And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Date: Wed, 16 Jun 1999 09:16:20 -0400
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
From: Lynne Moss-Sharman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: United Church of Canada VS Owl Man Dancing
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Wednesday, June 16, 1999
Clashing with the United Church
John Oldham, who refers to himself as Owl Man Dancing and
not reverend, tried to unite the native and white members of his
congregation. Many approved, but others resented his mix of
aboriginal practices with Christian symbols. The conflict led to
his firing by the United Church of Canada
Luiza Chwialkowska
National Post
When the Reverend Kay McKibbon resigned from the United Church of Canada
this week accusing
the church hierarchy of "clergy abuse," at the top of his list of examples
of "terrible and unjust"
treatment of ministers was the case of John Wesley Oldham of the Chippewa
Reserve at Rama, Ont.
For 20 years, Mr. McKibbon counselled various ministers who had clashed
publicly with the United
Church hierarchy and had been forced out of their jobs. But the firing of
the minister from Rama, who
had been fired last spring for insubordination and for "failing to keep the
peace" in his congregation,
was the last straw.
Last March, Mr. Oldham, 54, was fired for refusing church orders to undergo
full-time residential
psychological treatment at a Catholic-run mental health facility that he
calls a place for "burned out
nuns and paedophile priests." Mr. Oldham was not burned out, nor was he a
paedophile. He says he
was simply "different." The church says he was difficult. He joked, he
swore, he yelled. He pounded
his feet when angry. He also wore moccasins and beads, carried a native
walking stick, kept a sprig of
cedar in his Bible, burned ceremonial sweetgrass, and some of his
congregation said he "replaced Jesus
with the Great Spirit."
Instead of "Reverend," Mr. Oldham called himself Owl Man Dancing.
He wrote his own hymns, such as Dance in the Circle, penned "at Muskoka
cottage table, sitting beside
Marlene and Mom. "Savor the rainbow; Reach for the star; Stretch your
horizons; Be who you are," he
sung.
Owl Man Dancing lit candles and beat a drum. He sometimes used the native
word "miigwech" instead
of "amen."
"He was not doing his job. He didn't have real services in his church,"
said Irene Snache, a long-time
church member who says Mr. Oldham abandoned his congregation. "Ministers
should preach from the
Bible. That's what they're there for. He would hardly ever mention Jesus.
He wasn't feeding me
spiritually. I couldn't get what I wanted from his sermons."
After Ms. Snache and handful of long-time churchgoers complained about the
new minister's curious
ways, authorities at the Great Lakes-Waterways presbytery decided that Mr.
Oldham's "behaviour
problems" could not go unchecked. After a psychological assessment, he was
offered, and refused the
psychological treatment.
Mr. Oldham was barred from preaching, and he and his wife, Marlene, were
told to vacate the manse
where they have lived for four years.
Despite the dismissal, Mr. Oldham has not left the small house down the
street from the red-brick
Rama Church. His firing, like his ministry, has deeply divided his small
community near Orillia on the
shore of Lake Couchiching.
Most people say the battle to eject him began the July afternoon in 1996
when Casino Rama, a 17,550
square-metre megalith, was opened directly across the road from the church.
That afternoon, a few
church members wanted to ring the bell 160 times, once for every year of
Rama's existence, to signify
the "death" of their community. Mr. Oldham forbade the ringing and took the
bell rope away. The
casino had the support of the band council, he said. That afternoon, the
battle lines were drawn.
Last week, while Mr. McKibbon prepared his angry resignation from his
congregation in Metcalfe,
south of Ottawa, and while United Church authorities in Toronto denied
accusations that the church
had become a "brutal and soul-destroying organization," back in Rama, one
of the women who had
tried to ring the bell to protest the casino, hauled a locksmith to the
door of the church and of the
manse, in a failed attempt to keep Mr. Oldham away for good.
Isabel Schilling, 72, wants to see Mr. Oldham gone. She says he has ignored
the older church members
who built and sustained the church through the years.
