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Carmen Lansdowne, "Wearing a Broken Indigene Heart on the Sleeve of Christian Mission" (CMU Press, 2025)
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Reverend Dr. Carmen Lansdowne
Welcome to the New Books Network.
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Interviewer / Host
Hello everyone. Today we are joined by Reverend Dr. Carmen Lansdowne, author of Wearing a Broken Indigent Hat on the Sleeve of Christian mission published by CMU Press in 2025. This exhausted intervention in Christian mission as a colonial project, one that kind of refuses and rejects theological neutrality and institutional comfort and calls her to discomfort and. And Carmen draws on Indigenous epistemologies, liberation theology, and her own lived experience to discuss how reconciliation can be a premature goal. And she does not offer healing as a resolution, unfortunately, but insists that truth telling, honesty and humility is very important when it comes to accountability. And it's not just symbolic. Cummings, welcome and thank you so much for being on the new books next week.
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Reverend Dr. Carmen Lansdowne
Thanks for having me. I'm so happy to be here.
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Interviewer / Host
I'm so happy you are here. Before we go into the book, could you tell us a bit about yourself? Sure.
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Reverend Dr. Carmen Lansdowne
So I am a member of the Helsink First Nation, which is an Indigenous nation on the central coast of British Columbia. So if you look at the map of Canada, we're about halfway between Vancouver and the Alaskan Panhandle on the very west coast of Canada. My mother was born in Bella Bala, which is sort of the place where our people have mostly migrated to now. And my father is British settler, colonial descent, third generation. And so I'm, I'm mixed descent, but when I was younger, my aunties told me that race is a social construction. And I'm not half Helzuk, I'm just Helzuk. And actually I'm like a lot of Indigenous people nations, like a lot of indigenous tribes. And their, our names for ourselves mean like the people, but Heystok, which is our, our tribal name, our name means to, to act correctly and to speak correctly. And so I really love that because I think, how can you be half of that? Right? Like, right. And also like, how can you be half a person? But so that's my background in terms of my family. I'm an ordained minister in the United Church of Canada. I've actually just finished a three year term. I served as moderator of the United Church of Canada. So we have a conciliar kind of Presbyterian structure. And so I served as the elected spiritual leader of our denomination nationally from 2022 to 2025. And it was during the course of doing that work that a colleague at Canadian Mennonite University was like, will you please publish your dissertation? And I had kind of given up on the idea. And so I did that off the side of my desk while I was also traveling all over the country and getting a real sense of what's happening nationally across this very large country in our denomination. And so it was a real Gift and pleasure to be able to have time and space to do that. And I'm now serving as assistant professor of United Church of Canada Studies at Emanuel College. We are officially Emmanuel College of Victoria University in the University of Toronto, but we usually just say Emanuel College.
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Interviewer / Host
So awesome. Thank you so much for that beautiful intro. So I am wondering what compelled you to write wearing a. I mean, you talk about it. I've written the book, but for audience who don't know what made you write wearing a broken indigent hat and why now?
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Reverend Dr. Carmen Lansdowne
Yeah, so, I mean, this. This is my first monograph. It came out of my dissertation project. My dissertation was entitled. Bearing Witness was the main title. And then the subtitle was Wearing a Broken Indigene Heart on the Sleeve of a Missio dei. And so I was really trying to bear witness by telling my own story. So there's some autoethnographic features in. In how I wrote the book. The church as an institution has broken my heart many times when we fail to live into the life in abundance that I think God wants for the world that God loves. Um, and the. But wearing it, wearing that broken heart on my sleeve, I was like, well, what if I'm wearing on, like, God's sleeve? And so there's a real turn in this book to try and reclaim the idea of the missio dei. A lot of the conversations I had during my doctoral studies was like, is that still a useful concept? And one of my professors, in fact, said that I convinced him to not, like, throw it out as a concept, that it was. That it could still be useful. And so that was sort of like the three things that I tried to do through the.
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Interviewer / Host
Through the book, which you do so well. Thank you. I mean, I must say that it's made me really think a lot about concepts that we use, although they may not be adequate. But then you. You really show why it's not adequate, but it doesn't mean we should throw it away. What can we do about that? So thank you so much. Also, I noticed that you foregone vulnerability, like, even the title, a Broken Indigenous Hacks instead of healing or hope or Reconciliation. And I was wondering, why brokenness? Why should it start from brokenness, especially when it comes to etiological problems project? And what does it show and what does it fall close?
