evangelical 360°

Ep. 35 / Land as Relative: The Gospel through Indigenous Eyes ► Ray Aldred

• Host Brian Stiller • Season 1 • Episode 35

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What happens when Indigenous identity meets Christianity? For Rev. Dr. Ray Aldred, Director of Indigenous Studies at Vancouver School of Theology, this intersection has been both painful and profoundly illuminating.

Ray's story begins with generational trauma - a grandmother lost to alcoholism, a murdered uncle, experiences of racism that as a child he simply thought were "how it is with everybody." His journey through addiction to Christian faith, and eventually to deeper healing, reveals the gaps in how many churches address cultural shame and historical wounds.

"When you feel ashamed of who you are," Ray explains, "you think you're too bad to receive God's love. You spend most of your Christian life trying to do more religious stuff so God will actually love you." This breakthrough realization transformed not only his personal faith but his approach to theology and reconciliation.

The conversation takes a fascinating turn when Ray describes reading scripture through Indigenous eyes. Suddenly biblical humour comes alive, community connections deepen, and creation itself becomes family. His interpretation of Adam as "son of God" led to the revelation that the earth could be understood as mother - not in an idolatrous sense, but as a relative deserving care and respect. "If people could feel that about the land," he suggests, "maybe we could make different decisions when it comes to how we live upon it."

As Canada continues its journey toward reconciliation following the devastating legacy of residential schools, Ray offers wisdom for moving forward: tell the truth completely, listen with your heart to understand pain, then develop a shared plan to heal the damage. His approach places "the gospel in the center" while honoring Indigenous identity and addressing historical trauma.

For anyone seeking to understand Christianity beyond colonial frameworks or wondering how faith communities might participate meaningfully in reconciliation, Ray's insights illuminate a path that requires courage, honesty and deep listening. 

You can learn more with Ray Aldred through his books and the Vancouver School of Theology. 

And you can share this episode using hashtag #Evangelical360 and join the conversation online! 

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Brian Stiller:

Hello and welcome to Evangelical 360. I'm your host, brian Stiller, and I'm pleased to share with you another conversation with leaders, changemakers and influencers impacting Christian life around the world. Please listen in and join the conversation on YouTube in the comments below, and be sure to subscribe and share this episode, and please use hashtag Evangelical360. My guest today is the Reverend Dr Ray Aldred, Director of Indigenous Studies at the Vancouver School of Theology. The story of Christianity in North America, as in many other countries, is about those who arrived from elsewhere, who claim land as their right, and then we see the consequences those claims create. Over the last century in Canada, one of the most heart-wrenching realities of our history is that of Indigenous children who were forcibly placed in residential schools overseen by Catholic and Protestant churches. I'm grateful for Indigenous leaders, theologians and friends such as Ray Aldred, who are willing to speak and share about the history of this land, its original people and their relationship with the church and what it means with the gospel today. Ray Aldred, thank you for joining us on Evangelical 360.

Ray Aldred:

Hey, it's great to see you, Brian. It's good to be here.

Brian Stiller:

Ray. Our hearts break when we hear stories of children being rooted out of families and home. And yet we can't stop. We've got to move on with faith and love, and I guess the question to ask about the Indigenous community is is there hope?

Brian Stiller:

today.

Ray Aldred:

I think there's always been hope among Indigenous people. I mean that's why Indigenous people keep asking for reconciliation. They're the ones who call for reconciliation. I'm in Regina today and I remember listening to elders say Indigenous people are the most forgiving people in Canada. No matter what's happened, they continue to you know, call on the rest of Canada to be reconciled to you know, heal the land, to heal relationships. So I always find indigenous people hopeful.

Brian Stiller:

You have worked your way through this story, of course, from your childhood, being of your own ancestry and you have lived within the evangelical church. You now teach at the Vancouver School of Theology. You have wandered down the halls of many institutions and you've watched denominations in local churches. Yep, the halls of many institutions and you've watched denominations in local churches. So if the Indigenous community has hope, are the rest of us ignorant or insensitive, or simply uninformed?

