Category Archives: Church Missionary Society

The Stories That Make Us Weep

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The events that happened are the past, but ‘history’ is the record of those events. The two are rarely identical. Our connection with history is mediated through the stories we hear and remember. These stories can be skewed, and there is nothing wrong with trying to bring them more in line with reality.

I experienced this tension recently when I finished John Grisham’s Camino Ghosts. I had started it last year but put it down, finding the story initially uncompelling. Last week, while browsing my Kindle, I realized I had never finished it. I gave it another chance because Grisham is a favorite author of mine; I love how he connects his stories with real-world situations, helping me see things in a different light.

I finished the book earlier today and found myself weeping at the end. Briefly, the story follows a writer documenting an island off the north Florida coast inhabited solely by descendants of former slaves. The last inhabitant, an 80-year-old woman, is fighting a ruthless casino developer who wants to take over the island. The story has a good ending, but I found myself reflecting on why it moved me so deeply.

This reflection connected with another activity I’d been doing: genealogy. I decided this weekend to set aside time to look at my family tree, exploring the history of my great-great-great-grandfather, Rev. James Settee. I was researching his progenitors and came across an article written by Raymond Shirritt-Beaumont for a public school curriculum in Northern Manitoba. It discussed Rev. James Settee and his cousin — and later colleague — William Garrioch.

The author made a cryptic remark that a Joseph Smith was Settee’s great-grandfather. The article explored various possibilities before focusing on one person: a Joseph Smith who arrived in the Hudson Bay in the late 1700s. He made five journeys inland into what is now southern Manitoba and Saskatchewan, primarily to connect First Nations people with the Hudson’s Bay Company for trade. Smith eventually died on one of these trips. Remarks in his boss’s journal seemed to imply he had a “local family.”

For those unfamiliar with this history, that was very common. European men often formed families with First Nations women. Their children are known today as the Métis or Country Born. The article speculates that this child was Rev. James Settee’s grandfather. There’s no concrete proof; it’s a historical speculation based on Settee’s own claim of a Smith ancestor. This is where the past and the record of it — history — diverge.

“Certainly the glimpse Settee gave us of life among the Swampy Cree in the early years of the nineteenth century reveals a culture in transition, a unique blend of aboriginal and European that defies easy definition. For the Garriochs and Settees, that cross-cultural exchange had been going on for four generations, and perhaps longer, when James Settee and William Garrioch set out in 1824 for the mission school at Red River. It continues today among their descendants; indeed, one might say that the family represents Canada in microcosm. From its multicultural beginnings, the Garrioch family has become a new people, one that is firmly planted on this continent, but with roots stretching out across the seas. When all is said and done, what could be more Canadian than that?”

[Raymond Shirritt-Beaumont, Wabowden: Mile 137 on the Hudson Bay Railway, (Frontier School Division, 2004), 129.]

It was with this understanding of my own ancestors’ blended history that I returned to the story of the island in Camino Ghosts. Reading the story of a woman whose ancestors were slaves, who grew up on the fringes, and who finally saw justice done connected me directly to the story of the First Nations and Métis people of Canada — my ancestors. Reading how they worked not only in the fur trade but also in spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ throughout Manitoba and Saskatchewan connected me personally.

I am a long time removed from that period. Yet, thinking about their journeys through the wilderness of Northern Canada brought me back to my own experiences in that same wild. As I read, pictures of the lakes, trees, animals, and fish came directly to my mind.

The story became profoundly meaningful because I could feel a direct connection. Through my ancestors, their stories — the injustices they experienced through displacement and cultural pressure and the hardships they endured — became real. The theme of justice in Grisham’s book resonated with that personal history.

This reminds me again of the importance of relationship. It is impossible for me to care about the world or to desire to make it a better place without a relationship with it. That’s why perspectives are important. I must expose myself to other people’s perspectives — to understand their point of view, to hear their stories of joy, hardship, and justice. It is only through hearing these stories that we can connect our stories together.

I’ll close with a moment from the show Alone. In Season 10, set at Reindeer Lake, the producers invited Cree elders from the Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation to give a blessing. An elder stood and prayed over them in nîhithawîwin — the subtitle translation was the words of the Lord’s Prayer. This prayer had become so integral to this First Nations community’s way of life that their blessing invoked a connection with the God of Jesus.

I connect directly back to that because it was my great-great-great-grandfather, Rev. James Settee, a missionary with the Church Missionary Society in Northern Saskatchewan, who worked at making that prayer meaningful for First Nations peoples as he planted churches and communities of Jesus-followers in that part of the world. It felt like a full circle moment — a story connecting past to present, and history to the heart. This reveals what Shirritt-Beaumont so ably stated above, “a unique blend of aboriginal and European that defies easy definition.”

These are the connections have I found, but every story depends upon its listener. What’s your perspective? How do you connect with the world around you in a deeper way? How does your family story impact your experience so that you too can weep — like me — when you see beauty? If that is a new idea for you, what’s the first step towards discovery?

Photo of Rev. James Settee from the The Cathedral Church of St. John Archives.

When is it appropriate to appropriate? Why appropriation can be good. (Part 2)

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“Not all appropriation is bad” may seem like an odd statement since in Part 1 of this topic I talked about all the reasons why appropriation is bad. In this part I intend to talk about one aspect of human culture that needs to be appropriated and if it isn’t appropriated then problems happen. I am talking of course about the good news of Jesus Christ.