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Reverend Dr. Carmen Lansdowne
Well, I mean, I think, you know, if we go back to David Bosch's, you know, life's work, which was transforming mission, he talks in that book about the difference between the missiones ecclesiole, which is the mission of the church and then missio dei, which is God's mission. And that for much of Christian, the history of Christian mission, the church has confused the church's mission with God's mission. And, and I think that is in part how hearts get broken when we do that, because we are always walking this thin line between doing ministry in the way that we see it, which is always so wholly incomplete from. We can never fully understand God's revelation to us and really, truly discerning, you know, according to our faith, according to the scriptures, what is it that God wants for the world that God loves? And so in the Canadian context, the churches in Canada, especially the Roman Catholic Church, the Anglican Church, the United Church and the Presbyterian Church before it operated boarding schools or residential schools for indigenous children. It was law in Canada that every indigenous child be removed from their family at the age of five and put into these boarding schools. My grandfather was removed from his family's home at the age of five, sent to a boarding school 350km so south by ocean from where he was born. And he did not return home until he was 17. There was. We've had a Truth and Reconciliation commission in Canada. This is not news to the world anymore. I think the severity and the depth of the abuses that happened in those schools is still overwhelming and new and surprising to some. But, so there's that systemic. You can't grow up Indigenous in Canada without having your heart broken over and over again. But then there's the. There's the intergenerational abuse and trauma that I carry in my bones. There's the fact that neither, like my, my mother didn't have either of her parents. Part of our story is that my mother was born out of wedlock. And the Indian act, which governs Indigenous people in Canada at that time, said that if you, your parents weren't married, that you were not legally considered Indian, even though both her parents were indigenous. And so she never went to residential school, but she got taken as a teenager and put into foster homes. And so there's all of these impacts on families and generations that was largely perpetuated by the church on behalf of the state. That continues to plague. That continues to plague our people, both indigenous and non indigenous. And I think that, you know, it. One of the ways that it's different for Indigenous people is because historically, traditionally we don't see time as like a linear progression. We think of time in terms of cycles, thinking back to the wisdom of our ancestors, but also thinking forward to what will be needed from our great grandchildren five times removed. And I think that there can be sometimes in the Euro Christian mindset because we think of history as a linear progression of time, that those things happened in the past and that they're somehow not connected to what is happening right now. With the racialization of poverty in Canada, with substandard housing on reserve reserve, with the fact that our political systems on reserves are still set up to serve the state and not our people. There's all kinds of ways that the, really the most horrific things that were part of the initial act of government in terms of how to manage the Indian problem in Canada are still alive and well today. And either because of the long term impacts of those statutes and decisions or because they're still in place.
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Interviewer / Host
Thank you so much. I think you really do emphasize the reality of the past and how it's linked to the future and that it's not something we can just leave. But then for indigenous people, you also see the link. But besides that, it's also in the body.
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Reverend Dr. Carmen Lansdowne
So here's a, here's a very simple example, right? Like the, one of the well documented impacts of residential schools is the impact it had on, if, if children didn't have parent, they couldn't learn how to parent. Right. If a child didn't have a parent, they couldn't learn how to parent. And so my mother's parents didn't learn how to parent. My mom was essentially an orphan until she was 14 and then was sent to a foster home, well, multiple foster homes, and didn't really have parents until she was almost an adult. She lived for three years with a united church minister and his wife and their family. And they eventually adopted my mother. And so they're, they're my extended family now and they're, and then they are truly family. But you know, she was 16, so she lived most of her life without parents. She raised herself. And so there's all kinds of things that my mom never learned about growing up, about raising a child. And so one of the things is like I always had short hair because I didn't know how to style. I didn't know how to style my hair. My mom didn't know how to style my hair. And so we always had this like super like athletic, like short haircut. So it was easy to take care of. And even now, like, I can pull my hair back in a clip or put it in a ponytail, but I don't know how to do more than that. I don't know how to braid my hair. I, I Don't know how to do any hairstyles more than just a simple half pullback or pull back into a ponytail. My daughter's got long, beautiful hair. And we were going to a party and I. She wanted to have her hair done special, and I realized I couldn't do it. And so I ended up taking to her to a blowout bar and, you know, had her hair styled and everything. And I said, but, you know, when you're in school and you're learning about the effects of intergenerational trauma, this is what this looks like. It's not just the. It's not just the really overt horrible physical and sexual and spiritual abuse that happened in the schools, but the fact that I, you know, I'm my grandmother's daughter, and I can't. And I can't do your hair. And she. And she said, well, that will stop with me because I'm going to learn how to do my own hair. But, you know, it took me until I was almost 50 to realize that that was actually not a failing on my mother's part or my part, but it was just the reality of the context that we come from.
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Interviewer / Host
I think that's why you really foreground in your book the need to see the material realities of how indigenous people's lives, both past and present and in the future, is being shaped by ongoing colonialism.
