Author urges resisting efforts to clean up ‘image routes’

Last month, city Coun. Jeff Browaty proposed banning encampments along what he called “image routes” like the Disraeli Freeway just before Main Street, along with Pembina Highway, McPhillips Street, St. Mary’s and St. Anne’s roads, Kenaston Boulevard and Regent Avenue.

The reason he gave for the proposal was safety, and also for esthetics — they make Winnipeg look bad.

The question left hanging seemed clear: Who wants to see encampments on the side of the road on their way to work, shopping or to see a movie?

An editorial in this newspaper discounted Browaty’s proposal, suggesting it was more about optics than addressing the issue of safety — out of sight, out of mind. And, if applied, all it would do is move encampments to another part of the city and make it someone else’s problem.

Like the editorial writer, David Driedger isn’t in favour of the councillor’s idea.

When it comes to encampments, Driedger, lead minister at First Mennonite Church in Winnipeg’s West End, doesn’t think moving them to less visible locations is the solution. Instead, those tents and tarps and shopping carts should be seen because they might be showing us a way to salvation.

That’s the argument he makes in his new book Nothing Will Save Us: A Theology of Immeasurable Life (Pandora Press).

According to Driedger, the “nothing” he refers to in the title are those people and places often seen as being of no importance. Yet these “nothings” in the eyes of society are people loved by God. Not only that, they can hold the key to spiritual well being for people of faith — if they only pay attention.

“I want to call us to pay attention to those who are regarded as nothing in the eyes of the world,” said Driedger, adding that he isn’t trying to romanticize the poor or poverty. “Everyone is created by God, and we can see God in everyone and everything.”

Through the book, which is aimed at Christians, Driedger argues that these “nothing” places are where people can encounter God, discover truth and see how some structures of society are set up in such a way that some people, despite their best efforts, simply can’t move forward or get ahead.

Citing the Old Testament prophets who “proclaimed that every king, regardless of his actions, caused the people to sin,” Driedger says structural sins like the old regulations that required Indigenous children to be sent to residential schools continue to have consequences that can be seen on the streets of Canadian cities today.

Driedger’s challenge to Christians is to not only support charities like food banks and soup kitchens, but to also think about how laws and structures that disadvantage and oppress certain segments of society can be changed.

This includes laws that impact sex workers. When Driedger asked to meet with some, they were at first surprised a pastor wanted to talk with them. During the meeting, they spoke about the dangers of criminalizing their work, the lack of police protection and the Church’s tendency to either “rescue” or condemn them, instead of listening to them.

In the book, Driedger compares their experiences to the women in the Gospel of Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus. They were also women who transgressed social and sexual norms — people like Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba — in order to survive, but who are not discounted when it comes to telling the story of Jesus.

Driedger goes on to wonder if Christians today can find ways to not discount women caught up in sex work, but to hear their voices and stories instead of judging them.

The book is rooted in Winnipeg, using Winnipeg examples. For Driedger, that’s also a good illustration of what he means about being overlooked and underestimated. “Winnipeg seems neither small town nor big city, often discounted as nothing by insiders and outsiders alike,” he said.

The same goes for the West End, where he lives and which he loves. “Like many discounted neighbourhoods and their real challenges, there remains something welcoming and inclusive about the West End, resisting the measures of the upwardly mobile,” he said.

Overall, the book is a reminder to Christians to take seriously what the Apostle Paul writes in the second chapter of Philippians. That’s where he says that although Jesus was in the very nature of God, he did not use that to his advantage but rather “made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant.” (New International Version.)

Similarly, Driedger said, Christians should also “empty themselves” of their preconceived ideas and stereotypes about people who are poor and marginalized in order to truly see and hear those who are seen as “nothing” in this world.

And, for him, that would include resisting efforts to clean up “image routes” in the city of Winnipeg.

faith@freepress.mb.ca

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