Get this. The gospel is supposed to be appropriated. No one culture can claim ownership over it. No one group can say that they are the final authority on how the gospel should be understood and applied — such decisions need to happen in dialogue with everyone else. This is something very hard to do, granted, but also something that should be done. We know this because Jesus’ final command to his disciples — often called the Great Commission — is to spread this good news around the world.

Andrew Walls spent his life developing a framework of Transmission and Appropriation when it comes to the good news of Jesus Christ. What’s significant about Walls approach is that he sees not only the transmission side of things but also delves into the appropriation side as well. Appropriate is as intentional as transmission — eventually whatever is being transmitted is to subsequently be appropriated by the recipient. 

Walls talks about two types of recipients of the good news: Proselytes and converts. Proselytes adopt some one else’s encounter with God as their own while Converts adapt their own culture to reflect a new encounter with God. It may seem as if this is a two-stage process starting from proselyte and moving towards conversion but that is an over simplification of how things work. In fact in every culture we see examples of both co-existing. For example the practice of baptism, while debated as to its mode, is a nearly universally accepted practice among Christians, in spite of the fact that it originated in the Jewish religion.

The fact that the gospel is to be transmitted also implies that it will also be appropriated. Thus, Appropriation and Transmission must occur together. What’s also interesting is that ultimately the process also happens in reverse to create a richer transmission culture: The appropriator becomes the transmitter and the transmitter becomes the appropriator — or at least it should 🙂 Cultural hybridity is not a bad thing. In reality there are very few cultures that exist that have no interaction with other cultures. 

We have seen the dangers of what Bakhtin calls monologues — where only one person is allowed to speak. The results are staggering. 

Church participation in Cultural Genocide. I have already written a lot about this topic particularly as it relates to the Canadian Indian Residential Schools System but suffice it to say the church’s failure to listen to the voices of the Other in their missions efforts has been nearly universal. The “Other” is “someone or something who is perceived, either consciously or not, as alien or different.” In this example, while missionaries may recruit some of those they are on mission to into their own ranks, their otherness is often maintained as seen by the second example.

Marginalisation of Other clergy. My great-great-great-great grandfather, Rev. James N. Settee, was the second person of First Nations ancestry to be ordained as a priest in the Church Missionary Society (Anglican Church of Canada). He devoted his entire life to spreading the gospel among first nations peoples in Manitoba and Saskatchewan but was also forced to spend much of his time combatting the inconsistencies and discriminations that he himself experienced on a daily basis to the point that it hindered his ability to do actual ministry. What’s interesting is that he clearly appropriated the gospel into his life’s work but found baggage that needed to be peeled away in order for it to work in his context. 

Other examples. This can also been seen in the many Church splits and schisms that have marked church history as people took stands on where they thought the gospel should end — I suspect all done without acknowledging different contexts.

Rather than monologue, dialogues need to take place and it’s only through the use of dialogue that the appropriation of the good news of Jesus Christ can take place. We talked about Enriquez’ approach to what he calls indigenization from within, which is in effect a system of appropriation governed by insiders rather than outsiders and perhaps this is the best way for appropriation to take place — under the control of the Other!

Salin a Tagalog root word that means “translate” and also “pour” and talks about the process involved in making something one’s own in a different language or culture. Just as liquid is decanted from a pitcher into a glass, and thereby made useful, so also concepts can be decanted from one culture to another and more more understandable. But translation is more than simply making something more understandable — translation means that ownership is taken of the new word or phrase and making it one’s own. So how does someone make something one’s own? Here are a couple of examples from the Philippine context.

Sometimes this combination is more complex than merely combining indigenous and exogenous theories. Regardless of theoretical origins, other factors come into play that exert influence on human decisions, including sociopolitical purposes, religious institutional ends, and religious practitioners’ ends. The various actors, whether those in authority or those under oppression, are each able to exert their own will and influence outcomes. Wendt and Guazon each talk about the interaction of these three factors in the Philippines. Both describe situations where the original intent of the transmitters was re-purposed by the appropriators according to their own needs.

Wendt (1998) talks about fiesta, looking at both historical origins as a means of Spanish control that eventually was co-opted by Filipinos and reformulated into a real part of Filipino identity. Wendt says, “The functions originally intended to implement colonial rule, cultivate specific attitudes and stabilize the colonial system were counteracted to the same degree by the Filipinos’ incorporating the fiesta into their own ways of life and social structures.”

Guazon’s Crisis in the Formation of provisional members of a religious congregation in the Philippines is a study of the interactions between “formandi” and “formators” in the CICM, which is “Congregatio Immaculati Cordis Mariae, the institute’s Latin name. CICM is a Roman Catholic male religious missionary institute of Belgian origin.” The formandi are acolytes desiring admission to the order and the formators are those charged with overseeing the initiation process. One would assume that the process is quite straight forward since the acolytes are the ones seeking admission and will presumably submit. This is not the case, however, with tension occurring on multiple levels. In the end, Guazon concludes that the formandi … are “active participants” in the process and appropriate the requirements of their new social system “according to their own cultural matrix.”

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Image by Tyler Nix on Unsplash.