposal towards Transforming Indigenous and Settler Relationships

PUBLIC DRAFT – October 18, 2021 – for discussion and feedback

(see note to reader below)

A. Introduction

“Discovery”

In the spring of 1497, Italian explorer John Cabot unfurled the cross of St. George and, in the name of King Henry II of England, claimed the area where he landed (was it Newfoundland or ?) for the English Crown. On July 24, 1534, Jacques Cartier planted a 30-foot cross bearing the fleur-de-lis and the words Vive le Roy de France near Perce Rock in the Gaspe area.

Based on the “Doctrine of Discovery” enunciated by Pope Alexander VI in the May 4, 1493 Papal Bull “Inter Caetera” and on the “terrae nullius” concept, * these “discovered” lands became territories of the Christian Sovereigns of England and France, respectively. By papal authority and with the sign of the cross, Indigenous Peoples and their traditional territories – all Turtle Island - and resources were made involuntary subjects of these foreign Christian Crowns.

Through the centuries to the present, this claimed sovereignty expanded and has continued in what eventually became the various British colonies. A new era arrived with the Confederation of Canada in 1867 and its misbegotten Indian Act of 1876. The Act, variously amended since its inception by the federal government, empowered the Crown to control most of Indigenous life – especially “status Indians” - including land, resources, education, health, culture, and much more, even in today’s Canada.

Effectively, Canadians were divided into two unequally treated groups: the privileged Settler population enjoying all the human rights, freedoms, and provisions afforded by law, while Indigenous people were subjugated to the controls and co nstraints of the Indian Act and its enforcers. +

For over 500 years and still counting, Canada’s Indigenous peoples have been subjected to quasi-legal colonial settler power, authority, religion, and racist policies of assimilation leading to impoverishment and genocide. Restricted to and controlled in reserves totaling about 2% of the Canadian land mass and harassed by constant, manipulative efforts to cede and extinguish remaining land claims and resource rights, Indigenous peoples have seen their traditional heritage lands parceled out by the Crown to settler peoples harvesting the rich resources of land and sea. The Crown dealt to presumed superior settlers the wealth of land and sea, while the presumed inferior Indigenous peoples harvested poverty and dependency on government for subsistence program funding.

This faux-legal arrangement has gone on far too long. It is urgently overdue to acknowledge the dehumanization and injustice perpetrated against the Indigenous Peoples by colonial settler political, military, and economic power based on specious religious declarations. The United Nations’ Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, affirmed by Parliament in 2021, is a much more authoritative and justice-based guide affirming the inherent rights of Indigenous Peoples in Canada and globally.

Along history’s ways, the voice of justice for Indigenous Peoples has not failed to challenge the mindset of domination. The Royal Proclamation of 1763, the Constitution Act of 1982, some treaty implementation efforts, various legal judgements of the Supreme Court of Canada, and far too many commissions and studies, including the Truth & Reconciliation Commission with its 94 calls to action - all have revealed the extent to which Indigenous Peoples have been disrespected and denied justice.

Nevertheless, these glimmers of law-and-order have put in place substantial foundations for transforming the relationship between Indigenous and Colonial Settler peoples and for affirming the good life every Canadian rightfully seeks. The honour of the Crown and the integrity of Canada demands that this transformation be advanced without delay, and that Indigenous Peoples too experience their full right to justice and self-determination.

This proposal is intended to move the needle toward that full justice. We, the undersigned, recognize that ritualized words about “traditional Indigenous lands” have been only a tiny first step toward this transformation. For these words to have real meaning they must be married to action. Our proposal would transform that tiny step into a large leap toward substantial meaningful action.

B. The Proposal

The Indigenous Peoples Fund (IPF)

Specifically, we propose that the Parliament of Canada mandate the creation of an Indigenous Peoples Fund. The IPF would be resourced by a one percent tax – analogous to the Goods & Services/Harmonized Sales Tax - on all real estate sales in Canada. The ways and means of collecting the tax would require further study and negotiation.

The control and stewardship of the IPF would not be lodged with the government of Canada, but the federal government would mandate standards and practices to ensure public accountability and transparency.

The amount of total annual real estate sales in Canada requires further research but could amount to as much as $500 billion. One percent might generate about $5 billion. The IPF can go a long way toward freeing Indigenous Peoples from reliance on much of the humiliating special request “hand-outs” regime federal governments employ.

Human Development Focus

We believe in the Fund's liberating effect because the one percent tax is intended to be an investment in Indigenous human development. It would aim to enhance the capacity of Indigenous Peoples to close the social and economic gaps that separate Settler and Indigenous communities; to contribute Indigenous experience, knowledge, wisdom, expertise, and spirituality within and beyond their communities; and “to provide a foundation for [Indigenous Peoples’] economic self-sufficiency.” #

Dependency patterns can end only when Indigenous Peoples of all ages have access to resources that enable personal transformation, community development, and strengthened capacity to engage economic, social, and political structures.

The primary means toward Indigenous human development is education, ensuring all ages – from early childhood through to seniors - have access to diverse learning opportunities that equip them for the full and varied life that gives meaning and purpose, while contributing to the well-being of the entire society. The IPF would make this level of investment possible and would, we believe, reap benefits - far beyond the actual dollars collected - for all Canadians. Effective stewardship of land- and sea-based assets is an obvious priority enabling Indigenous people to participate in national and international economies.

Current Federal programs mandated by Treaties and the Indian Act would continue in force until replaced by mutually agreed alternatives. The IPF is not a concluding settlement for these Federal responsibilities, nor a form of reparations or restitution for injustices experienced.

An Inclusive Pan-Canadian Indigenous Peoples Fund Agency

To govern the IPF, an independent pan-Canadian indigenous agency representative nationally of all First Nations, Inuit, and Metis peoples is envisioned. It might evolve to include regional branches. The agency would be ratified by act of Parliament. The organization would govern the IPF according to principles and objectives determined by Indigenous Peoples themselves.

It is clear that the creation of such an agency is no simple matter. The diversity of the Indigenous Peoples is as real as it is for Canada’s Settler peoples. But it is equally clear that unity among Indigenous Peoples is an essential factor in any process seeking to transform the current and historic patterns of Colonial Settler paternalism and injustice hobbling Indigenous Peoples. These debilitating conditions must be addressed together and transcended if Indigenous Peoples are to be full, participating members of the body politic and society as a whole. The IPF agency would be a crucial vehicle in this task.

The Context Calls for a Transformed Relationship

More than ever, the years ahead for Canada require that all Canadians have a strengthened capacity to engage the demanding social, health, ecological, economic, political, spiritual challenges before us. It is our conviction that an IPF focused on the development needs of all Indigenous People can contribute substantially to the well-being of the entire Canadian society in an inter-dependent world.

We have consulted widely and share the growing conviction, sparked by too many tragic, unjust experiences and discoveries of Indigenous loss, that this is now time for transformation to happen. We believe Canadians throughout the land understand the need for a transformed relationship between the two realms. < Encouraged by popular “grass roots” wisdom and longing, and increasing calls for justice, we believe that these voices must couple with visionary political leadership in both Indigenous and Settler communities for a new future. An Indigenous Peoples Fund to which all will contribute directly or indirectly can help it happen and serves as a sign of good faith in any authentic journey toward reconciliACTION.

Footnotes:

* Terrae nullius = uninhabited lands or literally, lands of no one. The Papal Bulls made clear that “pagan” and “heathen” people in “barbarous” lands that were “discovered” were to be conquered and brought to the Christian religion

+ Clarifying common misconceptions is: “21 Things You May Not Know about the Indian Act, Helping Canadians Make Reconciliation with Indigenous People a Reality” by Bob Joseph, 2018.

# ”Living Treaties: Lasting Agreements – Report of the Task Force to Review Comprehensive Claims Policy” 1985. The Coolican Report. P.102

< See Call to Action #45 in the report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.

Grass Roots Group for the Indigenous Peoples Fund (with email contact information)

Mark MacDonald

Stan Beardy

Wendy Fletcher-Marsh

Laverne Jacobs

Maggie Dieter

Harry Oussoren – ahharryo370@gmail.com (administration )

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Dear Reader:

This “ Public Draft ” version of our proposal includes an invitation to reflect, to discuss, and to offer feedback – critical and affirming - including ideas that might strengthen this initiative.

If you were part of the consultation process for the concept, please respond to the Group member with whom you may have discussed the idea.

If this is a new idea for you, please share your impressions with any member of the Group or via "administration" or via the comment section below .

Your interest in and support for the proposal is invited and welcome.

Thank you!

Totalitarian China's Victim - still

Tue, 05 Oct 2021 20:54:33 GMT

Victims of China's Paranoid Totalitarianism

It's hard to imagine any Canadian citizen let alone one of Chinese background going to China after Kovrig and Spavor. Hostage diplomacy, rule by one-party laws, sham trials, arbitrary arrests, forced confessions, horrible incarcerations, and re-education programs that have all the marks of concentration camps - all that and more is on offer by the Beijing government.

The Lot off Huseyin Celil

Before Spavor and Kovrig there were numerous others, including Huseyin Celil, a new Canadian citizen, a Uighur who advocated human rights, a husband and father of four boys who haven't seen their father in 16 years. He was detained in Uzbekistan before he knew that there was a secret extradition agreement between that country and the Chinese regime. Claims that he was a dual-citizen were inaccurate. He had renounced his Chinese citizenship following the steps prescribed in Artticles 9 and 10 of China's Nationality Law. But following that law did not assuage China's paranoia.

His story was written up by his wife, Kamila Talendibaeva, in the Globe & Mail of October 2, 2021. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-no-more-excuses-canada-bring-my-husband-huseyin-celil-home/

Given all the effort and publicity given the two Michaels - justifiably and happily so - she lamented that the Canadian government seems to have forgotten the tyranny that her husband (not to mention as many as 115 other Canadian prisoners) was experiencing. So little is being done to address this injustice. Is it because far fewer citizens are calling for action by the government? Or is it that we don't want to poke Xi Jin PIng's hive any more than we already have and risk the stings (esp. loss of trade) of Beijing's reaction?

I wrote Amnesty International's Urgent Action office asking about their take on the case. They sent a substantial message outlining their actions and ideas for others to act. I won't repeat the whole message when you can just use this link and read it from the authoritative source itself:

https://www.amnesty.ca/huseyin-celil/

As usual, Amnesty offers lots of ways concerned people can pursue the case. Given the bully intransigence Xi Jin Ping demonstrated in the case of the two Michael's, we may not have much impact on Huseyin Celil (pronounced jay-leel). Pushing the rock up this big hill can be frustrating - a long hard slog. But maybe.... Sitting in a dungeon is worse.

Sending a message of concern, solidarity, and hope to Huseyin from time to time may be the most blessed basic thing one can do, but more is warranted. Here's the address provided by Amnesty International Canada. I hope it is still valid:

Huseyin Celil

Di 6 qu, Di 5 Fenqu

Xinjiang Weiwuer Zizhiqu Diyi Jianyu

No. 5 Siping Lu

Wulumuqishi 830013

Xingiang Weiwuer Zizhiqu

People’s Republic of China

While you're writing him, you might just send a note to Justin Trudeau to remind him that the government of Canada has an obligation to fend for its citizens, particularly when they are being victimised by another ruthless government.

(The Rt. Hon. Justin Trudeau MP, Prime Minister's Office, 80 Wellington St., Ottawa K1A 0A2 - save the stamp for mailing Huseyin; ir email Justin.Trudeau@parl.gc.ca)

For people of any faith, the divine Spirit has endowed the entire human family with gifts of compassion and concern that can bless Huseyin Cecil and his family, and others arbitrarily and unjustly jailed. For Christians, the witness attributed to Jesus in Matthew's Gospel chapter 25, esp. verses 43 to 45, will be a stark prod to action:

"I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me ... Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these you did not do it to me."

I plan to keep Huseyin before readers of Pilgrim Praxis every now and then!!

Beyond the Doctrine of Discovery

Thu, 30 Sep 2021 19:59:55 GMT

Beyond the Doctrine of Discovery - It's Time

The scene above, labelled "The Discovery of Canada", portrays a sword-bearing European with armed soldiers in 1534 meeting unarmed Indigenous people harvesting nature's gift of fish, lobsters, and deer near Perce Rock located on what he, Jacques Cartier, named the Bay of Chaleurs. "On July 24 he planted a 30-foot cross with the fleur-de-lis and the words Vive le roy de France. Two Indians were taken back to France. Their glowing accounts of mines in the kingdom of the Saguenay prompted Cartier to return in 1535 with the Grand Hermine, the Petite Hermine, and the Emerillon."

(Print version of painting by: J.D. Kelly; copyright source: Confederation Life's Gallery of Canadian History, Portfolio Set #1. Confederation Life Association prints of paintings to celebrate the centenary of confederation in 1967.)

Another print in this portfolio depicts Italian explorer John Cabot also bearing a sword, unfurling the cross of St. George flag. Having disembarked his ship Matthew, he claims the land “discovered” in the name of King Henry VII of England, who, with help from merchants in Bristol, financed Cabot's search for the route to the East! Did he land in Newfoundland, in Labrador, or Cape Breton Island? The two prints depict the genesis of the French and British struggle through centuries about sovereignty over the “discovered” Indigenous lands and resources and the oppresion of the Indigenous Peoples.

A propos: Copied from a Facebook post, from the “Department of Anticolonial History” displaying the following text on a brass plaque placed - who knows where - by Republic of Archaeology.ca led by archaeologist Joanne Hammond!!

"COLONIAL HISTORY LIED

When Europe showed up in North America, Indigenous people were not nomads, not few, not savage, not impoverished, not recent immigrants, and were not looking for salvation. Yes, Indigenous people had commerce, travel, economies, permanency, stewardship, inheritances, artistry, drama, ceremony, mourning, health care, politics, justice, penance, peacekeeping, and STILL DO."

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On the First National Day of Truth & Reconciliation - 2021

Promulgated in 1493 by Pope Alexander VI, the illegitimate Doctrine of Discovery’s first consequence for northern Turtle Island – Canada – arrived in 1497 and then another in 1534. The Kings of England and France were the beneficiaries of claims to the lands by Cabot and Cartier.

The Indigenous Peoples of Canada have been paying a very long lasting and costly price for these presumptuous European assertions of domination.

Skyla Hart, is an Indigenous Cree and Ojibway student in grade 10 of a Winnipeg high school. As a protests, she won’t stand for the singing of “Oh, Canada” because, she says, Canada is a colonized country. She is well aware that this is not just a fact of past history. The traumatic effects continue today. Her mum Raven Hart, who attended Lebret Residential School as did her mother, supports her teenage daughter. Her words are clear: “Canada was built on the demise of Indigenous People, the dispossession of the Indigenous people from their lands, their language, and their culture. “

Skyla’s respectful protest was successful. She is now free at school to sit for the anthem. She states she will not stand until there is a new national anthem. She also welcomes the opportunity to help others in the school learn what Indigenous people have so long experienced.

National Anthem(s)

English

Skyla's protest prodded me to look at the anthem(s) to see in what ways it was objectionable. Both the English-language and French-language versions bear close attention.

The line “Our home and native land” omits the fact, of course, that the Crown, by a variety of less than scrupulous and fair means dispossessed Indigenous Peoples of the bulk of their land and resources. Not taking this fact seriously is a fundamental flaw not only in the anthem but also in the ongoing relationship between Indigenous and Settler peoples. Taking out the “and” and replacing it with “on” would be a more accurate and just reflection of the Canadian reality.

I also stumbled over the words “the true north – strong and free.” Canada hasn't been as truthful about the history of our relationship with Indigenous Peoples and there is good reason to think twice about “free”. There was no freedom granted by the Indian Act. Indigenous peoples were deprived of their freedom to be themselves and the freedom to enjoy and benefit from their traditional lands. As legislation, the Indian Act casts a huge pall over the human rights commitments Canada proclaims and Canadians promote.

Francais

The French-language version too merits scrutiny. In it we find the two key symbols which have been the basis for the oppression of Canada’s Indigenous Peoples. As portrayed in the Kelly painting above, both the sword and the cross point to what was to befall the Indigenous Peoples. In the lyrics of the French version of the anthem we have the words: “Car ton bras sait porter l’épée il sait porter la croix [for your arm knows to bear the sword, it knows to carry the cross]. In a song abstracted from history one might take the meaning to be that the faith can grow while the sword ensures the safety of those living a faith reflective of the Gospel. But we have a real, live Canadian history that defies those meanings.

The colonizing sword and cross were not beneficent partners. The Residential School system is the starkest evidence. Raven Hart and her mother were just two of the thousands of children plucked by immoral legislation and the ordered enforcement of armed RCMP officers – the power of the sword - to attend church-run residential schools. I believe that the Christ of the cross was there with the children in their trials, suffering, and death. Nothing can justify what happened in either crucifixion setting.

