Canada’s third generation ecumenist is an Indigenous leader

She is a third generation ecumenist and, in her first term as a member of the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches (WCC), Carmen Lansdowne has clearly impressed people.

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	Carmen Lansdowne draws on her First Nations culture in global ecumenical work. (Photo: Cheryl Bowlan)

Since being elected to the Central Commmittee in 2006 at the WCC General Assembly in Porto Alegre, Brazil, she has been appointed to the Executive Committee and Audit Committee, and asked to serve both as Chair of the Fundraising Advisory Group and as Co-Moderator of the Palestine-Israel Ecumenical Forum Core Group with Olav Tveit, WCC’s General Secretary-Elect.

With characteristic directness, Lansdowne points out that as a young, ordained, aboriginal woman—she’s a member of Canada’s Heiltsuk First Nation— “I’m good for balances”. But there is more than a token gesture towards minority groups in her multiple appointments. Lansdowne was headed towards a career in aboriginal tax law and was doing studies in Chartered Accountancy when she felt the call to ministry. Now an ordained minister with the United Church of Canada, Lansdowne is a doctoral student in the United States at San Francisco’s Graduate Theological Union. Her focus is on missiology and Indigenous epistomology.

Lansdowne’s grandfather, Robert Wallace, was a member of the WCC Central Committee and her mother, Dolly Lansdowne, was involved in the WCC’s legendary Programme to Combat Racism. While both are proud of her accomplishments, Lansdowne says her mother has given her a serpent bracelet that says “Wise as a serpent, gentle as a dove.” These are words of wisdom for Lansdowne as she and other members of WCC’ governing bodies navigate choppy waters due to declining revenue and a difficult transition of leadership.

Lansdowne believes that, “God tries to get our attention through chaos.” Citing Amos 4 she says God is calling us back through our troubles. Her hope is that the WCC will take the warning of the choppy waters seriously and return to work on what it is called to do. She feels that Faith and Order (the Commission responsible for theological reflection on issues that divide churches) should be a larger part of WCC’s programme work, saying primacy should be given to working towards visible unity and should determine how “we do the ‘life and work part’” of the WCC mission.

As one of five Indigenous members of WCC’s Central Comittee—the others are from Greenland, New Zealand, India and Bolivia—Lansdowne regrets there aren’t structures for them to “offer our gifts back to the WCC.”

“We come from collective social structures and it pains us to see the consensus decision-making model is not working to full capacity. [Central Committee members] are not getting to know each other and our life stories.”

Lansdowne points as well to theological understandings of the world’s Indigenous peoples who see God’s creation as a place of great abundance, a different perspective from that of global economics which is built on competition for what are seen as scarce resources. By contrast says Lansdowne, Indigenous peoples “see oikos (God’s creation) as balance. We only need to take what we need. God will provide.”

Prior to the Porto Alegre General Assembly, Lansdowne served the WCC as a consultant on aboriginal peoples, supported by a grant from the Church of Norway. She came out of the experience convinced there are theologically-trained Indigenous people who “can play with the big boys”. Now, she says, “We have to present our perspectives in their language.”

Lansdowne is not directly involved in the work of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches though the United Church of Canada is a member. “I’m leaving room for other people’s voices,” she says and adds that she has encouraged people to stand for selection to attend the Uniting General Council in Grand Rapids in June 2010. Doubtless she will wish on them some of the wisdom of the serpent and gentleness of the dove her mother wished her.