Ray Aldred:

I think that maybe popular evangelicalism thinks that there's some. I think they think sometimes there's some magic formula that's going to solve something and somehow tension and sort of difficult situations are somehow going to be gone. But that's, and when I read theology and read church history, that's never been the case. I think maybe sometimes with modernity, popular evangelicalism promises something that it can't deliver on. So maybe that's why people feel disillusioned. Leslie Newbigin wrote in a book, foolishness to the Greeks, the Gospel of Western Culture, that people in Western culture are addicted to happiness. They think that somebody should be able to give them happiness, no matter what, and of course they get disillusioned with God, they get disillusioned with politics, and so they keep looking for this, something that's going to make them happy all the time. I think that's why contemporary modern evangelicals sometimes lose hope, because no one can have happy all the time. It's just not going to happen.

Brian Stiller:

Ray, in your family, in your childhood you're growing up was there a disruption in your family because you were Indigenous? Were there problems related to growing?

Ray Aldred:

Yeah, my grandmother was an alcoholic. She left my mother. My mother raised her three younger sisters from the time she was about eight. She left because my grandfather was quite abusive in those days. So then I really didn't have a close relationship with my grandmother.

Ray Aldred:

I thought my mom tried to sort of make it better somehow. My uncle was murdered and my cousin died on the downtown east side. All these things were I when you're a kid. So growing up you just think that's how everybody grows up. So you just don't think you kind of, when you're a kid you don't know people are being racist to you, you just think that's the way it is. But you know people don't rent things to you or people call you names. You just think that's how it is with everybody. It's only later that you realize that's probably not the way things are supposed to be. But I had my mom and dad tried hard, but I was thankful that my mom didn't drink and my dad didn't drink much either. But it was in our family and I was aware of it.

Brian Stiller:

So when you say that evangelicals aren't very good at dealing with trauma, was the trauma in your life that wasn't dealt with?

Ray Aldred:

It's generational trauma. You know when it happens for generation after generation. You know, and if you grow up feeling ashamed because you're First Nations, the evangelicalism had no answers for that Popular evangelicalism. Now, once you get into theology, you know some theologians have some good ideas and then I actually found guys like Dan Allender, larry Crabb that there was some answers there but they weren't mainstream or really popular all the time. Back when I first got into evangelicalism.

Brian Stiller:

Trauma is accumulative. It isn't just personal as first person, but it comes from the past as first person, but it comes from the past.

Ray Aldred:

Yeah, yeah, well, it can be. See, trauma can just happen. You know someone dies tragically or you know something that can happen. I think last time I looked it up probably 20% of the general population. That's how trauma impacts. Maybe 20% of the people experience that kind of trauma like tragic death, so they have a relative who dies tragically, or maybe 20% of society. But for indigenous people it's like 80% of us have experienced that and it impacts you. It affects you and it's passed on because you know, if your parents, if your mother learns to deal with trauma by just not feeling and being hard to make it, then that's what gets handed on to you and that's what you learn, then that's what gets handed on to you and that's what you learn.

Ray Aldred:

So that's kind of what I learned

Brian Stiller:

At what?

Brian Stiller:

point in your life did you realize trauma, or whatever else you would call it, was part of your inheritance.

Ray Aldred:

Well, I think that when I moved to Regina, saskatchewan, to do my bachelor's degrees my third year I started pastoring a First Nations church and listening to people, listening to residential school survivors, and realizing the answers that I have aren't working here. You know, I remember sitting in visiting with someone who was incarcerated for about I think they'd been incarcerated probably 40 or 50 times I don't think I'm exaggerating Always, just maybe a month or two at a time. 30 days always not long terms, not a long bit. And I realized, when I prayed with the person, I prayed for them to receive Jesus. I remember they opened their eyes, they looked at us and said that was good and he said I've done that so many times. He said so many times. And I realized, okay, there's something else going on here. There's something else going on here that he would keep, you know, get out of jail, something would happen. He'd bend up back into it Like there's something else going on and it was trauma.

Ray Aldred:

And listening to people's stories and then, looking at your own heart, you realize, yeah, there's stuff going on. I mean, I came to faith because I was a drug addict and I couldn't quit drinking. And I said, jesus, if you help me quit using, I'll do whatever you want me to. Well, at the time, I said God. A couple of days later, that's when my brother prayed for me to receive Jesus. I prayed to reset Jesus or put his spirit in me, and then, intuitively, I ended up doing all the things you do in the 12 steps.