Colonizing government pursued genocidal aims in step-by-step policies disabling the aspirations of Indigenous Peoples to be self-determining and whole. Assimilating indigeneity into the white “melting pot” of Euro-culture - erasing the Indian presence – and extinguishing Indigenous claims to land and resources were the over-arching colonial goals for far too long.

In schools and in reserves, Indigenous spirituality was suppressed and Christian religion - the cross - and its beliefs, practices, and obedience imposed. Legislation inflicted unilaterally upon Indigenous Peoples arose from no spirit of respect, care, and compassion. It was generated by an assumption of superiority, righteousness, empowered by the wealth from stolen lands and weapons to conquer others deemed primitive and savage. This was an anthropology of human disrespect, infantilizing others by illegitimate power, too readily blessed by religious authority.

The imposed religion and the dehumanization which Indigenous Peoples experienced witnesses more to the absence of the divine than to Gospel. Apologies by Christian churches for the way they allowed and participated in this dehumanization are the very least they can offer. Much more, however, is required to transform the relationship – reconciliation. Pawning responsibility for this oppression off to “individuals behaving badly” – ministers, priests, nuns, teachers, staffers, etc. – is not good enough. It’s a dodge, an avoidance of accountability. Churches – whether they have apologized or not - must look into their theological and ecclesiological bases that allowed church leaders to conclude that such systematic dehumanization was acceptable.

It wasn’t!! When seriously measured by the norms that Jesus prescribes for those who identify with him and his Way, we can only be embarrassed and ashamed by the failure of Canadian Christianity and its institutional churches to live Jesus’ Gospel.

This “ histoire ” was no “épopée des plus brillants exploits.” It was, lamentably, mainly a history of conquest which demands confession, apology, conversion, and thoroughgoing root-and-branch processes leading to transformation.

Transformation as the Goal

Such transformation requires serious engagement of equals together using all resources necessary to come to a new relationship – a relationship of respect, of shared vision, of generosity and compassion, and clear-headed realism – of justice. “All resources necessary” means ensuring that Indigenous peoples have the resources – money, facilities, gifted expert leadership - they need to work as equals with representatives of the colonial Settler population. Indigenous Peoples have been illegally “dispossessed” of inestimable assets – many-trillions of dollars – their land and resource heritage. So, we dare not fail to expend what is necessary to change the unacceptable reality.

Legal bases of Indigenous rights and claims are already in hand. These have been clearly established and adjudicated by laws, treaties, Constitution Act, and Courts. Now is the time draw the consequences of these bases, to act together to create a society where all can thrive and bless each other.

The political seriousness and leadership are, however, still missing. Leadership to promote this change is still not evident. Canada has governments, including the present ones, which keep throwing money at “Indigenous problems”, but are not willing to accept responsibility for addressing the fundamentals that keep Indigenous Peoples dependent and colonial Settler peoples in dominant and self-justifying roles.

No tinkering will accomplish a transformation. We need courageous political leaders – across party lines – to work together with Indigenous leadership to effect the core changes that will dismantle the colonial settler framework perpetuated by the Indian Act. What a new reality will look like is less than clear. But for me the “two-row wampum” image speaks of the kind of partnership that is based on mutual respect, shared resources, and a common vision for the well-being of all Canadians and the northern Turtle Island domain.

I hope Skyla has great success in sharing learning with her school-mates. I hope Settler and Indigenous leaders join the learning and discern a clear vision that moves us beyond the Doctrine of Discovery and its destructive consequences. Perhaps then with Skyla, we can sing with gusto and joy a newly worded anthem about “ brillants exploits ” of Canada that all can gratefully call “ home ”.

Could Christianity Survive without Constantine?

Mon, 27 Sep 2021 20:43:43 GMT

Can the Church Survive without Constantine?

But the Christianity Chose the Way of Constantine!

“Post-Constantinian” has been the adjective in use for the current state of the occidental Christian Church. It all goes back to the early 4th Century when Constantine the Great won control of the Roman Empire (306-337 C.E.) and began to tolerate and then advance Christianity as the official religion contributing to unity in the Empire. By 380 A.D. in the reign of Theodosius, Christianity was the Empire’s established religion. Within Christianity itself, however, unity was and is elusive. Diverse conceptions of God and revelation – theological differences - were and continue to be the ongoing disturber of peace and faithfulness in the global church.

An acquaintance asked me recently, “Would Christianity have survived if it hadn’t bought into the Constantinian arrangement?” As for the question, any response would, of course, be speculative. But for me the question invites reflection on what the Jesus movement might have become and where it may be headed into the future.

Prior to its preferred status, being Christian involved commitment, danger, and, too often, penalty. Companions and friends of Jesus risked much to accompany their Friend – dead and risen. Small groups gathered by faith under the Roman shadow, they huddled to break bread and search scriptures to understand Jesus and his Way for living.

Their Jewish siblings and neighbours challenged them for their new-found convictions, while Roman political authorities saw them as yet another unreliable sect unwilling to “bend the knee” before the divinized imperial majesty. Their new Way invited persecution and prosecution. Martyrdom, in the tradition of Jesus’ own faithfulness, was the lot of many.

But Constantine’s action brought an end to the persecution of Christians and birthed Imperial unity - and uniformity. For the Church, it meant stable, non-threatening peace and opportunity to grow and gain power. It's architecture was inspired by the imperial palace; the cathedra mimicked the throne.. For the better part of two millennia, Christianity of the western world has been living with this Faustian arrangement.

Associating with political regimes in order to maintain its position of dominance became a well-practiced pattern for the Church. In the middle ages, Roman Imperial conquests led to enforced baptism and suppression of “pagan” and “heathen” religious practices.

At times, ecclesiastical supremacy (theocracy) was blatant. The threat of excommunication made more than one monarch bend the knee before the Bishop of Rome. Later, associating with colonizing political, military, and economic powers gave the Church – Roman Catholic and Protestant - opportunity for organized mission to add to church numbers by converting “heathens”.

At its worst, the Papacy empowered Christian monarchs through the Doctrine of Discovery to take control of colonized land – the Canadian experience! More recently, regimes like Franco’s in Spain, Pinochet’s in Chile were encouraged by prelates to root out those opposing their authoritarianism.

More subtly, social pressures toward uniformity led many in the western world to assume superficial Christian identity through infant baptism. Too often, nationalistic populism with Christian veneers threatened faithful discipleship.

A St. Albans Episcopal Church post of Facebook, (without address), summarizes the 2000 years sojourn of Christianity roughly thus:

In the first century in Israel/Palestine [and Syria], Christianity was [a movement of] believers gathered in community; then Christianity moved to Greece and became a philosophy; then it moved to Rome and became an institution; then it moved to Europe and became a culture; and then it moved to America and became a business.

The Church to empire (political, economic, military) relationship during the Constantinian era has been fraught with contradictions to the Way of Jesus!

Repeatedly Jesus had rejected the temptation to become a political leader even while undermining the imperial authority of Rome and challenging the dominating ways of Jewish religious authorities. The temptations Jesus resisted in the narrative of Matthew 4 reveal his persistent trust in the Divine - “Worship YHWH, and serve only God.” When five thousand people of various backgrounds are fed in the miraculous sharing launched by a child, Jesus resists popular efforts to make him king. He withdraws in order to cool public ardour (John 6:1-15).

Jesus modelled another Way. Confronted by sick, wounded, and marginalized people, he turns to them compassionately with healing care and acceptance. “Sinners” are not repelled but welcomed as beloved human beings and invited to fully human living. Children are welcomed as signs of humility’s grace (Matthew 19:13-15). Creatures are affirmed as protected and blessed by God (Matthew 10:29).

In the face of injustice, Jesus rails against the powerful (Matthew 23:27-38), the ungrateful greed of the wealthy (Luke 16:19-31), and the judgmental legalism of the self-righteous (Mark 2:23-28; John 8:2-11). Walls dividing the human family are broken down (Luke 10:25-37) and relativized by the Golden Rule’s standard to treat others as you want to be treated (Matthew 7:12; Luke 6:31). Self-giving unconditional Love – the essential Divine gift manifested in the crucifixion, death, and rising of Jesus - is made the principal human law.

In recognition of his Spirit-blessed Way and to witness to his Way for them, Jesus’ friends and companions readily called him “kyrios” – Lord, and Christ/Messiah, the Anointed One.

Would Christianity have survived without the Constantinian arrangement? Was Jesus’ Way just too idealistic, too demanding, too out of touch with human reality, with human sin? The way largely chosen by the Church was about Realpolitik, about accommodating and adapting to the powers that be, while claiming for itself to be the earthly representative of the kingdom of God.

I believe the Church would have survived without the Constantinian arrangement. Biblically the divine promise is clear as Matthew recounts in the closing words of his Gospel (28:20): “Remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age!”

My trust in this promise is substantiated by the fact that throughout Christianity’s dominant but turbulent history there have always been groups of people – usually on the margins of the mainstream – seeking more faithful, less self-serving Ways to express and live their faith. I am struck by the fact that even in the most tyrannical cultures, Christians have chosen to gather and persist in identifying with Jesus’ Way.

To me, this is evidence that the Spirit continues to endow all people with gifts enabling them to mirror Christ’s virtues that empower humans - sometimes many and sometimes but a few - to embrace the Golden Rule and the way of love in relationship with all.

Witnessing to this faithfulness is a favourite little volume that has strengthened my conviction: “Radical Christian Communities” by Thomas P Rausch S.J., A Michael Glazier Book published by The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, MN.

We live in time when most institutions have been humbled - if not humiliated - and experience significant disfavour. Institutional Christianity has particularly suffered much loss of credibility – the causes, past and present, within and outside of the Church, are substantial and many.

We are also heading into a time of great transitions and tribulations which demand of all faiths an analyzing presence and movements that communicate deeper truths and actions to inspire hope.

In those stormy times, there will continue to be Christians and other people of good-will who band together (in person, on-line, and in prayer) to explore the heart of joy-filled faith and the Spirit’s gifts for faithful, respectful, compassionate and just relationships with others.

Professing Christian faith in the ethical, theological, social, and political Way of Jesus will become increasingly challenging in turbulent times. It will demand highly informed and deeply considered faith knowledge and convictions that pierce walls of self-interest and dismantle false witness. Inter-faith conversations and collaboration will help to break down silos of theological tribalism and pretensions of superiority, while broadening the global impact of faith-based leadership.

I think Jesus would be able to recognize in such a movement of faith communities both the Way he lived and the ubiquitos divine Spirit continuing “to work in us and others”.

So, yes, I think the Christian faith would have survived without Constantine and his imperial way. The divine transcends the imperial as the story of Jesus’ humble birth in the Bethlehem’s stable continually reminds us. (Luke 2:1-7)

Pipe Dreams Prod Realities

Fri, 24 Sep 2021 17:09:19 GMT

Pipe Dreams Prod Reality

Perhaps pipe dreams proliferate when smoking a hookah pipe with something stronger than flavoured tobacco, but wish-filled thinking also generates a flurry of dreams. They may not come to fulfillment, but they often point in a direction and evoke hope that goes beyond the routine, the known, or the safe. They prod us! Or is it the Spirit prodding us?

Gordon Light’s evocative song comes to mind, calling all to “Colour Outside the Lines” (More Voice 138) inviting us - not to smoke - but to venture, explore, go beyond the limitations we normally set for ourselves or have set for us by others.

Thomas Homer-Dixon reinforces this call to dream when he extolls the virtue of hope. “Our capacity and need for hope, as long as we keep hope honest, is a precious gift, because it encourages us to keep open a space for possibilities, and to use our imagination to create possibilities in that space. That hope thrives on uncertainly is not a weakness but its greatest strength.” (p. 120 in Commanding Hope – the power we have to renew a world in peril. Alfred A Knopff Canada. 2020.)

But it is also true that hope is generated by purposeful actions. Even small acts of kindness, generosity, goodwill have the power to move people toward a more hopeful way of being, because “every worthwhile gift, every genuine benefit comes from above, descending from the Creator of the heavenly luminaries, who cannot change and is never in shadow.” (James 1:17 Inclusive Bible Translation)

So this post is a mixture of fantasy, wishful thinking, and dreaming awakened by troubling realities and by small and large acts of kindness and justice.

1. Exams Testing Kindergarten Learnings. This would be a required test for anyone taking on leadership roles – bosses, police, politicians, coaches, captains, teachers, physicians, and many more. For biblical support look here: Matthew 18:1-3.

Robert Fulghum must have experienced much of what is prodding me into this pipe dream. When we see political leaders bullying, abusing, lying, recruiting sycophants and causing nightmares with their narcissism and self-interestedness, then we urgently need to mark their tests, recognize their failed exams, and require urgent and thorough remedial learning programs to repeat those early lessons taught (but obviously, not learned) in kindergarten.

If you’ve forgotten the lessons or know of others who may have lost the text book, here’s the link that will lead to the heart of this basic human life learning: https://cpco.on.ca/files/9214/0182/6527/NeedToKnow.pdf. Better yet, buy a copy of the book as a way of thanking Fulghum for his educational genius.

2. For Those Who Pass the Kindergarten Learning Exam: The graduate courses in this competency program focus on “The Golden Rule” – treat others as you want to be treated (Matthew 7:12 and Luke 6:31), as well as the “Great Commandment” – love God above all and neighbour as self (Matthew 22:35-40; Mark 12:28-34; Luke 10:27; also Deuteronomy 6:4-5 and Leviticus 19:18.

Learners in these courses will acquire neither a degree nor a halo, but will warm the cockles of many-a heart, including their own. It should be noted that these virtues are among the most challenging “ways” of living – hence “graduate” courses.

A certificate of faithful competency will be offered to all who have internalized and demonstrate the learning of the graduate courses as summed up in Micah’s cogent words: “Listen here, mortal: God has already made abundantly clear what “good” is, and what [the Creator] needs from you: simply do justice, love kindness, and humbly walk with your God.” (Micah 6:8 The Inclusive Bible Translation, p. 351)

3. A National-Provincial-Territorial Drugs and Health Authority: Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could get the governments – provincial, territorial, federal, and municipal – to create a whole new way of dealing with the opioid drug crisis which is killing far too many people – young, old, and in between. What if we saw drug addiction as a health issue and not a criminal problem. Imagine the results: safe injection sites would be readily accessible; drug distribution gangs would go out of business because supply would be prudently distributed by the authority; petty thefts and break ins and other property crime would be starkly reduced because the addicted would get help with their health issues and not be tempted by criminal activities; policing and prison budgets could be reduced; families would have far less grief and suffering because the provided drugs would not be laced with fentanyl, killing their loved ones.

Ministers of health rally eagerly together to listen carefully to the Portuguese ambassador and other experts, who inspire them to risk bravely but assertively to promote decriminalizing drugs and improve the health of Canadians and the well-being of our society.

(And of course, they’ll also begin to want to add long-term care, universal single-payer pharmaceuticals, and dental care to their complete health care “to do list”!! It’s just common sense, after all!)

4. Across Party Governance: Canada and all Canadians would be better served if the federal government would bend parliamentary conventions and create across party teams focussing on specific national issues. World War 2 freed parliamentary democracies from rigid party-based governance and opened the door to successful collaboration across party-lines to achieve victory.

Two major issues (among others) could far more effectively be addressed if our political leaders – and especially the current federal government – could open the door to the wisdom and creative energies of other elected representatives by creating cross-party teams.

*Addressing climate change could now be far more effectively addressed since the major parties, including the Greens, have acknowledged the reality of the threat and the need for national (and international) cooperation to overcome this threat to Canada and to the Earth itself.

*Similarly, the issue of transforming the relationship between Indigenous and Settler peoples will be addressed much more effectively when all the parties together work with Indigenous Peoples to create a new relationship that better serves all Canadians and strengthens Canada in the community of nations.

Much work has already been carried out to establish the legal basis underlying a new transformed relationship. What is needed now is collective goodwill, generosity, and a passion for justice as leaders work together to forge a new way that is fair and equitable. It is long overdue time for Indigenous Peoples to be freed from the oppressions of the Indian Act and fairly resourced to be full participants in a two-row wampum society. This would indeed be a dream come true!

5. Controlling the COVID Virus: I dream of a time when every Canadian - and every member of the global human family able to, has willingly been vaccinated so that the unnecessary death of thousands/millions can stop. The evidence is clear: no vaccination makes you vulnerable and increases your chances to hospitalization and death. Vaccination clearly reduces, if not eliminates, the threat.

The dream includes the transformation of conspiracy-theory spreaders, religious-extremists, and other intransigent nay-sayers, who have finally been moved to understand the damage their false-testimonies have caused. They repent by marching masked and with social-distancing to pop-up clinics where injections are offered without judgement..

6. More pipe dreams galore! Faith is to have dreams that prod humans to grasp the blessings that the Creator Spirit offers. What are your dreams? How are you sharing them? What are you doing about them?

