What if “reconciliation” lets the powerful off the hook? We sit with theologian and former United Church of Canada moderator Carmen Lansdowne to rethink repair from the ground up—centering Indigenous wisdom, circular time, and mission reimagined as solidarity. Carmen opens a candid window into her story of sobriety, Advent, and returning to a faith that saved her life, then presses the church to pair grace with real accountability: stop harm, welcome transformation, and measure change by relationships healed, not just programs launched.
Together we trace how the language of reconciliation often hides one‑way harms and ongoing power imbalances. Carmen introduces a community vision that asks those who broke trust to turn and make things right—repentance that shows up in policy, resources, and consent, not only words. We unpack why “mission” doesn’t have to mean empire, how indigenizing decision-making widens what counts as knowledge, and why justice must replace charity when congregations hold wealth while marginalized communities carry the costs. From land back to long-term funding without strings, from dialogue-first processes to resisting extractive economics, Carmen offers a roadmap for churches that want courage without arrogance and humility without silence.
We also talk about identity and self-determination, the pitfalls of gatekeeping “authenticity,” and the futures tools that keep hope practical: envision best and worst outcomes, then act today in ways you’d be proud of in either future. Bold humility and humble boldness become a daily practice—naming harm, sharing power, and taking faithful risks. If you’re ready to move from statements to solidarity and from nostalgia to repair, this conversation will meet you where you are and invite you further.
If this moved you, share it with someone in your congregation or organizing network, then subscribe, leave a review, and help more listeners find these conversations.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
Welcome to Religion and Justice.
(00:01):
I'm one of your hosts, GabbyLeasey.
In today's episode, we're joinedby Carmen Lansdowne, member of
the Hiltsuk First Nation,theologian, and former moderator
of the United Church of Canada.
Carmen is now AssistantProfessor of the United Church
of Canada Studies at EmmanuelCollege and the University of
Toronto.
(00:22):
Her work bridges churchministry, indigenous leadership,
and social impact.
Her new book, Wearing a BrokenIndigen Heart on the Sleeve of
Christian Mission, which wasreleased in August of 2025,
invites us to move beyondreconciliation, toward the much
harder work of making thingsright, centering relationships,
(00:43):
solidarity, and accountabilityin Christian mission.
In this conversation, we talkabout cycles of time,
decolonizing theology, charityversus justice, and why hope is
a verb.
Let's get into it.
Carmen is a member of theHellstook First Nation.
(01:05):
She's passionate about creatinga life with great stories and
amazing adventures with herfamily from their home base on
the west side of Toronto.
Carmen, welcome to the show.
Thanks so much.
Happy to be here.
SPEAKER_02 (01:15):
I thought you were going to read the informal bio,
which is also on my website thatsays that I was part of the
NASA's Lazarus ProjectInitiative and worked undercover
in the San Pedro AlligatorWrestling League for seven
years.
SPEAKER_00 (01:26):
I felt nervous about reading from your voice, though,
because I'm not you.
I didn't know if I was gonna beable to deliver it with justice.
SPEAKER_02 (01:33):
That actually was written for me by a 15-year-old.
SPEAKER_00 (01:35):
Even better.
Okay, so talk to us a little bitabout wearing a broken indogene
heart on the sleeve of Christianmission.
You use a term, and forgive meif I mispronounced this, hail
cut.
SPEAKER_02 (01:48):
Pretty close for English.
SPEAKER_00 (01:51):
It means to turn things around and make them
right again over reconciliation.
Can you tell me a little bitmore about why you chose this
versus reconciliation or overand above reconciliation and
what that means to you in thiswork?
SPEAKER_02 (02:05):
So why hail system?
In part, I think because for meto speak as an or to write as an
Indigenous woman, it's eventhough uh I make an argument for
why this is not a particularlyhasty study, that it's sort of
like looking at the ways ingeneral that indigenous
(02:26):
worldviews are different fromnon-Indigenous worldviews and or
like Euro-Christian worldviewsslash Western worldviews.
Um, but in in our, I am Haltzuk.
And so um in our community, wehave actually just passed our
own constitution this year, wasratified in a potlatch in May,
(02:47):
and I was privileged to bethere.
But um we have a jointleadership between the elected
tribal council government thatis what's mandated by the
government of Canada, but thenwe have our hereditary chiefs
and then also our Minux Council,which is the the women's council
in our community, and so thethose three parties make up
(03:07):
joint leadership.
And it was the joint leadershipwho said that even though we had
participated in the Truth andReconciliation Commission
process, and um reconciliationis a huge industry that's sort
of been an outcome of the TRCproceedings and reports in
(03:28):
Canada, that um, you know, thedefinitions of reconciliation
really look at repairing orrestoring a relationship between
parties who have hurt eachother.
And because the colonization ofIndigenous people was such a
one-way like imposition of powerand dominance over Indigenous
people by the state thatreconciliation doesn't feel like
(03:52):
the right word.
So Hastley Stewart is more likelike requiring repentance or
working towards like repentanceon beheart on the part of the
person who made things wrong inthe first place.
And I think it's important,especially for non-Indigenous
(04:12):
people, to think about what doesthat look like?
Because I mean similarly, whenwe look at what's going on right
now in Gaza, and yes, theattacks on October 7th were
horrific and devastating toIsraelis and to Jews across the
world, the obligations of theState of Israel as an occupying
(04:37):
military, like amilitary-occupying power, are
they they're not equal to what'sexpected under international law
by Hamas, whether it's themilitants or the political
party.
So um I think Casey's too kindof gets at that same that same
intent around there's not equalaccountability on both parties
(05:03):
between uh First Nations peoplesand the colonial governments.
And so um I think it I thinkit's an important thing to
highlight because the the powerimbalances between Indigenous
peoples and the states in Canadaand the US and elsewhere in the
world are still so imbalanced.
SPEAKER_01 (05:25):
I was about to even ask you, like, if it because it
seems like it reconciliation hasan acknowledgement of maybe past
power imbalances and pastcrimes, but it does not sort of
like carry that line of poweranalysis through to the present
and you know and even into thefuture a little bit.
And and this term which I amgoing to pronounce, you know,
(05:50):
completely accurately quiet tomyself.
It sort of has a sort of ongoingpower analysis, it sounds like,
which almost means uh somethinga lot more in line with uh what
we do at Wendell and Cook withour own sort of power analysis,
right?
SPEAKER_02 (06:08):
Yeah, I think and that's one of the things that I
explore in the book is this ideaof the purpose of history and
telling history in EuroChristian traditions is
chronological.
Like we've we've developed itinto this discipline in the
academy where we start in like1492 when Columbus sailed the
ocean blue, and then like allthis chronology of things and um
(06:33):
somehow distances us from ourpast.
Whereas indigenous cultures aremore likely to see time as
circular, which is one of thereasons you hear the sort of
common versions of like sevengenerations or things like that,
that we have to think sevengenerations back and seven
generations forward at the sametime, because what's happened in
(06:55):
the past is not disconnectedfrom the future.
What we're doing now is notdisconnected from the future.
And that and our past iscertainly connected to what's
happening today.
And I love the way that you wentreally liturgical there, George,
and just said the word in thesilence of your own heart.
SPEAKER_01 (07:12):
Well, I'm even gonna go even more liturgical and say,
you know, while church historyis told very chronological, you
know, this happened and thishappened and then this happened,
the liturgical calendar is verycircular, right?
That's true.
Yeah.
Um is there I feel I am alwaysscared as like a chaplain to do
(07:33):
this to people when they'veproduced such a a rich
intellectual project to startasking like, you know, psychic
personal questions.
Because what you're doing hereis you're doing a lot of you
know, right out of the gate, youcall you call for
transformation, you call fordecolonial decolonial uh
(07:53):
theology of mission.
You talk aboutanti-colonialization,
decolonization,post-colonialization.
What is the and you even talkabout, you know, right in the
title, you a broken heart.
And you talk about your hearthas been broken again and again
by both the church and society.
(08:16):
What makes you want to do any ofthis work to to even stay in
such an organization or to eventry and decolonize such an
organization?
SPEAKER_02 (08:26):
Yeah, that's a fair question.
So there's two reasons.
I'll start with the personal onefirst.
Um there's a a long history ofuh substance use in my family,
depression, suicide, uh, like alot of uh indigenous and
non-Indigenous families.
Um I had my own struggles withthat, including losing an older
(08:46):
brother to suicide um 25 yearsago.
SPEAKER_01 (08:52):
I didn't know that, Carmen.
I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_02 (08:54):
Yeah.
Well, you since you asked,Padre.
SPEAKER_01 (08:56):
Um that's how it goes.
SPEAKER_02 (09:03):
Yeah, forget careful what you asked for.
So I um when I got sober, Ihadn't been to church in like
seven years.
Like all good Gen X kids, I likegraduated high school.
