The Crest of The United Church of Canada sends a message.   Below at the asterisk* you will find the basic description and "message" of the Crest as it was previously.    As you read further down the post, I will return to talk about the Crest as a sign of our Church's significant shift in self-understanding.   You may need some patience to stay with the meandering thought process.  My apologies.

When I started this "from Generation to Generation" series, I was in conversation with my father through his 1945 doctoral thesis.   His studies centred on the work of William Carey,  "father of modern Christian missions" - especially the key "principles" by which Carey engaged in mission.   

The over-arching principle of Carey's work was the "making of disciples of all nations", as articulated in the Bible's Gospel of St. Matthew chapter 28:19ff.   The main purpose of the missionary endeavor was understood to be to convert and baptize "heathens and pagans", i.e.  anyone not Christian.    

Hinduism and Sikhism and other religious heritage  commitments were to be discarded and loyalty to Jesus Christ and the Church was required.  In 1794, Carey left "Christian" Britain to grow the Christian church in India.  What I have also come to understand is that there is not only a theological-religious sense of superiority which went into this mission purpose, but also a barely undeclared sense of racial superiority.   White  Christians "saving" dark-skinned others.  I have not developed this important thread, but it cannot be forgotten or under-estimated.

What for me is interesting about the missionary movement was its focus on church.   It was assumed that if you were part of the church you were among the redeemed and your way to God was assured.   No matter how blameworthy your life might be, your baptismal experience was the way of salvation.   Hence the task was to make all people Christians - to expand the church.   How you lived as a person of other or no faith was less important than being among the baptized having expressed faith in Christ.  Through shared faith in Christ and within the Christian church, the entire world population became the object of mission.

To achieve this end, a heavy emphasis on institutional organizing and programming AND alignment with power - economic and military-political - were chosen to promote the growth of the Church. 

The resources of European and North American churches and states made the churches' missionary mandate appear invincible .  The twentieth century could become the period of the Church's global conquest for Christ.

I've largely gone past the conversation with my father.   After 1945, world-views changed.  Two world wars and anti-colonial wars disabused even the most enthusiastic of Christians of mission's  world-conquering progress.   Institutional Christianity was, as the European nations demonstrated,  no guarantee of peace, racial justice,  sharing, and stewardship of the divine gifts of Creation.  Colonialism, imperialism, racism, sexism, fascism, materialistic communism or capitalism, along with other "isms"  competed aggressively with and undermined the "Christianizing" agenda.

For the United Church, the decades of the 1960s to 1980 became a time for rethinking the missionary purpose.  Increasingly the historic primary goal became suspect - especially as colonialism and its sibling imperialism was analyzed critically and  disavowed.   

The Spirit was calling United Church folks to humility and repentance, to stop fitting others into our images of faithfulness and discipleship, and to grow in respect for others.   That included starting conversations with other faith traditions supported by a national staff person for inter-faith relations.  Perhaps this and other initiatives were the result of a closer, analytical  reading of Jesus' take on the Greatest Commandment:   Love God above all and your neighbour as yourself?  (Mark 12:28-34; Matthew 22:38)

Simply put - Jesus' vision was more centred on the hearts of people and the Way life is to be lived than in professing certain beliefs and loyalty to institutional religion.   Something about Micah 6:8 became  central:   the Holy One "requires of you... to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God."   

As I have indicated in previous postings,  the Spirit endows all living creatures including humans with gifts to become and be  their full selves.   For humans this entails recognizing that the divine Spirit endows each and all with gifts, and when these gifts are fully appreciated and ingrained people become more fully human.   The fruits of the Spirit's gifts are evident in more hopeful, joyful, noble, just, self-giving and peace-filled living for self and others.  For Christians, the friends and companions of Jesus, this is understood as the life in and with Christ

The Crest of the United Church has, I believe, become less self-focussed or centripetal, and more centrifugal or other oriented, reflective of the Greatest  Commandment. 

In 1980,  the Church finally acknowledged Canada's francophone reality by adding its name in French - "L'EGLISE UNIE DU CANADA".   We are not simply a Protestant Church of English Canada but affirm  through the two official languages on the Crest, to be a church for all Canadians.   

In the same decade, great efforts were made to acknowledge and strengthen the participation of Indigenous peoples in the life and work of the Church..   This was made visible on the Crest in 2012 as Indigenous communities eventually  proposed and caused the General Council to adopt two major changes.   

First, the four colours associated with the aboriginal Medicine Wheel were added to the Crest:   white, yellow, black, and red - pointing to the Spirit's teaching from the four directions, to the four stages of life, and the four seasons.    These Medicine Wheel colours reinforce the Church's intention to respect diversity and interdependence .

Second,  a new motto  was  added.   It stated in the language of Mohawk people the phrase  AKWE NIA'TETEWA:NEREN, translated as "all my relations".    This is a richly symbolic statement which invites readers to explode the generally church-limited understanding of "that all may be one" (ut omnes unum sint}.   Since the birth of the United Church and probably well before, church folk have understood Jesus' prayer to mean that Christians should be united and uniting.  Their task was to break down denominational barriers and create the one ecclesial community - the one body of Christ - made up of those who professed faith in Christ.

This "mandate" drove the ecumenical movement of the twentieth century which sought to restore - especially in the Protestant tradition - the unity of a highly fractured and fractious faith community.  

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the United Church went to great efforts to continue "uniting" by effecting union with the Evangelical United Brethren Church and by unsuccessfully seeking union with the Anglican Church and with the Christian Church - Disciple of Christ denomination.  

Many ecumenical organizations worked at creating unity among Christians.   The World Council of Churches, established after World War II, sought to model globally what churches nationally and internationally might pursue.  But the goal was unity of Christian churches.  To be sure, this was and still is a noble goal, but increasingly it has seemed more self-serving than self-giving and other-affirming.

In our day, the Spirit is calling us, I believe, to less institutional, loftier, life-embracing goals.   "All my relations" pushes us all to think about the others with whom I am in relation - the Creator's entire global human family in all its diversity and similarity, its limitations and its aspirations, its sorrows and its joys, its carnality and spirituality.  Surely this is a supremely urgent goal given the suffering of so many of earth's eight billion humans all too conscious of the dangers threatening them and their Earth home.  There is only one global human family - we are all relatives of one another and we are called to live as sisters and brothers.  

But these are not our only relations.  Humans are not above creation.  We are part of God's Creation and, as St. Francis taught,  we bless the Creator alongside our non-human brothers and sisters as well.  All creatures of the Creator are worthy of both our respect and partnership because they too - the ones that crawl, swim, and fly - the four legged and the two - all  have received the breath of life.  We share the fundamental cycle of life:  born, live, procreate, die.   We are related and we need them for our well-being.   There is growing evidence that as the Earth's creatures are mistreated, harmed, and driven to extinction that humans will be negatively affected (zoonosis).  For a healthy Creation both humans and other creatures must live in respectful harmony if we are all to survive.

   

We are increasingly also learning that the earth itself is not just a treasure-store to be plundered, not  the lifeless home we and the creatures inhabit, but Earth is our Mother, who may itself be as alive as we are.    Earth too is worthy of honour and respectful relating if life on this planet is to survive and thrive. +   

The Spirit calls us all to live with respect in and for all Creation, paraphrasing the United Church Creed.  The Dove at the top of the Crest recognizes the Spirit who gives all the gifts needed to make that happen so that the whole family - all the relations in Creation may live and flourish.

The Crest as it has become, I believe, invites us to expand our centrifugal, self-giving energies so that the promise of abundant life may come to fulfillment for ALL as the Creator intends

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*The Church Crest