Organized Religion
How a drive to unionize the United Church of Canada is dividing ministers like never before
BY Sabitri Ghosh
Illustration by Mike Constable
In prayer, as in life, Jim Evans and Karen Paton-Evans believe in the power of collective bargaining. At the start of each day, they go straight to the top with their perennial joint offer: Use us, God, in whatever way you see fit.
“We’re trying to be open to where God is leading us,” Paton- Evans says, “and no one was more surprised than us when God led us to the CAW, but there you are.”
To some within the United Church of Canada, however, the minister and his journalist wife went astray when they went to Canada’s largest union last fall in search of better working conditions for ministers. The church’s national body, the General Council, pronounced their idea of an organized clergy “not a good fit” for the church. Letter-writers to the United Church Observer, the church’s official magazine, have scolded them for being selfish and immature. But the most unpredictable reactions have come from the very constituency they seek to unite— ministers. A year ago, the ministers’ well-entrenched left and right wings were clannishly squaring off over their moderator’s denunciation of The Passion of the Christ. Now, faced with the unexpected and elemental question of joining a union, ministers from both camps are breaking ranks in a way the United Church has never before seen.
For Paton-Evans, not standing in the way of her husband’s decision to become a minister in 1992 was a big concession. Only a few months earlier, their own minister had to leave their Windsor, Ontario, congregation after suffering a nervous breakdown in front of them in the pulpit. “I was concerned for Jim and I was concerned for us,” says Paton-Evans, who had seen many ministers erode from the pressures of the job during her years of churchgoing.
Her fears were soon realized when Evans began receiving unwanted attention from a high-ranking member of his rural congregation just outside of Woodstock, Ontario. Smitten, the woman phoned him during all hours of the day, and would turn up uninvited at his home and office. When the harassment became too extreme to ignore, Evans demanded a hearing from the presbytery—a regional body composed of clergy and laity that, in the United Church, serves as the equivalent of a bishop. The presbytery relieved him of his pastoral duties for the problem parishioner, but wasn’t prepared to remove her from the congregation or to intervene any further. When police advised him and Paton-Evans to leave the community for their own safety, Evans handed in his notice and set out to look for a new congregation.
“Jim and I are very strong people,” says Paton-Evans, “and we had decided that, OK, we will just regroup and just concentrate on healing and moving forward.”
But then they started feeling the sting of hurtful stories about them the woman was telling in the church community and beyond. Next, people started calling them—not for clarification, but to commiserate. The calls came from ministers and their partners, recounts Paton-Evans, “saying, ‘I don’t know you, but I heard this awful story about you, and I figured out what’s being done to you. I’m going through the same thing,’ or ‘I went through the same thing, and I know that you’re safe to talk to, because you understand.’”
What got to the couple weren’t the repeated reports of power-tripping parishioners or grudge-bearing colleagues. It was listening to ministers speak of the dearth of support they received from the rest of the church—a theme that echoed hollowly throughout all the tales of interpersonal conflict they heard. “We just were so devastated by the abuse, by the lack of institutional response, by the callousness, by the unjustness of it,” Evans says. “We said, ‘We can’t walk away from this. We have to do something.’”
In late 2003, along with ministers David Galston of Hamilton, Ontario, and Del Stewart of Windsor, Ontario, they began investigating the possibility of forming a professional association of United Church clergy. It turned out that several such associations had been formed over the decades to lobby for things like increased compensation and improved benefits, but these associations lacked the resources to sustain themselves, much less to mount any concerted push for change. Looking outside the church for ideas, the four were stunned to learn that clergy in the UK had unionized in 1994, largely because of the same issues the Canadian group had identified. “And that’s when we realized that unionizing was an option,” says Paton-Evans. “That had never occurred to us.”