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Reverend Dr. Carmen Lansdowne
Yeah. And the fact that we have no data about what those realities are. Right. Like, I did my dissertation. I finished it 10 years ago. I published the book last year. And in those nine years between when I finished my dissertation, when I published the book, there's no updated data on the material realities of indigenous people. Like, I just happened on a study that was relatively recent when I did the book. And then I. So I went to do more research. That was the one place where I was like, okay, I can update this research in order to publish it. There was no updated research. And so I was like, I'm dealing with data that is 10 years old, because people don't even care enough to know whether or not these indicators of Indigenous wellness have improved or not. It was like a pilot project to study them in the context that I found them. And then, well, that was a pilot project, so we're not, like, we're not going to continue to use it. Even though the data was really helpful,
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Interviewer / Host
there is something troubling about that and how things, like, are taken for granted. Also, I'm wondering how this is critical for mythology and how. And what goes wrong with when theology kind of forgets or bypass these realities on the ground and how it affects its own members.
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Reverend Dr. Carmen Lansdowne
I mean, I think at best, the theological concept of Christian mission is the act of trying to discern what is it that we do to participate in God's vision for the world that only God's self can truly know. Um, and so it will always be a fallible, imperfect practice. It will always, like all theology, it will always be incomplete because our revelation, you know, God's revelation. God's revelation to us as. As humans is incomplete. But, you know, as I was, you know, progressing as a scholar and was participating in, you know, guild meetings and things like that, one of the things that I realized was that missiology, at least in the North American context, and I will. And I will make it specific to North America, because I think when I've engaged with missiologists, especially from Southern Africa, like the South African Society of Missiology, is still very strong. I'm looking forward this summer to attending the International association for Mission Studies. I've had some interactions with the Commission on World Mission and Evangelism through the World Council of Churches. And so, like, I don't think that this is necessarily true everywhere, but in North America, we very much drifted back into this idea that mission is what the church does and not necessarily a theological concept. And. And that's exacerbated by the fact that we have these overall theological divides in the US That I think, think do persist in other parts of the world. And so you have mainline Protestantism and Roman Cath. Catholicism that are really rumbling with their colonialist past and present. Right? And then you have the more evangelical, organic, free churches that were. That kind of developed organically in the United States that see themselves as freed from some of that institutionalism that is in mainline Protestant, Roman Catholic and Orthodox traditions, but they're not in conversation with each other at all. And within missiology, my pers. My perception. And this may have changed because I kind of opted out of meetings that were specifically about mission over the last ten years or so. But was it missiologists were only talking to Missiologists? Right. There was no cross fertilization across other theological disciplines except for Bible, but even then was within a certain canon of biblical studies. Now I think they're really starting to do some work around decoloniality, but it's just very nascent within that field. And so I really focus, as you know, in the book on drawing on the wisdom and strength of that missiology that's coming out of the South African context, which was also not without critique, right? Like Bosch did an amazing job, died far too young. But the main critique of David Bosch is that he wrote this beautiful, beautiful, systematic treatment of Christian mission from within the context of apartheid South Africa without ever mentioning the deep injustices that existed then, that persist now within the South African context. And with no, with no indication as to how the church should be discerning about what is God's mission in the face of that deep systemic injustice. And so I think in, in my tradition, which is very strongly in this mainland Protestant camp, our tendency is just like, well, we don't want to talk about mission and evangelism because evangelism is too closely tied to proselytization and mission is too tightly tied to colonial histories. And so we just don't talk about them at all. But theologically, I think they're so deeply important because that's the heart of the church, right? That we continue to be in discernment about a God who is, has created and is creating. And how, how do we discern about participating in God's mission now in a way that is not perpetuating coloniality, that is not perpetuating harms on each other, that is seeking our liberation of all? And there's almost no, you know, there's some indigenous critiques of mission, George Tinker being foremost among them, but there's no. I really wanted to look at it and say, okay, like, if we look at all of the structures of power in the church, in society, and then we take liberation the. And look at what it's trying to do, how could we liberate theologies of mission so that they could be more life giving and not just tied into this colonialist juggernaut that it's become over the last 500 plus years.
