Repentance, Reconciliation, and Changing History

This week’s Overflow will touch on the topic of corporate repentance, consider the importance of learning history, briefly address something called “Critical Race Theory”, and touch on the process of correcting the historical record. As usual there will be a devotional opportunity at the end.

Repent!

On Sunday I tried to tackle the very meaty subject of corporate repentance and bit off more than I could chew. Eventually the Sunday school teachers will forgive me for the amount of extra time they had to try to manage their kids…

I am growing increasingly aware of how much I, and the western Church, have adopted the extreme individuality of our culture. We bristle at the very idea that we should be implicated in any action or decision that is not ours alone. But the Bible presents a different way of thinking, one that recognizes the interconnectedness of people, households, communities, and the Church itself.

This extends to the influence of sin. Ezekiel 18 tells us firmly that God does not punish people for the sins of others, but also shows us the foolishness of imagining that we are free from the sins of our parents and not perpetuating them. We cannot simply declare “I had nothing to do with that” when we are joined by strong ties to those who did, and operate using the same beliefs and assumptions that they did. I am not responsible for all the things the Christian Church has done badly or every time it has harmed people. But I am connected to those things as one of many parts of the body of Christ. In Sunday’s message I noted that:

Christian faith has an important corporate component. Jesus, even though he encouraged his followers to pray in private, still taught them to pray using communal language. Our Father, hallowed be your name. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.

There are times when “I” may not have sinned, but “We” did and I want to understand that, reckon with that, be part of offering help and healing for that, and to learn to walk in a better way as a result. This is repentance. It is not a scary or accusatory thing. It is a means of grace, a gift from God allowing us to stop repeating broken patterns and be guided by God’s Spirit toward something more pleasing to Him.

Check out the video, audio, or written sermon (below) from Sunday for more (a lot more!) and how the practice of corporate repentance is valuable for the Church today by contributing to our spiritual maturity, offering relief and healing to those who have been mistreated and hurt, and strengthening the witness of the Church.

sermon_nov14.pdf

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Death and Loss in Nova Scotia

I was about to change subjects from repentance when I saw this news update from the recent COVID-19 outbreak that reportedly began with a Baptist camp meeting in the Amherst area where the participants did not follow the public health rule to require proof of vaccination to attend. According to the Province multiple participants were infected and spread the disease to numerous households and church communities and beyond. Cases in a nursing home and group home were traced to these gatherings and three people have died as a result.

A special testing site set up in Amherst to help contain the COVID-19 outbreak that began at an event hosted by an independent Baptist church in Amherst

According to the CBC the pastor of the church at the epicentre of all this preached on Sunday to the effect that this was “unfortunate” but all part of God’s plan, and that the church did what God wanted them to do by holding their week of meetings the way that they did. Rather than reckon with bearing some responsibility for a great deal of harm being done to their neighbours, the pastor urged the congregation to resist feeling bad about the situation, saying such feelings are from Satan “trying to drag us down.”

I don’t know any more than what has been reported by the media or said at one of the Provincial health briefings I watched. I don’t know if this church has been cooperative in following other public health guidelines to protect their congregants and community through the pandemic. So I don’t know just how justified I am in feeling as angry as I do. But I am confident that the response of this particular pastor and (through him) the church to the situation has been very poor. This would be a very appropriate situation to practice some corporate repentance - to humbly acknowledge playing a role in the harm that was done, seek to address any aspects of their church culture that contributed to it, and look for any opportunity to help those affected if any are willing.

That kind of approach doesn’t seem forthcoming, though I hope and pray this will change and some words that are much more loving will be spoken. But even if this happens, now that this news coverage has been widely read and discussed Nova Scotia’s Christians (and, unfortunately, Baptists in this case, though not my branch of Baptists) will end up being viewed with greater suspicion and mistrust as a result.

CRT and the fight over history

I offered a lot of history my Sunday message this week, particularly the history of Africville’s demolition by the city of Halifax and some of the more egregious statues of the Indian Act affecting indigenous peoples in Canada. Some of this history isn’t well known and people are shocked to learn it for the first time. Knowledge like this is profoundly important for repentance - we can’t learn to walk in a good way if we are blind to what is wrong (and has been wrong) with the way we are accustomed to.

How history is presented and taught is hugely important, and it looks like this may be one of the most important issues in the next set of elections south of the border. American society, and parts of the Church there, are fighting an especially fierce battle in the long war over how history is taught. The new wrinkle is something called “Critical Race Theory” or CRT. If you haven’t heard it mentioned in a news story or article yet I suspect you will before too long. But the bizarre part about this new controversy is the amount of passion and panic being generated by something that hardly anyone involved actually understands.

There is an academic discipline called Critical Race Theory with roots in the Harvard University Law School. It began as an approach to identifying racial inequalities in the American legal system. And that’s as much as I feel qualitied in writing to describe CRT. I’ve read multiple articles from Christian writers and publications explaining CRT and what I know for sure is that it is obscure, complex, and that I don’t have enough background in law, political science, or sociology to become familiar with it without dedicating a lot time to in-depth study.

People attend a school board meeting in Texas with varying opinions on CRT. (And probably little-to-no ability to describe or define CRT.)