It's like peace out youth group,and I also moved from like
Vancouver Island to Denton,Texas for university.
(09:25):
And like there's a lot in commonbetween the United Church of
Christ and the United Church ofCanada.
But I would say that thosethings in common are much more
culturally the same, like inCascadia.
Like, so the difference betweenWashington State and British
Columbia is much less than, say,like the difference between
Victoria BC and Denton, Texas.
(09:47):
And so I couldn't find a churchhome, even if I'd wanted one,
that felt like church to me.
Um and I came to understand howvery like Canadian the United
Church of Canada was.
And so I'd stopped going tochurch.
I was really struggling uh withusing substances and primarily
alcohol, but not only that.
Um, when I got sober when I was25, uh I I decided, because in
(10:09):
12-step programs, they talkabout the need to like heal our
spirits as well as our physicaland our mental selves, that
church had always been a safeplace for me and I would go back
to church.
And it was the first Sunday ofAdvent, and I walked in and
there was an intentional interimminister, and she was talking
about how, like speaking to thatlike cyclical um liturgical life
(10:31):
of the of the church, that weknew that um in the period of
advent, like that the potentialfor change was coming in the in
the event of the Christ child,that that change wasn't here
yet.
And I was like, and like balledmy eyes out for the whole rest
of the service, and my wholebody relaxed and was like, oh
good, you can be a minister now.
And I was like, Hello.
(10:56):
It was not having a hello,goddess me, Margaret moment.
Like I just wanted to get soberreally badly.
And um, like church became partof that personal transformation
that I needed in order to likemake things right in my own life
and in order to have a a longerlasting sobriety than I'd been
(11:17):
able to achieve.
And so for me, like that kind ofevangelical, like personal
conversion moment was verystrong.
Uh, and I believe that there is,despite the fallibilities of
like the humans that make up thechurch and the way that the
church has been co-opted bypower over and over and over
again, that there is like asalvific efficacy in the Jesus
(11:40):
story, which is why any of usremain Christian.
Because it's not only, I mean,there's just as many
non-Indigenous people who aredisillusioned with the church
and and the ways that itcontinues to harm people.
And I think that there areenough of us like within our
traditions that are trying tosay, but it doesn't have to be
that way.
Like the answers are actually inour book and in our tradition
(12:02):
about like how to not do that.
You know, we're several thousandyears into imagining over and
over again how to do thingsdifferently, and we're humans
and we're imperfect and we hurteach other.
Um and so like I don't you knowwhat I don't fault any of my
(12:27):
like cousins or other peoplefrom my community or other
indigenous communities who havecompletely like outright
rejected the church.
Like I completely understandthat.
But for me, there's still thatone, it was always a safe space
for me, and two my faith gettinglike wrapped up in my own
(12:49):
salvation and saving me fromlike the worst of the
dysfunctions in my family and mycommunity is that it's not like
I would be Christian even if Iwasn't a minister.
So and I just think like there'salso I'm really fascinated, and
maybe one day I'll get towriting about this too, but I'm
(13:10):
really fascinated by liketheodicy and grace and like how
do we how do we make space foruh healcy student or
reconciliation like morebroadly, not just around
colonization, but you know, inmy denomination, we made a
decision in 1988 to allow anymember of the United Church of
(13:34):
Canada, regardless of sexualorientation, to become ordered
ministry personnel.
And then we extended that in thelate 90s or early 2000s to
people regardless of genderidentity or expression.
And I had the experience ofhearing somebody give a
testimony during a theme time ata regional conference in 2017,
(13:56):
and he talked about how for himas somebody who he identifies,
and in this particular rubric,we had like different marks of
the church that people weretalking about, so like
evangelical, contemplative,missional, ecumenical, and
ecclesial as being these likebroad categories.
And so he was talking about hisjourney as an evangelical
(14:18):
Christian and um how for him,for much of his ministry, that
had meant um, you know,preaching a like biblically
centered Christian message,which included um a homophobic
message.
His his theology had beencorrupted by homophobia, and
(14:39):
that um 40 years later, he waslike, and I hurt so many people,
and that's not actually what Ibelieve anymore.
And there's nothing that I cando that can like erase the the
damage that I did to mycommunity, to my congregation,
to the individuals in mycongregation, in my community.
And I can never fully makeamends for that, except to say
(15:01):
that my heart has been changedand thank God for this message
of salvation in our traditionthat teaches me that I'm already
forgiven for the hurt that I'vecaused.
And I thought like, like I mean,I still like seven years later,
eight years later, I still tearup every time I tell this story
because I think Yeah, I couldsee that like we we want cancel
culture of like alive and realin the church, too.
(15:23):
And I think like, you know, forall of the ways that we've
worked to try to eliminate theunsafety that comes from
allowing, you know, both sidesof an issue or whatever to like
say, like, actually, we need tomake space for the two spirit
and LGBTQIA plus community to besafe and to be honored for
(15:44):
exactly who they are and thatthey are a blessing to this
world and to the church.
And at what point do we allowthese people like my colleagues
the grace to have a 40-yearjourney to realize that they
were wrong and hurtful andoppressive?
And then to celebrate when theyhave that moment of clarity to
(16:05):
say that's no longer who I am orwhat I believe.
And so I'm really like rightnow, I'm really fascinated by
how do we like stop harm andalso create liberation for
people who have been the ones tocause the harm.
So yeah, that I mean, that'slike a question I didn't answer
(16:26):
in my book, but that I findfascinating now.
SPEAKER_00 (16:29):
That was I that was one of my questions on my list
for you today was was talkingabout both the oppressed and the
oppressor needing conversion,that the church had been
co-opted by homophobia, or notthe church, uh, his theology had
been co-opted by homophobia.
And I really, really like thatphrasing.
Um, because I think that's partof the path to that grace.
(16:51):
Um, is that um there is a pointin which the I don't know, I was
just talking about this at a barthe other night.
It wasn't particularly abouttheology, but it was about that
like both all genders need to beliberated from the patriarchy
and that men are being harmed bythe patriarchy, even though they
(17:12):
are the ones who created it.
Um but that and and that gotsome pushback at the bar, as you
can imagine.
They there were a couple of myfriends who were like, No, I
just hate men.
And I was like, but they'repeople too.
This and this vision is not thatthere's no accountability.
This vision is that there'saccountability for action and
there's also grace andforgiveness that comes with.
(17:35):
And so to think, I mean, youteared up while you were telling
that story, but to think thatthere are thousands of other
people like that out there whohave changed and who have had a
change of heart and who are nowtrying to do things differently
and believe different things,um, essentially are just walking
a line of consistent repentance.
I don't know if that's healthyeither.
If that makes sense to justnever let them feel free either.
SPEAKER_01 (17:59):
But it is also central to the intellectual work
you're doing here because umthis notion of
co-transformation, maybe, orco-repentance, or not
co-repentance, but uh mutualliberation?
Mutual liberation, thank you somuch.
(18:21):
Because solidarity is soimportant to you and and the
sort of guilt that comes fromjust uh laying it in the harms
that you have done sort ofprevents you from, you know, the
major weapon that we haveagainst sort of oppression,
(18:44):
which is this sort of solidaritythat leads and you and you talk
about mission as solidarity.
And mission seems to be one ofthose like really, really bad
words in indigenous communities,right?
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (18:59):
Um no, there's there's like a movement in my
denomination to like stop usingthe word full stop.
And um and it's our like ourmain bucket of funding um that
we use for all things likeprogrammatic ministries actually
called the mission and servicerequire like rebranding all of
(19:21):
our fundraising and everythingelse.
And so somebody's like, well,obviously you agree with this,
and I I was like, uh no.
I don't.
Um but have you read my bookyet?
It's like I have a book comingout that's like why we should
like reclaim that word, maybethe same way that the two spirit
(19:42):
and LGBTQIA plus community isreclaimed queer, right?
Like um, because you know, whenI I think when I was going
through my theological training,like doing my MDiv, I you know,
I was coming up in the church ata time where everything was like
decline, decline, decline.
Like all the mainland Protestantchurches and the Catholic
churches in North America aredeclining, and like how do we
(20:04):
counter this decline?
And so we had a lot ofconversations around evangelism
versus proselytizationproselytiz now, it's my turn not
to be able to pronounce thatthing, proselytization.
And how how do you share thegood news without like forcing
(20:25):
your faith on someone?
And I took a class in my lastyear of my MDiv called Mission
Church and Ministry, and we readDavid Bosch's Transforming
Mission, and we read VincentDonovan's Rediscovering Mission
and oh no, rediscoveringChristianity, I think is what
it's called.
And I was like, oh no, likemission's important, like this
(20:46):
shit's the bomb.
Also, like we've like one,thrown out the like mission and
evangelism with the colonialism,like the mission and evangelism
baby with the colonialismbathwater, right?
It's all bad, just get rid ofit.