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Interviewer / Host
Thank you so much. I like how you talk about the need for conversations across different, not just disciplines, but also context because it helps us to see what is theology doing and what is becoming the dominant theological discourse. I had a question because you ground your work in indigenous epistemologies. And I wanted to find out how does the contrast between indigenous epistemologies and that of dominant Western epistemologies, especially talking of binary thinking, abstraction and claims to universality, affects conclusions. We come out with theology itself, or even our understanding of what theology you've touched about and even mention is so
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Reverend Dr. Carmen Lansdowne
like, broadly speaking, some of the differences you mentioned already, some I've mentioned already. So this idea of understandings of time being circular in indigenous traditions in general and a Sort of a linear progression of time in general. I really struggled with the chapter. So it's chapter two that looks at the epistemological difference question. And I really struggled with that because, you know, because of the brokenness of our culture and in my tribe in particular, we are survivors of a pretty horrendous genocide. So, like, over 99% of our people died since the early 1800s and the early 1900s. And so there's a lot of cultural loss. There's a lot of historical knowledge that has been lost to that. And so, you know, our. Our understand we've almost lost our language. I think now we have nine or 10 elders left that speak our language as their first language. And we're working really hard to. To reclaim our language because, of course, epistemology is so inform by language. Right. Our worldviews are informed by our language. And so I think we'll make the corner on that because there's a lot of young people in our tribe that are. That are becoming fluent in our language. But it's also. So it's very difficult for me to write from a specifically haystock perspective. And I didn't want to just like, pick and choose. There's so much diversity of indigenous peoples. And one of the. One of the really brilliant women that I drew on in my dissertation was a Navajo philosopher named Viola Cordova. She was the first indigenous woman in North America to get a PhD in philosophy. And she argues that we can look at these. It's not for trying to create a pan Indigenous truth, but that there are broad strokes epistemologically that are different between North American indigenous worldviews and European, like Euro Christian worldviews. And we have more in common with each other as indigenous people. And the Europeans have more in common with each other just the same as if you look at the Frankfurt School versus the French school of philosophy. They're speaking the same philosophical, philosophical language even. There's like, traditions and cultures within it. And so we have more in common, as he, with the Blackfoot or the Haudenosaunee than we would with the Frankfurt School, for example. And so I really tried to look at like, what. What are the through lines philosophically in the European. European Euro Christian tradition. And then how can Indigenous worldviews be used as a foil against that? And so binary dualisms, the Platonic binary dualism, and then Cartesian binary dualisms are one the idea of justified truth claims. And so in Euro Christian logic, there's this. You can do like a causal regression back to Something that is either like justified as like the truth or as close to the truth as you, as you can, that is accepted as truth even as if, even if you can't like logically conclude right back to the very resource that is true. Whereas an indigenous perspectives, we are much more inclusive and so we allow for multiple truth claims. So, you know, my experience of an event is very different than Mauricio, my husband's experience of an event. And we could have completely different interpretations and they're both accepted as true. There's no, there is no objectivity that needs to be proven as like the source of truth. It's like they're all truth. I wish that I had read Harold Johnson's brilliant little book, the Power of Story, because he says, no matter what your discipline, it's all fiction, right? It's all fiction. And we tell certain stories to convey meaning and sometimes, and sometimes those stories serve us in the moment and then we realize later, because we have new knowledge or because we've had a different experience or something has blown our minds that that story doesn't serve us anymore. Um, and so some of the big scientific discoveries, like Einstein, he just found a new story for the story of physics. Um, and so that, that he, he, in the Power of Story, he really articulates so clearly this idea of multiple truth claims versus the, the, the philosophical tradition coming out of Europe about like a single justified truth claim. Um, and then that the purpose of history is not objective and like this linear progression of time to tell like a true story, but the purpose of history is pedagogical and ethical. So we tell our stories in order to discern how to be in right relationship with each other and with the world that God loves. And I think like that and the idea of how do we define truth are two of the main things that really call me into this much more ethical, relational way of seeing the world. And you know, if we didn't have to, if we didn't have to get so caught up in positionality and saying, well, I'm right, you're wrong, this is black, that's white. And we lived in this shades of gray space where we asked each other what is the next right thing to do? How, how is it that I want to love my neighbor that we could get out of some of these, I don't know, theological sticky places that I just think are sometimes irrelevant. Like we get into this, like these mind bending, like philosophical, theoretical things that are so, like just so many degrees of removed from our real lives. And it doesn't matter. I mean, it does matter. We should always be discerning, like what we think. We should always be discerning what we think we believe about God because it matters in how we act. But if that, but if that belief is causing us to take actions that harm another, then I think we're in the wrong spot. And so that's why the relationality piece, that's why the listening, the, the inclusion of liberation theology in Christian mission is so important, because we each have our own work to do.
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Interviewer / Host
We do have work to do, indeed. And then you talk about how non indigenous theologians need to practice what you might call epistemic humility or even epistemic disobedience. And what would that mean and how would that look like? I think you've typed on it. But I'm just wondering, for people who may not have caught it, that in North America it's.
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Reverend Dr. Carmen Lansdowne
It can sometimes be common for an indigenous elder to say, God gave us two ears and one mouth for a reason. And I have to be careful about that because sometimes I get asked a question. I can just go on forever and ever. But I think learning, learning to, to listen deeply, to, to listen, to understand, to develop empathy as opposed to listening as hearing, which is like, okay, I physically hear your voice, but while you're talking, I'm thinking about how I'm going to respond. I'm thinking about how to debate you. I'm thinking about how to prove my point instead of really listening and thinking, what is it that this child of God is trying to tell me about the world and their perspective and how am I to be transformed by this interaction?
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Interviewer / Host
I like the how am I going to be transformed? Rather than just talking, talking without listening. That's such a powerful point that you make in your book. And we all need to really be humble. There is a lot to learn from each other. And in chapter three, you talk about mission, Miss your day and power. You've already mentioned miss your day and how we should interrogated from an indigenous perspective. But what does monsieur de promise and where does it fall, especially when it comes to colonial responsibility and issues of accountability.