Towards a New Way for Canada

Fri, 09 Jul 2021 15:23:47 GMT

The Time Is Now

Graves Call for a New Relationship

Canada has been overwhelmed by the not surprising, but horrendous discovery of the unmarked graves of, so far, more than one thousand Residential Schools children, youths, and others in BC and Saskatchewan.

“Not surprising” because the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) had alerted us to the fact that thousands of children and youths – “inmates”, as Duncan Campbell Scott, the Deputy Superintendent for the Department of Indian Affairs, labelled them - had died during their detention in these facilities ordered by government and operated by national Christian denominations.

“Overwhelmed” because the discovered remains put into stark relief the horror visited upon these children and their families and on all Indigenous peoples by Canada’s Indian Act policies over the life of the nation.

There were 140 government-run “schools” and only these, unlike other “Indian schools”, were covered by the TRC Settlement Agreement signed by the churches and federal government. Most of these facilities had cemeteries on their property – a-typical for schools in Euro-based cultures!

Calling them “schools” is far more complimentary than justified by the purpose and reality of these facilities. Much learning took place there, but any useful learning was mostly suffocated by the brutal lessons of the system and the personal abuse and violence of too many staffers.

The intended learning was to ensure that the children would be alienated from their “savage” Indigenous roots and assimilated into Euro Christian settler ways. The actual learning was more about the racism and savagery of dominant European Christian culture.

The spartan facilities themselves were incubators of disease, especially tuberculosis and other contagions. The death toll is now finally literally being unearthed even though as early as 1907 the Chief Medical Officer of the Government of Canada, Dr. Peter Bryce, had alerted all who would listen about the extremely high rate of death for these young human beings.

For his trouble, not only was Bryce not listened to by officialdom, but even sidelined out of his role. Whistle-blowing calls for justice for Indigenous children were rewarded with ostracism and loss of employment.

Scott, however, saw the death statistics as meeting the goal of the government’s policy. In these facilities “Indian children…die at a much higher rate than in their villages. But this alone does not justify a change in the policy of this Department, which is geared toward a final solution of our Indian problem.”* (my emphasis)

For anyone aware of the mid-20th century European Holocaust, this single amoral quote will evoke only horror and disgust reminding us of the Nazi “final solution” visited upon Jews and other demonized groups of humans.

More currently we think of the merciless expulsion of Rohingya people from Myanmar and the herding of Uyghur Muslim people into concentration camps in China, and the oppression lived by Palestinians.

Mercifully, the Canadian “final solution” failed in its intended purpose, but the government policies wreaked destruction and suffering deserving to be classified as another illustration of humanity’s propensity to demonize and destroy diverse sisters and brothers.

In Rabble.ca,* Pamela Palmater reports passionately and convincingly that the residential schools were part of the Canadian government's systemic colonial policy of genocide to rid Canada of "the Indian problem". Conservative party policies, as advocated by Sir John A MacDonald in the late 19th century and sustained and supplemented by subsequent Liberal and Conservative governments, aimed to limit and/or do away with “inferior” Indigenous peoples, as if to ensure the nation's flourishing depended on such blatant racist policy objectives.

The Indian Act became the legislative vehicle denying Indigenous people fundamental human rights and enforcing a dependency relationship on government exercised by paternalistic Indian agents armed with powers over “Indians” and backed up by the RCMP.

Over the generations, Indigenous peoples were systematically deprived of freedom and well-being. Promises made in Treaties signed by Indigenous leaders and Crown representative were (and are) broken.

For example, every reserve was to have its own school and educational capacity. But, according to Murray Sinclair,** this was deemed by government not to fit its assimilationist policy. With the Treaty model, the children would be able to return home at the end of every school day. This however risked them unlearning their Euro-based lessons and continuing in their families’ “savage” Indigenous ways. Said MacDonald, the unwanted result would be “savages who could read and write English”! Hence the Indian Residential “School” system with its enforced removal of children from their homes was established.

The unearthed remains of thousands of children and youth in grave sites are calling all settler Canadians to take seriously the costly impact their governments’ policies had and still have on both Indigenous and Settler peoples.

The cost for Indigenous peoples has been incalculable and reported extensively. They inherited impoverished dependency and so much more to harm their well-being. But they also retained the will to live and to fight for the right to be treated justly as full members of the one global human family and in Canadian society.

The effect of these policies on Settler Canadians has hardly been assessed – presumably based on the facile assumption that their western consumer society was evolving as it should. The high cost of suppressing Indigenous spirituality, wisdom, experience, natural knowledge, and many other values and virtues that might have flourished in a two-row wampum society has not been calculated and hardly taken seriously.

Canadian culture might have been substantially enhanced and more peaceable had there been a willingness to walk together with respect and humility and to learn from Indigenous peoples’ long history of living on the land and respecting Creation as Mother.

Could Canadian culture have become more respectful of Creation and less inclined to plunder the land for raw resources? Less inclined to commodify and to monetize the natural world; more adept at expressing gratitude and sharing? Might the looming climate change crisis have been mitigated if Indigenous voices had been part of the energy generation conversation? Would the Creator have played a greater role in the lives of all?

A New Way

The unearthed graves of the children and the laments of their families are calling the entire Settler society of Canada to a new way of being together with Indigenous Peoples. It is time to grasp the opportunity to work together toward a fairer and more equitable "two-row wampum" relationship with Indigenous peoples – the promise of a more “peaceable kingdom.”

Canada needs urgently to mass talents, energies, and resources – as we would if fighting a war or as we did for countering the Covid 19 pandemic - to address this long-standing shadow on the Canadian body politic. We need to mobilize leadership to that we may all live in the light. Doing less than that is to continue tokenism and would perpetuate the broken relationship.

It is no longer enough to have only two federal ministers paddling this freighted canoe against the current of other government business and, now, against rumours of a snap and unnecessary general election. Collectively working to renew the relationship between Settler and Indigenous peoples is top priority now. We can only hope that the appointment of Mary Simon as Canada’s first Indigenous Governor General is an encouraging step in that direction.

Towards a Two-Row Wampum Society - Steps on the Way

1. The federal government invites all Canadians to engage in a period of learning more about and reflecting on the history of the relationship between Settler/colonial society and Indigenous Peoples with a view to opening themselves to new, fairer ways of relating for the benefit and well-being of all Canadians.

2. Parliament declares the national intention to work towards a “two-row wampum” society respectful of both Indigenous and Settler peoples, honouring the spirit and intent of Section 35 of the Constitution Act of 1982 and relevant judicial interpretations of the Section. +

3. Parliament creates, mandates, holds accountable an all-party Cabinet Circle (CC) to give focussed and disciplined leadership in providing researching, evaluating, directing, guiding, resourcing, and recommending to enable Canada to move efficiently and effectively toward a two-row wampum society. (The "war" cabinet approach has been used productively by various national governments, avoiding the more cumbersome workings of government.)

The CC reviews reports of the Truth & Reconciliation Commission and its calls to action, the National Inquiry into Missing & Murdered Women & Girls and its recommendations, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, and other relevants documents e.g. Kelowna Accord, Treaty Implementation Reports, UNDRIP, Supreme Court of Canada judgements, etc.
The CC initiates a review of the “Indian Act” with a view to its abolition and the development of a new legislative framework for the Crown/Indigenous relationship in. Self-determination of Indigenous Peopes is the cornerstone goal.
The CC receives the report of the review of all government legislation affecting the relationship with Indigenous peoples (Bill C15) and directs various ministries to draft amendments and revisions as required.
The CC identifies the steps required to arrive at a “two-row wampum” vision of Canadian society and makes recommendations to Parliament.

4. Parliament mandates the government to invite and provide resources to Indigenous peoples to share in the period of learning and reflection on ways that will contribute to fuller understanding of the effects and costs of previous colonial/settler policies, to foster self-determination by Indigenous Peoples, and to identify effective new ways of achieving a “two-row wampum” society.

As a sign of good faith and as a step toward making real the meaning of the “land acknowledgements” ritually repeated across the land, the government of Canada inaugurates a one per-cent levy on all real estate sales to provide an ongoing revenue stream to Indigenous Peoples for the purpose of supporting their participation in pathways leading to their self-determined engagement in a renewed “two-row wampum” society benefitting all Canadians – The Indigenous Peoples Fund.
ii. The Indigenous Peoples Fund does not replace any financial programs or provisions under current arrangements which continue in effect until new mutually agreed arrangements are made.
iii. The Indigenous Peoples Fund is administered by and for Indigenous Peoples by a fully accountable pan-Canadian representative authority structure. (Current representative groups of Indigenous Peoples include: Assembly of First Nations, Inuit Tapirit Kanatami, Metis National Council, Congress of Aboriginal People, National Women's Association, traditional elders, etc.)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

*Cited in https://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/pamela-palmater/2015/06/what-happened-residential-schools-was-genocide-what-matters-j

**In a Webinar sponsored by the University of Waterloo on June 29, 2021.

+ Section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982 explicitly recognizes and affirms the existing Aboriginal and treaty rights of the Aboriginal peoples of Canada. Section 35 also indicates that the term

“Aboriginal peoples of Canada” includes the First Nation, Inuit and Métis peoples of Canada.

ref.: https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/corporate/transparency/committees/inan-jan-28-2021/inan-section-35-consitution-act-1982-background-jan-28-2021.html

Less of the Same - Strengthen the Arc of Justice

Fri, 28 May 2021 14:31:06 GMT

Time for a New Spirit in Indigenous and Settler Relations

Less of the Same! – Strengthen the Arc of Justice

Can Bill C15 Signal the End of an Old and begin of a New Era for Indigenous/Settler Relations?

Oka 1990

The September 10th, 1990 issue of Maclean’s magazine was dramatic. The cover picture: a battle-ready Canadian soldier staring across to a Mohawk warrior. An assault rifle was part of the picture. Over 3000 armed troops, including 2500 combat soldiers along with military hardware, were deployed to Oka by Canadian forces chief of staff John de Chastelaine at the behest of both the Prime Minister – Mulroney – and the Premier of Quebec – Bourassa. The issue: who really owned the golf course lands?

In a nutshell, the scene symbolized the long-standing asymetrical relationship between the federal and provincial Crown and Indigenous Peoples. A potent armed force in the name of law-and-order overwhelming long-suffering, courageous people in the wearying pursuit of justice. Said de Chastelaine, “As the last resort of Canadian law and order, we cannot fail.”

It had too long been a failure. This Canadian style of “law-and-order” was the problem. Governments long acting as if committed to that noble value, while north Turtle Island’s Indigenous Peoples were depicted as law-breakers and disturbers of the peace and good order. False. It was the Crown and its agents failing “law-and-order”. (see my Pilgrim Praxis blog post at: http://www.minister.ca/restore-law-order-recognize-indigenous-land-rights-3 )

It has taken many years of litigation for Indigenous peoples to gain significant degrees of vindication. Their claims to traditional lands and their resources, their refusal to go along with the notion of “extinguishing” their title and rights, their resistance against assimilation in general, their demand for comparable social, educational, and health conditions, their right to decent housing and clean drinking water on reserves, the justified claims to self-determination, and much more – core law is actually on their side and the Crown’s honour has been besmirched as governments procrastinate, prevaricate, legislate, and resist the irresistible arc of justice.

Determining "Law and Order"

The Courts of Canada reading the case history determined that it is indeed the governments of Canada that have broken the law and created the disorder. As far back as the 15th century obscene “Doctrine of Discovery” – the then Pope declared European Christian monarchs could take possession of “terrae nullius” – lands only occupied by “heathen and pagan” natives – starting a European land rush and wars to take control of the “vacant lands”.

With British dominance, Turtle Island becomes a colonial settler-controlled region. After the American Revolution, British North America is limited to the area “north of the border” – Canada. The Royal Proclamation of 1763 assures Indigenous peoples of their land and resources rights; the Charter of Rights and Freedoms of 1982 enshrines “inherent” rights; endless court cases confirm Indigenous claims and rights; Royal Commissions and other in depth investigations dig deep into the malignant relationship between settler and Indigenous societies; apologies confirm the abuse suffered by Indigenous peoples as governments, churches, and immigrants press original inhabitants to extinguish land rights and assimilate into Euro-Canadian ways; reparations and the Truth & Reconciliation Commission reveal starkly the evil the Residential School system perpetrated over six or seven generations of Indigenous children. “Visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children….”

Indigenous efforts to restore “law-and-order” is a long saga involving tense moments of encounter as at Oka, at Caledonia, at Burnt Church, Kettle Point, with Wet’suwet’en Elders blocking the TMX pipeline and activists blockading mainline trains; resisting RCMP officers enforcing judicial injunctions burdening justice seekers with incarceration and violent restraints; and suffering endless imposed litigation for land rights and resource justice.

Instead of observing legally established law-and-order, governments have forced Indigenous Peoples into lengthy legal mazes delaying, manipulating with a view to minimizing Indigenous gains and maximizing the lands’ natural wealth for the settler society. The benefits have made colonial society wealthy while impoverishing Indigenous peoples, forcing them into dependency on government “beneficence” for paternalistic hand-outs. Coralled into postage stamp reserves, Indigenous peoples were deprived of their rootedness in and the abundant wealth of their vast lands by the Crown and its perverse colonial legislation.

In March 1990, Max Yalden, then the Chief Commissioner of the Canadian Human Rights Commission wrote in his annual report, “If there is any single issue on which Canada cannot hold it head high in the international community, it is in the area of aboriginal relations.”

“His comments: Broken promises, paternalism, and arbitrariness are the three main factors in the frustration that has built up over the years. Always having to follow the rules set by the Indian Affairs department, natives must have felt increasingly that this was a game of cards in which the deck was stacked against them. It is paradoxical that federal authorities spend billions of dollars a year aimed at improving the health and well-being of the native population and yet their conditions remain poor and their prospects nil. They [Indigenous peoples] are saying, ‘Give us a land base and the financial resources you owe us, and we will run our own affairs.’ Well, we certainly haven’t done a satisfactory job, so we should take up their challenge.” [ p.28-29, Maclean’s/September 10, 1990]

31 Years Later

Have things changed in the intervening 31 years since Yalden reported? Not much. The struggle continues with more of the same. What is needed is a fundamental shift in approach. Instead of hollow ritual words about Indigenous lands, Canada and all Canadians need to “take up the challenge” to welcome the opportunity for a new mutually respectful, harmonious, productive relations between settler peoples and Indigenous peoples.

Will Parliament's Bill C15 affirming the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) now signal that government is actually willing to take up that challenge? If you read the words of the Bill, then it could be interpreted this way. It seems to have all the makings. It states:

“that the Government of Canada must take all measures necessary to ensure that the laws of Canada are consistent with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and must prepare and implement an action plan to achieve the objectives of the Declaration.”

[Bill C15 - https://parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/43-2/bill/C-15/first-reading.]

An action plan? The Trudeau government has not detailed one in C15 except to review current laws to ensure they conform to international standards of justice – something they could have done over the past five years! And if some senators have their way, the whole bill and UNDRIP will go away just as the NDP’s Romeo Naganash’s Private Member’s Bill C262 was squashed by the Red Chamber lobbied hard by corporate interests.

New Hearts Needed

A real action plan will require changed hearts. But there are still too many people ill-informed today like the letter writer to Maclean’s editor back in 1990 who fulminated :

“Is it not amazing what is happening on the Mercier Bridge and at Oka? Some Indians pay very little in the way of taxes, set up their own governments on the reserves and, in so doing, choose not to participate in Canada. They add insult to injury by demanding federal funding for the reserves, and Canadians are further insulted by the interruption of transportation and the disruption of the economy in the areas affected. Perhaps the army should have moved in on July 11, when the standoff began.”

Settler society needs to become just as aware of the actual Indigenous experience of living under the Indian Act as the Indigenous peoples have learned about settler society harvesting abundance from Indigenous lands! Then there might be deeper understanding, more compassion, renewed incentive for shared visioning and cooperation, and perhaps even hope for a welcome future.

But to have change – to restore law and order as it should be – we do need hope - not some ill-defined, vague feeling. Thomas Homer-Dixon, social scientist, commends “commanding hope” in a world in need of change – “we hope TO bring about a specific vision of the future," he expounds, "by setting out goals for achieving that vision and by making ourselves active, powerful protagonists in that vision’s story. It’s designed to shift us from a vicious to a virtuous circle of agency.” ( Thomas Homer-Dixon, Commanding Hope – the Power We Have to Renew a World in Peril. Toronto, Alfred A Knopf Canada, 2020. p. 84.)

The first thing government and well-intentioned allies could do is educate the populace about the historic occupation and tell the sorry story as Indigenous peoples have experienced the settler reality. Public opinion is shifting but still has a long, long way to go for the change of heart that understands, appreciates, and welcomes a new “two-row wampum” relationship with Indigenous peoples.

