I wrote the following letter in March of 2023 when it felt like so many people I know were struggling with going back to the church buildings and rhythms that they had left in the pandemic. The emotions and reasons people pointed to varied significantly, but in the midst of the struggle was longing, hope, anticipation, and a bit of dread that nothing would, in fact come of these more optimistic thoughts.
In the meantime, it feels like many people have been writing and talking about this phenomenon. In the midst of that conversation, I also continued to wonder about the line from a poem by T.S. Eliot called Journey of the Magi. At the end of the poem, he asks,
…were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
This, I think, is the tension we find ourselves in. Have we come all this way for Birth or Death? No matter, the reality is that we are no longer at ease in the old patterns. They have become ill-fitting. But rather than walk away, I hope we are haunted by what else might need to be put to death to make way for new life? This leads me to this question, in the Canadian context at least, about the church’s relationship to land and buildings. As I read this letter over, I still resonate and wonder about these questions. I would love to know your thoughts.
Dear Christian Church in Canada,
I am writing because of my deep longing for you and the journey ahead. It will be, I am afraid, more difficult than you can imagine. It is extremely risky, and in the end, you might lose everything you have held dear, but you might also find the life you have been looking for. I want to talk to you about land-based reparations, the practice of returning land.
What if God is doing something new and is asking us to leave behind the familiar structures and rhythms of Christian faith and is bringing us out into a new and spacious place? What if, in the interest of resurrection and renewal, we are being asked to die to our identity as it is defined by our buildings and structures? What if we were willing to spend our lives on behalf of others, giving over what no longer serves us so it, and we all, could have new life?
Let me be plain. What if we gave up and gave over our church properties in service of Indigenous neighbours? What if we acknowledged that our claims to this land were founded on fraud and theft? What if we faced the fear that haunts us and holds us back in efforts of healing and reconciliation, the fear that Indigenous People would want their land back? What if we faced that fear head-on and asked them?
The most recent census results tell us that more of us have left the church than was anticipated based on anticipated trends. I include those of you who left in this letter because I wonder if some of you left the church to save your faith. Some of us, I know, are tired of propping up the structure. Covid set us loose from the habits that held us in the routines of what we had come to call faith. When those routines were removed, we looked around like a sleeper awakening and wondered what it had all been for anyway. When restrictions were lifted, some returned to the buildings and routines, going back, looking for what had been, and it wasn’t there anymore, like a carnival in the cold light of day, surfaces sticky, and cigarette butts under foot, the magic gone. So we plugged the lights back in and cranked up the music, but it still failed to produce the feelings we had hoped to recover. So we left and told ourselves we felt better doing so. We told ourselves and our friends who asked, “I am finding deeper spiritual connection these days when I walk in the forest with my dog.” But what we really mean is that we felt empty when we returned to the hollowed-out forms of church as we had known it, and walking in the forest with my dog doesn’t have expectations laden on it and leaves me feeling full of what is, not empty with what is not. I wonder if our longing is for deeper connections to the questions and struggles we are surrounded by. If you wonder what difference your faith makes in the world?
Others of us have stayed. We have been delighted to return to the regular rhythms of Sunday morning gatherings. We missed the music, the opportunity to see friends, and that circle of contacts with whom you are friendly and who you missed seeing, but you were never close enough to call them up and include them in your “bubble.” We are glad to be back. We have thrown ourselves in, convinced that if everyone would pitch in, we could get back to what was. Yes, things feel a little more hollow than they did before the pandemic, but if we give it some time and effort, we can build back better.
What if the patterns that were broken and the disruption that was experienced in regard to our gathered life of faith is a gift and not a curse? Not a temptation of the devil but a proving of our faith that reveals the substance at the core?
I am stirred by the wonderings of a black Episcopal priest in the States who asks, for the sake of recovering our faith, if are we willing to “step out of these buildings of the church and leave it behind to become something new.”(Jarrett-Schell p. 84 quoting Rev. Dr. Gayle Fisher-Stewart)
There are already examples out there of what this can look like, but let’s keep in mind that this is a journey of repairing relationships (that’s what reparations means, repairing) which must happen in dialogue and should always be directed by those most impacted by the harms (Indigenous Peoples in this case). In Ontario Mennonite and Lutheran churches have entered into a Spiritual Covenant with the Haudenosaunee Confederacy to honour a treaty that was not kept. There are churches in British Columbia on unceded territory (where there has been no treaty or agreement about how to share the land) some churches have begun to pay a property tax to the host nations as a way of acknowledging that lack of agreement. In New Zealand, a church came to the understanding that their building was on land that was contested based on a treaty agreement. They agreed to give over the property title to the local Indigenous community in the spirit of the jubilee laws of the Old Testament.
What if the spiritual malaise many of us feel is born of a Spirit-led call to something more? What if it is a call to a deeper, thicker life of faith that dares to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly? What if the church is being given an opportunity for rebirth that begins with what feels like death? What if we were freed to become people who look to repair what is broken because we are no longer afraid of losing what was never ours to possess in the first place? What if reparation was the doorway into this new way of being the church in Canada? What if salvation came to this house in such a way?
I love your out of the box thinking. You are bold as you are called to be. Somebody has to say these hard things out loud, thanks for having the courage to do this