Repair Cafe Excerpt: The Tithe
Repair Cafe is a newsletter in which Jodi Spargur, director of Red Clover, goes deeper into themes of reparations, theology, and all that is beautiful and broken — through short essays and engagement with reader responses.
Once a month, we’ll offer excerpts from Jodi’s writing here on the Red Clover blog, but do consider subscribing and engaging Jodi’s work on Substack.
Today, we look at a “tithe” on church property sales. A tithe is a ten percent payment typically associated with individuals paying that percentage to a religious institution. In this model, the script is flipped somewhat in that the church would pay ten percent of the sale of a church property to Indigenous people.
Perhaps the highest profile example comes from the diocese of New Westminister, British Columbia. In May 2019 the diocese synod (a regional decision-making body) passed a resolution requesting that
the diocese provide for one-tenth of future property sales, and of sales retroactive to January 1, 2018, to go to Indigenous causes. The resolution asks that 5 per cent of these funds be returned “to the Indigenous Nations and communities including Métis and Inuit who are the ancestral caretakers of that land for use as they see fit”; that 2.5 per cent fund Indigenous ministries in the diocese; and that another 2.5 per cent go to the Indigenous Ministries department of the Anglican Church of Canada to support the planned self-determining Indigenous Anglican Church.1
This resolution in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia came in response to a suggestion by a Commission of the National Anglican Church in 2018. The Commission recommended that the sale of church properties be considered as one possible revenue source for various equity and justice issues related to the Indigenous Anglican church.2
Newspaper articles like “Metro Vancouver Anglicans to direct millions to Indigenous efforts " 3 garnered much attention. In fact, the resolution asked that the diocese act retroactively to January 2018. In that year, we know that the diocese's sales totalled $17.5 million. Public perception seems to be that this is happening, and the coffers of Indigenous neighbours are being filled by the Anglican church’s tithe. The question is, what is the reality?
In the ensuing five years, have Indigenous communities, in fact, been receiving “millions” of dollars from the sale of Anglican church buildings?
The details
Nothing in the news indicates what has come of this decision made five years ago, so I reached out to see if I could find out what has been happening. One crucial step that seems to have been missed in bringing the resolution forward was robust consultation with the Indigenous communities that would be impacted. Because that consultation had not been done, the recommendation by Indigenous elders was to slow down and build relationships. This has been the direction that the dioces has taken, to strengthen relationships before a truly beneficial path can be pursued.
A couple of notes on this progress. First, I applaud the Diocese of New Westminister for heeding the advice given. The work of repair must always be relational work. It is not for the appeasement of guilt, or to prove good intentions. The trouble is, sometimes settler institutions have very poor memories and our follow-through on past commitments are too readily abandoned. What is happening with the money from sales now? Are funds being set aside for later? Will the church community hold themselves accountable to the heart and substance of this commitment?
To read the rest of the article go here.