And also, like, we sort of letourselves off the hook with the
mid-century move to distinguishbetween the um mission
(21:11):
ecclesiole and the missionmissiodei, right?
Missio ecclesiale and missiodei.
So the like there's the missionof the church, and then there's
the mission of God, and thatwhen we followed the mission of
the church, that sometimesbecause we are humans
infallible, we get co-opted bythe state and we operate
residential schools or whatever,but that if we like know that
(21:31):
there's like God's mission thatwe only can like participate and
co-create in.
So we sort of like moved to justtalking about missio day without
recognizing that we were justtheologizing our own actions in
(21:51):
a way that actually sort ofbuttressed the possibility to
move into Christian nationalismor whatever.
It wasn't a simple move either.
And I became very and I just hadthis really creative professor,
his name was Richard Leggett,and um he started that class by
saying, like, is there an is,right?
(22:11):
If like I was like, what?
And it was just it wasmind-blowing the con kinds of
conversations that we had uh inthat class about like what is
what is mission, what is church,what is ministry, and and really
getting into like these longphilosophical conversations
about it that made me think thatmaybe throwing mission out the
(22:35):
window is not the best idea, andmaybe was a little bit at the
heart of like why we're indecline, because we couldn't
talk about the good news of thegospel as being good news
anymore.
And we're still busy doing lotsof good things, but we couldn't
talk about like how that wasmotivated by or supported by our
faith as Christians, right?
(22:56):
Like that we're just the handsand feet of Christ, but like
don't ask us to talk about ourfaith, because that could be
proselytization and that's bad,and colonialism is bad, and
therefore we just like if I justignore it, it's not there.
And I think it kind of rippedthe heart of the church a little
bit.
SPEAKER_01 (23:12):
Could you talk a little bit more about your
method of decolonial uhdecolonizing mission?
Uh or just maybe, maybe couldyou say a little bit about
decoloniality?
SPEAKER_02 (23:29):
Yeah, I mean it's a it's it's a tough subject
because it's not an easy thingto do, right?
At at very best, we are allcontinuously impacted by
colonialist thinking, becausethat is the power structure that
has governed how we've operatedin terms of industry,
(23:50):
government, politics for thelast 500 plus years, 1,300
years, if you want to talk aboutcolonialism starting with the
conquest of El Andalus.
But so it's not if I was goingto indigenize Christian mission,
it would be more focusing onrelationships and solidarity.
(24:13):
Talking about indigenizing ismore attractive to me than
decolonizing, and maybe that'sshifted since I wrote the book.
I'd have to like go back andreread it and see if I still
agree with myself.
It's understanding the holisticrelationship between faith,
people, the environment, ourpolitics, that those are all
interconnected when we makedecisions as a denomination or
(24:38):
as ecumenical movements, thatdecolonizing means actually
centering non-Euro Christianways of looking at the world and
saying, like, does this departenough from the status quo that
if you sat down with a95-year-old elder who grew up in
a big house in the temperaterainforest of British Columbia,
that they would say, yeah, thisis actually like really
(25:00):
consistent with the way that wesee the world.
Or if you sat down with a youngactivist from the Amazon in
Brazil, who's fighting thedevastation that's happening
through clearing the rainforestthat they live in, that they
could say, like, yes, you'vetaken enough relationships into
account between like betweenhumans, but also between humans
(25:20):
and all of God's created orderto make an informed decision.
Like so much of Euro-Christianworldviews are an informed
decision is like data accordingto like one particular
discipline and not looking atall of the impacts of the
decisions that we make on eachother.
And we're seeing that like writlarge in Canada right now, where
(25:41):
everybody kind of rode theliberal wave under Mark Carney,
and he had this big groundswellof support because there was
this assumption that afterJustin Trudeau that we were
going to go back to having aconservative government, and
then the leader of that partywas starting to sound more and
more like your president.
That scared a lot of people.
And then we had this brillianteconomist who came in, and
(26:02):
people were like, oh, thank thebaby Jesus.
We're gonna vote for him and hisparty.
And now he's like, how we'regonna be elbows up against our
big American neighbor to thesouth is to invest in massive
infrastructure projects the sameway that the Americans did after
World War II.
That's what's gonna bolster theeconomy, which is like
(26:24):
technically not wrong.
And we have nearly 60 years ofcommon law legal precedent where
Indigenous communities in Canadahave taken projects like that to
court and said you have touphold what's now the United
Nations Declaration on theRights of Indigenous People to
have free, prior, and informedconsent.
How are you gonna do free,prior, and informed consent in
(26:46):
this massive infrastructurebill?
And they were like, we don'thave time to worry about that.
And it's like, well, okay, soway to roll Indigenous rights
back like 60 years.
And that happens over and overagain.
Like those are the systemicthings are the things that break
my heart.
I mean, there's themicroaggressions and the times
very infrequently that Iencounter somebody who's like
very overtly prejudiced orracist, but it's like, oh my
(27:08):
God, you guys still don't getit.
We don't just think about what'sgoing to create the best outcome
for our GDP.
Like that's not the way thatIndigenous people in general
think about things.
There are some mostly men,indigenous leaders in this
country who've been like, well,if people are going to be making
money off our resources, itmight as well be us.
(27:28):
And so have tried to replicatethat economic success through
extractivist industry intraditional territories.
But for the most part, peopleare like, if they have to choose
between poverty and colonialismor not poverty and colonialism,
they're going to probably chooseand not poverty and colonialism.
But then there's a growing groupof folks who see this middle way
of being able to say, no, we canmanage things differently.
SPEAKER_00 (27:52):
I think you were sort of touching on it a little
bit.
You presented bold humility andhumble boldness, and I may have
gotten those mixed up.
SPEAKER_02 (28:01):
Bold humility and humble boldness.
SPEAKER_00 (28:02):
I'm curious about what you're hoping for, what
your vision is with boldhumility and humble boldness,
both in the mission context andalso in this sort of societal,
socioeconomic, late stage or endstage capitalism context as
well.
SPEAKER_02 (28:18):
So, first of all, those are not my terms.
If they didn't come directlyfrom Bosch's Transforming
Mission, they came out of thebody of missiological discourse
that was happening in SouthAfrica after Transforming
Mission came out.
It was the South Africanmissiologist that really kind of
teased those two things out ofBosch's work that we have to be
humble in our boldness andboldly humble.
(28:41):
I'm always a big fan of both andways of approaching things.
It's completely understandableby why any indigenous person
would just be like speak to thehand, uh, I don't have anything
to do with you.
But that I also am required, asit says in the epistles, to like
(29:02):
be willing to give an accountingof the hope that is within me as
a result of being a Christiandisciple.
I need to speak that truthboldly, but also with humility.
What I keep saying to everybody,especially the indigenous church
or like non-Christian folks inmy indigenous world, is like
this book is not for everybody.
It's not for everybody becauseit is a scholarly monograph.
(29:23):
And for the church community,like a lot of little old
white-haired ladies are buyingmy book because they loved me as
moderator, and I'm like, oh,you're not gonna like this book.
My mom called me one day and shewas like, Can can you for our
congregation, which has like sixpeople, and she's like, for our
congregation, can you likecreate a study guide and can you
also have a book club with thisso we can add it?
(29:44):
Because we don't understand yourbook, but we want to understand
your book.
And you know, I'm busy workingon this other research project
around leadership developmentthat church has nothing to do
with indigenous theology rightnow.
And I was like, Yeah.
That's like it might take me, itmight take me like a year.
Um, these guys are laughingbecause you couldn't hear it,
but I'm like shaking my headwhen I said yes.
Like I'm like, might really wantto say no, but like who says no
(30:06):
to their 80-year-old mother andwho really wants to read your
book?
And uh, and then I had thismoment where I was like, wait a
second, this could be a thingthat like I don't actually have
to struggle with.
And so I sat down with likenotebook, Google Notebook AI and
was just like, I just did awhole bunch of like
conversations with the AIbecause Google Notebook will
(30:28):
like work with only like set,it's not scouring the internet
like Chat GPT.
So you I plugged PDFs of all ofmy own, writing in a PDF copy of
the book in there and like askedit to develop a study guide and
like a glossary of terms forlike a general readership of
like things that they people whowere educated in theology or
philosophy wouldn't necessarilyunderstand and created this
(30:49):
beautiful like little 20 20 pagestudy guide that my mom my mom
woke up the next morning, she'slike, How did you do this?
I'm like, I didn't do it, and Idid it.
But like I also know my workwell enough to know that it's
like half decent.
And so surprise, here you go.
And then I put it on my websitebecause I was like, actually,
this is like you know, for Iknow that there's at least a
(31:11):
couple of congregations thathave big book clubs and are just
like, we're gonna read yourbook, and I'm like, you should
use this alongside my book.
So yeah, I don't know.
My book's not for everybody, butuh it's definitely for people
who study theology.