But recently it’s become a common claim that CRT is being taught in American public schools and that it is having a widespread influence on public discourse about racism. This is not the case. But a new thing has been created and is now being called CRT. This invented doctrine or worldview is accused of teaching all white children that they are oppressors and needlessly inflaming racial tensions. Often the opposition to CRT boils down to a denial that there is such a thing as systemic racism. Some African American commentators counter that it boils down to the people who fought to prevent black children from being integrated into schools in the first place now fighting to keep their grandchildren from leaning about this. However we got here, parents are going to school board meetings and angrily demanding action to purge CRT from schools, politicians are making it part of their election campaigns, and lawmakers are passing bills to ban it.

Before a lot of this happened the issue of CRT landed amidst the world’s largest group of Baptists when the Presidents of the six seminaries of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) put out statements condemning CRT as being incompatible with the Christian Gospel. Numerous African American churches within that Convention reacted to this, considering the statements to be misguided and politically motivated. A more nuanced statement was adopted at their annual meeting last year, which likely retained a number of those Black churches who were ready to cut ties with the SBC for its general unwillingness to acknowledge or oppose racism.

Maybe this CRT issue won’t be very relevant to Canadian Christians. Unlike some American evangelical cultural influences that flow across the border more easily Critical Race Theory (the actual thing) is a uniquely American field of study, and their history of slavery, segregation, Jim Crow laws, etc., is fairly different from our own.

What this controversy highlights for me is the importance of learning history and being critical (no pun intended) about what history is taught and how it is taught. A lack of knowledge of Church history makes it hard to understand some passages of scripture or address certain theological issues. A lack of knowledge of national history makes it harder to understand historical injustices or to appreciate how much progress has been made.

Changing History

Continuing on with the theme of history, we are hosting a speaker on Nov. 20th who is involved in updating history in Canada. Marlene Companion, the Mi’kmaq elder and knowledge keeper from Treaty Education Nova Scotia, spoke to me this week about some of the history-changing work of knowledge keepers. I learned that when Newfoundland was in talks to join confederation its government tried to simplify the process by claiming that there were "no indians” on the island, and therefore no pesky treaty issues to resolve. This was false, there were plenty of indigenous people living there, but considerable time and effort went into proving this and establishing an indigenous band in Newfoundland, now recognized as the Qalipu Mi’kmaq. History changed.

A faded sign welcoming people to a Mi'kmaq reserve in the land known as Miawpukek to the people the government of Newfoundland claimed didn't exist up until the 1980s.

When I was in school I learned that there had been an indigenous tribe in Newfoundland, the Beothuk, who became extinct due to the steady encroachment of European settlers. Marlene Companion told me of being involved in the efforts to show that this is also untrue. DNA testing has recently confirmed what indigenous knowledge had claimed all along, which is that some Beothuk people became integrated into Mi’kmaq communities and that their lineage lives on.

History isn’t static. What we think we know can change. How we are told our history can change our perspective. This is one more reason to adopt a humble and open posture and being willing to listen. None of us has a perfect understanding of the world, past or present. To walk in a good way requires a good-faith effort to keep learning.

Devotional

For his week I've put together a selection of scripture connected to repentance. From Chronicles we see God's response to Israel's recommitment to Him upon completion of the Temple. Then a couple of short stops in the New Testament. My emphasis in Sunday's message also brought to mind a song from Steve Bell called "Mercy Now" which I have added below.

2nd Chronicles 7:13-22 (selections)

When Solomon had finished the temple of the Lord and the royal palace, and had succeeded in carrying out all he had in mind to do in the temple of the Lord and in his own palace, the Lord appeared to him at night and said:

“I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for myself as a temple for sacrifices."

“When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people, if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land. Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayers offered in this place. I have chosen and consecrated this temple so that my Name may be there forever. My eyes and my heart will always be there."

“But if you turn away and forsake the decrees and commands I have given you and go off to serve other gods and worship them, then I will uproot Israel from my land, which I have given them, and will reject this temple I have consecrated for my Name. I will make it a byword and an object of ridicule among all peoples. This temple will become a heap of rubble. All who pass by will be appalled and say, ‘Why has the Lord done such a thing to this land and to this temple?’ People will answer, ‘Because they have forsaken the Lord, the God of their ancestors, who brought them out of Egypt, and have embraced other gods, worshiping and serving them—that is why he brought all this disaster on them.’”

1 Peter 2:9

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession,that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.

Romans 12:1-2

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDefB2xL4VM

Closing Prayer - Psalm 51 (NLT)

Have mercy on me, O God,

because of your unfailing love.

Because of your great compassion,

blot out the stain of my sins.

Wash me clean from my guilt.

Purify me from my sin.

For I recognize my rebellion;

it haunts me day and night.

Against you, and you alone, have I sinned;

I have done what is evil in your sight.

You will be proved right in what you say,

and your judgment against me is just.

For I was born a sinner—

yes, from the moment my mother conceived me.

But you desire honesty from the womb,

teaching me wisdom even there.

Purify me from my sins, and I will be clean;

wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.

Oh, give me back my joy again;

you have broken me—

now let me rejoice.

Don’t keep looking at my sins.

Remove the stain of my guilt.

Create in me a clean heart, O God.

Renew a loyal spirit within me.

Do not banish me from your presence,

and don’t take your Holy Spirit[d] from me.

Restore to me the joy of your salvation,

and make me willing to obey you.

Then I will teach your ways to rebels,

and they will return to you.

Forgive me for shedding blood, O God who saves;

then I will joyfully sing of your forgiveness.

Unseal my lips, O Lord,

that my mouth may praise you.

You do not desire a sacrifice, or I would offer one.

You do not want a burnt offering.

1The sacrifice you desire is a broken spirit.

You will not reject a broken and repentant heart, O God.