Galvanized by their epiphany, the group began contacting major Canadian unions. Many of them laughed out loud, says Paton-Evans. “They thought it was hysterical. And others had a hard time taking us seriously or they couldn’t see how it could work.” The exception was their local Canadian Auto Workers’ representative, a transplanted Liverpudlian who knew of the successful campaign to organize clergy in her native UK. She pleaded their case to CAW President Buzz Hargrove, who agreed to hear them out.
Meeting with the group on October 4, 2004, Hargrove was struck not only by the poignancy of the Evans’ story, but also by their parsing of the “363 review”—the process outlined in Section 363 of the United Church’s manual by which a presbytery can remove someone from ministry. “They will call witnesses,” Galston explained, “and you won’t know who those witnesses are, and they’ll tell stories, and they’ll make reports, and they’ll send in documents, and there’s no policy of full disclosure or any advocate for the minister.” All three ministers in the group knew of people who had gone through the review; some, they alleged, for shadowy reasons over which personal politics had plainly loomed.
Hargrove emerged from the meeting a convert, but he and the CAW still had to confirm that an organizing drive among ministers could withstand legal scrutiny. While Paton-Evans deftly fended off the media—managing to persuade producers at Vision TV, who had learned of the story, to hold off breaking it until November—the CAW’s legal department pored over the United Church manual, past cases of ministers who had sued the church, and the vexing legal question of which entity should be considered the employer: the congregations that cut the cheques; the presbyteries that hire and fire ministers; or the church’s national body, the General Council, which oversees policies and procedures and sets the pay scale for ministers. (Ultimately, the CAW would settle on the latter.)
On November 3, the Vision TV current affairs program 360 Vision aired its segment on the Evans’ story, including a clip of Hargrove saying that clergy should be entitled to the protection of a union. The following day, The Globe and Mail ran a front-page article describing the ministers’ discussions with the CAW. All the while, the four anxiously awaited word from the union that it would indeed accept them. Finally, on November 5, they got the news they’d hoped for: If they could secure the necessary workforce support to call for a vote—which, in Ontario, means 40 percent have to sign union cards—and then win at the polls, they were welcome in.
No sooner had that obstacle been cleared, though, than the real challenge began. Within days, the Evans’ started receiving hate mail from other ministers. “Saying that we’re wrong,” sighs Paton-Evans, “that we’re trying to tear the church apart, that we must hate God, or we’ve lost our way, or we’re a bunch of wimps; ‘What did we expect? Jesus told his disciples they would suffer,’ that type of thing. And then vows that ‘I will fight you and your cause with everything I have.’”
Paton-Evans says she wasn’t surprised. Overcoming the geographical distances between them and the 1,000 ministers across Ontario was one thing; overcoming the personal and ideological distances separating ministers was, they understood, something else entirely.
Lois Wilson was attending an event on social justice at the University of Toronto’s Convocation Hall when she overheard the people behind her discussing the union drive. Turning around, the Canadian senator and former United Church moderator interjected, “That’s the daftest idea I’ve ever heard.”
One of the women, a minister she knew, argued that the idea might not be as crazy as it sounded. “Apparently, a paycheque was mislaid or something like that,” says Wilson, “and she thought a union would fix this up. And I said, ‘I don’t think so. I don’t think so.’”
Meanwhile, out in suburban Etobicoke, the chair of Alderwood United Church buttonholed Connie denBok and her co-pastor and asked if they would be picketing in front of the church anytime soon. “Would you bring me hot chocolate if I did?” denBok responded.
“Yeah, I would,” he chuckled, appreciating the wryness of the exchange.
It was the week after Jim Evans and David Galston had signed their union cards on national TV, and the debate was on in the United Church over what to make of their campaign. Debate is a familiar spectacle in this big-tent church, which has grappled with such controversial subjects as abortion, ordaining gays and lesbians, and adopting a less literal interpretation of scripture long before and much more vigorously than many other mainline denominations. But this debate marked a first. For once, it didn’t fall under the customary left-right rules of engagement.