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Reverend Dr. Carmen Lansdowne
That's a million dollar question, right?
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Interviewer / Host
Like it's such a big question to ask because it's a whole chapter. But then I'm asking this because you tell us not to let go, miss your day. But then there is a lot that it offers, but it has its limits. I'm like, we are in love with you, but we don't want to let go. So where do we Let go and why do we hold on? Kind of, that's what I'm trying to,
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Reverend Dr. Carmen Lansdowne
I mean, so, I mean, this gets back to the previous question around humility and epistemic disobedience. You know, the, the theologians that are not explicitly writing about Christian mission but then bringing into conversation with missiological writings are really, you know, process theologians, John Caputo's negative theology. The fact that we like don't fully know God's revelation and that we have to take this, this posture of we have to be bold in our humility to say we don't know all the answers and to really sit with the mystery. You know, one of the, one of the writers I cite a lot in the book is Katherine Keller and she has an introductory text on process theology called on the Mystery. And in the beginning she talks about, you know, the first chapter of Genesis and how God's breath breathes over the deep. But we have this deep fear of the tahome, of the, of the, the deep darkness of the void of what was before we knew. And she calls it to homophobia. Right? We have a fear of that deep, a fear of the mystery. And so I think it's, it's learning to sit with mystery and not knowing. And, and I think that that can liberate us from having like, I see the churches becoming more and more risk averse. It's like the shadow side of acknowledging the coloniality that has been so strong in the church has been that, okay, well, we can't say anything, we can't do anything with certainty, so we won't change anything because we don't know what the outcome is going to be. And it's created this, almost like this paralyzation or this fear of making mistakes. And the truth is like none of us get out of life without making mistakes. And the church is not going to get out of life without making mistakes. But it's, it's important to, it's important to try and, it's important to sit and be thoughtful and to, and to be prayerful and to think like what is being revealed to us in this time and in this place? How do we act, however imperfectly, to be co participants in God's mission in the world in a way that upholds the inherent dignity of each of us and that seeks justice for those who are still oppressed. That, that allows us each to see the places where we sin, where we distance ourselves from the right action that we say we believe that God wants for the world. How do we, how do we Sit in that unknowing long enough that we can actually be attentive to a God who shows up and acts in the world.
- [36:13]
Interviewer / Host
Right.
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Reverend Dr. Carmen Lansdowne
Like Andrew Root writes about this a lot in his Churches and the Secular Age series that he wrote for Baker Academic following from Charles Taylor's book the Secular Age where he says, like we've really fallen away from a tradition that believes that God is fully transcendent and fully imminent. And that is what happened for us in the Christ event, right? Is that God is so much bigger, bigger, more transcendent than we could ever understand. But also God made God self real for us in the Christ event. But our minds since the, since the Enlightenment have been so focused on the material that we've lost a sense of the transcendent. And so we say we believe in these stories of a God who showed up and parted the Red Sea or you know, spoke to Moses through a burning bush or like rose Jesus from the dead, rose Lazarus from the dead. And we say we believe in that God, but we don't actually believe that we could encounter that God now. Right. And I think when we sit with the mystery, then it allows us to be attentive to the miracles that are happening that can happen when, when we, when we stop and pray. Andrew Root uses this beautiful example in his book what Church Stops Working that he co wrote with Blair Bertrand. He says, you know, we, or it might have been churches in the crisis of Decline which he wrote by himself, I can't remember exactly, but he said we literally, with gun violence in the United States, we literally testify to the fact that we believe that our prayers don't work. When we say to politicians that thoughts and prayers are not enough. Like yes, we need public policy to change, but what if our prayers were what mattered the most? Like what if prayer was the thing that would actually change the hearts and minds of our politicians to put safeguards in place so that school shootings no longer happened. Right. Like we literally testify to the fact that we don't believe that could happen anymore. And I think those questions are what mission really rumbles with is like how do we experience both the imminent and the transcendent in this God who is self revealing to us through time and space and not only in the Christ event, but all of these other times in our scriptures where, where we rumble with what is the next right thing to do? And, and how do we deal with our own brokenness? And so, so for me that like not needing to put pressure on ourselves to have all the definitive answers right? The second is a way to resist that secularism that has embedded itself in the church through the enlightenment and to say, you know, maybe for today, I don't know how to liberate myself. I don't know how to liberate you, but I can sit and pray with you after I listen with you. And that, that is enough knowing for. For now.
- [39:19]
Interviewer / Host
Wow, that's so powerful that sometimes we take, especially as a Christian, if you take prayer for granted, then what are you saying? Because prayer is like your communication with God, who so love you. So this is really thought provoking. And then I wanted to ask, so in this way, how does the idea of missing from below, which is missing that, look like one that is grounded in our experiences tell us and how of that even affects how we even deal with daily things, daily preaching, sermons we hear? Because you do tell us that indigenous theology is very political as well. So mission has to be understood from below. And this below is grounded in experiences, right?