But if you're in pastoralministry or you're um an
80-year-old grandma who justlike really wants to understand
(31:32):
and you don't know whatepistemology is, then you might
want to use the study guide inaddition to the book.
SPEAKER_01 (31:39):
You point out that the global north still holds
money and power and indigenousand marginalized communities
remain dependent on those.
Yeah.
I often hear in my work withchurches the very paternalistic
aid conversations still comingout.
SPEAKER_02 (32:02):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (32:03):
What is like sort of genuine interdependence look
like from pure perspective?
What does that solidarity sortof look like for a for a
progressive church that's reallytrying to get its shit straight?
I mean, is it like is it landback?
SPEAKER_02 (32:15):
The the answer to is it land back?
Always, yes.
But I think one of the culturalfeatures of colonialism is this
idea that you can just be likeripped up from your roots and
transported somewhere else thatis really damaging to our bodies
and to the earth.
Just like you can haveintercultural conflict, like say
in Japan, you don't know thatyou're supposed to cover your
teeth when you laugh because youdon't show bones.
(32:37):
Bones are associated with death.
So if you don't know that andyou go around smiling at
everybody, it's you can causeoffense.
And then how do you makedecisions that like manage all
of those relationships that wetalked about earlier?
We're like 1300 years intocolonialism, so it's probably
gonna be at least anotherthousand years before we start
to get at interdependence.
I do think we have to have moreexplicit conversations about the
(33:00):
difference between justice andcharity in the church.
I see that happening a littlebit in the denominations, but
not very much.
We we like to do things thatallow us to pat ourselves on the
back, denominationally speaking.
SPEAKER_00 (33:16):
That makes me think about the section of your book
where you talk about indigenouscultures often prioritize di
dialogue over outcomes and howmuch is lost because people are
just focused on responding andtreating responses as outcomes.
Well, we can fix the probleminstead of looking at where the
root of the problem is and howhow many relationships and
(33:38):
communities are impacted and howthat problem even came to be.
I feel like a lot of our societyis just addressing symptoms of
bigger problems, and there's noencouragement in a lot of
communities that I'm in oftalking about and having that
dialogue of why does this evenexist?
Why are we just responding to arunny nose when we've got full
body chills and could probablytrace where this came from?
SPEAKER_02 (34:03):
So when the United Church of Canada was eliminating
their presbyteries like seven,eight years ago, nine years ago,
there was an indigenous responsecalled the Caretakers to the
Church, and they issued thisdocument that was basically
saying, like, we will say how wedo indigenous ministry in the
church.
And in that document, it says,like, we will say who we are.
(34:25):
The concept of identity iscomplicated and is a complicated
issue with the indigenouscommunities.
The very notion of being anindigenous person is a European
construct.
Prior to European contact, thepeople of Turtle Island
identified themselves as membersof their own tribes, nations, or
communities.
Intermarriage was common, andmany children were mixed blood
in terms of how we would say itin Euro Christian language.
(34:47):
Many nations have alwayspracticed traditional adoptions,
self-determining who is part oftheir communities.
And with European contact, thesemany nations and tribes became
lumped into one homogeneousgroup known as indigenous,
aboriginal, or Indian.
This has caused indigenouspeople to be viewed as a single
nation, erasing the reality ofmany nations with different
social, cultural, and spiritualbeliefs and traditions.
Eurocentrism introduced identitypolitics based on race, blood,
(35:09):
quantum, and what people looklike.
And so we basically said we'regonna, in the indigenous church,
allow people to self-identify orcommunities to self-identify who
they are.
So now we've got these like twotargeted ministry personnel who
are accused of beingpretendians.
So there's this conversationhappening in the church, and
like Tarwatts would be like,okay, we're gonna replicate the,
(35:30):
we're gonna replicate theOntario process for like vetting
indigenous heritage.
And I'm like, but you can't dothat because we've actually also
in our polities said thatIndigenous church gets to
self-determine, and we've saidthat self-identification is
okay.
It's amazing watching thisinstitution trying to wrap its
brain around how do we live intoour commitments to allow
self-determination for theindigenous church and also
(35:52):
protect the reputation of thechurch and our ministry
personnel?
What if they are lying and is ita reputational risk?
It's just crazy.
The problem isn't the rightchecklist to make in the hiring
process.
The problem is like, how do weallow grace for the indigenous
community within the church toself-identify who they are and
(36:16):
then represent that to a worldthat is becoming increasingly
polarized around what it meansto be indigenous, in part
because it pits people againsteach other because it's
perceived you know, competitionfor scarce resources when that's
tends to be a root of a lot ofour problems as humans are we
(36:38):
like to end our interviews withasking people a question that
was inspired by St.
SPEAKER_01 (36:43):
Augustine.
He said hope has two beautifuldaughters, anger and courage.
Anger at the way things are andthe courage to change them.
And I'm wondering like whatgives you anger and that courage
today.
SPEAKER_02 (37:01):
Interesting.
I just spent the last threeyears as moderator of my church,
and my church has been verydispirited because of this you
know decades-old narrative ofdecline, and then COVID just
like kicked the crap out ofeverybody.
It was no picnic trying tofigure out how to run a homeless
shelter in a pandemic, but thesheer amount of pivoting and
(37:21):
existential threat thatcongregational ministry
personnel had to face was likeyou now you have to learn how to
stream your services and operateall this tech stuff and do that
within like public healthguidelines via force for calm,
even when you're scared and yourown parent just died in a
nursing home.
It was crazy times.
(37:42):
So I developed um along withBloom Leadership in San Diego
project called the FlourishingProject.
And we did a workshop that wetook around, I did it like 13,
13 or 14 times across thecountry.
In that workshop, we talkedabout how hope is productive.
It's not just a feeling, likeyou hear all the time that love
is a verb.
Hope is also a verb.
(38:03):
We we do things that cause hopethat comes from anger and
courage and like envisioningthat the world um could and
should be better, and that Godwishes for us that we would have
life and have it in abundance,um, and for all of the created
order, not just for humans.
So um dreaming, like spendingtime dreaming and like dreaming
(38:27):
big audacious goals is one ofthe things that gives me hope.
One of the privileges of beingmoderator of the United Church
of Canada is you get to choosethe theme for the general
counsel that you're gonna chair.
And that was the theme that Ichose.
It was visions and dreams.
We came up with this beautifullogo that's got like a dove
descending over the mountains inthe lake with a rainbow above
(38:48):
it, and it's sort of likereminiscent of the all the stuff
from the Rocky Mountains inCanada at the moment, but you
know, it was really inspired bythe texts from Joel and Axe that
the spirit would pour down onGod's people and that their
elders would dream vision orelders would dream dreams and
(39:10):
their uh children prophesy andtheir young people would see
visions.
It gets really hard to break outof the status quo.
And for us living in likelate-stage capitalism, you guys
know this really well at WendellCook program, that we have to
imagine radically alternate waysof living in the world in order
(39:30):
to disrupt the status quo thatit's so on built on these really
oppressive systems that feellike they're way too unruly for
any one of us to change, andthey are.
Jane McGonagall did this, she'sa futurist and game designer in
in California, and she talksabout in her book, Imaginable,
how we have to envision like thebest future possible, but also
(39:52):
the worst future possible.
Because exactly never do thingsalways work out either way,
right?
And so the challenge with onlythinking about the worst case
scenario is that sometimes whenthings start to go well, you
don't believe it.
And so you don't get some energybehind like momentum behind like
(40:14):
making things change.
But if you only think about thebest case scenario, then like
you get disheartened when theworst happens.
And you can see that playing outall over the place in North
American society right now, andI'm not just you know, not just
talking about the US, but Canadatoo.
(40:35):
And so I think like having thislike healthy sense of dreaming
about like what's the best thatcould happen, what's the worst
that could happen, because wehave to she she asks this really
these two really importantquestions, and I think they're
good ones that we'll leave withyour listeners, which is like,
what are the things that I cando today that I would be proud
of that will help to mitigateagainst that worst case scenario
(40:57):
that I don't want to see happen?
And what are the things that Ican do today that I would be
proud of that will help tocontribute to the future that I
want to see for the future?
Because either way, like weeither get angry at the
oppression or we're courageousand like charting a new vision,
but we need both of thosethings.
And we need to break, do we havethese big audacious schools and
(41:20):
then break them down into likelots of iterations and not be
scared of failure?
Like I think the church hasbecome so risk-averse because of
all of that colonial baggage andall of the harm that the church,
the institutional churches havecaused.
But like, it's also okay to failand to learn sometimes.
Yeah, those are the things thatbring me hope right now.
SPEAKER_01 (41:40):
Thank you so much, Carmen.
Thanks for being with us today.
SPEAKER_00 (41:42):
Thank you, Carmen.
Yeah, you're welcome.
A huge thank you to CarmenLansdowne for sharing her wisdom
and for calling us toward boldhumility, humble boldness, and a
more just church.