For the organizers, the unusualness of the situation became apparent early on. As co-founders of the SnowStar Institute— a progressive religious think-tank dedicated to re-examining Christianity and other faiths in the context of science and hermeneutics—they recognized many of the names on the first passel of signed union cards as those of like-minded ministers. At the same time, they noticed a parallel stream of cards coming in from ministers whose doctrinal views were diametrically different from their own. “I’m signing my union card,” Paton-Evans says these conservative ministers told her, “because I need to be in an organization collegially with my clergy, where everything’s going to be fair and equitable. As it is now, liberal clergy are discriminating against me because I’m a conservative.”
“That was something we didn’t see coming,” she remarks, “but we were really, really pleased that these people got it—that this isn’t about left or right.”
But while support for the union may be cutting across traditional political lines, so is ambivalence. An avowed evangelical leading a theologically orthodox congregation, denBok knows exactly where she stands on articles of faith. Not so on unionizing.
Many of the organizers’ concerns, especially those surrounding the 363 review, do resonate with her. “In any church discipline situation,” she says, “the risk is that you end up in the hands of a colleague who is something of a bully or who has issues. So politics can certainly play a role in clouding someone’s judgement.” She too claims she can cite instances of ministers being “railroaded” into leaving their ministries—not because of incompetence or abuse of power, she alleges, but because of partisan church politics.
Still, denBok just isn’t sold on the union as the solution, especially as most of the problems it would aim to address hinge on the readiness of human beings to pre-judge others according to their own biases. “The only way you can fix that is to get rid of the people equation,” she declares. “I mean, I’ve also heard of union situations that were not resolved satisfactorily for all parties. If a union were completely dispassionate and non-political, and viewed people without respect to ideology, maybe it could work. But I don’t think that’s true either.”
On that point, the theologically liberal Wilson would concur. “We’re trying to put two systems together, which are different, they just are different,” she says. “Neither system is better than the other. I mean, no system is perfect, because there are people involved. If you just eliminated all the people, there’d be no problem.”
Different, maybe, yet under Wilson’s tenure as moderator, the commonalties between the United Church and organized labour never seemed greater. In the polarizing era of Reaganomics and Thatcherism, she steered the denomination decisively toward the left, publicly allying it with labour on a host of social and economic issues. To this day, she remains venerated within the movement—even serving on the CAW’s public review board, to which union members can appeal when internal disputes arise.
“I know the union movement and I respect it,” Wilson explains, “but that’s an employer-employee relationship and the church is not.”
As proof, she produces her copy of the Basis of Union—the 1925 Act of Parliament that merged the Methodist, Presbyterian and Congregational churches into the United Church of Canada—and points to the question that all would-be ministers must answer in the affirmative: “Will you subject yourself to the oversight and discipline of the United Church of Canada?”
“That’s one of the things you do when you’re ordained,” she says. “You make a covenant, which is different than a contract, and you say, ‘Yes, I will subject myself to the oversight of presbytery.’” Moreover, since the unique nature of ministry remains enshrined in a parliamentary act, Wilson believes that cumbersome legislation may well have to precede a move to unionization.
What complicates any such hard-and-fast reading of the Basis of Union, however, is the church’s own decision to hedge on strict adherence to the 80-year-old document. Ministers need only be in “essential agreement” with its contents—a condition applied with particular magnanimity when it comes to the traditional theological doctrines still embedded in many of its clauses, like the Virgin Birth and Day of Judgment. Because of this tolerance, the SnowStar Institute’s contingent of United Church ministers can readily advance the argument that Jesus was human, and not divine, without fear of losing their status in the church.
“Oh, yes, we all agree to loopholes,” acknowledges Wilson. “That’s our strength and weakness. But this is a vow you take. Sorry. That is not negotiable. The United Church has a strong identity. And people seem to think anything goes. Well, that’s not quite true.”