"He deliberately set out to divide the church and shut us out. We had
nothing to do with it. He did this
all on his own," she says. "He should not be here to impose his will on the
will of this church. He should
be here to serve."
John Wesley Oldham was born in Sarnia, Ont., and ordained as a minister in
1969. The son of a United
Church minister who preached to starched-collar mandarins in Ottawa, Mr.
Oldham earned a degree in
history and philosophy from Carleton University, and a theology degree from
the University of Toronto.
While ministering on native reservations in Manitoba, he discovered native
spiritual traditions, and
ceremonies such as "smudging" where smoke from burning sweetgrass is used
to purify the body and
carry prayers to the sky.
"My story is that I'm more liberal, more open and inclusive," explains Mr.
Oldham. "I am not native but
my spirituality has been deeply enriched. My faith is stronger because of
it."
His experience in Manitoba convinced Mr. Oldham that a minister should
reach out to the larger
community, not just the congregation who filled his pews each Sunday.
"Is the church for everyone in the community or is it a private chapel?"
asks Mr. Oldham, who travels
around Rama, poking his bearded Farley Mowat-like head into homes,
backyards, and bars, preaching,
counselling and "just listening" to help those residents who are recovering
from abuse, alcoholism, or
hopelessness.
"His vision is open. He knows there is a lot of pain here," says Paul
Shilling, a resident of the reserve
who has been putting together a petition to keep Mr. Oldham in Rama. "He
has affected everyone on
the reserve."
"He is the first minister who has come in and become a part of the people.
It's genuine. It's not a
mask," he says.
Mr. Shilling builds drums, including the controversial drum that Mr. Oldham
uses in his circle
gatherings. He believes that by incorporating native symbols into his
preaching, Mr. Oldham is giving
his people new strength.
"My mother had native traditions beaten out of her," he says. "People are
going to get strong talking to
John."
He compares Mr. Oldham to Jesus Christ.
"He talks to people on their own level," says Mr. Shilling. "I think J.C.
would have done that."
The United Church of Canada does not have an official policy on the
integration of traditional native
practices into Christian worship. Individual congregations can decide on
the nature of their own rituals.
But a congregation must reach an agreement before changes can be made. Rama
has found only
conflict in the complicated legacy of the United Church.
On Aug. 15, 1986, the General Council of the United Church of Canada issued
a statement of apology
to its native congregations. The church had been wrong to ignore the
teachings of native spirituality, it
said.
"We did not hear you when you shared your vision. In our zeal to tell you
of the good news of Jesus
Christ we were closed to the value of your spirituality," the United Church
wrote.
"We ask you to forgive us and walk together with us in the spirit of Christ
so that our peoples may be
blessed and God's creation healed."
To Mr. Oldham, the message was clear: "I am trying to live out that
apology," he says.
But Mr. Shilling says the church's handling of Mr. Oldham shows the apology
is empty.
"The church needs to take responsibility. Our healing is their healing,
too. They have to do more than
say they're sorry," he says.
Predictably, Mr. Oldham's attempts to import the native culture into the
church have created racial
tensions, though they are not the ones most people would have expected.
The aboriginals to which he reached out have not repayed him with regular
church attendance. The
ill-feelings that he has aroused are not against the natives. Instead, the
controversy concerns the
enthusiastic, but almost exclusively white audience that filled Mr.
Oldham's services, and, since his
firing, flock to his Sunday morning "circles" in a hall next to the main
sanctuary of the church.
The mostly middle-aged white people drive for hours to the reserve, to "sit
in circle" with Mr. Oldham
and to be spiritually healed. On a recent Sunday morning, only one native
person was present in the
circle of about 12 worshippers.
The whiteness is a problem.
"It is not that there aren't some white people in other native
congregations. They are sometimes
married to natives, or cottagers who become part of the community for part
of the year," says Glenys
Huws, who is responsible for personnel matters for the Great
Lakes-Waterways Presbytery that
oversees Rama Church. "But there is no other First Nations congregation in
the United Church where
Sunday morning gathering consists of all non-native people."
The old-time members of the congregation are more blunt.