(42:03):
You can find her book, Wearing aBroken Indogen Heart in the
Sleep of Christian Mission,through CMU Press, or wherever
you get theology that matters.
And check out her website for afree study guide if you're
reading in community.
If this episode moved you, sendit to someone in your
congregation or organizingnetwork.
And if you haven't yet, be sureto subscribe and leave a review.
(42:26):
It can help others find theseconversations too.
Religion and Justice is producedby the Wenland Cook Program in
Religion and Justice atVanderbilt Divinity School.
I'm Gabby Leasey, one of yourhosts, and I thank you for
listening.
May your week be filled withboth anger at what is and
courage for what can be.
(42:46):
Until next time, remember thepath to justice is when we
navigate together, you can seethe first time.
Welcome to Religion and Justice.
(00:01):
I'm one of your hosts, GabbyLeasey.
In today's episode, we're joinedby Carmen Lansdowne, member of
the Hiltsuk First Nation,theologian, and former moderator
of the United Church of Canada.
Carmen is now AssistantProfessor of the United Church
of Canada Studies at EmmanuelCollege and the University of
Toronto.
(00:22):
Her work bridges churchministry, indigenous leadership,
and social impact.
Her new book, Wearing a BrokenIndigen Heart on the Sleeve of
Christian Mission, which wasreleased in August of 2025,
invites us to move beyondreconciliation, toward the much
harder work of making thingsright, centering relationships,
(00:43):
solidarity, and accountabilityin Christian mission.
In this conversation, we talkabout cycles of time,
decolonizing theology, charityversus justice, and why hope is
a verb.
Let's get into it.
Carmen is a member of theHellstook First Nation.
(01:05):
She's passionate about creatinga life with great stories and
amazing adventures with herfamily from their home base on
the west side of Toronto.
Carmen, welcome to the show.
Thanks so much.
Happy to be here.
SPEAKER_02 (01:15):
I thought you were going to read the informal bio,
which is also on my website thatsays that I was part of the
NASA's Lazarus ProjectInitiative and worked undercover
in the San Pedro AlligatorWrestling League for seven
years.
SPEAKER_00 (01:26):
I felt nervous about reading from your voice, though,
because I'm not you.
I didn't know if I was gonna beable to deliver it with justice.
SPEAKER_02 (01:33):
That actually was written for me by a 15-year-old.
SPEAKER_00 (01:35):
Even better.
Okay, so talk to us a little bitabout wearing a broken indogene
heart on the sleeve of Christianmission.
You use a term, and forgive meif I mispronounced this, hail
cut.
SPEAKER_02 (01:48):
Pretty close for English.
SPEAKER_00 (01:51):
It means to turn things around and make them
right again over reconciliation.
Can you tell me a little bitmore about why you chose this
versus reconciliation or overand above reconciliation and
what that means to you in thiswork?
SPEAKER_02 (02:05):
So why hail system?
In part, I think because for meto speak as an or to write as an
Indigenous woman, it's eventhough uh I make an argument for
why this is not a particularlyhasty study, that it's sort of
like looking at the ways ingeneral that indigenous
(02:26):
worldviews are different fromnon-Indigenous worldviews and or
like Euro-Christian worldviewsslash Western worldviews.
Um, but in in our, I am Haltzuk.
And so um in our community, wehave actually just passed our
own constitution this year, wasratified in a potlatch in May,
(02:47):
and I was privileged to bethere.
But um we have a jointleadership between the elected
tribal council government thatis what's mandated by the
government of Canada, but thenwe have our hereditary chiefs
and then also our Minux Council,which is the the women's council
in our community, and so thethose three parties make up
(03:07):
joint leadership.
And it was the joint leadershipwho said that even though we had
participated in the Truth andReconciliation Commission
process, and um reconciliationis a huge industry that's sort
of been an outcome of the TRCproceedings and reports in
(03:28):
Canada, that um, you know, thedefinitions of reconciliation
really look at repairing orrestoring a relationship between
parties who have hurt eachother.
And because the colonization ofIndigenous people was such a
one-way like imposition of powerand dominance over Indigenous
people by the state thatreconciliation doesn't feel like
(03:52):
the right word.
So Hastley Stewart is more likelike requiring repentance or
working towards like repentanceon beheart on the part of the
person who made things wrong inthe first place.
And I think it's important,especially for non-Indigenous
(04:12):
people, to think about what doesthat look like?
Because I mean similarly, whenwe look at what's going on right
now in Gaza, and yes, theattacks on October 7th were
horrific and devastating toIsraelis and to Jews across the
world, the obligations of theState of Israel as an occupying
(04:37):
military, like amilitary-occupying power, are
they they're not equal to what'sexpected under international law
by Hamas, whether it's themilitants or the political
party.
So um I think Casey's too kindof gets at that same that same
intent around there's not equalaccountability on both parties
(05:03):
between uh First Nations peoplesand the colonial governments.
And so um I think it I thinkit's an important thing to
highlight because the the powerimbalances between Indigenous
peoples and the states in Canadaand the US and elsewhere in the
world are still so imbalanced.
SPEAKER_01 (05:25):
I was about to even ask you, like, if it because it
seems like it reconciliation hasan acknowledgement of maybe past
power imbalances and pastcrimes, but it does not sort of
like carry that line of poweranalysis through to the present
and you know and even into thefuture a little bit.
And and this term which I amgoing to pronounce, you know,
(05:50):
completely accurately quiet tomyself.
It sort of has a sort of ongoingpower analysis, it sounds like,
which almost means uh somethinga lot more in line with uh what
we do at Wendell and Cook withour own sort of power analysis,
right?
SPEAKER_02 (06:08):
Yeah, I think and that's one of the things that I
explore in the book is this ideaof the purpose of history and
telling history in EuroChristian traditions is
chronological.
Like we've we've developed itinto this discipline in the
academy where we start in like1492 when Columbus sailed the
ocean blue, and then like allthis chronology of things and um
(06:33):
somehow distances us from ourpast.
Whereas indigenous cultures aremore likely to see time as
circular, which is one of thereasons you hear the sort of
common versions of like sevengenerations or things like that,
that we have to think sevengenerations back and seven
generations forward at the sametime, because what's happened in
(06:55):
the past is not disconnectedfrom the future.
What we're doing now is notdisconnected from the future.
And that and our past iscertainly connected to what's
happening today.
And I love the way that you wentreally liturgical there, George,
and just said the word in thesilence of your own heart.
SPEAKER_01 (07:12):
Well, I'm even gonna go even more liturgical and say,
you know, while church historyis told very chronological, you
know, this happened and thishappened and then this happened,
the liturgical calendar is verycircular, right?
That's true.
Yeah.
Um is there I feel I am alwaysscared as like a chaplain to do
(07:33):
this to people when they'veproduced such a a rich
intellectual project to startasking like, you know, psychic
personal questions.
Because what you're doing hereis you're doing a lot of you
know, right out of the gate, youcall you call for
transformation, you call fordecolonial decolonial uh
(07:53):
theology of mission.
You talk aboutanti-colonialization,
decolonization,post-colonialization.
What is the and you even talkabout, you know, right in the
title, you a broken heart.
And you talk about your hearthas been broken again and again
by both the church and society.
(08:16):
What makes you want to do any ofthis work to to even stay in
such an organization or to eventry and decolonize such an
organization?
SPEAKER_02 (08:26):
Yeah, that's a fair question.
So there's two reasons.
I'll start with the personal onefirst.
Um there's a a long history ofuh substance use in my family,
depression, suicide, uh, like alot of uh indigenous and
non-Indigenous families.
Um I had my own struggles withthat, including losing an older
(08:46):
brother to suicide um 25 yearsago.
SPEAKER_01 (08:52):
I didn't know that, Carmen.
I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_02 (08:54):
Yeah.
Well, you since you asked,Padre.
SPEAKER_01 (08:56):
Um that's how it goes.
SPEAKER_02 (09:03):
Yeah, forget careful what you asked for.
So I um when I got sober, Ihadn't been to church in like
seven years.
Like all good Gen X kids, I likegraduated high school.
It's like peace out youth group,and I also moved from like
Vancouver Island to Denton,Texas for university.
(09:25):
And like there's a lot in commonbetween the United Church of
Christ and the United Church ofCanada.
But I would say that thosethings in common are much more
culturally the same, like inCascadia.
Like, so the difference betweenWashington State and British
Columbia is much less than, say,like the difference between
Victoria BC and Denton, Texas.
(09:47):
And so I couldn't find a churchhome, even if I'd wanted one,
that felt like church to me.
Um and I came to understand howvery like Canadian the United
Church of Canada was.
And so I'd stopped going tochurch.
I was really struggling uh withusing substances and primarily
alcohol, but not only that.