From her end of the spectrum, denBok doesn’t see it as so clear-cut. “Part of our problem in the United Church is that we have a broad generosity that’s rooted in our DNA,” she notes. “It’s that generosity that said, ‘essential agreement’ with the Basis of Union. But we have taken that generosity to the point where we don’t know where our boundaries are. And I think that’s where the union talk has come in. We’re a church that doesn’t know what we believe, frequently, that doesn’t know what our own ethical standards are, that doesn’t know what our own structural organization is.”
According to denBok, as the big-tent denomination opened itself up to an ever-airier concept of what it was, the hierarchy got carried away with swapping old-fashioned religious beliefs for a secularized activist agenda—making the church more akin to Greenpeace, she suggests, than to other Christian denominations. Without realizing it, she contends, they were asking for this union drive: “Because if we’re a secular organization, why don’t we take a secular approach? And if it’s a secular organization, why on Earth would a secular organization wish to keep a union out?”
In real life, though, rhetorical questions don’t lead to viable answers to her uncertainty over unionization. All that a union could do, she suspects, “is make the hierarchy standardize rules for everybody.” Yet for denBok and her congregation, “the less interference we have from the hierarchy, the happier we are.”
So the organizers’ task of achieving solidarity seems destined to be a thankless one. As denBok remarks, “It’s not so much that we’re united or divided. We’re mostly oblivious to each other.”
At the tail end of February, Galston and Stewart arrived at the Best Western Inn in Kingston, Ontario— the final stop on the initial phase of their clergy union drive. It had been a long, cold four months. In the empty conference room booked for them by the CAW, the lanky, professorial Galston stretched out in a chair, looking tired but not beaten. “Over the last little while,” he said, “I’ve had my faith questioned, my motives attacked.”
But even more frustrating than these reflexive responses was the utter obliviousness of many ministers to the organizers’ efforts. Sometimes—as on this evening—it seemed almost studied. Not a single minister showed up to learn more about what unionization would mean for them or the church. Instead, Galston and Stewart used the downtime to prepare for their upcoming meeting of the Jesus Seminar, an international group of scholars famous (or infamous, depending on one’s perspective) for voting on the historical veracity of the gospels.
The next morning, at their second informational session, they got a slightly bigger turnout: Elizabeth Macdonald, whom Stewart knew in passing as a theologically liberal minister, a feminist and a lesbian with a partner also in ministry. Telegraphing from the outset that she wasn’t keen on unionizing, she explained: “My solidarity is in showing up.”
To this audience of one, Galston tried to present the case for a union: the apparent increase in 363 reviews; the lack of protection for ministers faced with abuse or bullying; the conflicts of interest and politicking that play out in almost every disciplinary proceeding of the church.
In response, Macdonald offered the same observation made by many other ministers from various vantages within the church: “I don’t see that there’s any guarantee of protection with a collective agreement that you’re still not going to have with a human dynamic.”
“I just want to say one word,” stated Galston. “Clarity. I think the union will bring clarity to the situation.”
Macdonald asked how.
By holding the church accountable to clearly defined procedures, Galston said. “One of the misperceptions has been that the union will protect the minister when they’re guilty. No. If they’re guilty, they’re guilty.”
“But what if it’s not about guilt?” Macdonald pressed. “What it it’s about a broken relationship?” For she didn’t believe, she told him, “that ordination gives me some claim to the pulpit. It’s a relational agreement that those people come and I have the privilege of preaching in their midst.”
“And they have the privilege of hearing you speak,” added Stewart, who wore a denim shirt bearing the CAW logo.
Recounting Jim Evans’s story, Galston explained how “there was no vehicle for Jim to put pressure on the church. And there’s no opportunity for me to express solidarity. If there were a clergy union, we could have put pressure on the church to do something.”
Macdonald asked why Evans’s colleagues didn’t come out en masse at a presbytery meeting to demand justice for him. Why not do that, instead of fight for a union, which could end up forcing smaller churches to close by demanding an across-theboard wage increase for ministers?
