The Journal of the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America October-December 2017 - 20

sTorIes oF PeaCemakers

Confessing Our Sin:

An Interview with Jodi Spargur
by Katie Cook & Allison Paksoy

taff note: Originally from South Dakota, Jodi Spargur lives in
vancouver, BC (a city on the unceded territory of the musqueam,
Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations). Jodi has an mDiv degree from
Regent College in Vancouver and currently runs Healing at the Wounding
Place, a movement seeking to catalyze justice and healing between church
and Indigenous peoples. She formerly pastored God's house of many Faces,
a church with a large Indigenous population. During the 2017 Summer
Conference of the BPFNA ~ Bautistas por la Paz, we interviewed Jodi
about her work alongside Indigenous people.
BPFNA: you are originally from South Dakota. what
took you to Canada?
JS: I went to canada for seminary, and then various opportunities opened up that caused me to stay. I thought by going
to canada I was going to a kinder, gentler world than the uS.
I was wrong. the violence in the States is straight up and in
your face but in canada it is hidden and sometimes worse.
Racism is built deeply into the system. In canada there
are more children in foster care right now than were students

at the height of the Residential Schools. So we're still removing
children from families and culture, still devastating families
and communities. canadian stats are even worse than in the
uS on incarceration, especially women. Incarceration rates
for Indigenous women are 20 times higher than the general
population.
BPFNA: Tell us about your education.
JS: my undergraduate degree is from South dakota State
university. I did all my degree work at Florida International
university in miami. I studied International Relations with a
focus on faith-based resistance movements, so the Sanctuary
movement of the 1980s was my area of study.
BPFNA: what made you decide to go to seminary?
JS: I felt a strong sense of calling to pastoral ministry on my
life for a long time. I was drawn to Regent college, particularly
because it was the only seminary I knew of at the time that
was not primarily for people who were going to be working
in churches. Its emphasis was on lay people, and I wanted to
be educated as a clergy person in that context and also in the
context of a secular university. the university
of British columbia is where the seminary is
located.
The implications of colonization are still
manifested today. canada is currently going
through a truth and Reconciliation process, but
the effects of colonization are still happening
around us. So I'm going to truth and Reconciliation hearings during the day, and I'm coming
home at night, and I have a child who lives with
me because he moved himself in because he
wants to finish high school. Neither his father
nor grandfather went to school because of the
intergenerational impacts of the Residential
Schools. His grandfather was abused horrifically in those schools, so he didn't send hIS son

Left: Jodi Spargur pastors a church called God's house
of many Faces In vancouver, BC.
Photo by Beth Malena.

20 Baptist Peacemaker

Oct-Dec 2017

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Journal of the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America October-December 2017