Ray Aldred:

I had three people for the next year. I had three people that I could call one of them at any time, 24 hours a day, when I was really struggling, because when you quit using, when you quit using soft drugs and we quit drinking for about eight months to a year, every day you have this anxiety that pushes you to drink or to use. And I had someone to call. And then the holiness movement. You know you end up thinking about what's going on. You try to make amends, but it was years later.

Ray Aldred:

You know, I was ordained in 1995. And my wife and I a few years later maybe five years after that we'd been married about 18 years we went to marriage encounter, which was good for us, helped us because we weren't hearing one another much anymore, but it was after a couple years. After that we went to helped us because we weren't hearing one another much anymore, but it was after a couple years. After that we went to it was called Survivors of Abuse Leadership Training and while we were there we realized I realized there's a whole bunch of other stuff going on inside, because when you feel ashamed of who you are, what happens is you think you're too bad to receive God's love. You spend most of your Christian life trying to do more religious stuff. So God will actually love you.

Ray Aldred:

And at some point a friend of mine said to me you know there's something worse than your pain. And I said what's that? He said it's your sin. So I remember thinking what a jerk who tells a guy that he feels like, know, you're feeling all your pain from your past. And you tell him it's your sin. And he said you believe you're unlovable. And I remember thinking that's it. That's the thing.

Ray Aldred:

I think that a lot of first nations, I think a lot of people, they think that they're too bad, god couldn, couldn't love me and you actually hold yourself away. So I remember I said, god, give me the gift of repentance. And I began to weep and it felt like I got born again, right there Somehow. I said, god, put your love in me. And there was a new freedom that came. I mean, it's like this happened over like a year, maybe years, just thinking about stuff. I remember I told that story to Richard Twist, who you probably remember, and he said, brother, pentecostal church. We'd say you got the Holy Ghost and I said, well, I don't know, call it whatever you want, but that was key and you know that it's there in places, but that's not what popular evangelicalism was Like. This was stuff. It was there but it wasn't popular.

Brian Stiller:

I'm not quite sure I understand, ray, what wasn't popular, what's not popular that you would have this experience of as you prayed for repentance and you felt the love of God fill your life. I mean that.

Ray Aldred:

It's not popular to sit with someone else and talk about what's really going on inside that wasn't popular. And to talk about the impacts of trauma and to talk about the lies that you have believed about yourself, to look at your heart, that wasn't popular. It's not easy always to find a church where you can be honest about what's going on or you can be half healed, so that wasn't popular in those days. You had to go someplace else. You had to try to find a courageous space where you could actually do that. That wasn't everywhere. So that's what, going further among my indigenous people, that's where that led me because people were. They were trying to deal with stuff like that. That wasn't being dealt with in popular evangelicalism.

Brian Stiller:

So what was the next step in your life?

Ray Aldred:

Oh wow. I pastored a church and then eventually I got into leadership development and started thinking about doing theology and someone told me I should do a doctorate. I started bringing together theology and my indigenous identity and see how they could see one another Like what was different, what looked different Now. That started when I was doing my master's degree, trying to read, trying to interpret the Bible through Indigenous eyes, and that was because you could see things, change things. Help me discover story and help me to understand what was going on, that there was more in the bible than what maybe I had thought before. I remember when I thought I should read this like an Indigenous person instead of trying to read it like an academic scholar and I saw humor where I hadn't seen humor before or I could understand how tribal people were thinking. When I thought about how my people function already and creation, my understanding of creation shifted and my understanding of who Jesus was and his shifted Sure I was reading the story about when the angel comes and says you know you're going to have a child.

Ray Aldred:

You know Abram's older and he says I'm going to call you father of many nations. If you think about it, that's funny, but I couldn't see the humor in it until I started thinking about how we use nicknames among my own people. So people use nicknames because they're teasing you about something. So God shows up, or an angel of the Lord shows up and says to Abram I'm going to call you father of many nations and he's too old really to have a baby. He's 99. I just thought that's funny and it's.