Instead of the adversarial relationship that hasn’t worked, let’s help Canadians with diverse backgrounds, experiences, gifts, values, and cultures, learn about gratefully sharing our home on native lands and embracing a desire and the necessity for well-being and productive life together. Truth, justice-based values, and the common good must inform the hope.

Let’s create some dreaming circles representative of both Indigenous and settler peoples to imagine a future of respect and welcome for all of Canada’s peoples. But let’s also create a way that Indigenous peoples don’t have to go cap in hand to enter into processes of change. Indigenous peoples need an assured revenue stream that allows them to determine what they need to do and how they can participate in partnership processes without having to beg for money from the federal government.

Land as the Key

The land is key to any new funding approach. What was taken from the Indigenous peoples was the source of their well-being and economic potential. Confining people to reserves too often on unproductive land was a formula for impoverishment and degradation, dependency and disempowerment.

So now let’s determine that in those vast traditional territories - land and its resources - lies the future of both Indigenous and settler Canadians. Let’s start with a sign of “good faith” to signal that the traditional territories – the entire land mass of Canada - of the Indigenous peoples has made the settler community rich and productive, and it is long overdue for Indigenous peoples to share in the common-wealth.

A Sign of Good Faith

The bridge building sign of good faith could be a 1% toll or levy or "expression of gratitude" on the sale of any property anywhere in Canada. It would provide a steady revenue for Indigenous peoples to participate authentically and independently in renewing the relationship and developing their social and economic potential.

How would such a Fund be perceived? The most perverse way to see it would be to say it is a bribe or a ransom to gain peace. Others might see it as restitution to redress the injustices – past and present. Some might interpret such a Fund as reparations – to finance improvement of the living standards of Indigenous people more in line with that of other Canadians. None of these views brings hope for the future of a vibrant and respectful, productive relationship.

Instead, could we see the Fund as the first fruits of a new spirit that seeks to treat the other as we would want to be treated, a new spirit that recognizes the iniquity and inequity of the past and our resolution to embrace a new, mutually respectful and productive future, in shared appreciation of the land and its blessings so abundantly provided?

An Indigenous authority structure would steward the Fund for social and community development, for education, housing, and ecological endeavors, while conversations with the Crown continue about how Indigenous claims and rights are fairly determined for the common good – for Indigenous peoples and settler peoples and for the well-being of the Earth.

Such a scenario would be a wonderful, miraculous way to bring to an end the dramas like that of Oka and Wet’suwet’en. The fruits of this spirit could just be law-and-order, or better: justice and peace. We too can have a dream….. the arc of the moral universe is long, but even in Canada it bends inexorably towards justice – the basis for peace.

Scriptural Sketches towards Global Theology - 3

Tue, 04 May 2021 19:03:13 GMT

A Selection of Newer Testament Texts

Part 3 selected texts in other books of the Newer Testament.

In part 2, our attention was centred on the four Gospels in the Newer Testament. The focus here is on "books" coming after John's Gospel and concluding with the book of Revelation. Links to Parts 1 and 2 follow here: http://www.minister.ca/scriptural-sketches-toward-global-theology-1

http://www.minister.ca/scriptural-sketches-towards-global-theology-2;

1. Pentecost: Acts 2:1-13: Pentecost: 7 weeks after Passover and 50 days after the first Easter, the day when Jews gathered to celebrate the giving of the Law. Jesus’ friends are gathered “in one place” in Jerusalem. There came upon them “a sound like the rush of a violent wind” and tongues as of fire and they were filled with the Holy Spirit talking “in other languages”. With the city filled with devout Jews from “every nation under heaven”, they hear the friends speaking “in the native language of each.” “How is it we can understand these Galileans in our own native language” about God’s deeds of power? The language of love? Whatever else the story may mean, the Spirit was addressing these foreigners from far and wide with words of God’s presence and activity affecting their lives. When people from diverse cultures and languages gather, the language of love is universal. The principal sign of the Spirit’s presence is love spoken and enacted for the well-being of the human family.

2. Life among believers – in common : Acts2:43-47: The earliest friends and companions of Jesus had a deep sense of community – a spirit, the Spirit - which drew them closer to each other for prayer in the temple, and, “they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people.” “All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.”

The Spirit moves people to generous community, where at its core people share and respond freely to the need of others. Generosity is a sign of the presence of the divine whose boundless goodness moves people to care for their neighbour near and far sacrificially and compassionately. Communism? Certainly not of the malignant type that the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have seen too much of. Nor libertarian individualism, where the focus is my freedom and my well-being.

This communal generosity stands as a model of the possible and as a judgement against other models where domination, greed, and self-interest dominate – wherever it rears its egocentric head. This is the type of community worthy of the label: the church or the ecclesial community where Christ’s Spirit is noticeably present.

3. The Transformation of Saul, who becomes Paul. Acts 9:1-9: Early Christians had opponents. Saul was a religious fanatic who permitted himself to persecute friends of Jesus because they no longer conformed to the faith of Jewish ancestors and teachers. He was actively present when Stephen was stoned to death – the first martyr among Jesus’ friends. He was on the road Damascus to root out the Jesus contagion when suddenly he experienced a life-changing vision. He heard Jesus calling him out, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” It was a moment to transform his hate and begin to embrace the Spirit of Jesus.

Christ's Spirit reaches into peoples’ lives to awaken them to the gifts emanating from divine love experienced and shared wherever on the road of life they may find themselves. Paul became a great interpreter of the Good News of Jesus and his Way, calling all to learn and nurture the gifts of humility, compassion, justice and love – the fullness of their humanity.

4. Philip and the Ethiopian court official – Acts 8:26-40: Philip is an early “evangelist” – a word in our time corrupted by televangelists’ manipulative and often self-interested ways. An “evangelist” is really anyone who tries to live the “Way” and the good news of Jesus. When asked about “the Way” they simply tell the truth and leave it to the other and to the Spirit to respond in their own manner. In this story the man from Numibia, now Ethiopia, a court official, is obviously a searcher – trying to discover divine truth. He had worshipped in Jerusalem’s temple, he reads aloud to himself the scriptures (of the Older Testament, namely Isaiah 53:7-8), and he wonders what it all means.

He needs an interpreter of the text. The interpreter, Philip, is so convincing that the official is led to ask to be baptized, a sign that truth has come to him and he has embraced it with his whole life. Philip doesn’t hesitate, in spite of religious law that would have constrained him from responding to the request to be included among the friends and companion of Jesus.

The Hebrew law as stated in Deuteronomy 23:1 would have excluded this man from “being admitted to the assembly of JHWH” because of his race and his emasculation (eunuch). But Philip goes beyond the surface and recognizes a member of the human family loved by God and gifted by the Spirit. Ethiopian tradition claims the official as the country’s first evangelist to share “the Way” of Jesus.

5. God shows no partiality – Cornelius, the centurion of the Roman army. Acts 10:1-34: Cornelius was a “god-fearer”, a gentile who, like the Ethiopean official, in their own way lived in awe of the divine “praying to God constantly and giving charitable gifts to the needy”. He demonstrated being led by the gifts of the divine Spirit. The story brackets another story of Peter having a vision that freed him from the religious regulation of “clean” and “unclean”, distinguishing the Jewish world from the “gentile” world. “God has made it clear to me not to call anyone unclean or impure.” So, Peter is enabled and now willing to meet with gentiles and understand that “any person of any nationality who fears God and does what is right is acceptable to God.” Not even the uncircumcised (men) are beyond God’s affirmation. Peter shares with Cornelis and his household the sacred story of Jesus. Then the Spirit “descended upon all who were listening to the message” – including alien gentiles – and they are baptized.

In identifying with “the Way” of Jesus. the “god-fearers” strike me as recognition that their passion for God and their ways of generosity and kindness are fruits of the spiritual gifts the Divine pours out on all humanity. Baptism, in this story, is the formal and informed response within the Christian community of friends and companions indicating that a “god-fearer” has committed her/himself to “the Way” of Jesus. Many of Jesus’ friends and companions are not baptized, but welcome “the Way” as inspired and informed by the divine Spirit.

6. Sent out to the Jewish diaspora. Acts 13:1-4: Barnabas and Saul aka Paul are commissioned by the community of the Way to proclaim “the word of God.” Paul’s first “mission” trip reveals that the tension between the synagogue and the Jesus community is substantial. It reveals that the Way of love can be a challenge and threat to people of other faiths and can generate less than loving and gracious responses by advocates of the Way. It is a story to assess the means whereby friends and companions of Jesus tell his story. (Cf. Paul’s aggressive personality in Acts 9:13ff, Acts 16:18)

7. Paul at the Areopagus in Athens . Acts 17:16-34: On his mission trip through Greece, Paul lands in Athens, where new ideas and religious icons were topics of many conversations. Given the chance to tell the story of Jesus life, death, and resurrection, Paul acknowledges “How extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, [the One] who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is [God] served by human hands, as though [God] needed anything, since [God] gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. From one ancestor [God] made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for and find [God] – though indeed [God] is not far from each one of us. For ‘in [God] we live and move and have our being’….”

Paul acknowledges the diversity of religious observance and recognizes that it is a searching for the divine who is present to each and all wherever they find themselves. No tribal God, only the universal Divine. The God of all who gives the breath of life to all is the One Paul proclaims and points to Jesus’ resurrection as the evidence for the authority of the One.

It is hard to find a text in Judaeo-Christian Scripture that is clearer about the omnipresence of the Divine in earth’s entire human family. Once the Athenians hear Paul talk about “resurrection” they scoff and become give vent to their skeptical side.

8. What can separate us from God. Romans 8:18-39 (see also Psalm 139)

In life there is so much that speaks of futility, suffering, death, and loss. “We know that the whole Creation has been groaning in labour pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.”

The entire human family is gifted with the “first fruits of the Spirit” the outward evidence of the Spirit’s gifts within each. These gifts demand cultivation by one and all so that the fruits of the Spirit will fill the earth. Believing and acting on this is the vocation of the entire human family, knowing that “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

9. All one – chains that divide are broken. Galatians 3:26-28: The challenge in the Newer Testament is that often it seems to generalize only about those who have chosen to be part of the Christian faith community, i.e. the church. But this shrinks the goodness of God contradicting or constraining the covenant love of God for the entire human family and for all Creation. This limitation is contrary to the Way of Jesus as depicted in the Gospels. It triggers a kind of works theology that says, unless you have the right beliefs about Jesus and have fulfilled proper procedures in advance (e.g. baptism and profession of faith), don’t count yourself included among the friends and companions of Jesus.

This passage refutes this and I believe this passage has universal validity: “there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Jesus Christ” – all heirs of the love of God as revealed in Jesus the Beloved.

10. Spiritual Gifts. 1Corinthians 12:1-11: ”Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit;” “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” Again, these gifts are distributed by the Spirit at birth and the global human challenge is to cultivate those gifts that contribute “to the common good.” Jesus’ life and work reveals how these gifts are made real in their maturity – how they are employed when they are centred and rooted in the fertile soil of divine love. Not everyone has the same gifts – the Spirit distributes a diversity of gifts. But everyone is invited to grow the gifts received and to use them faithfully and fruitfully so that both the individual and the community (small or large, local or global) can thrive and flourish – “for the common good.”

11. Fruits of the Spirit. Galatians 5:22, 25; 2 Corinthians 6:6-10: “The fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. … If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.” The fruits or outcomes are summarized, but the list is not an exhaustive catalogue of virtues and character traits. The passage in 2Corinthians adds: endurance, purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God, with weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left, honor, good repute, true, well known, alive, rejoicing, making many rich, having nothing but possessing everything….and open hearts. (see also my Pilgrim Praxis blog post: http://www.minister.ca/recognizing-the-presence-of-the-spirit).

12. After this life. 1 Corinthians 15:35-44, 51-52: When officiating at funerals, my hand and heart frequently found its way to this text and image answering the questions: “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” The seed has to die before it can come to life. So our lives are but seeds and the Creator enlivens the perishable to become imperishable: “It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body…. Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of any eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.” For Christians, this faith conviction is anchored in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. The one given “for the world” reveals to the world the marvelous mystery of God’s steadfast love for all – in life and in death, we are God’s.

13. Imitating Christ’s humility - as stars in the world: Philippians 2:1-8, 15. Humility is a core “gift” of the Spirit because it was modelled for human well-being in the life and work of Jesus. “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus. …It is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for God’s good pleasure.” Humility counters the sense of superiority and the urge to dominate that has been so much part of the socio-cultural way of Christendom. In Earth’s “small village” – God's pluralistic world – humility is a key virtue and wisdom for any engagement with people of other faiths and none.

14. By faith: Abraham (& Sarah, Hagar, Keturah and others) – Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-10, 13-16; 12:1, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” The scriptures witness to the faith and hope of many ancestors who sensed the call and promise of God and pursued its direction by faith! They did not in their lifetime experience the fulfillment of the promise but by faith persevered in the Way of Jesus and since then have experienced something better: a homeland, a better country, a city for them and for all.

Nothing can separate the human family and all Creation from the eternal and steadfast love of the Holy One, the Creator, Source, Giver, and Sustainer of life in its fullness. Those faithful ancestors who embraced the gifts of the Spirit are now “the cloud of witnesses” who surround the global family as it “sees to it that no one falls short of God’s grace”.

15. Hearers and Doers of the Word. James 1:19-26: The gifts of the Spirit and the faith that God loves unconditionally and eternally are one side of truly human life and the other is to be an agent of those gifts and of that love mending and healing the world humans inhabit. Faithful living is summarized as “caring for orphans and widows in their distress and keeping oneself unstained by the world.” The spiritual gifts and their fruits, the Way of Jesus, the Great Commandment, the Golden Rule, Micah’s summary - all are keys to the response of faith to God’s prevenient grace – amazing grace – to which the Judaeo-Christian scriptures witness. The person of faith knows what is expected of them, but none is able to attain the perfection of God. But God’s grace abounds.

16. God is love: 1John 4:13-21

The principal sign of the divine presence is love. “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. … No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us and (God’s) love is perfected in us.” “Those who say, “I love God,” and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from (God) is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.”

The entire human family is called to live by this commandment – we are all sisters and brothers in God’s one human family and the relationship extends beyond people to Earth itself and its creatures, and beyond.

17. God will dwell with mortals and make all things new : Revelation 21:3-6; Isaiah 65:17, 43:18f; 2Cor.5:17; John 4:13. “I am making all things new” is the message of these texts as the Jewish and Christian communities have experienced the Holy One. Christians by faith trust this declaration to be for the whole human family. This trust is awakened as the fulfillment of the Covenant promise of Genesis 9. It is revealed in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and is confirmed in the persistent witness of people of faith – for the one human family. The old exile, sufferings, and death will no longer be remembered, but there will be joy and delight because the one God is present to all Creation. The thirst for life in its fullness will be quenched.

18. The River of Life. Revelation 22:1-6: “Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life; bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. Nothing accursed will be found there anymore.”

Concluding Comments

The scriptures of the Judaeo-Christian heritage emerge from the Jewish and the Christian communities as a witness to the divine experienced in times past. Inevitably the addressees of these scriptures are the communities from which they originated. But thanks be to God there are so many testimonies that call the separate communities to transcend their own self-focussed interests and recognize JHWH/God’s abiding and ubiquitous steadfast love and concern for the well-being and salvation of all the world’s peoples.

Logic and my faith in JHWH/God compel me to recognize that JHWH/God is no tribal deity, but the Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer of all Creation – its people, creatures, the Earth, and heavens beyond. Through the Spirit, I believe and can’t imagine otherwise, that God’s love and redeeming goodness has been experienced and reflected on by people of other religious practices and that the Spirit has endowed them also with all the gifts necessary for observing in all their fullness the essences of the Golden Rule and the Great Commandment – however they may be labelled in other traditions.

These convictions warrant, in my judgement, the ongoing pursuit of respectful and informed conversation with people of other faith traditions – recognizing that no one person of faith or faith community can represent entire religious traditions or comprehend them. The result of these conversations may not be an actual global theology, but it may cultivate deeper understanding, greater appreciation, and honourable respect for both differences to explore and common values to celebrate. It might even lead to a more peaceful world, something dear to the Divine heart.

Thanks be to God!

Scriptural Sketches towards Global Theology-2

Thu, 22 Apr 2021 21:43:13 GMT

Part 2 – The Gospels in the Newer Testament – Towards a Global Theology

The image above is from Unsplash by Samantha Sophia;. "Unless you become as a little child...."

Introduction

The first post in this series focused on texts of the Older Testament – the Hebrew Scriptures – pointing to the universal and cosmic JHWH – God, Allah – who created and sustained the Earth with “all that is in it” and all who live in it. (Psalm 24:1)

[visit: http://www.minister.ca/scriptural-sketches-toward-global-theology-1]

The current post focuses on the four Gospels of the Newer Testament – Matthew (Mt), Mark (Mk), Luke (Lk) and John (Jn). In the various narratives we are offered a verbal video of who Jesus is – the way he related to God and the way he dealt with people around him. We also experience the witness of the early faith community to what he means, not only for Christians but for the whole human family.