Um, when I got sober when I was25, uh I I decided, because in
(10:09):
12-step programs, they talkabout the need to like heal our
spirits as well as our physicaland our mental selves, that
church had always been a safeplace for me and I would go back
to church.
And it was the first Sunday ofAdvent, and I walked in and
there was an intentional interimminister, and she was talking
about how, like speaking to thatlike cyclical um liturgical life
(10:31):
of the of the church, that weknew that um in the period of
advent, like that the potentialfor change was coming in the in
the event of the Christ child,that that change wasn't here
yet.
And I was like, and like balledmy eyes out for the whole rest
of the service, and my wholebody relaxed and was like, oh
good, you can be a minister now.
And I was like, Hello.
(10:56):
It was not having a hello,goddess me, Margaret moment.
Like I just wanted to get soberreally badly.
And um, like church became partof that personal transformation
that I needed in order to likemake things right in my own life
and in order to have a a longerlasting sobriety than I'd been
(11:17):
able to achieve.
And so for me, like that kind ofevangelical, like personal
conversion moment was verystrong.
Uh, and I believe that there is,despite the fallibilities of
like the humans that make up thechurch and the way that the
church has been co-opted bypower over and over and over
again, that there is like asalvific efficacy in the Jesus
(11:40):
story, which is why any of usremain Christian.
Because it's not only, I mean,there's just as many
non-Indigenous people who aredisillusioned with the church
and and the ways that itcontinues to harm people.
And I think that there areenough of us like within our
traditions that are trying tosay, but it doesn't have to be
that way.
Like the answers are actually inour book and in our tradition
(12:02):
about like how to not do that.
You know, we're several thousandyears into imagining over and
over again how to do thingsdifferently, and we're humans
and we're imperfect and we hurteach other.
Um and so like I don't you knowwhat I don't fault any of my
(12:27):
like cousins or other peoplefrom my community or other
indigenous communities who havecompletely like outright
rejected the church.
Like I completely understandthat.
But for me, there's still thatone, it was always a safe space
for me, and two my faith gettinglike wrapped up in my own
(12:49):
salvation and saving me fromlike the worst of the
dysfunctions in my family and mycommunity is that it's not like
I would be Christian even if Iwasn't a minister.
So and I just think like there'salso I'm really fascinated, and
maybe one day I'll get towriting about this too, but I'm
(13:10):
really fascinated by liketheodicy and grace and like how
do we how do we make space foruh healcy student or
reconciliation like morebroadly, not just around
colonization, but you know, inmy denomination, we made a
decision in 1988 to allow anymember of the United Church of
(13:34):
Canada, regardless of sexualorientation, to become ordered
ministry personnel.
And then we extended that in thelate 90s or early 2000s to
people regardless of genderidentity or expression.
And I had the experience ofhearing somebody give a
testimony during a theme time ata regional conference in 2017,
(13:56):
and he talked about how for himas somebody who he identifies,
and in this particular rubric,we had like different marks of
the church that people weretalking about, so like
evangelical, contemplative,missional, ecumenical, and
ecclesial as being these likebroad categories.
And so he was talking about hisjourney as an evangelical
(14:18):
Christian and um how for him,for much of his ministry, that
had meant um, you know,preaching a like biblically
centered Christian message,which included um a homophobic
message.
His his theology had beencorrupted by homophobia, and
(14:39):
that um 40 years later, he waslike, and I hurt so many people,
and that's not actually what Ibelieve anymore.
And there's nothing that I cando that can like erase the the
damage that I did to mycommunity, to my congregation,
to the individuals in mycongregation, in my community.
And I can never fully makeamends for that, except to say
(15:01):
that my heart has been changedand thank God for this message
of salvation in our traditionthat teaches me that I'm already
forgiven for the hurt that I'vecaused.
And I thought like, like I mean,I still like seven years later,
eight years later, I still tearup every time I tell this story
because I think Yeah, I couldsee that like we we want cancel
culture of like alive and realin the church, too.
(15:23):
And I think like, you know, forall of the ways that we've
worked to try to eliminate theunsafety that comes from
allowing, you know, both sidesof an issue or whatever to like
say, like, actually, we need tomake space for the two spirit
and LGBTQIA plus community to besafe and to be honored for
(15:44):
exactly who they are and thatthey are a blessing to this
world and to the church.
And at what point do we allowthese people like my colleagues
the grace to have a 40-yearjourney to realize that they
were wrong and hurtful andoppressive?
And then to celebrate when theyhave that moment of clarity to
(16:05):
say that's no longer who I am orwhat I believe.
And so I'm really like rightnow, I'm really fascinated by
how do we like stop harm andalso create liberation for
people who have been the ones tocause the harm.
So yeah, that I mean, that'slike a question I didn't answer
(16:26):
in my book, but that I findfascinating now.
SPEAKER_00 (16:29):
That was I that was one of my questions on my list
for you today was was talkingabout both the oppressed and the
oppressor needing conversion,that the church had been
co-opted by homophobia, or notthe church, uh, his theology had
been co-opted by homophobia.
And I really, really like thatphrasing.
Um, because I think that's partof the path to that grace.
(16:51):
Um, is that um there is a pointin which the I don't know, I was
just talking about this at a barthe other night.
It wasn't particularly abouttheology, but it was about that
like both all genders need to beliberated from the patriarchy
and that men are being harmed bythe patriarchy, even though they
(17:12):
are the ones who created it.
Um but that and and that gotsome pushback at the bar, as you
can imagine.
They there were a couple of myfriends who were like, No, I
just hate men.
And I was like, but they'repeople too.
This and this vision is not thatthere's no accountability.
This vision is that there'saccountability for action and
there's also grace andforgiveness that comes with.
(17:35):
And so to think, I mean, youteared up while you were telling
that story, but to think thatthere are thousands of other
people like that out there whohave changed and who have had a
change of heart and who are nowtrying to do things differently
and believe different things,um, essentially are just walking
a line of consistent repentance.
I don't know if that's healthyeither.
If that makes sense to justnever let them feel free either.
SPEAKER_01 (17:59):
But it is also central to the intellectual work
you're doing here because umthis notion of
co-transformation, maybe, orco-repentance, or not
co-repentance, but uh mutualliberation?
Mutual liberation, thank you somuch.
(18:21):
Because solidarity is soimportant to you and and the
sort of guilt that comes fromjust uh laying it in the harms
that you have done sort ofprevents you from, you know, the
major weapon that we haveagainst sort of oppression,
(18:44):
which is this sort of solidaritythat leads and you and you talk
about mission as solidarity.
And mission seems to be one ofthose like really, really bad
words in indigenous communities,right?
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (18:59):
Um no, there's there's like a movement in my
denomination to like stop usingthe word full stop.
And um and it's our like ourmain bucket of funding um that
we use for all things likeprogrammatic ministries actually
called the mission and servicerequire like rebranding all of
(19:21):
our fundraising and everythingelse.
And so somebody's like, well,obviously you agree with this,
and I I was like, uh no.
I don't.
Um but have you read my bookyet?
It's like I have a book comingout that's like why we should
like reclaim that word, maybethe same way that the two spirit
(19:42):
and LGBTQIA plus community isreclaimed queer, right?
Like um, because you know, whenI I think when I was going
through my theological training,like doing my MDiv, I you know,
I was coming up in the church ata time where everything was like
decline, decline, decline.
Like all the mainland Protestantchurches and the Catholic
churches in North America aredeclining, and like how do we
(20:04):
counter this decline?
And so we had a lot ofconversations around evangelism
versus proselytizationproselytiz now, it's my turn not
to be able to pronounce thatthing, proselytization.
And how how do you share thegood news without like forcing
(20:25):
your faith on someone?
And I took a class in my lastyear of my MDiv called Mission
Church and Ministry, and we readDavid Bosch's Transforming
Mission, and we read VincentDonovan's Rediscovering Mission
and oh no, rediscoveringChristianity, I think is what
it's called.
And I was like, oh no, likemission's important, like this
(20:46):
shit's the bomb.
Also, like we've like one,thrown out the like mission and
evangelism with the colonialism,like the mission and evangelism
baby with the colonialismbathwater, right?
It's all bad, just get rid ofit.
And also, like, we sort of letourselves off the hook with the
mid-century move to distinguishbetween the um mission
(21:11):
ecclesiole and the missionmissiodei, right?
Missio ecclesiale and missiodei.
So the like there's the missionof the church, and then there's
the mission of God, and thatwhen we followed the mission of
the church, that sometimesbecause we are humans
infallible, we get co-opted bythe state and we operate
residential schools or whatever,but that if we like know that
(21:31):
there's like God's mission thatwe only can like participate and
co-create in.
So we sort of like moved to justtalking about missio day without
recognizing that we were justtheologizing our own actions in
(21:51):
a way that actually sort ofbuttressed the possibility to
move into Christian nationalismor whatever.
It wasn't a simple move either.
And I became very and I just hadthis really creative professor,
his name was Richard Leggett,and um he started that class by
saying, like, is there an is,right?