Ray Aldred:

And then sarah. Then I finally understood. Sarah laughs like his wife laughs when she hears it too. She laughs because she knows okay, he's old, this isn't happening. And then suddenly the angel says don't laugh. And the whole story stood up like it. Just I couldn't see that for all that it was, but through my eyes, or the story, when, who is? It comes to Jesus and Jesus says here is a true Israelite in whom there is no guile. Yes, that's funny, because Israel's name is Jacob. Jacob means like trickster, liar, and Jesus says here is a true Israelite in whom there is no God. It's funny it was things like that but also being able to see how really creation is really central to the gospel and why John would say all things that came into being came into being through him, like through, through the word, and I just shifted my thinking about it because land was a relative and then I hadn't understood that, and then I hadn't understood that.

Ray Aldred:

But it was actually reading that. I was reading the genealogy of Jesus, you know, in Luke, and it goes all the way back to Adam. So it starts with Jesus, goes all the way to Adam, and then it says Adam, the son of God. And I'm sitting there and I'm thinking, okay, adam the son of God. And I'm sitting there and I'm thinking, okay, adam is the son of God. I don't know if I I know what Luke's trying to do. He's trying to set up that Jesus is the new Adam. Right, and then I started thinking in my mind. I started thinking so, if Mary is the mother of Jesus and he's the son of God, mary is the mother of Jesus, jesus is the son of God. And I'm thinking Mary is the mother of Jesus and he's the son of God. Mary is the mother of Jesus, jesus is the son of God. And I'm thinking Mary is the mother of Jesus. And then I just said so, who's the mother of Adam? And then I just thought it's the earth.

Ray Aldred:

And when I thought that, suddenly I had this feeling about the earth and I understood why the elders call the earth our mother, for she provides for us Everything. My dad taught me how to trap, my mom taught me how to snare rabbits, my mom and dad taught me how to fish, how to hunt, and everything that we eat comes from the land. She provides for us. I mean, ultimately, I understand it comes from the creator, but the earth cares for us. We get our heat from the earth, we get our clothing from the earth. Everything comes from the earth. She's like our mother.

Ray Aldred:

I didn't have any desire to worship the earth, but I felt something for the earth, like a family connection, and I remember thinking you know, if people could feel that about the land not that they would worship the earth, but that they could feel something Maybe we could make different decisions when it comes to how we live upon the land, not upon the earth if we understood it was part of the family. And that also helped me to understand the incarnation, for Jesus is fully God, fully human, creator and creation in perfect harmony, and I thought, hey, that's cool. So then that helped me to think about a whole bunch of other things, like restorative justice and sin and how all these things work together. So I owe that all to Indigenous people. Theology gave me some good you know, they have some good language. It taught me the stories of the Bible. Indigenous people helped me to understand them in ways that I just didn't learn in seminary.

Brian Stiller:

What is that different lens through which they see life, the scriptures, the world around us.

Ray Aldred:

Well, over the years I've tried to think about that. One of them is just that the story happens on the land. It's within creation. That's the only place that we encounter the creator is in creation, like there's no other place, I don't know. Sometimes we talk, sometimes I don't know. If people talk they think that there's someplace else they could go, but there isn't. It's in creation. That's where we encounter the creator. That's the only place. And story it's always a story, because I heard it from my theology professor, but I think I learned it from indigenous people Some truths are so big they can only be contained in a story.

Ray Aldred:

So you've got to tell the story. You've got to tell the story and then, as we would gather around the story, then it comes to life, then it I don't know I'm taken into the story, the story is taken into me and somehow there's this thing that's happening. So it's growth to me, and somehow there's this thing that's happening, so it's growth. I also am thankful that my parents taught me that you know, something good happens to your relative, that you should feel good about that. You shouldn't be jealous of them. That's, they're your relative. So it's like it happened to me, so it happened to my brothers, it's like it happened to me. So it happened to my brothers, it's like it happened to me. So that communal identity you could. It was good and he also taught me the importance of emotion. That emotion was a place you could start and you could learn something from it. Now, brian, as a Pentecostal, you should understand that part, like the emotion, like emotion's important. But I found Indigenous elders. They didn't discount emotion as a way. It's complicated. You needed a community to understand what was going on, but it was there. So those kind of lenses, through the lens of emotions, through the lens of community, through the lens of the land and through the lens of story that was. It's not like those things aren't there in the rest of society, but they just are further back in the memory than they were for indigenous people. These things were right in the front so they could teach me about these things. Those are the things that I think about. I had four children. That would be a good study, you know.