Would that be such a bad thing? Stewart wondered aloud. “I know I’m being radical,” he said, adding that ministers might be better paid if languishing congregations had to consolidate resources “instead of paying $5,000 a month to heat empty buildings.”
“You don’t sound radical to me at all,” Macdonald responded. “You sound like a suit, Mr. CEO: ‘I know what’s right for you people and it doesn’t matter where you are or your experience in your faith journey.’”
Galston emphasized that a union wouldn’t be a foreign entity within the church: “it will be by ministers, for ministers.”
Macdonald retorted that she couldn’t agree with “this notion of those engaged in ministry as set apart and sharing more in relation with each other than with the communities they serve.”
Joining a union is “allowing me to negotiate a covenant that’s real and effective,” Galston countered. “That’s what I mean by clarity.”
But there wasn’t to be any clarity at this meeting. After more than an hour of arguing with Galston and Stewart, Macdonald departed—leaving behind the pamphlets and union card they’d handed her.
Galston admits that organizing the clergy could take years. Still, he refuses to quit. And the CAW has committed itself to supporting the organizers for the long haul—all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, in fact, if the United Church does ultimately decide to launch a legal challenge.
Those opposed to unionization sound just as adamant. “If it goes to employee-employer, I quit. Oh yeah. I’m not interested,” says Wilson, adding, “Well, I’ll wait and see.”
Ever the activist, she relates how she’s been asking anyone who might know “Do I have a vote so I can vote against this? So I can mobilize all the retired ministers to vote against it?” The General Council office told her yes: One never truly retires from ministry. But the CAW says no: Retired ministers must be working on contract or as supply ministers to be eligible to vote.
“This could be quite an issue,” Wilson says. “Again it’s apples and oranges, which the union doesn’t understand because the church has a different system.”
Wilson doesn’t deny that a lot of people have been done a disservice by the church. “I think all of us have experienced some of that,” she says. “What I’m saying is that no system is perfect: We’re looking for better systems all the time. But the way to change it is established.”
DenBok is more skeptical of the system’s ability to right itself. “There’s no question that we have ministers who have been badly mistreated by the system,” she says, “and that the system is not very good at policing itself, and that people within the system who have power are not particularly self-conscious in the use of that power.”
Rather than attracting ministers to the organizers’ cause, though, the problematic realities of the church could end up keeping them away. As the organizers embarked on their campaign’s second phase this spring, speaking before presbyteries, one minister furtively told Paton-Evans he didn’t come out on their earlier visit because an anti-union parishioner had threatened to park in front of the meeting hall and make a list of ministers he saw entering. (Such intimidation tactics can’t be censured by the labour board, as the CAW has identified the General Council, not congregations, as the ministers’ employer.) Others have declared that they distrust their colleagues too much to stand shoulder to shoulder in a union with them. Most damaging of all, perhaps, few pro-union ministers other than the organizers have been willing to publicly voice their support—allowing the General Council’s insinuations that there’s scant backing for a union to slowly harden into a form of unwritten dogma.
“If there were really a groundswell of support…” muses den- Bok, without teasing out the thought, concluding, “the consensus is this isn’t going anywhere, and for the people who are the organizers, it’s going to be hard for them in the church.”
Against this self-fulfilling prophecy, Jim Evans and Karen Paton-Evans like to summon up their own sense of prophetic mission. “We do believe God called Jim to this,” reiterates Paton- Evans, “and though most days I would have dearly loved if Jim had left the ministry, and we could just get back to our sane lives, I do believe we’re here for a reason, and maybe this is it.”
“When I’m exhausted,” says Evans, “when I’m tired and thinking, ‘Oh boy, do I really have any energy for this?’ someone calls and says, ‘Thank you for doing this. You’ve given me hope. My prayers are with you and the team, hang in there.’”
In the end, it all comes down to faith.
“This will go,” insists Paton-Evans. “This will go. Absolutely.”