(22:11):
If like I was like, what?
And it was just it wasmind-blowing the con kinds of
conversations that we had uh inthat class about like what is
what is mission, what is church,what is ministry, and and really
getting into like these longphilosophical conversations
about it that made me think thatmaybe throwing mission out the
(22:35):
window is not the best idea, andmaybe was a little bit at the
heart of like why we're indecline, because we couldn't
talk about the good news of thegospel as being good news
anymore.
And we're still busy doing lotsof good things, but we couldn't
talk about like how that wasmotivated by or supported by our
faith as Christians, right?
(22:56):
Like that we're just the handsand feet of Christ, but like
don't ask us to talk about ourfaith, because that could be
proselytization and that's bad,and colonialism is bad, and
therefore we just like if I justignore it, it's not there.
And I think it kind of rippedthe heart of the church a little
bit.
SPEAKER_01 (23:12):
Could you talk a little bit more about your
method of decolonial uhdecolonizing mission?
Uh or just maybe, maybe couldyou say a little bit about
decoloniality?
SPEAKER_02 (23:29):
Yeah, I mean it's a it's it's a tough subject
because it's not an easy thingto do, right?
At at very best, we are allcontinuously impacted by
colonialist thinking, becausethat is the power structure that
has governed how we've operatedin terms of industry,
(23:50):
government, politics for thelast 500 plus years, 1,300
years, if you want to talk aboutcolonialism starting with the
conquest of El Andalus.
But so it's not if I was goingto indigenize Christian mission,
it would be more focusing onrelationships and solidarity.
(24:13):
Talking about indigenizing ismore attractive to me than
decolonizing, and maybe that'sshifted since I wrote the book.
I'd have to like go back andreread it and see if I still
agree with myself.
It's understanding the holisticrelationship between faith,
people, the environment, ourpolitics, that those are all
interconnected when we makedecisions as a denomination or
(24:38):
as ecumenical movements, thatdecolonizing means actually
centering non-Euro Christianways of looking at the world and
saying, like, does this departenough from the status quo that
if you sat down with a95-year-old elder who grew up in
a big house in the temperaterainforest of British Columbia,
that they would say, yeah, thisis actually like really
(25:00):
consistent with the way that wesee the world.
Or if you sat down with a youngactivist from the Amazon in
Brazil, who's fighting thedevastation that's happening
through clearing the rainforestthat they live in, that they
could say, like, yes, you'vetaken enough relationships into
account between like betweenhumans, but also between humans
(25:20):
and all of God's created orderto make an informed decision.
Like so much of Euro-Christianworldviews are an informed
decision is like data accordingto like one particular
discipline and not looking atall of the impacts of the
decisions that we make on eachother.
And we're seeing that like writlarge in Canada right now, where
(25:41):
everybody kind of rode theliberal wave under Mark Carney,
and he had this big groundswellof support because there was
this assumption that afterJustin Trudeau that we were
going to go back to having aconservative government, and
then the leader of that partywas starting to sound more and
more like your president.
That scared a lot of people.
And then we had this brillianteconomist who came in, and
(26:02):
people were like, oh, thank thebaby Jesus.
We're gonna vote for him and hisparty.
And now he's like, how we'regonna be elbows up against our
big American neighbor to thesouth is to invest in massive
infrastructure projects the sameway that the Americans did after
World War II.
That's what's gonna bolster theeconomy, which is like
(26:24):
technically not wrong.
And we have nearly 60 years ofcommon law legal precedent where
Indigenous communities in Canadahave taken projects like that to
court and said you have touphold what's now the United
Nations Declaration on theRights of Indigenous People to
have free, prior, and informedconsent.
How are you gonna do free,prior, and informed consent in
(26:46):
this massive infrastructurebill?
And they were like, we don'thave time to worry about that.
And it's like, well, okay, soway to roll Indigenous rights
back like 60 years.
And that happens over and overagain.
Like those are the systemicthings are the things that break
my heart.
I mean, there's themicroaggressions and the times
very infrequently that Iencounter somebody who's like
very overtly prejudiced orracist, but it's like, oh my
(27:08):
God, you guys still don't getit.
We don't just think about what'sgoing to create the best outcome
for our GDP.
Like that's not the way thatIndigenous people in general
think about things.
There are some mostly men,indigenous leaders in this
country who've been like, well,if people are going to be making
money off our resources, itmight as well be us.
(27:28):
And so have tried to replicatethat economic success through
extractivist industry intraditional territories.
But for the most part, peopleare like, if they have to choose
between poverty and colonialismor not poverty and colonialism,
they're going to probably chooseand not poverty and colonialism.
But then there's a growing groupof folks who see this middle way
of being able to say, no, we canmanage things differently.
SPEAKER_00 (27:52):
I think you were sort of touching on it a little
bit.
You presented bold humility andhumble boldness, and I may have
gotten those mixed up.
SPEAKER_02 (28:01):
Bold humility and humble boldness.
SPEAKER_00 (28:02):
I'm curious about what you're hoping for, what
your vision is with boldhumility and humble boldness,
both in the mission context andalso in this sort of societal,
socioeconomic, late stage or endstage capitalism context as
well.
SPEAKER_02 (28:18):
So, first of all, those are not my terms.
If they didn't come directlyfrom Bosch's Transforming
Mission, they came out of thebody of missiological discourse
that was happening in SouthAfrica after Transforming
Mission came out.
It was the South Africanmissiologist that really kind of
teased those two things out ofBosch's work that we have to be
humble in our boldness andboldly humble.
(28:41):
I'm always a big fan of both andways of approaching things.
It's completely understandableby why any indigenous person
would just be like speak to thehand, uh, I don't have anything
to do with you.
But that I also am required, asit says in the epistles, to like
(29:02):
be willing to give an accountingof the hope that is within me as
a result of being a Christiandisciple.
I need to speak that truthboldly, but also with humility.
What I keep saying to everybody,especially the indigenous church
or like non-Christian folks inmy indigenous world, is like
this book is not for everybody.
It's not for everybody becauseit is a scholarly monograph.
(29:23):
And for the church community,like a lot of little old
white-haired ladies are buyingmy book because they loved me as
moderator, and I'm like, oh,you're not gonna like this book.
My mom called me one day and shewas like, Can can you for our
congregation, which has like sixpeople, and she's like, for our
congregation, can you likecreate a study guide and can you
also have a book club with thisso we can add it?
(29:44):
Because we don't understand yourbook, but we want to understand
your book.
And you know, I'm busy workingon this other research project
around leadership developmentthat church has nothing to do
with indigenous theology rightnow.
And I was like, Yeah.
That's like it might take me, itmight take me like a year.
Um, these guys are laughingbecause you couldn't hear it,
but I'm like shaking my headwhen I said yes.
Like I'm like, might really wantto say no, but like who says no
(30:06):
to their 80-year-old mother andwho really wants to read your
book?
And uh, and then I had thismoment where I was like, wait a
second, this could be a thingthat like I don't actually have
to struggle with.
And so I sat down with likenotebook, Google Notebook AI and
was just like, I just did awhole bunch of like
conversations with the AIbecause Google Notebook will
(30:28):
like work with only like set,it's not scouring the internet
like Chat GPT.
So you I plugged PDFs of all ofmy own, writing in a PDF copy of
the book in there and like askedit to develop a study guide and
like a glossary of terms forlike a general readership of
like things that they people whowere educated in theology or
philosophy wouldn't necessarilyunderstand and created this
(30:49):
beautiful like little 20 20 pagestudy guide that my mom my mom
woke up the next morning, she'slike, How did you do this?
I'm like, I didn't do it, and Idid it.
But like I also know my workwell enough to know that it's
like half decent.
And so surprise, here you go.
And then I put it on my websitebecause I was like, actually,
this is like you know, for Iknow that there's at least a
(31:11):
couple of congregations thathave big book clubs and are just
like, we're gonna read yourbook, and I'm like, you should
use this alongside my book.
So yeah, I don't know.
My book's not for everybody, butuh it's definitely for people
who study theology.
But if you're in pastoralministry or you're um an
80-year-old grandma who justlike really wants to understand
(31:32):
and you don't know whatepistemology is, then you might
want to use the study guide inaddition to the book.
SPEAKER_01 (31:39):
You point out that the global north still holds
money and power and indigenousand marginalized communities
remain dependent on those.
Yeah.
I often hear in my work withchurches the very paternalistic
aid conversations still comingout.
SPEAKER_02 (32:02):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (32:03):
What is like sort of genuine interdependence look
like from pure perspective?
What does that solidarity sortof look like for a for a
progressive church that's reallytrying to get its shit straight?
I mean, is it like is it landback?
SPEAKER_02 (32:15):
The the answer to is it land back?
Always, yes.