Ray Aldred:

But lots of us who got into like trying to bring together indigenous Christianity and, and, uh, of us who got into like trying to bring together indigenous Christianity and and trying to bring together indigenous and Christian. Lots of our kids just walked away. They walked away from the church. I'm not going to say they walked away from Christian faith, but they just didn't want. Maybe because they saw their dads and their moms get in such grief Like how could you stay? How could you stay?

Ray Aldred:

I don't know enough about it to either, but sometimes it seems like our kids take it harder than we did. Well, when you were, when you know, different denominations were censoring us or telling us when we took, you know, got accused of stuff, told we were, you know, idolatrous, or told we were heretics or that, that was all stuff happening when we were trying to bring together Christian faith and and being indigenous, and maybe our kids saw that and just didn't want any part of it. They just kind of walked away. None of my kids are anti-Christian, but I think probably only one of them would, you know, still be involved in the church.

Brian Stiller:

Have they walked away from being indigenous or have they embraced it?

Ray Aldred:

No, no, no. Indigenous is the thing that. So when we were so, when lots of us Brian, when you remember we met lots of us were trying to hold together being indigenous and being Christian, we were trying to hold this together. I think today, I don't know if young people are actually trying to hold Christianity anymore at all. They're just saying I want to be indigenous, Now that's. I don't think that's what we were going for, but sometimes that's what we ended up with.

Brian Stiller:

But being Indigenous, it seems to me, by its very nature embraces spirituality. But does that spirituality not include the Christian story?

Ray Aldred:

Well, I think it does, and they still might include parts of it. Maybe it's the church they don't like, but that's lots of us, isn't it? I don't know. That's the question I'm trying to work out in my mind. That's why I say it would be an interesting study just to go and talk with all these. You know, I got people I talk with my children about it and they got burned. It wasn't just because they saw me get burned, but they got burned. They got burned in the church. Usually it was always about people trying to give simple or easy answers to complex questions. So they just said man, this is. I mean, you run into lots of people like that, I suppose.

Brian Stiller:

Ray, it's been fascinating just to listen to you tell your story. Your story is playing out on a larger landscape here in Canada, and it's true in other countries as well New Zealand, australia, south Africa, I mean just place after place. The European settlers that came in and took land settlers that came in and took land. We've gone through various scenarios of trying to find some kind of reconciliation, understanding, reparations. Even here in Canada we've gone through the Reconciliation Commission and there's been an enormous amount of conversation. And at the political level you have various, for example, economic initiatives. Many of them, especially related to energy, can't be done unless indigenous community is there, participates and approves. So there's been an awful lot of stuff that's been going on and going on today on that landscape. As a professor at a major university and as an avowed Christian with your own story of new birth and life in Christ, where is that going for you?

Ray Aldred:

The thing that I work on most is teaching people how to place the gospel in the center. Like I'm a firm believer in that, we should. I think the elders taught us that we need to make sure that we place the gospel in the center. So to gather around, I mean every new gospel-based discipleship I do with my class and what that involves is we read the gospel, usually from the lectionary, whatever the Eucharistic reading from the lectionary is, and we read the gospel and then we say what are the words, ideas or phrases that come to mind when you hear that? And then we say let me read it again. I said someone else read a different translation. And then I say to my students I say let me read it again. I said someone else read a different translation. And then I say to my students I say so what is it? What is the gospel Jesus saying to you? And people share their ideas. And then I read it. If we read it together a third time in another translation, we say what is the gospel or Jesus calling you to do? And I try to do that because it's all about the gospel. Now that part, evangelicals get right, the church gets right. It's about the gospel. So I try to place the gospel in the center and then we'll work on the other things together. But I do that with everybody because I don't try to like I don't. I do it with people, I don't know if they say they're Christian or not Christian. That's just what I do. That's kind of what I do. So we gather around the gospel and then we try to after we we do that, we try to tackle the issues that are before us.

