Clergy Notes — Tenth Sunday after Pentecost, August 1, 2021

“There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3.28 NRSV)

The Provincial Government has just issued a Proclamation naming the 1 August statutory holiday “Emancipation Day”: it was on 1 August 1834 that the Slavery Abolition Act came into effect across the British Empire, including what is now Canada. This was due in large part to the persistent efforts of a British parliamentarian William Wilberforce, whose zeal for this cause was informed by his Christian understanding of the dignity of every human being. The Church commemorated him earlier this week.

The Proclamation declares that “recognizing Emancipation Day in British Columbia is an initial step towards reconciliation and recognition of the damaging effects of enslavement and ongoing anti‐Black racism against people of African descent.” The Federal Government has published an outline of the history of Slavery in Canada, which sets out the grim treatment of enslaved Africans in North America. Indigenous Peoples, oppressed in so many ways, were also enslaved.

Despite the text from St. Paul quoted above, down the ages the Church has been complicit with societies and cultures which have oppressed and persecuted others. We see this in anti-Semitism, and other forms of racism, for example, and in the status of women and other gender-related issues.

Emancipation Day, alongside the recent discoveries of the unmarked graves at Residential Schools, highlights the pressing need, first to acknowledge and repent of the Church’s part in past history, then to recommit to walking in the path of Reconciliation.

Let us pray and work together with all of goodwill, that the day will come soon when “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”

Every blessing,

Fr. Kevin

Download the Sunday booklet here: Liturgy at Home Pentecost 10 August 1 2021