New crest will include aboriginal elements
By Natalie Stechyson, Postmedia News
August 13, 2012
http://www.thestarphoenix.com/crest+will+include+aboriginal+elements/7080753/story.html
Ray Jones sat down, his eyes red and watering, after the General Council for
the United Church of Canada voted Sunday to include aboriginal elements in its
crest and references in its official documents acknowledging the history and
territory on which the church was founded.
The hundreds of commissioners in attendance at the United Church of Canada's
41st General Council in Ottawa on Sunday were on their feet, clapping and
cheering, then broke into song as voting finished, belting out the line, "And
on this path, the gates of holiness are open wide."
For Jones, the chair of the task group that brought forward the proposal and
the chair of the church's aboriginal ministries council, the lyrics held
special meaning.
"We've widened the path for the United Church of Canada," said Jones, who is
from the Gitxsan First Nation in northwestern British Columbia, after the
celebrations had quieted.
The current crest - a blue oval containing symbols representing the
Congregational, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches - will soon be updated to
include the yellow, black, red and white of the traditional aboriginal medicine
wheel "in acknowledgment that The United Church of Canada was founded and
continues to exist on Indigenous land," according to the proposal from the task
group.
The church also accepted the task group's recommendation that a Mohawk
translation of "All my relations" - Akwe Nia'Tetewa: neren - be added to the
bottom of the crest alongside the Latin words Ut Omnes Unum Sint, which
translate to "That all may be one."
The proposal was one of about 130 that church commissioners of Canada's largest
Protestant denomination will discuss over the next week. The General Council
for the United Church of Canada meets every three years to elect a new church
moderator and approve new policies.
"This is a significant moment, my friends," current church moderator Mardi
Tindal said to the room of about 350 commissioners as the voting began Sunday
at Ottawa's Carleton University. The vote itself took little time, over in a
flourish of green cards that the majority of voters waved in the air to signal
they were in favour of the proposal.
There were at least 60 aboriginal congregations across Canada - mostly
Methodist - that became part of the United Church of Canada when it unified in
1925, said Jones. But this history had been excluded from the formal history of
the union, he said.
"It's important that we recognize the generations of my parents and
grandparents who, like other church members of their time, especially among
aboriginals, were very, very committed to the church, to The Creator, and
worship, and the way of living," Jones said.
"We also have to think about the future. We will have a lot of youth who will
see the new crest and identify the aboriginal originality that will be embedded
in it."
The prospect of drawing in more youth comes at a critical time for the United
Church of Canada. Membership has fallen by nearly half since peaking at more
than one million in 1965. And the average age of church members who responded
to a major study last year was 65.
The task group was created after the last General Council in 2009 approved
motions to recognize the "presence and spirituality" of aboriginal people in
the United Church of Canada as a significant component to the Basis of Union -
the formal document outlining the church's doctrine, ministry and
administration.
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