A Statement on the 215 children found at Kamloops Residential School
From Lead Pastor AJ Thomas on behalf of the Leadership Team, staff, and congregation of Deep Water Church.
I was both saddened and sickened to hear of the 215 children from the First Nation of Tk’emlúps Secwépeme found buried on the grounds of a former residential school in Kamloops, BC late last week. 215 precious children created in the image of the God who loved them and whose culture, language, well being, and ultimately very lives were stolen by people who claimed to follow that God.
This is yet another concrete example of the injustice and sin that was perpetrated by our government, our churches, and our country in general against our Indigenous brothers and sisters. The reality and severity of this evil cannot be denied, ignored, or understated.
I want to acknowledge the deep sadness and grief being experienced by Indigenous communities over what has come to light this week and over what they have known all along was such an evil part of the Canadian story. We join you in mourning, in pain, and in anger. We are incapable of fully understanding the depth of your pain but we offer you our solidarity in it.
We unequivocally condemn the attitudes, ideologies, theologies, and sinful depravity that underpinned the church’s cooperation with and leadership in the heinous abuses that happened within Residential Schools and with the very concept of Residential Schools themselves. It was inexcusable. It was unjust. It was hateful. It was heretical. It was un-Christlike. It was wicked and sinful. The church should have been a leading force in the opposition to this genocide not the arrogant perpetrators of it.
The Residential School system, including the Shubenacadie Residential School that operated from 1922-1968 right here in Nova Scotia, is a great evil and the harm it has caused continues to reverberate through generations of Indigenous persons and communities. This evil was perpetrated by Canadians in general and by Christians specifically and as Canadians and Christians we repent of this national sin and ask both God and our Indigenous brothers and sisters for forgiveness.
And while we condemn the actions of those who went before us, we are not so naive as to believe that our individual hands and hearts are clean. So many of us, myself included, were raised in the world that this attitude of cultural and racial superiority created and we acknowledge that there are no doubt ways that this sin has crept into our own hearts.
We repent of that sin. We plead with the Holy Spirit to continue to bring every expression of the sin of racism and prejudice and white supremacy in our hearts to light. We are, and will continue to be, repenting of this sin and asking God to continue to conform us to the image of His Son Jesus.
We affirm our commitment to listening to the voices of our Indigenous brothers and sisters and to the voice of the Spirit through you as we continue on this journey of racial reconciliation. We have so far to go in understanding the depth of the harm that colonialism has caused to you and the meaningful and respectful ways we can be part of relationship that brings healing and peace and reconciliation.
We affirm our commitment to the ministry of racial reconciliation that Jesus has called us to as a church. We have made advances but there is still so much more room to move forward.
Next Steps: Our Racial Reconciliation team has been laying the groundwork for much more focused and strategic efforts in this area. This will include the entire staff and Leadership Team receiving cultural intelligence training over the summer, a focused sermon series in the fall, and the launch of small groups that help us to move racial reconciliation into a key aspect of our discipleship process.
In the meantime, and specific to reconciliation with Indigenous peoples, I invite you to join me in familiarizing yourself with the findings and calls to action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. (http://www.trc.ca/about-us/trc-findings.html) You may also want to consider taking the course “Walking in a Good Way With Our Indigenous Neighbours” (http://courses.baptist-atlantic.ca) being offered by the Canadian Baptists of Atlantic Canada. The course consists of online content curated by the Indigenous Relations Working Group of the CBAC.