- [40:19]
Reverend Dr. Carmen Lansdowne
Yeah. And I think specifically it's grounded in the experience of those who are most made marginal. Right. So to use an example of ableism, when you. It can be commonplace in North America, a lot of our mainline Protestant churches are filled with like, mostly elderly, mostly white people. And, you know, this, this idea of how do we create a church that is welcoming for people that might not look like us and might not have the same needs as us? And so an example would be, well, why do we have to put a ramp from the sanctuary up into the chancellor? Because nobody needs it. Like, no, nobody needs it because nobody's coming here. Because you don't have it.
- [41:14]
Interviewer / Host
Right.
- [41:15]
Reverend Dr. Carmen Lansdowne
Like, so why do we need to have a Sunday school or children's program? Because no children come here. It's like, well, if you are a parent of young children and there's no. Nothing engaging if, if either, like the main service and the sanctuary space is not welcoming to children and, and there's nothing else to engage children through the service, then of course children are not going to come to the church because they are de facto not welcome there. Right. And so we can't always wait for, we can't always wait for something to, to show. It's just to show itself to us. Like, we actually have to be thinking about what is the experience of the people who are not here in the room with us, who's not speaking, whose voice is not included, who's experience is not being thought of. There's a, a great saying that I learned while I was the executive director of a big outreach Mission in Vancouver that I preach about all the time. I write about it in this new text I'm writing on ministry of governance and administration. It's a very sexy topic that says there's a difference between saying all are welcome here and we designed this with you in mind because all are welcome here. Basically, if you're not thoughtful about it can mean you're welcome to come and be like us or you're welcome in spite of who you are. But we designed this with you in mind, means that this is for you because of who you are. And I think that that's the gift we get from. We think of mission from below is we're designing our actions in response to the self revealing God that loves the world in a way that welcomes people because of who they are, not in spite of who they are.
- [43:06]
Interviewer / Host
I like how you say you design people in mind when you are doing something rather than it being an afterthought. Because if it becomes an afterthought, people don't feel welcomed and they feel left out.
- [43:20]
Reverend Dr. Carmen Lansdowne
Yeah. There's this great book that I just started reading called Disabling Leadership and they talk about how in creating spaces in the sanctuary, like, you know, most of our churches, most of our historic churches are not designed to be accessible to people who use mobility devices, who have mobility challenges. And so the debate about do we keep our pews or do we get rid of them? Right. Becomes a debate about cost, about relevance, about loss of tradition. And so often what happens is some kind of compromise where either at the very front there is, you know, one or two pews is removed, or maybe in the center they take out half a pew and they make space, they make space for people with mobility aids. But that decision is made for the people with the mobility aids. When you take out all of the pews and you just have chairs, it's easy to move chairs. And so you give the person who has the mobility aid the agency to say where they want to sit, who they want to sit next to, making space for their family that may or may not also have mobility devices. Like, it just, it provides so much more flexibility in a way that is really designed with them in mind as opposed to, oh, we made space for you over there. Right? Not making, not making, coming up to the front to receive communion accessible. It can be ableist. You know, it's the, it's the practice of many churches in that I've been a part of in Canada where the instructions are when they were saying, okay, this is how we're going to come up and receive communion in an orderly fashion. And if you're not. If you're not physically able to come to the front, just raise your hand and someone will come to you. Which I think that tradition comes out of trying to honor our elders who maybe aren't stable on their feet, are tired, don't want to come to the front. But when you assume that that's the same for an elderly person who would like to be served where they're seated versus any person with a disability, that the assumption is that they don't want to come to the front, then you're making that decision for them. Right. So it really gets down to making decisions about how to be church with the nothing about us without us approach, that if you're going to make a decision about how to make church welcoming for somebody that is not embedded in the power structures in that church, that you don't do that you don't make
- [46:11]
Interviewer / Host
those decisions without them, make the decisions with everyone, especially the most vulnerable. Thank you so much. I thought of asking you this question, and I have to ask it before we finish. So your book. Actually, I'm an anthropologist with personal narrative, which you hesitate a bit about calling it autoethnography with rigorous. I mean, even this discussion shows a trilogical critique, but you also show us how it is so important. I think it's also because you talk about indigenous knowledge and epistemologies, how embodied experience is so crucial and lived experience is so crucial. So my question is, how did you decide what's needed to be made vulnerable and what's needed to remain protected?