The texts chosen here are but a sample that caution any Christian against the hubris of exclusivism and the denial of God’s saving ways with the entire human family. Positively put: these sacred texts witness to the historic and boundless love of God and to attributes and virtues that all humans, all creatures, and all Creation can and do embrace and celebrate in their particular context and communities.

The Gospels' Texts

1. The Birth of Jesus – Incarnation: Lk 2:1-20; Mt 2:1-12; Jn 1:10ff. In the story of Jesus’ birth, we see revealed what Micah summarized. The promised holy child is born in poverty and homelessness – a more humble way is hardly conceivable. But it is this powerless “little one” who is welcomed by both poor shepherds, wise Magi from the east, and a “multitude of heavenly hosts” – angels – singing “Glory to God in highest heaven”. JHWH is revealed by this helpless child as the One who brings “peace on earth” and “goodwill to all”. The message is clear: not the Emperor in Rome is the “Lord”; he is not worthy of claiming human adoration. The Child is the “beloved One” – the Anointed One (“Messiah” in Hebrew, “Christ” in Greek) whom people of faith await. The light shines bright even in the darkness of imperial occupation and oppression. (See my previous Pilgrim Praxis blog post on this theme: http://www.minister.ca/the-bethlehem-child-removing-the-proud-from-thrones.)

2. Escape to Egypt: Mt. 2:13ff: In this vignette, Matthew describes the desecration of the “Holy Land”. Herod’s paranoia sends armed soldiers to root out any potential, threatening claimant – born within the last two years - to the throne. The life and well-being of the Holy Child depends on fleeing to safety – as refugees evading the sword. All who live in refugee camps around the world are remembered by this brief poignant text – whatever their faith may be. The Holy One has the Beloved Child identify with all who have been driven to find safety from tyranny and oppression perpetrated by the malevolent of various stripes: military, economic, religious, nationalist, xenophobic, racist, sexist, homophobic, and more. Danger to and abuse of human life is a betrayal of the Divine image within every member of the human family. In the town of Jesus’ birth, parents wail at the loss of their innocents massacred by Herod’s paranoid and narcissistic exercise of power. Their wailing continues wherever the Great Commandment and the Golden Rule infused by the Spirit into every life are suppressed and betrayed.

3. The Temptations of Jesus : Mt. 4:1-11; Lk 4:1-12 – Egocentricity, self-centredness, self-aggrandizement, greed, self-interest, lack of authenticity or integrity, unearned adulation – all these sins are potentially in evidence in this story. They contradict “love your neighbour as yourself” and “treat others as you would have them treat you”. They represent assaults on the human family and a betrayal of the divine compassion and unconditional love which the Spirit awakens in every human. In the narrative, Jesus must navigate these temptations successfully for his ministry to be worthy and to be discerned as a divine blessing. When Jesus refuses to yield to temptation, the Tempter abandons Jesus - for now- and angels bring the Faithful One nourishment. See also James 1:12-16.

4. Jesus’ first sermon: Lk 4:16-30; Matthew 13:53-58; Mark 6:1-6; Isaiah 61:1-2; 58:6 – In his home region, Jesus risks being frank. He acknowledges the gifts of the Spirit calling him to truthful words that call people to more faithful living – esp. to humans at the margins of society. But they are not empty words, they a call to a more faithful response. Jesus reminds them that often Gentiles – outsiders – were more aware of God’s grace than the insiders of the faith, who assumed too much about God’s ways. God isn’t contained by human-designed excluding boundaries. The widow of Zarephath and Naaman the Syrian live in the domain of God’s healing! But Jesus’ village mates revolted at this plain, inclusivist talk and threatened Jesus.

5. Jesus’ Prayer: Mt. 6:9-15 // Lk 11:1-4 - Our Father – today we want to recognize that assuming God is male again boxes God into a space much smaller that the reality of the divine. So, contemporary Christians often enlarge the parenthood of the Holy One by beginning this frequently spoken prayer with the words: Our Mother and Our Father. For those who grew up with the idea of God the Father, this transition is not easy. But assuming God is male – has in various cultures created a pyramid where males are on top and females lower and children even further. The systemic outcome has been to restrict religious (and other) leadership to males (still!!!) – a loss to many women and an obstacle to women’s gift sharing in the faith community. Blessedly change is happening even as we continue to pray: Our Mother & our Father, hallowed be they name; thy kindom come. … Some say this could be a prayer prayed across the religious spectrum. Although attributed to Jesus, the prayer has roots in the Older Testament and transcends in substance and in its petitions any particular tradition.

6. The Beatitudes : Matthew 5:1-11: These pearls of holy wisdom are both grace and challenge to all who read and hear them – whatever their particular religious heritage may be. Matthew sets the story on a hillside – the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:1-7:27; see also Luke 6:17-19) – an open space where the crowds of people in all their diversity can come to listen. This is no secret “in-group” teaching for the elite disciples only. Not at all. Jesus’ teaching is “non-denominational” - global! It is Spirit wisdom inviting all listeners – whatever their background and human situation – to internalize as they are this wisdom to realize their full humanity “in the image of God.”

“Blessed are the poor in Spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. You are the salt of the earth. … You are the light of the world.“

7. Love for Enemies: Mt. 5:38-48 // Luke 6:27-42 & Leviticus 19:17: The Lex Talionis – law of balanced retribution - is superseded by a higher standard – that of love even for those who harm you and even those whom one regards as enemies. “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of JHWH in Heaven, who makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.” God’s love is unconditional and those created in the image of God with the gifts of the Spirit are called to cultivate in themselves the divine way. The way of reciprocal retribution is the formula for persistent violence and suffering. Beating swords into plowshares is the symbol for global peace as portrayed in the United Nations building in New York.

8. Forgiving and Accepting: Lk 7:36 ff. // Jn 8: 1-11: These stories of the Jesus Way reveal that his approach to others – female and male – was not predicated on their “purity” or “sinlessness”, but simply on the basis of being another, a daughter or son of JHWH – beloved by the Holy One and treated with the full respect of being part of the human family. With Jesus, forgiveness was rooted in the experience of compassion, respect, and empowered by love.

9. Do Unto Others – the Golden Rule: Mt. 7:12 & Lk. 6:31: “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.” Treat others the way you want to be treated. This is the simple – but incredibly demanding – norm shared by most of earth’s faith traditions as a starting point towards faithful human relations – especially in an increasingly pluralistic context. [See my previous Pilgrim Praxis blog post on the Great Commandment, Great Commission, and Golden Rule - https://www.minister.ca/revisiting-the-great-commission]

10. The Greatest Commandment : Lk. 10:27; Mark 12:28-31; Matthew 22:34-40; Leviticus 19:18-19; James: “You shall love JHWH your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself.” The story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:29-37) recognizes that “your neighbour” is anyone from wherever – near or far – in need or well – different or similar – foreign language, colour, faith, social status, political choices, gender, sexual identity – also a beloved child of JHWH. The companions/friends of Jesus are, like Jesus, moved to pity, full of compassion, and committed to restoring well-being for the other. Jesus is less interested in “correct faith” and doesn’t set in place preconditions before relating to others. Faithful living and acting, ready to give of self for the other – these are the Way of the faithful – of whatever stripe. (See also James 2:8 where the “neighbour” commandment is called “the Royal Law.”) (See also my earlier Pilgrim Praxis blog post: http://www.minister.ca/who-is-my-neighbour)

11. A New Commandment: Jn 13:34 & 35 and 1 Corinthians 13:1-13

The command to love transcends all the other commands and laws, customs, conventions, standards, norms, convictions, opinions, prejudices. Jesus says: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my mathetes (companions, disciples), if you have love for one another.” A later friend of Jesus wrote of this to a small congregation in Corinth, “And now faith, hope and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.” Love for the other, for the human family, for the world God loves can be costly as the life and death of Jesus attest.

12. True Relatives of Jesus: Mt. 12:48-50 // Mk 3:31ff //Lk 8:19-21: “My mother and my siblings are those who hear the word of God/Allah /JHWH and do it.” Is there a hierarchy of loyalty and love? Or is the relationship with Jesus predicated on living the love that has been poured into our being by the divine Spirit and expressing that love towards the others in God’s human family? The highest and ultimate “law” is the commandment to love. See also 1 John 4:7-16. (See also my Pilgrim Praxis blog post: http://www.minister.ca/disciple-or-friend-and-companion)

13. The Courageous Syrophoenician Woman : Mt. 15:21-28 // Mk. 7:24-30: For Christians, this passage can be somewhat embarrassing. She who came running after Jesus crying out for him to help her unwell little daughter is avoided by Jesus and rebuffed by his companions. She persists. Even in the conversation, Jesus is less than friendly – the children, his people, get food first, not “the dogs”, the foreigners / aliens!! She will not allow herself to be excluded or deflected from trying to save her daughter! Yes, Jesus! but even the dogs get crumbs and scraps from the children’s table! “O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire.” Of course, the unconditional love of God enfolds all members of the one human family. No one, however they may differ from me / us, is beyond the unconditional love of God. Those who serve God and walk the Jesus Way cannot but love the other.

14. The Widow’s Offering: Mk 12:41ff

The story of the poor widow who “put in two small copper coins” into the temple treasury reveals again Jesus’ respect for poor and rich, old and young, powerful and weak – the entire human family. He respects her and her gift, which she gave “out of her poverty,” while rich people were giving “out of their abundance.” The gifts that the Spirit endows to all humans come from God’s boundless love and invites each and all to give with the heart of love.

15. True Greatness: Mt. 18:1-5 // Mk 9:33 // Lk 9:46-48 and Lk 18:15 – 17: Jesus’ band of mathetes/companions are so caught up in the values of superiority! They have internalized the oppressive values of the religious pyramid and the Roman imperium. Result: they argue behind Jesus’ back about who among them is the greatest and will be the greatest when Jesus announces his reign into being! Boys will be boys!

They haven’t been paying attention! They haven’t noticed the way of humility and self-giving – the way of the child. So, Jesus has to explain the Way it is meant to be in the reign of JHWH: “’Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.’ Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, ‘Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the One who sent me.’” Jesus’ teaches all who will listen the Ways of the Holy One.

16. The Centurion’s Servant: Mt 8:5-13 // Lk 7:1-10: Not even the officer commanding a unit of soldiers – the oppressive enemy – is beyond the care and concern of Jesus. The revelation of the breadth of God’s love is clear: no one is beyond the love of God neither the centurion not his servant in need of healing. “Go,” Jesus says, “let it be done for you according to your faith.” Your religious ways may not be ours, but it is enough that you claim the gift of healing for your servant – an act of faith! You have the gift of the Spirit who endows each and all with the gifts of the Spirit to love generously.

17. Feeding the 4000 and more: Mt 14:13-21; Mt. 15:32-39 // Mk 6:30ff; Mk. 8:1-10 // Lk 9:10-17; Jn 6:1-14: Jesus drew crowds of people – women, men, children – and he shared food and drink with them. He didn’t ask them first to become his disciples; he didn’t brand them or make them drink particular kool-aid. He simply welcomed and accepted them, shared himself and the food, the gifts that the “community” – the diverse community - had brought together. And it was enough – they had sufficient to feed even more people. Together they feasted on the generosity and goodness of JHWH and God’s creation of the blessed diversity within the human family. There are other meanings in these stories, but they do not diminish the simple act of welcoming all in their personal or collective diversity to be together and share. At the table set by Jesus, all can gather and are welcome as they are. The Gospels’ frequency of mentioning these “mass banquets” points to their importance for the nascent Christian community and for all who embrace divine attributes.

18. The Gift of Jesus’ Spirit : Jn 14:22-28. “Judas – not Judas Iscariot – said, “Rabbi, why is it that you’ll reveal yourself to us, and not to the whole world?” Jesus answered, “Those who love me will be true to my word, and Abba God will love them; and we will come to them and make our dwelling place with them. Those who don’t love me, don’t keep my words. Yet the message you hear is not mine; it comes from Abba God who sent me. This much have I said to you while still with you; but the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, whom Abba God will send in my name, will instruct you in everything and she will remind you of all that I told you.” [The Inclusive Bible translation.] The Spirit of Jesus sent by the Holy One endows every human with gifts that reflect the Jesus Way of being human in the image of God. It is the whole world of humans whom the Spirit – the Paraclete – unites with the Divine love which creates, redeems, and sustains all. Cultivating these gifts for the well-being of all – the Earth and all in it - is the vocation of all humans, irrespective of the religious heritage and community into which they were born or chose to immerse themselves.

19. Friends with the fruits of Jesus’ Spirit: Jn 15:12-17. “This is my commandment: love one another as I have loved you. There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. And you are my friends, if you do what I command you. I no longer speak of you as subordinates, because a subordinate doesn’t know a superior’s business. Instead, I call you friends, because I have made known to you everything I have learned from Abba God. It was not you who chose me; it was I who chose you to go forth and bear fruit. Your fruit must endure so that whatever you ask of Abba God in my name God will give you.” [The Inclusive Language Translation]

Friends of Jesus are ones who have recognized that his Way – the values and virtues of being human have universal validity. Central is the command to love – God and neighbour as self. The gifts of the Spirit produce the fruits shared to bring wholeness and well-being to all.

20. Judgement of the Nations: Mt. 25:31 ff. Just before he moves into telling the traumatic story of the Passion – the arrest, trial, conviction, and crucifixion and resurrection – of Jesus, Matthew paints a picture of a trial of the “sheep and goats”. The sheep are the good people; the goats, the bad. Were life that simple! In the story “the Son of Man” or “the Human One” sits at the court bench before “the gathered nations” who are divided into the sheep section and the goat section.

Who are the sheep: the ones who fed the hungry; gave drink to the thirsty; welcomed the stranger; clothed the naked; cared for the sick; and visited prisoners. The sheep respond with compassion and love to the neighbour, whoever they may be and wherever they find themselves.

The goats: didn’t.

To the sheep the Judge says: “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”

Those who didn’t – the goats – “just as you didn’t do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.”

Those who did: life; those who didn’t: condemned.

When we link this story with the persistent witness of the scriptures that God’s love is unconditional, unstoppable, and boundless, it is difficult and illogical to accept the notion of “eternal punishment.”

A long time ago, I was blessed to learn that if the Holy One “judges and condemns us,” then the “sentence and punishment” is actually “to be loved by God forever.” A judgement of grace abounding for my healing and my wholeness and for all.

This passage’s reference to “all nations” also picks up on the Genesis 9 Covenant with post-flood covenant with Noah and his family – in which the Divine gives the rainbow as a sign of the eternal covenant between JHWH and the earth and “with every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth,} that the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.” JHWH is the God who is love. (see also 1 John 4:13-21)

21. Anointing at Bethany: Lk. 7:36-50; Mt, 26:6-13; Mk 14:3-9 // Jn 12:1-8 Jesus doesn’t judge or condemn those whom religion or society label “sinners”; he receives them and their goodness graciously, unconditionally and recognizes the transformative power of love in their lives. In this story, the “sinner” woman’s generous expression of love in bathing Jesus’ feet with ointment is to Jesus a sign that “her sins, which are many, have been forgiven – see how she loves! But the one who is forgiven little, loves little.” (The Inclusive Bible Translation)

22. The Crucifixion: Mt. 27:32-55 // Lk 23:13-43 and John19:13-30 – The cost of abundant love can be extremely high. Innocence and kindness bring with along no guarantee of safety or security. But there is power in the witness of the faithful martyr. “Death is the supreme festival on the road to freedom,” Dietrich Bonhoeffer testifies. There are many interpretations of the meaning of the crucifixion. A Song of Faith – an evocative (vs. dogmatic or prescriptive) poetic statement of the faith of the United Church – says this about Jesus’ life and death:

“Because his witness to love was threatening, those exercising power sought to silence Jesus. He suffered abandonment and betrayal, state-sanctioned torture and execution. He was crucified. … In Jesus’ crucifixion, God bears the sin, grief, and suffering of the world.” The meaning for all the world: God is willing to go to the cross to redeem and make whole the Earth, its creatures, and the entire human family – love divine transcending all the evil and pain of the world. The crucifixion of Jesus the Beloved is the sign for Christians that God “so loves the world” (John 3:16 and that embracing Jesus’ Way of the Great Commandment and the Golden Rule is to experience the gift of “eternal life” – full humanity for now and forever.