"They like to play Indian," says Ms. Schilling, who is white, but a status
Indian through marriage.
"He is trying to act like an Indian when he isn't," agrees Ms. Snache, who
is Ojibway.
These new white followers of Mr. Oldham are less welcome than his walking
stick.
"Our congregation was ageing and started importing these people from
wherever. These people aren't
too keen on organized religion," says Ms. Schilling. "He has paid more
attention to these people than to
the people who pay his salary," she adds, recalling the many rummage sales
and bake sales the elderly
women of the community put on to keep the church financially afloat over
the years.
She believes they have discarded Christianity for a politically-correct
fad. "It all started at the time that
being Indian became popular," says Ms. Schilling insists there is no racism
in the belief the Christian
and native traditions are fundamentally incompatible.
"They don't believe that Jesus was sent here to be crucified for our sins,"
she says. "As long as the
[sweetgrass] smoke rises, it carries their prayers to God. We pray through
Jesus. He is our
intermediary."
But the fans of Owl Man Dancing who gathered at a recent "circle" say their
faith has been
strengthened since they met Mr. Oldham.
"It's the blending of traditional Christian faith and native spirituality
that draws us," says Debbie
Chicoine, a non-native woman who drove 50 kilometres from Kirkfield, Ont.,
to attend a recent circle
in which participants passing the Bible and cedar to each other, sung Mr.
Oldham's hymns set to 1960s
folk songs, and shared their feelings and family tribulations.
"I've spent more than 30 years in the United Church, but I've finally found
what I've been looking for.
I've very disappointed and disheartened by the way he's being treated,"
says Pat Stewart, a white
woman who had been married to an aboriginal man.
"After my partner died, I came to John for help and I got all the help I
needed," said Ms. Stewart, who
has attended the church for two years. "A regular church is like a court
room -- you look at the back of
people's heads. The circle is non-threatening. The sun is a circle, the
moon, the earth, life is a circle, a
cycle."
Likewise, Terry Mayhew, who commutes 40 kilometres to the circle from the
community of
Bracebridge, says Mr. Oldham brought him back to church.
"John has been helpful in helping get my life together. He helped me get
spirituality back into my life. I
could phone him, go for coffee, go for a walk and have a conversation," he
said. "He helps me get my
spirituality but he doesn't preach."
"I was counting on him being my minister for the rest of my life," says
Jean Westerby, a long-time
resident of Rama. "To me he's getting crucified, that's the only way I can
say it."
The United Church will rehear Mr. Oldham's case in the fall. But presbytery
officials say circles and
sweetgrass are not the issue.
"He had the responsibility of building bridges between the people of Rama.
Instead, his behaviour
created a lot of conflict," says Ms. Huws. "He exhibited, from the
beginning, troublesome behaviour
and hostility."
"He was yelling at elders and at others. He would pound his feet on the
floor. He wrote hostile letters.
He accused them of being racist," she said. One elderly woman secured a
restraining order against Mr.
Oldham and filed a complaint of "elder abuse" after he yelled at her at her
home.
But Hilda Cockerham, the church organist and an elder of the church, says
the conflict has been
exaggerated, and can be attributed to a handful of discontent, white-haired
ladies who refuse to
embrace change.
"Even if the King of England came to preach here, these women would
complain," she said yesterday.
"The presbytery has only listened to the few people who have growled."
Mr. Oldham says he feels betrayed by the church to which he has devoted his
life .
"This experience has affirmed to me that organized religion does not have a
lot of spirituality. It is very
much an institution. I don't see a lot of kindness, forgiveness, love, or a
lot of Jesus," he says.
"However imperfectly, I have always tried to serve the church."
"Let Us Consider The Human Brain As
A Very Complex Photographic Plate"
1957 G.H. Estabrooks
www.angelfire.com/mn/mcap/bc.html
FOR K A R E N #01182
who died fighting 4/23/99
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.aches-mc.org
807-622-5407
Reprinted under the fair use http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html
doctrine of international copyright law.
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Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit)
Unenh onhwa' Awayaton
http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/
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