- [47:11]
Reverend Dr. Carmen Lansdowne
Effy, that is always a tough question, right? Because I think learning to be vulnerable with each other is part of what creates stronger social muscles around empathy. Because, you know, if you think in just like a simple social interaction where you have a friend that you think you know very well, that you think could tell you anything, and all of a sudden you find out that they've been, like, really deeply struggling with something that is, like, painful and hard. And you think, my gosh, like, why couldn't you. Why did you feel like you couldn't tell me this thing? Like, I love you, you're my friend. And so we, we all have the opportunity and the. We always have the opportunity to choose to be vulnerable with people who love us and who we are safe with. And because life kind of kicks us in the pants a lot. Like, we also will always struggle with the, the trauma response, like the, the actually like, limbic response in our brain about fight Flight or freeze when we perceive a threat. And so we're, we're constantly scanning the horizon for threats, for social threats, for physical threats, financial threats, political threats. And we have this negativity bias in our brain that says, it's not safe, I must protect myself. And that's just how our brains have developed biologically over time. And so learning to really be prayerful and thoughtful about, like, when is the right time to say, like, I'm not, I'm not unsafe, there's no tiger at my door, and it's important for me to be real is a personal choice that each of us needs to make. But also creating systems of safety and inclusion that also allow for others to exercise that agency. Like, I can't force you to tell me as a new acquaintance the things that are most troubling and hardest on your heart, right? And that would not be appropriate for me to do that. Like, say, well, you must be vulnerable with me. And so I try and do it in a way that models that it's okay to do it. And even if I get hurt or somebody messes up or I mess up and I hurt somebody, that we have things called apologies and making amends that can, like, there's grace in the world that we can repair relationships when we make mistakes. And so I'm very intentional about trying to model vulnerability, including the self awareness to know when I might possibly be wrong or not have gotten things right, to share that I'm hurt. And you know, despite being an indigenous woman, despite being like in the very small minority of Christians as an indigenous woman, but also, like, that works where I'm a minority voice within the church, but I'm also a minority voice within, like my generation of indigenous people in Canada where they're like, how can you be Christian after all this crap, you know, for the last 500 years? So I get it on both sides. And, you know, we, we need each other and we need to be able to create those spaces. The sociologist Brene Brown said, everybody has a story that will break your heart. And if you really listen to everybody has a story that will bring you to your knees. Like, none of us gets out of life unscathed. And our response to trauma, our resilience is all relative, right? Like, how I, how I develop resilience or response to like, all of the hurdles that life throws at me is completely different to somebody who might have grown up with much more privilege than me and had something to me that feels really inconsequential. When I measured against all of this intergenerational trauma, all of the. The, you know, poor decisions that I made that hurt myself in my early 20s, I might be like, really? That's the thing that's going to take you out? But that doesn't make that trauma any less real for that person. And so, you know, and when we're deciding whether or not to be vulnerable and in what context, we have to think about how to do that respectfully, right? So there was one time, only once, where I was preaching to a very large gathering about six or seven hundred people, and I decided to disclose the fact that I had suffered a particular type of trauma as a child and which was a sexual abuse. But I was a little bit more explicit. Not, like, not super explicit about it, but. And I. And I shared about the fact that my late older brother had died by suicide, and I shared about the history of alcoholism and substance use in my family. And it was because I was trying to confront the racism where. In the church that existed, where people were like, oh, you're so lucky. You didn't really suffer like most indigenous people because you're so successful. And so I was, like, using it as a tool from the pulpit to say, okay, I didn't grow up poor. I didn't grow up in abject poverty, but my. My brother died by suicide. I'm a survivor of sexual abuse. I grew up around alcoholism and substance use. There's histories of, you know, suicide on both sides of my family, of all of these social challenges that are a result of colonialism for indigenous people. The only things that didn't happen to me is I didn't grow up poor and I didn't grow up on a reservation. But other than that, what part of the hard parts of being indigenous did I miss out on? Right? Like, don't assume that because I'm resilient and because I'm successful that I didn't suffer. So. But when I did that, I had a friend who was a student at the time, came up to me, and she was like, you just shared that you have a history of alcoholism. And I said, I did. And. And she said, well, I. I have not done that. And. And this is a. A common part of our story that we had shared. And I was like, and you shouldn't, because you're still a student, where people have the power to make decisions about your life based on what you disclose to them. Like, I'm the executive director of our biggest outreach mission across the whole church. I've been ordained for 10 years. I have a Huge amount of privilege and you know, reputational strength in this denomination. Like what's any. And in the context where I work with people who are homeless and drinking and using drugs, my lived experience is an asset, right? So nobody's going to judge me for the fact that 20 years ago I had a problem with alcohol because that actually creates more empathy for the people that serving. But you should not do that because like all it takes is one person who has a false idea of what that means for you or for your ministry. So it requires discernment, I think, to really think about it. And