Archbishop Mark MacDonald on sin, baptism, & remains of 215 children found at residential school

The Archbishop calls upon Western society and Christianity - including his own Anglican church - to place less emphasis on individual sin and more emphasis on corporate and systemic sin, a view in keeping with Indigenous understandings. Perhaps then, churches, including his, would become more accountable for what they did or could do collectively or as institutions. For example, many Christians acknowledge that the 215 children were baptized, and thus made formal members of the churches concerned. But few Christians acknowledge that even baptism was not enough to have the children listed in a parish register - something that would have at least prevented their deaths from going unrecorded in Kamloops. The churches lost sight of the children’s very humanity. “If this is your worldview, you’re in trouble,” he says in the video recorded on June 3, 2021, during a graduate class at Carleton University's MPNL program.