Christians “proclaim Jesus, crucified and risen, our judge and our hope.” (A New Creed)

23. The Resurrection: Mt. 28:1-11; Jn 20:1-18; Ezekiel 37:1-10. The resurrection stories (prefigured in the witness of Ezekiel to the power of God to restore “them dry bones” to life) proclaim that death is conquered by life given by God. In A Song of Faith, United Church faithful sing: “But death was not the last word. God raised Jesus from death, turning sorrow into joy, despair into hope. We sing of Jesus raised from the dead. We sing hallelujah. … In Jesus’ resurrection, God overcomes death. Nothing separates us from the love of God. The Risen Christ lives today, present to us and the source of our hope. In response to who Jesus was and to all he did and taught, to his life, death, and resurrection, and to his continuing presence with us through the Spirit, we celebrate him as the Word made flesh, the one in whom God and humanity are perfectly joined, the transformation of our lives, the Christ.” The transformation of the entire human family from ways of death to the Way of love rooted in JHWH’s love and revealed in the Gospel narratives of Jesus.

24. Some Companions on the Way: Lk 24:13-31. A resurrection story – one of several in the Gospels. These stories start with sadness, sorrow, grief, remorse, doubt, fear, despair but wind up with good news evoking joy and hope. In this particular story, two grieving friends of Jesus are walking to the village of Emmaus and find themselves accompanied by a stranger (identified by the narrator as the resurrected Jesus), who recounts to the friends the long story of faith that interprets the crucifixion and resurrection. The stranger is invited to their home and at the evening meal he “took bread, blessed, and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him….” Breaking bread together is an opportunity for the global human to recognize the divine Way of sharing the gifts and fruits of the Spirit. In the Christian faith community this is celebrated as a sacrament, but in the global human family every meal shared has sacramental meaning.

25. Commissioning the Friends : Mt. 28:16ff. The “Great Commission” at the end of Matthew’s Gospel has historically been for many Christian missions the mandate to proselytize and convert people of other and no faiths into the Christian fold. For some Christian denominations approach remains the mission they pursue. The means have too often been less than ethical and the outcomes have too often been superficial.

The “Great Commission” is much more serious than simply adding numbers to the Christian church. It is a mandate to invite respectfully the whole human family to be about the task of cultivating the gifts of the Spirit revealed in Jesus’ Way so that Earth might become a place where God’s shalom – God’s just and peaceful reign of love may be fulfilled. Visit my Pilgrim Praxis blog post for a fuller commentary on this text:

http://www.minister.ca/revisiting-the-great-commission.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

End of Part 2 - selected passages from the Gospels of the Newer Testament. Part 3 will post a selection of passages from other books of the Newer Testament. To visit Part 1, the post of texts selected from the Older Testament books, use this link: http://www.minister.ca/scriptural-sketches-toward-global-theology-1.

Scriptural Sketches Toward Global Theology -1

Sun, 18 Apr 2021 14:48:02 GMT

Toward a Global One God Theology

Judaeo-Christian Scriptures - Selected Passages

The world is divided into various religious traditions . A few of these traditions have a huge following and diverse “internal” branches – Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Christian; some are smaller but influential (usually with their own internal branches – Jewish, Sikh, Mormon, Shinto. Others are small like yeast: Zoroastrian, Baha’i, Unitarian Universal, etc. And then there are ideological streams that stand apart from religious commitments but have ardent supporters.

As a Christian, I embrace this diversity as a sign of the amazing human passion to deepen our understanding of the divine ubiquitous presence and God's persistent intention for life in the cosmos. But I have increasingly become aware that too much theological reflection in our tradition is “particular” – geared to the Judaeo-Christian silos of religious practice. It too often has seemed as if the real God were present exclusively to those in this Judaeo-Christian tradition. Beyond that, there is "terrae nullius" - as if God is absent from the rest of the world outside of our particular theological and religious silo.

Christian theology has too often assumed that the corollary to the absence of God "out there" is the worship of false gods, idols, and atheism In practice, this assumption nurtured hubris and conscious or unconscious superiority attitudes towards others outside of the Christian community.

So mission, then and still in very conservative Christian communities, meant proselytizing to "save" "them". The talking point was: I will love you and therefore I want you to leave behind your old ways and beliefs, and let yourself be transformed into a (Euro-) Christian like me. In Canada, the relationship between colonial settler society and Indigenous peoples exemplified this corruption of both the Golden Rule, Great Commandment, and the Great Commission. (Matthew 22:37-39; Matthew 28:18-20)

Happily most Christian denominations of the "ecumenical" variety have gone beyond this simplistic "us and them" dualism,. Since 1966, the United Church of Canada has wrestled creatively to discern more fully the conviction that "God is creatively and redemptively present" in the religious life of the whole human family.

The Judaeo-Christian scriptures testify persistently against the false belief that there is any "terrae nullius" when it is about the presence of God. Any Christian theology, which suggests that God is present "creatively and redemptively" exclusively to those who affirm this exclusivist doctrine has too small an understanding of the Divine and is not taking scripture seriously. To be sure, many texts point or seem to point to exclusivity for Jewish believers in the Older Testament and to exclusivity for Christian believers in the Newer Testament. But scripture witnesses repeatedly to God's ongoing and steadfast concern, love, and relentless reaching out to all Creation, to all creatures and to the entire human family.

The issue: is your "God" simply a tribal god? or is the Creator present to all peoples around the world, all endowed with the breath of the Spirit and with gifts of life and love?

I believe that the Holy One, JHWH, the Eternal One, the Three-in-One, Allah, God is the Universal Cosmic Divine. In what follows, I identify and comment briefly on some of many passages which speak against "siloing" God within the Judaeo-Christian enclave and which prod the faithful to "love your neighbour as yourself" and "treat others as you want to be treated." The issue of "making disciples" in the Great Commission will be addressed in a subsequent blog.

This first blog post focusses on the Older Testament. A subsequent post will identify passages from the Newer Testament.

Ed. note:

(All Bible quotes are from the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) unless otherwise indicated. Where appropriate, some adjustments have been made towards inclusive language. "The Lord", the English version of the Holy One, has been rendered JHWH as in the Hebrew Tetragrammaton. JHWH is the Hebrew Testament’s way of communicating the “name” of the “incommunicable Holy One” and is usually spoken aloud as “Adonai”.

Older Testament Selections

1. Creation of the Universe – Genesis 1: 1-9; Psalm 148. John1:1-5

The dramatic opening sentences of the first book of the Bible – Genesis – speaks by faith of the origins of all Creation. “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while the Ruach [spirit, wind, breath] of God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light” and there was light. … God called the dry land Earth, … And God saw that it was good.” There is no presumption here about knowing how or when this took place. There is simply a timeless affirmation of faith made by the writers of event, but within the eternal reality of the divine presence.

The actions of God are perceived by faith as the passionate work of an artist creating a work of love which has awed people of all ages and places and caused them to sing praises as in Psalm 148. Psalm 104 is a sung witness to God's creative endeavor (sung recently in the funeral service oof Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.) In the Prologue to John’s Gospel, God’s “word” of creative love brings all things into being. Christians have identified this eternal “word” with Christ in whom was both life and light. The divine Spirit, recognized by Christians in the person and work of Jesus Christ, creates and brings to life everything and everywhere.

2. Creation of Earth and Flora & Fauna – Genesis 1:10-31; Psalm 104

Many religious communities focus largely on humankind – as if that is all that the Holy One is really interested in relating to and “redeeming”. In this creation story anthropocentrism is balanced with environmental recognition. Creatures of land, sea, and air occupy Creation along with humankind – male and female created in the image of the Holy One. Patriarchy is rejected in this witness because the Holy One recognizes in both females and males, at their best, attributes and traits that reveal God’s essential being. Humanity reflects and is - in-breathed - by divinity. The harm done to humans and everything that prevents humans from their fulfilling their full humanity assault and traumatize the Holy One.

“Then God said, ‘Let the earth put forth vegetation: plants yielding seed, and fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it. And God saw it was good. … And God said, ‘Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky. … ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.’ … And God said, ‘Let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind: cattle and creeping things and wild animals of the earth of every kind.’ … ‘And God saw that it was good.’ … Then God said, ‘let us make humankind ( atham ) in our image.’ … God saw everything God had made and saw that everything created was good.” “Let us” suggests the mystery of God in community - not a mon-arch in cosmic aloneness, but God relating with Creation in divine community: the Three-in-One!

The Reading of Ecclesiast icus or Sirach - one of the books of the Apocrypha - at the funeral of Prince Philip will give the prod to deeper exploration of at least chapter 42:15 to chapter 43:27.

3. Sin and Consequences – Genesis 3; Romans 8:12-17: The story of “the Fall” is a mythological witness to the reality of sin – “the one verifiable doctrine of the Christian Church!!” St. Paul understands that there are choices here and that the consequence of the choice can bring disaster and death, or reveal to self and all humans that they are the beloved offspring of God. “If you live according to the flesh, you will die, but if you live by the Spirit, you will put to death the evil deeds of the flesh and you will live. Those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. For the Spirit that God has given you does not enslave you and trap you in fear; instead, through the Spirit God has adopted you as children, and by that Spirit we cry out, “Abba!” God’s Spirit joined with our spirit to declare that we are God’s children. And if we are children, we are heirs as well; heirs of God and coheirs with Christ, sharing in Christ’s suffering and sharing in Christ’s glory.” (The Inclusive Bible translation)

4. A Day of Rest – Genesis 2:1-3; Mark 2:27; Exodus 20:8-11

Work is blessed by the Holy One, but work is not the total purpose of living. Rest and reflection on accomplishment is a sacred restorative – Sabbath - activity. Later witnesses report that Jesus proclaimed the Sabbath to have been made for humankind and not simply a regulatory device to restrict human activity and test obedience. “And on the seventh day God finished the work … and rested … from all the work done. So, God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it….” The 4th of the Ten Commandments echoes this theme.

5. Covenant with Earth, Creatures and the Whole Human Family - Genesis 9:8-17; Psalm 150.

The story of the Flood and the rescuing Ark climaxes in a Covenant in which the Holy One promises never again to wipe out Earth and its creatures. God gives the rainbow as a sign to remind God (and all humanity) about this divine promise. For all sentient beings and for Earth itself, the rainbow becomes a perpetual natural reminder of God’s unconditional, eternal love.

“Then God said to Noah and family, ‘As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark.’ … ‘This is the sign of the covenant …I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. … When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.”

For the entire human family this divine covenant is a binding commitment of love by the Holy One..

6. Abraham and Sarah, Hagar, & Keturah – Genesis 15, 16, 17:15-22 21:1- 22:15-18; 25:1-6-18

(Ref.: Hagar, Sarah, and Their Children – Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Perspectives by Phyllis Trible and Letty M. Russell, eds., Louisville, Westminster John Knox Press, 2006)

Books galore have been written about Abraham, some about Sarah – the first wife, then Hagar – the slave-woman taken as wife, but little about Keturah – third wife after the death of Sarah. But this foursome is reputed to be the parentage of the “Abrahamic faith communities” – Judaism, Christianity, Islam. Judaism is the story of God’s covenant promises to Abraham and through his and Sarah’s son Isaac, who with Rebekah bore Jacob, who with Rachel and Leah bore twelve sons to form the twelve tribes of the Jewish nation; Abraham’s offspring with Hagar and Keturah tell the stories of the ancestry of the Arabic tribes. See Gen. 21:13 for the divine promise to Ishmael: “I will make a nation of him also, because he is your [Abraham’s] offspring.” Abraham’s six sons with Keturah receive gifts but no report of a divine promise. They are, however, still within the Noachic covenant of Genesis 9.

7. I am, who I am – I am has sent you - to deliver your people up out of misery and bondage - Exodus 3:1-17: God’s self-revelation to Moses through the burning bush which is not consumed [sign used by churches of the Presbyterian tradition] is a moment of call to Moses, a Jewish child raised in the Egyptian palace but never uprooted from his heritage. In the wilderness, he perceives God calling him to lead the Hebrew slaves to freedom and into the promised land where they may thrive – a call that is fraught with threat and danger, but hard to resist because it comes from the Holy One with an assurance of support and protection. The burning bush not consumed is a symbol of the nature of God – the I am - JHWH - full of limitless energy but beyond human comprehension.

Humans may apprehend the Divine Mystery and explore the nature and mission of God, but they will never fully comprehend the essence and nature of God. Theologians throughout the ages have exercised their vocation to understand more of the essence and nature of God – at times to ridiculouss lengths and picayune ends, but only the most arrogant and pretentious theologians will pretend to have fully grasped the divine reality.

It is for this reason that humility is one of the principal attributes of a serious, authentic theologian / preacher. Moses understood this and hesitated to go to the Pharaoh and state that he represented the Holy One. But the Holy One also didn’t let him off the hook – “Go!! And tell that Pharaoh to let my people go!” Taking the risk to speak for God can be extremely hazardous as too many martyrs have learned, but they also know by faith that the Holy One will ultimately not let them down – even when it may cost one’s life, as Jesus revealed and as Dietrich Bonhoeffer and other faithful women and men have witnessed.

8. The Liberating God – Exodus 7:14; Exodus 15; Psalm 105:37ff. The exodus becomes a key liberating narrative for the Jewish people and a key attribute of the Divine. The Holy One calls - then and now - leaders committed to the “let my people go” cause, in diverse situations of oppression, injustice, and slavery. Powerful humans in every age continue to assault, abuse, and degrade the “divine image” in others and subvert the Divine intention granting life in its fulness for all in the human family. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to [the Divine] justice anywhere.”(M.L. King Jr.] The journey of Exodus may be long – as long as the symbolic 40 years, but the Divine will is not overcome. And when liberation is experienced, the grateful people sing their praises to the One who in steadfast love redeems people.

9. Ten Commandments – Exodus 20:1-17 // Deuteronomy 5:1-22

Central to the Judaeo-Christian tradition, the Ten Commandments with some variations guide all humanity in its life together – in the family, in the community, in the nation, and across all boundaries. For non-theists, the first tablet of the law (1-4) is less obviously relevant – though these commandments have their own applicability. The second table is more obviously a clear injunction to honour the humanity and possessions of others. In patriarchal society the wife was regarded as the husband’s possession; in contemporary society the patriarchal conventions are challenged by the higher authority of equality within the human family, expressed as inclusive language by which patriarchy can be overcome. (The following text is from The Inclusive Bible.):

‘Then God spoke all these words,’ and said, “I am YHWH who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. 1. Do not worship any gods except me! 2. Do not make for yourselves any carved image or likeness of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters under the earth, and do not bow down to them or serve them! … 3. Do not utter the Name of YHWH to misuse it, for YHWH will not acquit anyone who utters God’s Name to misuse it! 4. Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy! For six days you will labour and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath for YHWH. Do no work on that day … For in the six days YHWH made the heavens and the earth and the sea and all that they hold, but rested on the seventh day; this is why JHWH has blessed the Sabbath day and made it sacred.

5. Honour your mother and your father, so that you may have a long life in the land that YHWH has given to you! 6. No murdering! 7. No adultery! 8. No stealing! 9. No giving false testimony against your neighbour! 10. No desiring your neighbour’s house! No desiring your neighbour’s spouse, or worker – male or female – or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbour.”

10. Naomi & Ruth: Ruth 1:16; 2 Samuel 5:1-5; Psalm 89:19-37: Your God will be my God.

The tragic story of Naomi’s loss of her husband and two sons is balanced by the persistent love of her Moabite daughters-in-law, Orpah and Ruth. A famine in the land of Israel led Naomi and her husband with two sons Chilion and Mahlon to seek refuge in the gentile land of Moab. But the three men died and the widowed women decided to return to Naomi’s homeland, Israel. On the way, Naomi realized that the two younger women might not be well-received in her homeland and encouraged them to return to Moab. Orpah finally did, but Ruth persisted and proclaimed “do not entreat me to leave you…where you go I will go, your people shall be my people, and your God my God…” In Israel, the story continues, Ruth meets Boaz, they are married, and bear a son, Obed, grandfather of King David, the great fore-parent in God’s story of salvation leading to Jesus. God’s love is not just tribal, the circle of God’s steadfast love is far wider than sectarian limitations. An alien woman becomes a key parent in God's narrative of salvation for all.

11. The Hymnal of Israel: Psalms 24, 33, 47, 65, 67, 75, 98, 111 (Covenant); 117, 119 (God’s ways); 145.

In this collection of 150 songs to accompany acts of worship, we find hymns of praise, laments – both personal and for the nation’s distress, historic songs, wedding and coronation texts, wisdom words, covenant commitments, and songs to curse enemies. The Psalm are for Israel’s worship and for synagogues. As part of the Older Testament they became a key song book for Christians – in monastic chants, in Protestant psalters, and, paraphrased in various Christian communities.

