The traditional First Nations practice of “listening circles” has Catholic and Protestant Christian church leaders around the world rethinking how they make decisions and relate to the people in their pews.
The World Council of Churches’ general secretary, Rev. Dr. Jerry Pillay, took part in his first Canadian listening circle while visiting Canada for the 80th anniversary of the Canadian Council of Churches in early December.
“I was just so overwhelmed by the engaging style and methodology that was used,” said Pillay, a South African Presbyterian minister and theology professor who heads up the Geneva-based, global organization. “The passing of the feather to each person to receive and to speak with no interruption, and to share their story, was just so powerful — so powerful, indeed.”
Pillay says he was already familiar with the dynamic of listening circles from the council’s engagement with Indigenous communities around the world, and his experience of the South African Truth and Reconciliation process, which investigated human rights abuses that occurred during apartheid.
“Coming from South Africa, in the villages they use the same model — where they will sit around in circles, where they will have conversations, and people will share,” he said.
“They deal with very strong, serious topics. But they do it in such a civilized way, in such a peaceable way. So, I think there’s a lot to learn from the Indigenous communities, especially models in terms of how you make decisions … [and] find solutions.”
Listening circles also played a central role in the design of the Catholic Church’s just-completed Synod on Synodality, a three-year process of listening and dialogue on the culture of the Church. As Canadian Affairs previously reported, that process began with “listening meetings” with church members at the local or regional level — the first Catholic synod to be conducted this way.
Sr. Nathalie Becquart, synod designer and undersecretary of the Vatican department in charge of synods, said in a 2022 interview that she was inspired by an experience of listening circles on Manitoulin Island, Ont., in 2021.
“It’s a way for this listening church to get together with the idea that everybody is a protagonist,” said Becquart. “As Pope Francis says, nobody is a mere extra. Everybody has to be a protagonist.”
Inspired in part by listening circles in Canada, the Synod on Synodality presented the novel sight of cardinals, archbishops and even the Pope sitting in circles on an equal footing with lay people, religious sisters and non-Catholics. Participants carefully listened to different points of view offered up in the context of prayer and contemplation.
“To put it in a nutshell, I say synodality is about getting rid of the pattern of domination to go to a pattern of co-operation,” Becquart said. “This is the vision of Indigenous people.”
Professor Catherine Clifford agrees that Canadian Indigenous experience was an important part of the Catholic synod.
“We can and are learning from the Indigenous practice of the listening circle,” said Clifford, who teaches at St. Paul University in Ottawa and is a leading expert on the nature of the church. “It is one of many models for conversation in the spirit.”
Noah MacDonald, an Anishinaabe canon lawyer and PhD candidate at the Jesuit-run Regis College in the University of Toronto, finds hope in the spread of listening circles into the global church.
“It makes room for marginalized voices, where they won’t normally be heard,” he said. “By marginalized voices I don’t mean just those on the peripheries, but specifically women and lay people.”
MacDonald, who is from Michipicoten First Nation in Northern Ontario, pinpoints the origin of listening circles as a formalized, sacred practice in Anishinaabe culture.
“Listening circles aren’t just a way to get ideas. They’re often quite sacred and used in ceremonial events. A sweat lodge is always done in a circle. That is where some of the deepest sharing, most intimate exchanges of knowledge and of wants, desires and hopes and beliefs are shared,” MacDonald said.
For MacDonald, it does not seem strange or unlikely that non-Indigenous congregations in Canada might start to use the listening circle model, now that it has been used at the Vatican in the largest consultation of Catholics in history.
At the same time, MacDonald recognizes there are countervailing forces. “[Bishops] are under some obligation to listen,” he said. “But thousands of years of tradition tells them that they don’t necessarily have to. It’s changing that mindframe.”
But MacDonald believes listening circles are well suited to a global church that encompasses thousands of cultures from Africa to the Arctic.
“Sitting in a circle and listening isn’t just Anishinaabe, it’s cross-cultural,” he said. “But it’s more than that. It’s deeply human … If anything, it’s a return to tradition. It’s a return to the most basic human tradition of sitting together and listening. It’s something that transcends culture.”
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