More than 100 Anglicans from across the diocese gathered online on Oct. 26 to learn more effective ways to work for justice alongside disadvantaged people. The diocese’s Outreach & Advocacy Conference, with the theme of “Communities of Resilience and Resistance,” included workshops tackling a range of topics, including some not covered in previous years.
Bishop Kevin Robertson welcomed participants and reminded them that “faith without works is dead” (James 2:17), describing outreach work as a “sacred vocation.”
The conference hit a snag when keynote speaker Rudy Turtle, former chief of the Grassy Narrows First Nation in northern Ontario, was unable to attend due to lack of internet access. Instead, participants watched videos about the Grassy Narrows situation, shared resources and discussed how they could show solidarity with the people of Grassy Narrows, who continue to suffer from the physical, social and economic costs of the discharge of 10 tons of mercury into the Wabigoon-English River system by a pulp and paper mill between 1962 and 1970, poisoning the water and fish upon which the community relied.
Janet Rodriguez challenged conventional thinking about disability issues in a workshop she led as a person with disabilities active in the organization Disability Without Poverty. She noted that 27 per cent of working-age Canadians say they have at least one disability. Often disability is seen as a problem to be cured or managed to relieve a person from suffering. The disabled person is not seen as someone capable of making their own decisions, she said. The social model of disability, however, views a disabled person as someone able to make decisions about their life and health in partnership with specialists. “The impairment is part of their identity, and they embrace it,” said Ms. Rodriguez.
In his workshop, the Rev. Christian Harvey, director of the One City Peterborough community agency, refuted common myths about homelessness, such as the belief that people choose to be homeless, that taking a harm reduction approach only enables drug use, and that homeless people are from “somewhere else.”
He also punctured the myth that homeless people are lazy, noting that travelling around a city to access food banks and other survival programs is hard work. When One City advertised 25 job openings for a street cleanup program, the number of applicants far exceeded the available positions.
Mr. Harvey underscored the role of community in addressing homelessness. “If we think housing is only about getting people indoors, we have misunderstood what housing is,” he said.
When speaking with people who hold starkly different views about homeless people, he urged participants to explore, in a non-judgemental way, why a person has come to the beliefs they hold, rather than trying to score points through debate.
Meanwhile, record numbers of refugee claimants have arrived in Canada in recent years, many from Africa, with hundreds forced to sleep on Toronto sidewalks. Last winter, some found their way into churches, who turned their sanctuaries into emergency shelters. Today, refugee claimants still struggle to find housing and support. A workshop led by the Rev. Alexa Gilmour and the Rev. Eddie Jjumba, who have worked with refugees, explored how race was a factor in determining which refugees were left on the streets and who came to their rescue. They explored how to overcome barriers to helping, as well as ideas on how faith communities can prepare themselves to be places of refuge when a crisis strikes.
Sisters Sylvia and Carolyn Wilson led a workshop on Black pioneers of Ontario, focusing on early settlers in Simcoe and Grey counties, from whom they are descended. They’ve worked to preserve the history of the pioneers, whose presence had been almost wiped out. One harrowing story told of how a cemetery had its headstones removed and thrown into ditches or used in baseball games. The Wilson sisters are co-owners of the Sheffield Park Black History and Cultural Museum in Clarksburg, near Collingwood, and offer tours to interested groups.
A workshop on harm reduction as love highlighted the principles of harm reduction, which aims to reduce the negative impacts involved with drug use. Workshop leaders Barb Panter and Tina Estwick are involved with a Toronto site where people can use drugs safely, one of 10 such sites in Ontario slated to be closed by next March.
A workshop on ministry with former inmates was punctuated by comments from several men who had been in prison. “Without the support and understanding of groups like Brampton Prison Ministry and Circle of Hope, I would not be on the road and journey of recovery from my addictions, mental health struggles and offending behaviours,” said one.
The Rev. Mark Stephen, workshop leader from Brampton Prison Ministry, added, “These are people trying to change their lives. Changing one’s life is almost impossible on your own. Recovering offenders need the assistance and understanding of all of us to rewrite the map of their lives. They need us to care, as much as we need them to change.”
The Rev. Alison Hari Singh led a workshop that rooted the conversation about becoming an anti-racist Church in our creedal (Nicene) confession. She looked at how scripture sees “race” as a social construct rooted not in biology but in the false ideas human beings attribute to skin colour. The concept of race has unfolded in history via colonization and slavery, and the violence involved became embedded in western societies so that white European dominance and supposed superiority became entrenched in the structures of western society – structures also known as systemic racism.
Ms. Hari Singh outlined the Nicene controversy (Arianism). Arius claimed that God the Son was not of the “same substance” as the Father, but was of “similar substance” (homoiousious). The First Council of Nicaea determined that Arianism was heresy, and that the Son and Father share the “same substance” (homoousious). She made an analogy between the shared divine substance of the Father and Son and our shared substance as human beings: just as the Father and Son are homoousios, all human beings share in the same substance of humanness. For Christians to live or act in any way that denies this shared substance of humanity is, from a theological perspective, heresy. Racism, then, functions as heresy.
“The conference gives us a chance to explore issues which many people don’t know about or where there’s a lot of misinformation,” said Elin Goulden, the diocese’s Social Justice and Advocacy consultant. “It opens our eyes to needs and injustices in our communities and give us practical things we can do. The closing plenary also gave us time to share what we’d learned with each other. That helps break down the isolation people might feel in their parishes, to know that other people in different parts of the diocese are also facing similar issues.”