In their poetic lyrics, the Psalms invite worshippers to reflect on the Divine in ways that go beyond the limitations of the Jewish or Christian religious traditions. Psalm 24 may be a song to sing as worshippers enter the Jerusalem temple, but it also serves to remind them that “the earth is JHWH’s and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it….” "All peoples are part of God’s one family". Psalm 33 proclaims that JHWH “loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of the steadfast love of JHWH.” The whole earth! All the peoples of the earth are invited to “Clap your hands, … shout to God with loud songs of joy. For JHWH, the Most High, is awesome, a great Ruler over all the earth.” (Psalm 47). “All the earth worships you [JHWH].” (Psalm 66) Even “Those who live at earth’s farthest bounds are awed by your signs” “you are the hope of all the ends of the earth and of the farthest seas.” (Psalm 65) The destiny of all the nations is under God’s control (Psalm 75). All nations are invited to “make a joyful noise to JHWH.” (Psalm 98) God is trustworthy and faithful, the divine covenant is forever, and living in awe of JHWH is the beginning of wisdom; “all those who practice it have a good understanding.” (Psalm 111) “Praise JHWH, all you nations! Extol God, all you peoples! For great is God’s steadfast love toward us, and the faithfulness of JHWH endures forever.” (Psalm 117)

In the lengthy meditation on the Law of God (Psalm 119), worshippers are reminded that “JHWH exists forever; your word is firmly fixed in heaven. Your faithfulness endures to all generations; you have established the earth and it stands fast.” The Psalm gives us an indication of attributes of God, but never a comprehensive description. God is larger than “our” nation. God laws, ways, steadfast love transcend human capacities, human intellect, and human wisdom. Laudate omnes gentes – Praise JHWH all peoples.

The underlying good news in the Psalms is the “steadfast love” of the Holy One. Psalm 139 extolls not only God's boundless love but also the inescapable nearness of the Divine: “where can I go from your Spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? … I come to the end – I am still with you!” (see also Romans 8:38-39)

12. Prophetic words: Isaiah 2:1-4; 42:1-9//49:6; 52:15 – 53:6; 55:5-13; 57:14-58:14; 65:17 ff., 66:18ff In the context of both Judah/Israel’s ongoing covenant relationship with JHWH – a relationship filled with prophetic challenges against evil and disobedience, as well as compassionate laments at the suffering of the people, and revelations of the mercy of God, there are glimpses of awareness of the nations of the world. Sometimes simply as oppressors to be judged; elsewhere, as subjects of JHWH’s love longing to redeem and draw them into the Divine presence. The prophetic word spoken for all peoples: “In days to come the mountain of JHWH’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it….and JHWH shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”

The message sees Israel as “a light to the nations” welcoming all to the Holy One on an elevated Mt. Zion. Crucially for our purposes, it recognizes that the Divine intention transcends Judah/Israel alone, revealing JHWH’s redemptive commitment to effect justice and peace for all nations and the whole earth. God requires people to live more generously and reject worship hollowed empty by self-interest: “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin? Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you, the glory of JHWH shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and JHWH will answer; you shall cry for help, and God will say, Here I am.

If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. JHWH will guide you continually, and satisfy your need in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail.”

God is “about to create new heavens and a new earth, the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. … They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain.”

13. A New Heart: Jeremiah 31:31ff.

Jeremiah’s message, like that of the Isaiah tradition, is addressed initially to Judah/Israel, but reveals Divine inclinations which, using the lens of the rainbow covenant, speak to all who see the divine in whatever context. “The days are surely coming, says JHWH, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors…. I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know YHWH,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says JHWH, for I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin so more.” Knowing the Holy One and receiving the gifts of the Spirit of God “in their hearts” the whole human family will know themselves to be God’s people.

14. The Faithful Shepherd : Ezekiel 34:11-31; see also Psalm 23

Ezekiel continues the prophetic message of both judgement and grace in the context of Judah/Israel, but, by extension, true for all earth’s people. In Chapter 34 he rails against faithless “shepherds” (‘pastors’, religious and political leaders) who have seen the “sheep” as objects for “fleecing”. “I will rescue my sheep from their mouths, so that they may not be food for them.” Instead, JHWH will seek the lost sheep wherever they are to be found and bring to pastures and water courses when they can thrive with the Great Shepherd in person. The failing intermediaries will no longer be necessary.

15. Message of Mercy for the Alien City : Jonah 1-4. (Mt. 12:38ff//Lk. 11:29-32)

A fish story! A commentary on the exclusivism of people re their God (in a box). God calls Jonah to preach in the great city Nineveh about their wickedness. Jonah however sets out in the opposite direction on a ship headed for Spain! A violent storm terrifies the crew and they beseech their god to save them. Jonah is thrown overboard because the crew learns he’s disobeying God. A fish swallows Jonah and for three days he “camps” in the fish till he is up-chucked onto the beach.

God again calls on Jonah to carry out the mission. He goes; preaches a sermon of condemnation and threatened destruction; and, lo! and behold, the city repents in sackcloth and all citizens are told to “pray earnestly to God and … give up their wicked behaviour and evil actions…” in the hope that God will have mercy. “God saw what they did; God saw that they had given up their wicked behaviour….” So, God repented and did not punish them as planned!

Jonah was @#$%^%$#@# angry at God and sulked in the shade of a made-to-order big bushy plant. But an east wind and hot sun killed it, causing Jonah to now wish he were dead. God challenges Jonah sulking self-centredness and anger about the plant. Here’s the divine kicker: “This plant grew up in one night and disappeared the next; you didn’t do anything for it, and you didn’t make it grow – yet you feel sorry for it! How much more, then, should I have pity on Nineveh, that great city. After all, it has more than 120,000 women, men, and children in it, as well as many animals.”

JHWH’s mercy and steadfast love transcends any particular love for Israel, to include the larger world of women, children, men, and creatures as represented by the city of Nineveh. The Jonah story countermands all the scripture passages with “divine commands” which culminate in the death of foreign peoples. Instead, it calls all “to love neighbour as self.”

16. Hollow Religious Festivals Won’t Do: Amos 5:21-24:

“I hate your religious festivals; I cannot stand them! … Stop your noisy songs; I do not want to listen to your harps. Instead, let justice flow like a stream, and righteousness like a river that never goes dry.” Where justice flows like a stream" - there the Divine Spirit delights to be present – wherever justice abounds, JHWH is at peace.

17. What Does JHWH Require of the Entire Human Family? Micah 6:1-8

“JHWH has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does JHWH require of you? But to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God!” No mortal – no human being – is excluded from this Divine requirement. It is part of being essentially human - being created “in the image of JHWH” and being endowed with the gifts of the divine Spirit. The challenge for all human beings created in the image of God is to grow these divine attributes and share them like a contagion.

And more. ... There is much more in the Older Testament pointing toward a globaL theology than can be included in a blog post. Books need to be written on what has been briefly pointed to above and more needs to be said:

- about the wisdom of the Proverbs ( see my blog post: http://www.minister.ca/sophia-challenges-hubris),

- the sensual love of the Song of Songs (see my blog post: http://www.minister.ca/copy-of-song-of-songs-sex-and-faith-1) ,

JHWH is no tribal god. The Creator and Lover of Earth and all that continues to reach out in love to all that has the breath of life. Hallelujah

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Part 2 focussing on selections from the Newer Testament will follow in a subsequent blog post....

theological education - learning from our past 3

Sat, 03 Apr 2021 18:37:24 GMT

The Place of Theological Studies

Rev. Dr. Northrop Frye (1912-1991)- straddling arts and theology at Victoria University (source: The Strand)

Theological Education – Learning from the Past #3

[Continuing reflections with the guidance of Kenneth H. Cousland’s The Founding of Emmanuel College in Victoria University in the University of Toronto, 1978.

Previous posts on this topic:

https://www.minister.ca/theological-education-learning-from-our-past-2

https://www.minister.ca/cultivating-theological-leadership]

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Post 1925 Union

What could possibly go wrong?... I asked in the previous post #2. Here’s the answer:

With the Union of 1925, virtually the entire Congregational, Methodist and Local Union Churches, and the Presbyterian Church – as institutions – united to form Canada’s largest Protestant denomination, The United Church of Canada (UCC). The potential of Knox College to serve as the key theological centre for the whole church was close to being realized, except for the fact that thirty one percent of Presbyterian members voted non-concurrence, choosing thereby to remain Presbyterians.

Given this minority, two critically important issues had to be resolved. Would non-concurring members of any of the denominations retain the denominational identity or would the denominational identities be assumed by the UCC? And would the Knox College facility with its hefty endowment and just mortgage-free be retained by the non-concurring Presbyterians or become part of the UCC?

Politics ruled the day. In the end Parliament rejected the notion of non-concurrent members retaining the identity of their denomination. On the Knox issue, the province of Ontario had responsibility for determining property matters. Its Legislature resolved its reservation about the first issue by granting the new Knox building (but not the Principal’s residence) to the non-concurring minority.

The Dominion Properties Commission followed suit by granting both the Charter and the bulk of the Knox endowment to the minority, while the school’s Caven Library was put under shared control. (The struggle to reach this conclusion is described in Cousland’s volume pp. 49-55.) Totally new faculty and board members were quickly appointed to manage the College for the continuing Presbyterians.

Unionists lamented but Gandier remained gracious – even when the new appointees replaced him in the Principal’s office. Presbyterians and Unionists were entitled to three years of shared occupancy of the facility. Meanwhile the Unionists – the entire old Knox faculty, board and senate, and 80% of students, along with denominational officers – re-organized by quickly launching “Union Theological College” – for now lodged in the Knox facility.

A "New" Theological School

On April 10, 1927, the UCC’s General Council Executive incorporated the new college and authorized it:

To enter into the same relations with Victoria as there existed between Knox College and Victoria University and to alter those relations in any way that was mutually agreed upon by Union College and Victoria University; and to unite with Victoria so as to form with its Faculty of Theology a Theological College of the United Church of Canada under terms and with powers determined by the General Council of the United Church. [And] to enter into federation with the University of Toronto.   [The latter was enacted by UofT governors on June 30, 1927]

In effect continuity between the “new” Union Theological College and Victoria’s Faculty of Theology was complete. As stated by Old Testament Professor and later Emmanuel Principal Richard Davidson: “Union Theological College is essentially ‘Old Knox’; only it bears a new name. It is Knox College continuing in the United Church and under a new name carries forwards its tradition, spirit, and service within the United Church.”

Amalgamating “Old Knox” and Victoria Faculty of Theology

The formal amalgamation of the two entities was next – now looking to integrate on the Victoria campus. Numerous aspects preceded the event. Joint classes, a common course of study, common worship, shared meals, a single curriculum – all indicated the chosen direction of both schools. The first joint convocation and graduation took place in the UofT Convocation Hall in 1926.

But if amalgamated, in what way would the theological school relate to Victoria University. Previously Knox College was autonomous, but had close, informal relations with the University College Arts faculty? Victoria’s Chancellor Richard Bowles envisioned the solution as follows:

I made it clear to the friend in [“old”] Knox that if Knox did not come in [to the UCC] I believed the policy of the new Church would be to bring the present Knox Faculty and students over to Victoria and continue in a new theological building in the very closest relations possible with the Arts College the work practically as it is now going on in Victoria…. A form of government which would unite the two as the property of one Church exercising its teaching functions in two directions was imperative. (Cousland, p. 59)

Principal Gandier was, however, concerned to ensure that the theological entity within the Victoria arrangement would have a good degree of autonomy – as Knox had enjoyed in its relationship with University College. The latter institution was not faith-based as the former was. University College gave Arts students aiming towards ministry in the Presbyterian Church the window on the larger (secular) world needed by “learned” ministers of Presbyterian heritage, while Knox as faith-based seminary enabled theologs to deepen and further inform their faith and equip them for the practice of ministry.

Faith-Based Education and the Alternative

In his own way, Gandier may have been interpreting the institutional/organizational task through the quaerens ut intellectum – faith seeking understanding lens of Anselm of Canterbury. A seminary is a church-connected, faith-based organization dedicated to pursuing aggressively a deeper understanding of the Holy One who has called the school into existence through the faith of the community, i.e. church.

The Arts college, may, as Victoria was and still is, be connected to the Church and honour "Christian principles" as 19th century forebears advocated, but it will pursue knowledge for its own sake as a core humanizing endeavor. It’s founders had clearly respected this humanistic role.

But a faith-based theological college has a different motivation, usually manifested by close relationship with the church - faith communities. Says Canadian theologian Douglas Hall:

“If it is truly faith, Anselm insists, it will seek to understand what is believed …. Like the defiant boldness of a lover, the doing of theology entails a search that will not be deterred by the many obstacles that are certainly in the way of it. … There is a drive towards understanding built into faith itself, if it is really faith and not just sentimentality.” *

Faith-based theological studies are different from Religious Studies offered in an Arts faculty. The difference between the two needs to be honoured structurally and in practice.

What is not mentioned by Cousland is whether Gandier’s concern was also based on the simpler assumption that a theological faculty within a larger predominantly arts-oriented university would inevitably be at greater risk of being overwhelmed or diminished by the much larger Arts faculty.

In 1925, Victoria’s Arts students numbered more than 600; while the number registered in theology at the time of the amalgamation of Union College and Vic Theology was 77 students. The asymmetrical relationship between Arts and Theology was substantial and obvious. Arguing for a relatively autonomous College – Emmanuel – alongside a much larger Arts College – Victoria – within Victoria University, federated within the University of Toronto may simply have been Gandier's practical way of trying to protect the special nature of faith-based education.

On April 3, 1928 royal assent was given to the Ontario Legislature’s Act to replace the Victoria University Act of 1915. The new act declared:

“Union Theological College and the Faculty of Theology of Victoria University ‘are hereby united and amalgamated into one theological college of Victoria University to be known as Emmanuel College.’” [Cousland, p. 67]

Both the Board of Regents, with a slight majority of UCC-appointed members maintained the close relationship with the United Church and the Senate had overall responsibility for the University. Victoria College and Emmanuel College within Victoria University each had a Council “charged with general supervision of the life and work of that college.”

“The powers given to the Emmanuel College Council did give some measure of autonomy that Dr. Gandier wanted, for while the business administration, general oversight, and degrees came under the larger body, theological education was under the direction of the theological college, and the church through its representative had the final word in the appointment of theological professors.” (Cousland, p. 70) Gandier’s concerns were largely met.

Fund Raising Again, Still

With the organizational configuration sorted out, the whole University with Bowles as President and Gandier as Principal worked (again!) indefatigably to raise funds from church members and alumni of the University to add new accommodations for both the new college and students. Emmanuel located at 75 Queen’s Park Circle was opened formally February 28, 1931 and the residences including “Gandier-Bowles House” [of which I was Don in the 1967-1968 school year] were ready for the 1931/1932 sessions – a time of serious financial stress.

Today, financial pressures continue. The future of faith-based theological education for the UCC – no matter how institutions are configured - is murky. It is clearly easier to fund the teaching of the much larger Arts colleges than to find money for theological schools.

Societal culture and values have shifted dramatically from the 1930s. Loyalty to the denomination and organized Christianity is weakening. The result is that the United Church itself has been forced to cope with seriously diminished resources.

Theological studies in UCC-recognized institutions in Edmonton, Winnipeg, Kingston, Saskatoon have had to be or are being severely curtailed or even terminated. Financial pressures and the inability of the Church to sustain grants have long had their impact on all the church-related theological schools – a problem addressed by the UCC General Council in 1968, 1986, 2006, and again currently, but without lasting solutions.

It seems unlikely that the Church can contribute much to solving the financial challenges of the several recognized UCC schools. Is it likely that UCC ministers – like the Methodist preachers of the 19th Century - might pledge half their salary to supporting the school or that another Gandier will emerge to inspire the kind of generous giving that built both Knox and Emmanuel College buildings?



The United Church is not alone in this dilemma. Protestant churches of the ecumenical persuasion may no longer be able to afford “their own” theological schools the way it has been.

Currently, Toronto School of Theology includes two Anglican schools, one Presbyterian and one United theological school. There are also three Roman Catholic theological institutions. In Hamilton, Baptists have a school and in Waterloo there is a Lutheran seminary. Toronto School of Theology is a step towards greater cooperation among seven school. More steps will doubtless be required.

Does Theological Education Have a Future?

Are members and leaders of church and schools thinking about how the “faith seeking knowledge” challenges of today and the critical needs of the future are going to be addressed or will these institutions just continue to fade one after the other?

For the United Church, Cousland’s story of the founding of Emmanuel College is a gift and a prod. Our forebears modeled for us the urgency and their determination to provide both general education to meet societal needs and theological education, in particular, to equip the faithful for informed participation in God’s mission.

Today’s urgency, I believe, is to discern sustainable ways to raise up and empower leaders through educational communities where faith can continue to seek knowledge. More to come.....

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*Hall, Douglas J., Thinking the Faith. Minneapolis, Augsburg Press. 1989. P. 255

Theological Education - Learning from Our Past - #2

Tue, 30 Mar 2021 19:35:13 GMT

A Passion for Education

Grave and monument, near Prescott, to honour Barbara Heck, United Empire Loyalist and a strong mother of Methodism in Upper Canada (Ontario) (1734-1804). More about Heck & the EULs at a previous blog post: https://www.minister.ca/cemetery-learnings

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Historical Bottom Lines

Just finished reading Kenneth H. Cousland’s The Founding of Emmanuel College in Victoria University of the University of Toronto!* It didn’t just roll off the presses. It was published in 1978 – a decade after I graduated from Emmanuel and 50 years after the College was established. I wish I’d read the book sooner. I would have been better informed about the evolution of the Church and its theological schools. It should be required reading for all Emmanuel students, especially UCC members.

