issued by the Canadian people,” Aldred
has noted, “if we continue in the theme
of the apology of repentance, forgiveness, reconciliation and healing.”
And that to Aldred involves more
than mere statements. “If the other people are not repentant, if they don’t show
some kind of change, it would be nuts
for you to give them your whole heart
again. If you were abused by someone
and they said, ‘Oh yeah, I’m sorry,’
you’d be crazy to go back into that.
When it comes to family relationships,
I think if it is a real serious enough thing
you don’t just talk; you tell the truth.”
And if one is fighting deeply embedded, institutionalized racism, “you can’t
change it with only little things. It’s not
as if the system was good and it did only
a couple of bad things and now we are
OK. You have to repent. You need to
restore order.” He returns to his three-step program: Tell the truth. Listen.
Come up with a shared plan.
Have churches taken heed? Aldred
believes that, on other matters, Evangelicals have often followed instead of
led and that “a big part of the problem,” at least for Evangelicals, “is we
still kind of have a utilitarian look [to-ward] people. We don’t see how they’re
going to benefit us. We don’t necessarily
think it’s worth putting much effort into
cultivating that relationship.”
But on this issue, “the Church has
tried to reverse that. At least some denominations have tried to move toward
reconciliation and restitution. Instead
of asking ‘What’s the bare minimum
we have to do?’ [churches should ask]
‘What do we need to do? How can we
resolve this? How can we come away
more than merely co-existing. How can
we be friends?’ ”
LeBlanc, a member of the Indigenous Christian Alliance, a loose network of aboriginal Christian leaders,
and head of the North American Institute for Indigenous Theological Studies,
sees progress. “I’m regularly in situations where I hear aboriginal believers
talk about their feelings of welcome and
[of] belonging in the wider Church now
that they would not have felt before. I
hear them talk about ownership, in a
very positive way, of their involvement
in the wider Church and of their ownership of ministry for their own people as
well as others.”
The rewards have been hard-won
and have showcased what commitment
to biblical ethics can accomplish. But to
Aldred, “There’s something bigger than
ethics that is needed. That is the gospel,
isn’t it? God sacrificed His own Son to
heal the relationship. That’s why I’m
involved in reconciliation.”
Ron Csillag is a freelance writer in Toronto.
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