Ray Aldred:

I mean, I use restorative justice a lot. You gotta tell the truth. I think the good thing in canada, the sign that stuff was changing, like it was a 30-year journey, wasn't it brian? It was 30. But can can? Indigenous people told the truth. Canada started to tell the truth, churches started to tell the truth Like complete disclosure. Number two people began to listen with their heart, you know, to really listen Not just to the words being said but to understand the pain that different people have caused, the pain.

Ray Aldred:

And once you feel that, then you have the emotional energy to try to come up with a plan, a shared plan. How do we fix the damage? And I just think that that's where we're at as a society we're trying to come up with a plan how do we fix the damage. And I think that's my approach, I think everybody's committed to that, and so I just treat people that way.

Ray Aldred:

I try not to spend too much time making people feel bad about what happened, unless that's what they need. I suppose I try to think, okay, so then I don't. I just think, look, canada's guilty, that's an objective fact, that's not a feeling, that's just, that's just happened. Okay, so let's move to the next thing. So now, how do we heal the damage? How do we heal the damage? How do we heal the damage?

Ray Aldred:

And I see different things. Usually it's always in the local church or different people just trying to heal the damage. And that's why my wife and I spend a lot of time doing stuff with trauma helping people to strengthen their coping strategies. Helping people to strengthen their coping strategies, helping people to grieve in a healthier way, helping people to, you know, see what lies they believe themselves, so that then they can sort of, you know, start to understand that Jesus loves them and he likes them. And that's kind of what we do.

Ray Aldred:

But you got to go to the hard stuff, and I think that's the thing that evangelicals maybe in the 80s. Maybe they're trying to deal with the hard things and they thought if they just, you know, focus on facts or propositional truths, somehow that'll you know, help, but it You've got to deal with the hard stuff, you've got to go there, not so you can stay there, but you've got to move through it. You've got to move through it and then figure out how you're going to heal it. I don't know that's a lot of words, brian, but that's kind of what I try to do, and never forget the gospel.

Brian Stiller:

Ray, it's been just a pleasure for me just to listen to you and to hear the words and to feel the rhythms of your heart and to hear between the lines, the words. And I was raised in the prairies, as you know, and in the 50s and 40s and 50s, at our church that was that simply had no understanding of what had happened. As the settlers moved in and land was taken and lifestyle upended and identity cursed. We had no understanding of what was going on. We were blind and deaf. I look back to that and I realize with steep sorrow the failure of my church, my Pentecostal evangelical church. As honest as they were, as good as they tried to be as close to the gospel as we attempted to live our lives, we just didn't understand what was going on.

Brian Stiller:

To the First Nations, métis Indigenous, the variety of words come to me as I remember the past. It's a reminder that all of us, both by generation and by individual life, we walk through places, we walk by people, we listen to words and we don't see and we don't hear the accumulation you talk about, trauma accumulating out of your past. I think the failure of the gospel witness has brought its own kind of trauma failure and the trauma of the past. I think also we are dealing with that even in the acceleration of church and church growth. There is something that needs to, and I think is going on, where that confession of failure and cultural deafness needs to find resolve and ways that allow the next generation to move on, that are much more sensitive to the things that we simply were insensitive to. I've been in ministry for six decades and I realize that there have been moments and places and with people where I've simply failed.

Ray Aldred:

Yeah, well, you know we committed to be agents of reconciliation. Didn't we Remember that meeting we had in Winnipeg?

Brian Stiller:

I do. I'll never forget that.

Ray Aldred:

And I just think we're trying to do that best we can and in the end, that's all you can do, I think, is to try to be honest with people. There's a phrase, og Cree word, it's inanamon. It means the feelings that we have in our heart. You've got to talk about those things, you've got to try to understand them.

Brian Stiller:

Thank you, ray, for joining us today and for helping us understand our shared history and what the Christian faith means to Indigenous brothers and sisters today, and thank you for being a part of the podcast. I'd be so grateful if you would subscribe and share this episode, and always use hashtag Evangelical360. If you'd like to learn more about today's guest, be sure to check the show notes or description below, and if you haven't already received my free e-book and newsletter, please go to brianstillercom. Thank you for joining us, until next time.

Brian Stiller:

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