Two things stand out clearly upon reading this loving account of the evolution of theological education in Ontario and the creation of Emmanuel College which Cousland served as professor of church history and as its third Principal. First, the importance our foreparents accorded education - in general - for the well-being of society, and theological education, in particular, for the church to participate faithfully in God’s world. It is a large legacy they bequeathed to us. The second is that education to be sustainable and effective requires ongoing substantial investments of vision, determination, cooperation, and money.

Wandering towards Church Union 1925

So, now you can now just put this blog post aside since you’ve gotten the bottom lines or you can wander with me toward the founding of Emmanuel College substantiating these two primary learnings. This post leads you up the path to Church Union in 1925. A subsequent post will take readers into the aftermath of Union.

Cousland’s slender volume is an personal account offering a glimpse into the development of Protestant education in 19th century Upper Canada and some of its key players. Little schools popped up here and there in the semi-wilderness, then merging into larger schools in towns and cities. The aim was to better serve basic educational needs of the growing settler populations coming as immigrants from the British Isles and United Empire Loyalists fleeing the American Revolution and War of 1812. [See my blog post on Barbara Heck at https://www.minister.ca/cemetery-learnings.] Regrettably, nothing is said about Indigenous peoples response to this invasion, nor about the role women played in shaping the educational enterprise.

Methodist Initiatives

Providing education is easier said than done! The United Church’s antecedent denominations struggled with the establishment pretensions of the “Church of England” leadership and the “Family Compact” political elite. There was little room for nor encouragement of educational opportunity for other than Anglicans.

Methodists, though, at the 1830 Conference, decided education was as much a necessity as religious practice was for the general population and determined to create an educational institution.

The Upper Canada Academy - “a purely literary institution” – was finally founded and formally opened on June 18, 1836 with 120 students. Its aim was to provide “a general liberal arts education for students of all denominations without any religious tests either for professors or students. It was to have ‘a religious character yet not sectarian, liberal in its view yet not radical, maintaining the highest academic standards yet not exclusively confined to one type of education.’” (Cousland, p. 22)

Raising funds to build a home for the Academy was a heroic cause evoking generosity and sacrifice - evidence of the popular enthusiasm for the educational vision, especially among Methodists. Financial crises abounded, however. One threatened to imprison building committee members who had pledged personal resources. Another moved fifty itinerant preachers to sign an amazing pledge for half their meager salaries. (p.23)

To get around establishment obstructions to granting the Academy a charter, Egerton Ryerson was personally mandated by the Conference to sail to London to seek a charter mandating the provision of instruction “in the various branches of Literature and Science on Christian principles.” He was successful. King William granted the Royal Charter in October 1836 - the first such charter issued to a non-Anglican institution outside the British Isles.

In the early 1840s, the decision was made to transform the Academy - a secondary school - into a university. Ryerson’s further efforts were again successful - this time, in having the Royal Charter appended to an act of the Upper Canada Legislature elevating the Academy to college level and giving it the name “Victoria College.” Ryerson became the first Principal and college level liberal arts classes began in October of 1842. Educational options were expanded subsequently: 1854, Medicine; 1860, Law; and a Bachelor of Science degree in 1875. In the early 1870s theological courses began to be offered. In 1873, Theology was elevated from department to faculty status with Professor Nathanael Burwash as dean.

Methodist church bodies of diverse origins realized their fragmentation did not contribute to effective ministry. In 1884, they united into one Methodist Church and decided to support one University: Victoria University. The next step was taken In 1886, when Victoria federated with the University of Toronto. Victoria continued its Arts program including Religious Knowledge, relinquished law and medicine, but retained its Faculty of Theology.

Presbyterian Initiatives

East of Coburg in Kingston, Scottish Presbyterians had founded Queen’s College. Unlike Victoria, Queen’s began as a theological school to which subsequently an Arts faculty was added. Conflict in Scotland between the supporters of the national established Kirk and those advocating a Free church spilled over into the colony. The disagreement played out with “Free” supporters in 1844 launching another seminary – this time in Toronto. Eventually it was chartered by provincial legislation as Knox College. In 1875, Knox College occupied a newly built home on Spadina Circle serving the school for the next 40 years.

Gradually Toronto became the heavy weight centre for theological institutions in Ontario. The Presbyterian Church unified in 1875 maintained both Knox and Queen’s as theological schools. The Methodists decided to move Victoria University from "the old Ontario strand" of Coburg to the Queen’s Park circle campus in 1892. It provided education for Arts students and a smaller number of theologs. Roman Catholics were part of the University through St. Michael’s College and Trinity (Anglican) federated later.

By 1915 the Knox premises had worn out. The building was replaced by a handsome new structure on the St. George campus next to University College, upon which Presbyterians relied for Arts education. The persistent fund-raising labours of Principal Alfred Gandier had been crucial to realizing the shared vision of a new facility to serve the new denomination’s need for substantial theological education. Responding to the Unionist movement, leadership in both Knox and Victoria’s Faculty of Theology had been implementing strategies that increased cooperation and shared teaching as intentional steps toward eventual amalgamation.

Union is at Hand

Everything appeared ready for the new united church to have a central capacity for theological education at the Knox building. It implied that Victoria’s Faculty of Theology would be woven into the Knox operations – a sacrifice of significant proportions for Methodists. But it was felt that this was a cost justified by the new united denomination’s need for informed and competent “learned” leaders. Victoria would continue as the new denomination’s primary Arts university in Ontario among whose graduates candidates for ministry would pursue theological studies across the campus at Knox.

Strong leadership, close collaboration, generous giving, and prayers for unity had set the stage for a new and vital era in education among Protestants in Ontario and Canada as a whole.

What could possibly go wrong? Stay tuned for the next post…….

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[see my previous blog in this series: https://www.minister.ca/cultivating-theological-leadership

*Kenneth H. Cousland, The Founding of Emmanuel College of Victoria University in the University of Toronto. The Porcupine’s Quill, 1978.

The Water of Life - Guest Post

Wed, 17 Mar 2021 16:55:57 GMT

The Water of Life

Image: Unsplash. John Duncan

This guest post first appeared in Mission Matters !!

- A newssheet connecting the North Bay & area Mission Cluster with United Church people of faith. Issue #3 - March 2021.

The Water of Life

The ancient waters of her territory should be a world heritage site, according to Teme-Augama Anishnabai councillor Mary Laronde. Speaking about environmental racism on our Wet'suwet'en Witness webinar last fall, Mary concluded her extremely powerful presentation with a plea to develop a shared land ethic for nDaki Menan, their sacred land, the region settlers call Temagami. "None of us will survive if we don't have water to drink." We need to preserve its small untouched ecosystems, Laronde continued. In the midst of extraction and logging, "everything doesn't have to be taken."

Laronde's wisdom is crucial to all of us. In many ways, water symbolizes the chasm between colonial and Indigenous thought. For the former, water is simply a resource. It can be damaged by resource extraction or bottled and sold. For the latter - and in our own scriptures - water is life.

As a country, we have much to learn. One place to begin is with the boil-water advisories that are endemic to reserves throughout Canada, with 58 long-term advisories in 38 communities. This year's rapid commitment of billions of dollars to pandemic response - while necessary - threw into sharp focus the fact that water trreatment funding for reserves has never received the same priority. According to an investigation by the institute for Investigative Journalism, inadequate funding, bureaucracy, and racism get in the way. Indigenous Services Canada requires First Nations to take the "lowest valid bid price" for construction, for instance, which sometimes results in disproportionate low quality results. Required approvals of First Nations' feasibility studies often drag on until they are outdated by the time projects get the go-ahead.

Once built, underfunding means that on the majority of First Nations, water operators earn less than their municipal counterparts and are on call at all times. Lack of money for maintenance also means that equipment breaks down early or it is insufficient to begin with. On Nipissing First Nation, for instance, the treatment plant was deemed inadequate even as it was under consgtruction in 2009. Promises to adjust the design never materialized, and retrofitting now will be vastly more expensive. "I can move off the reserve a mile from here and West Nipissing doesn't have the same problem," Chief Scott McLeod told the Institute. "And if they did, it would be fixed, right? So when we talk about systematic racism, that's what we're talking about."

Expert and exacting research on reserve health would help. But "there's nothing. lt's a black hole," NDP MP Charlie Angus is quoted in Burn-Pieper's article. He says the lack of evidence is deliberate. "This is all about protecting the government from liability. If they don't track it there's no evidence."

The crisis in water on reserves is shocking. But its roots go far deeper than poor funding or sluggish bureaucracy. This endless emergency arises from the way we understand water: as a resource to be given or withheld and used as we wish - or as life, to be held sacred and protected. In recent clashes between corporations and Indigenous land defenders, the conviction that water is sacred is central. The Wet'suwet'en see the Coastal GasLink pipeline as a threat to their pristine water. The Tsleil-Waututh, Squamish and Musqueam similarly oppose the Trans Mountain pipeline. Many First Nations in Northern Ontario's ring of Fire fear the cumulative impacts of mining and road-building on their peatlands and rivers, even as others feel compelled by poverty to allow such activity.

We are called to name all these threats for what they are: environmental racism. The current federal government promises to end boil-water advisories, and has made some progress. But it's hard to heal lakes and rivers once the ecosystems that safeguard them are violated. Hence, this edition of Mission Matters. We suggest that, as people of faith, we listen carefully to Mary Laronde's wisdom and open our hearts to the sacredness of water. And that we support actions to end both boil-water advisories, and the water-contaminating projects that make them necessary.

- Written by Donna Sinclair with research, editing, and direction by the Indigenous Solidarity Team of the North Bay & Area Mission Cluster -

Some actions you can take:

Add your name (or faith community to a solidarity statement: https://cela.ca/call-for-a-moratorium-in-the-ring-of-fire-to-protect-watersheds-and-indigenous-rights/

Attend a (virtual) film festival and more: https://mailchji.mp/telus/movements-in-defense-of-life-film-festival?e=o86a2d1ab6

Petition & Pressure those in power: https//www.mcgilldaily.com/2021/01neskantag-a-first-nation-still-doesnt-have-clean-water/

Tell MPs to redress environmental racism: https://www.kairoscanada.org/tell-canadas-leaders-to-redress-environmental-racism

Boil your water: try out life with a boil water advisory for up to a week: boil (one minute, rolling boil) all water used for drinking, cooking, brushing your teeth, washing your vegetables, bathing your toddler and feeding pets. Please let us know what this was like for you by emailing Kay Heuer, kaymheuer@gmail.com (For more details on what to do, see: https://www.sac-isc.gc.ca/eng/1538160229321/1538160276874)

Read further: We are grateful to Concordia University's Institute for Investigative Journalism for much of the information in this Mission Matters. See

https://www.concordia.ca/artsci/journalism/research/investigative-journalism/projects/clean-water-broken-promises.html

School Systems - Four or Two?

Tue, 16 Feb 2021 21:19:16 GMT

Moving Beyond "Separate" Schools

The Ontario School System – too many boards

A "separate" religion-based public school system is an Ontario anachronism that can no longer justified.

It's time for the province to move into the 21st Century by merging the separate school system into one public educational system resulting in two boards - English and French.

Currently there is a four publicly-funded boards structure - English Catholic, French Catholic, English non-religious, French non-religious. This is ridiculous over-governance.

Perhaps in 1867 it made sense to have a compromise alternative in view of the sharp division between French Catholic and English “protestant” - non-Catholic populations - of Ontario and Quebec. Lamentably, no one at the time thought about the impact of this constitutional compromise on Indigenous peoples or Jews or non-believers.

So provincial governments were given the power to fund “separate” “protestant” and Roman Catholic educational systems in order to protect the minority rights of Protestants in Quebec and Roman Catholics in Ontario. The “simple” solution was enacted and persists in Ontario, defying reason, justice, efficiency, and educational consequences.

The issue is joined because the binary stand-off of the 19th Century has become a multi-cultural, multi-faith and no faith, pluralistic, complex society . Quebec has scrapped its version of the “simple” arrangement. But Ontario has not – even though Roman Catholics are now the largest religious constituency, substantially larger than “protestants.” In fact, in the 1980s, Ontario’s Davis Conservative government chose to extend public funding for Roman Catholic elementary and all high school grades.

John Tory, now mayor of Toronto, but erstwhile leader of Ontario’s Progressive Conservative Party, in the 2007 provincial election proposed that public funding be extended to other faith groups wishing to have separate schools. This idea went against the popular current. The electorate told Mr. Tory to seek another place to offer his leadership gifts.

Ontario residents increasingly are of one opinion about the “separate” system idea. One poll reports that 56% of respondents favour merging the public and separate systems.

The Justice Issues

Most people discussing the situation intuit that it is simply an unjust arrangement. To have public funds – taxes – pay for an educational system controlled by one faith community – the Roman Catholic Church - is unfair to the many other religious groups now part of the province’s societal fabric. An R.C. priest with whom I discussed this situation also agreed that it just didn’t make sense any more in this pluralistic society.

That is not to say that there is no room in the public school system for religious education. Helping students learn about the important role religion has played in all civilizations is essential to understanding the many-facetted human condition.

But this is learning about the large role religious observance and practice has played in life – not education for becoming a person of faith in this or that tradition. That type of formation is the role of the faith community itself, not the provincial government.

Injustice also occurs when the separate school system imposes religiously-based personal norms and standards that discriminate against minority groups such as LGBTQ2S persons. When statutory-based human rights conflict with religiously-based convictions, then individuals easily become victims of discrimination – overt and subtle.

Further compounding the injustice of the separate system is the disparity in amounts of money being spent on the separate system. Numbers vary, but the picture is clear that the public system receives substantially less money per capita than the separate system. Justice would be achieved when both systems receive comparable per capita grants or when the systems are merged into one.

Money Wasted

But the real issue is that the province is spending more than necessary on education as the four board system is currently managed?

I can’t argue against the need for a French board and an English board. To organize the French schools in Ontario under an English or bi-lingual board would be deleterious, I believe, to French education and culture in this province and in this officially bi-lingual nation. In Ontario, the minority rights of francophones need to be safe-guarded.

But merging the French Catholic and the French public boards into one public French system, and, amalgamating the English Roman Catholic boards into a single English public board system would generate huge long-term savings.

Imagine the current expense of duplicated bureaucracies and services, school buildings and equipment, libraries, IT, and other resources that are required in a four-board system.

Here we’re not talking about millions of tax dollars, but billions that could be applied to improving and strengthening the entire provincial educational portfolio. It could also be diverted to other priority areas such as housing for the homeless, safer public long term care facilities, Indigenous support services, etc.

When inefficiency is generated by no longer applicable historic circumstances in an immensely different society, then such extravagance (waste) cannot be justified.

Other provinces have come to that conclusion and made the challenging but necessary adjustment – Newfoundland/Labrador, Quebec. Why not Ontario?

The Need for Faith-Based Education

My educational experience included two and a half years in Calvin Christian School of the Christian Reformed Church in Vancouver. Often, only half-jokingly, I will say that that’s where I learned to swear, but also where I learned the stories of the Bible. There is no doubt that people of faith need to have effective means of passing on the heritage of faith to their offspring. So, the church I was then growing up in had its own micro, inadequately fee-funded “separate school system”.

Most Canadian Protestant churches, including the United Church of Canada where I’ve lodged since I went to high school, have relied, to their detriment, on the public school system for the education of their children. In the 1960s, public schools effectively phased out such religious education.

It resulted in children with varied quality “Sunday school” lessons to learn their own faith heritage and with little, if any knowledge of the faith heritage of their peers.

Other faith groups – Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists – have created more or less substantial educational programs to orient the younger generation to their faith heritage.

Education about Religious Heritages

Religious education is too significant to be so inadequately honoured. In our diverse society and in a shrinking world, we need to know more about our own heritage of faith (or “none”) and we need to understand more about the faith tradition and observances of others.

In a public system we can do that as part of the sharing of knowledge. An amalgamated public system – French or English – needs to recognize the significant contributions religious traditions have made to human life and reflect on their shadow side as well.

This is not happening in the current arrangement but could be one of the many improvements joining the systems might provide.

Act Now

The time is ripe for courageous and visionary action to improve the Ontario educational system. Amalgamating the four boards system into two would open real possibilities for educational outcomes that contribute to a more harmonious and informed populace.

Let’s not miss the opportunity. Our children deserve it.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

For more information, including about legal action to advance the cause:

Broadview magazine, January/February 2021 issue, pp. 20-25.

Visit OPEN (One Public Education Now); CRIPE (Civil Rights in Public Education; www.OnePublicSystem; www.open.cripeweb.org;

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