also like, if I had shared those stories in a way where I wasn't really clear on the homolytic effect that I was trying to create on the, on the, what did you call it? Creative epistemic disobedience or whatever. Like my, our general secretary talks about, like sometimes in the church we have to practice creative deviance. Right? So like I, I was, I was doing it for, to serve a particular purpose. To make the middle class whiteness CIS hetero patriarchy in the church uncomfortable by talking about hard things. But you know, if, if there hadn't been a purpose in it. And I was just like, you know, sort of like. And like, you know, dumping my trauma on other people because it was some kind of cathartic thing. For me that's a very different circumstance. And so I think we have to know ourselves really well to know how and when to be vulnerable. But we also have to become places of deep safety so that other people can tell us who we are. You know, so like you, I'm a professor, I had a student come to me and they were just like, they were so wound up with anxiety, like reactive to everything. And you know, was it able to say what is happening? Like what is happening? What is on your heart? And they were like, I can't tell you because you're a professor and you, you have the power to report stuff to the church. And I was like, okay, but like, because of that, you're going to have to learn to trust me and that I'm not going to ever say anything to the church about you without talking to you about it first. Like, what is on your heart? What is going on? And so it turned out that there was a particular stressor that they weren't really acknowledging. And when they felt safe enough to tell me, their whole demeanor changed. And like they've become so much more calm and like they still have moments of, of being skeptical and like, whoa, like what, what if, what if what if. And they're, and they're filled with anxiety, but it's not nearly as bad as it was. But like, for me with my students, I'm trying to say, like, yeah, I have a, I have a formal role to play, but I'm also like your mama hen right now. And like, I need to be safe, safe space for you to be able to like, tell me what you're really struggling with. Because if you can't do it now, then we're going to ship you off to be in some congregation where you have no practice of like learning how to do these tools of self differentiation, like, what hope are you going to have? So it's, it's a messy business, this being human. And I think that that's part of why, you know, that's also the bigger part of the why. The title brokenheartedness is because we all are to some extent and it doesn't help us to pretend like we're not.
- [57:04]
Interviewer / Host
No, we can't keep pretending. But then I also like the fact that you say when you find safe space, you open up and you become a safe space for others as well. I think it's like opening doors to others and also giving people the chance to be human and to learn and to unlearn as well. And this question I have to ask you, ask yourself throughout the book or ask a lot of people ask you that with all this brokenness and deep violences, why do you still stay in the church? You don't just stay, you, you are a leader in the church as well, so playing a big role in the church. So why still remain a Christian?
- [57:51]
Reverend Dr. Carmen Lansdowne
Because I think there's, there's power in the story of Jesus, right? There's power in our scriptures, there's power in our, in our faith. And when I assume positive intent about others and about our tradition, you know, I have to extend grace to others and, and know that if I believe that God is a God that wants life for us and life in abundance, then anytime we fail to do that has not been God's failure, it's been our failure. And, and that we are all perfectly imperfect. And there's still salvific value for me in this story. And it, and it has been deeply life changing for me. You know, when I got sober, I, I started going back to church when I was seven days sober and six days sober and it was the first Sunday of Advent and the minister was preaching about how this possibility of change that was coming in the event of the Christ Child was on the horizon, but it wasn't here yet. And that we were living in this anticipatory state of the fact that change is possible, even it wasn't here yet. And like my six day sober self was like, like bawling my eyes out. And, and so I think that like my faith has changed my life. It saved my life. And people who are atheists do harmful crap to each other all the time without any kind of like community framework to, to, to, I mean, you know, being, separating ourselves from these faith traditions because the institutions of the church or the institutions of religion have hurt people doesn't eliminate hurting people. And so because I still find the, the value for myself and the possibility for others that we could be liberated from, you know, all the systems of oppression and sin that we impose on ourselves, on each other is why I stay. Thank you.
- [59:58]
Interviewer / Host
I like the fact that you said I love Jesus and I love people and I want them to find peace and love in Jesus Christ. I, I just love that. Is there any final ways for listeners? There's something you want to say to listeners?
- [60:16]
Reverend Dr. Carmen Lansdowne
No, just, I mean, buy my book. No.
- [60:19]
Interviewer / Host
Yes, buy the book. It's really, really interesting. It's thought provoking. There is so much wisdom in it and it will actually humble you. So thank you, Carmen.
- [60:32]
Reverend Dr. Carmen Lansdowne
The other thing is if, if you do buy the book but you're not a theologian, like it is a scholarly monograph. But if you go to carmenlanstown.com there's a, a reader's guide that I made. And so it's got a glossy of terms and like reflection questions and like explanations of what I was trying to say. So if you're not like somebody who's a formal theologian or an academic, there is this little guide to help, like to make it a little bit more accessible.
- [60:58]
Interviewer / Host
Awesome. I'll add it to the show notes. Thank you so much. So this has been Reverend Dr. Carmen Laut than Wearing a Broken indigent Hat on the Sleeve of Christian mission, published by CMU Press in 2025. Thank you, Reverend Dr. Carmen, for sharing your wisdom and your knowledge and your encouragement with us. And thank you listeners. Bye bye. Sa.