But I think one of the culturalfeatures of colonialism is this
idea that you can just be likeripped up from your roots and
transported somewhere else thatis really damaging to our bodies
and to the earth.
Just like you can haveintercultural conflict, like say
in Japan, you don't know thatyou're supposed to cover your
teeth when you laugh because youdon't show bones.
(32:37):
Bones are associated with death.
So if you don't know that andyou go around smiling at
everybody, it's you can causeoffense.
And then how do you makedecisions that like manage all
of those relationships that wetalked about earlier?
We're like 1300 years intocolonialism, so it's probably
gonna be at least anotherthousand years before we start
to get at interdependence.
I do think we have to have moreexplicit conversations about the
(33:00):
difference between justice andcharity in the church.
I see that happening a littlebit in the denominations, but
not very much.
We we like to do things thatallow us to pat ourselves on the
back, denominationally speaking.
SPEAKER_00 (33:16):
That makes me think about the section of your book
where you talk about indigenouscultures often prioritize di
dialogue over outcomes and howmuch is lost because people are
just focused on responding andtreating responses as outcomes.
Well, we can fix the probleminstead of looking at where the
root of the problem is and howhow many relationships and
(33:38):
communities are impacted and howthat problem even came to be.
I feel like a lot of our societyis just addressing symptoms of
bigger problems, and there's noencouragement in a lot of
communities that I'm in oftalking about and having that
dialogue of why does this evenexist?
Why are we just responding to arunny nose when we've got full
body chills and could probablytrace where this came from?
SPEAKER_02 (34:03):
So when the United Church of Canada was eliminating
their presbyteries like seven,eight years ago, nine years ago,
there was an indigenous responsecalled the Caretakers to the
Church, and they issued thisdocument that was basically
saying, like, we will say how wedo indigenous ministry in the
church.
And in that document, it says,like, we will say who we are.
(34:25):
The concept of identity iscomplicated and is a complicated
issue with the indigenouscommunities.
The very notion of being anindigenous person is a European
construct.
Prior to European contact, thepeople of Turtle Island
identified themselves as membersof their own tribes, nations, or
communities.
Intermarriage was common, andmany children were mixed blood
in terms of how we would say itin Euro Christian language.
(34:47):
Many nations have alwayspracticed traditional adoptions,
self-determining who is part oftheir communities.
And with European contact, thesemany nations and tribes became
lumped into one homogeneousgroup known as indigenous,
aboriginal, or Indian.
This has caused indigenouspeople to be viewed as a single
nation, erasing the reality ofmany nations with different
social, cultural, and spiritualbeliefs and traditions.
Eurocentrism introduced identitypolitics based on race, blood,
(35:09):
quantum, and what people looklike.
And so we basically said we'regonna, in the indigenous church,
allow people to self-identify orcommunities to self-identify who
they are.
So now we've got these like twotargeted ministry personnel who
are accused of beingpretendians.
So there's this conversationhappening in the church, and
like Tarwatts would be like,okay, we're gonna replicate the,
(35:30):
we're gonna replicate theOntario process for like vetting
indigenous heritage.
And I'm like, but you can't dothat because we've actually also
in our polities said thatIndigenous church gets to
self-determine, and we've saidthat self-identification is
okay.
It's amazing watching thisinstitution trying to wrap its
brain around how do we live intoour commitments to allow
self-determination for theindigenous church and also
(35:52):
protect the reputation of thechurch and our ministry
personnel?
What if they are lying and is ita reputational risk?
It's just crazy.
The problem isn't the rightchecklist to make in the hiring
process.
The problem is like, how do weallow grace for the indigenous
community within the church toself-identify who they are and
(36:16):
then represent that to a worldthat is becoming increasingly
polarized around what it meansto be indigenous, in part
because it pits people againsteach other because it's
perceived you know, competitionfor scarce resources when that's
tends to be a root of a lot ofour problems as humans are we
(36:38):
like to end our interviews withasking people a question that
was inspired by St.
SPEAKER_01 (36:43):
Augustine.
He said hope has two beautifuldaughters, anger and courage.
Anger at the way things are andthe courage to change them.
And I'm wondering like whatgives you anger and that courage
today.
SPEAKER_02 (37:01):
Interesting.
I just spent the last threeyears as moderator of my church,
and my church has been verydispirited because of this you
know decades-old narrative ofdecline, and then COVID just
like kicked the crap out ofeverybody.
It was no picnic trying tofigure out how to run a homeless
shelter in a pandemic, but thesheer amount of pivoting and
(37:21):
existential threat thatcongregational ministry
personnel had to face was likeyou now you have to learn how to
stream your services and operateall this tech stuff and do that
within like public healthguidelines via force for calm,
even when you're scared and yourown parent just died in a
nursing home.
It was crazy times.
(37:42):
So I developed um along withBloom Leadership in San Diego
project called the FlourishingProject.
And we did a workshop that wetook around, I did it like 13,
13 or 14 times across thecountry.
In that workshop, we talkedabout how hope is productive.
It's not just a feeling, likeyou hear all the time that love
is a verb.
Hope is also a verb.
(38:03):
We we do things that cause hopethat comes from anger and
courage and like envisioningthat the world um could and
should be better, and that Godwishes for us that we would have
life and have it in abundance,um, and for all of the created
order, not just for humans.
So um dreaming, like spendingtime dreaming and like dreaming
(38:27):
big audacious goals is one ofthe things that gives me hope.
One of the privileges of beingmoderator of the United Church
of Canada is you get to choosethe theme for the general
counsel that you're gonna chair.
And that was the theme that Ichose.
It was visions and dreams.
We came up with this beautifullogo that's got like a dove
descending over the mountains inthe lake with a rainbow above
(38:48):
it, and it's sort of likereminiscent of the all the stuff
from the Rocky Mountains inCanada at the moment, but you
know, it was really inspired bythe texts from Joel and Axe that
the spirit would pour down onGod's people and that their
elders would dream vision orelders would dream dreams and
(39:10):
their uh children prophesy andtheir young people would see
visions.
It gets really hard to break outof the status quo.
And for us living in likelate-stage capitalism, you guys
know this really well at WendellCook program, that we have to
imagine radically alternate waysof living in the world in order
(39:30):
to disrupt the status quo thatit's so on built on these really
oppressive systems that feellike they're way too unruly for
any one of us to change, andthey are.
Jane McGonagall did this, she'sa futurist and game designer in
in California, and she talksabout in her book, Imaginable,
how we have to envision like thebest future possible, but also
(39:52):
the worst future possible.
Because exactly never do thingsalways work out either way,
right?
And so the challenge with onlythinking about the worst case
scenario is that sometimes whenthings start to go well, you
don't believe it.
And so you don't get some energybehind like momentum behind like
(40:14):
making things change.
But if you only think about thebest case scenario, then like
you get disheartened when theworst happens.
And you can see that playing outall over the place in North
American society right now, andI'm not just you know, not just
talking about the US, but Canadatoo.
(40:35):
And so I think like having thislike healthy sense of dreaming
about like what's the best thatcould happen, what's the worst
that could happen, because wehave to she she asks this really
these two really importantquestions, and I think they're
good ones that we'll leave withyour listeners, which is like,
what are the things that I cando today that I would be proud
of that will help to mitigateagainst that worst case scenario
(40:57):
that I don't want to see happen?
And what are the things that Ican do today that I would be
proud of that will help tocontribute to the future that I
want to see for the future?
Because either way, like weeither get angry at the
oppression or we're courageousand like charting a new vision,
but we need both of thosethings.
And we need to break, do we havethese big audacious schools and
(41:20):
then break them down into likelots of iterations and not be
scared of failure?
Like I think the church hasbecome so risk-averse because of
all of that colonial baggage andall of the harm that the church,
the institutional churches havecaused.
But like, it's also okay to failand to learn sometimes.
Yeah, those are the things thatbring me hope right now.
SPEAKER_01 (41:40):
Thank you so much, Carmen.
Thanks for being with us today.
SPEAKER_00 (41:42):
Thank you, Carmen.
Yeah, you're welcome.
A huge thank you to CarmenLansdowne for sharing her wisdom
and for calling us toward boldhumility, humble boldness, and a
more just church.
(42:03):
You can find her book, Wearing aBroken Indogen Heart in the
Sleep of Christian Mission,through CMU Press, or wherever
you get theology that matters.
And check out her website for afree study guide if you're
reading in community.
If this episode moved you, sendit to someone in your
congregation or organizingnetwork.
And if you haven't yet, be sureto subscribe and leave a review.
(42:26):
It can help others find theseconversations too.
Religion and Justice is producedby the Wenland Cook Program in
Religion and Justice atVanderbilt Divinity School.
I'm Gabby Leasey, one of yourhosts, and I thank you for
listening.
May your week be filled withboth anger at what is and
courage for what can be.
(42:46):
Until next time, remember thepath to justice is when we
navigate together, you can seethe first time.
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