Repair Cafe: #churchlandback
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. She also posts on Medium.
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We can only work toward what we can imagine. I want to turn our imaginations toward some real and practical examples of #churchlandback this week and in the coming weeks. None of these examples are meant to be models to be picked up and replicated in new locations. Each comes from the particularities of the relationships in each specific place. They can, however, feed our imaginations for beginning our own relational journeys toward land-based repair.
Eight types of arrangements are emerging across Canada. Below are the basic types of #churchlandback exchanges we are seeing emerge on the Canadian landscape. These are not meant to be models to be replicated per say, but examples of what can be possible outcomes of relational processes.
A “tithe” on church property sales where a portion of the money made in the sale goes back to Indigenous Peoples. So far the money stays inside the denominational structure and goes to support Indigenous Ministries within that denomination.
Return of land and/or church buildings to host nations once the church has closed down.
Dying churches entering into agreements with local Indigenous groups for re-development projects. In many cases, this agreement might mean redeveloping the former building into housing with access retained in a multi-purpose space for church use.
Excerpted from Jodi’s July 4, 2024 newsletter. Read the full post here.