We have a gospel to proclaim, with people of an ancient land
When Captain Phillip arrived in 1788 to establish a British penal colony, this continent we now call Australia was the home of an indigenous people.
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They occupied all of the continent, had a complex religious and social system, spoke over 600 languages and dialects, traded across vast distances and had regular contact with people from Indonesia.
It is likely that indigenous people had been here for 50,000 years, and their lifestyle varied from hunting and gathering to settled villages and gardens. In short, there was the same complexity and variation in social life as in any community in the world.
Yet the British claimed ownership without treaty, recognition of prior occupation, or declaration of war (though there were skirmishes, armed resistance and murders). They justified occupation with a racist ideology about primitive people, and this racism has continued to shape the way indigenous people are seen and treated in Australia.
Today, indigenous people live in the same variety of situations that they always have. Some live lives that are close to those they lived when Europeans invaded the land. Others live urbanised lives almost indistinguishable from their neighbours, and the majority seek to find an indigenous identity that is different to 200 years ago, yet clearly indigenous.
What indigenous people share in common is the experience of having been robbed of their land, of being subject on a regular basis to racism, of living with the legacy of the Stolen Generations, of high levels of unemployment, high infant death levels, lower life expectancy, high imprisonment rates, and a great deal of poverty.
The Church has shared in that history. It has participated in the racism, in the taking of the children, in control of people’s lives as if they were children. Yes, the Church has brought the gift of the gospel, but far too often this was a white gospel tied to the trappings of white society.
Twenty-one years ago
the Uniting Church sought to recognise this history as it established the Uniting
Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress (UAICC).
Congress brought together
the various ministries with and among indigenous people, and placed the oversight
of those ministries in the hands of indigenous people. Congress continues to exist
as a way of encouraging indigenous people to be a sign of the Kingdom or reign
of God, a people of holistic evangelism, a people with the ability for self-determination
and access to support and resources.
In 1988 the Assembly began a process of covenanting between the UAICC and other parts of the Uniting Church. The Covenant, established in July 1994, expressed a commitment to a relationship which would enable Congress to have oversight of ministry and to share in the struggle for a more just and equitable society.
Yet, however grand the intention, the experience of Congress has been that the structures and actions of the church have not given them appropriate control of ministry, access to resources, or a proper voice in the councils of the church.
Racism still marks our life together.
We are faced with three challenges as we consider our relationship together inside the Uniting Church.
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First, how do indigenous people reflect more consciously on what it means to be indigenous Christian people, to consider how the understanding of God which is found in land, sacred story and ritual and the story of their oppression over the last 200 years relates to the good news found in Jesus Christ?
That is, how can indigenous people affirm their identity as indigenous people and as Christians, and how can their land and history be sources for knowing about God?
This is a task that indigenous Christians must pursue, and all that others of us can do is provide encouragement and resources for this to occur.
There is work being done. For example, the Rev. Djiniyini Gondarra has been writing on indigenous theology for many years. Wontulp-Bi-Buya College in Queensland has recently published Milbi Dabaar, a resource book for those seeking to do theology from an indigenous perspective (edited by David Thompson).
Norman Habel has acted as translator and editor for the Rainbow Spirit Elders as they published The Rainbow Spirit in Creation: A Reading of Genesis 1 (The Liturgical Press, 2000).
The second challenge is how the church engages in theology, in a conversation about God and the saving work of Jesus Christ, about the Holy Spirit, the church and Christian life, when we exist on indigenous land and as heirs of colonial occupation.
What difference does it make to the way in which we are church that we take seriously our relationship with indigenous people?
This is not simply an issue of justice, of the need to ensure that we work for a just community in the face of the experiences of indigenous people. It is the question of how a church that has shared a colonial history is able to answer the question: who is Jesus Christ for us in this place and in this time? What does a truly contextual theology look like in Australia?
The theological issue at stake is one of redemption, healing, wholeness, reconciliation and forgiveness. It is about the ability to live with integrity, with coherence between what we say about Christ and how we live.
This is not the same task as the first. It is not the task of speaking a theology that addresses indigenous people, but of finding words to speak in the light of indigenous experience. It is a task and burden for those of us who recognise indigenous people as the “first people” of this land, and ourselves as those who have come after.
Yet it is a task that must be done with indigenous people as mentors, guides and companions.
Later this year (September 19-23) there will be an Intensive Course at United Theological College that will provide an opportunity for people to explore further the experience of indigenous people, the task of doing theology, and what theology might look like if we take seriously the culture, experience and history of indigenous people.
The course will explore questions like:
How does this experience touch the way we understand God, and how we know God?
In what way is the indigenous experience of colonialism and oppression able to reveal new things about God?
How do we interpret scripture in the light of this context?
How do we understand the saving necessity of Jesus in the light of indigenous life?
How does theology take seriously the pervasive existence of racism?
How do we understand the life of the church?
What social and political issues are at the heart of the gospel when seen in the light of this experience?
The third task is that of renewing the Covenant, the commitment made between Congress and the Uniting Church to walk together as equals. The issue of Covenant raises the question of how the church is to relate to indigenous people so that our relationship reflects our following of Christ.
The call to Covenant reminds us, as a church, that we need to deal with the claim of indigenous Christians that they are not only the original inhabitants of this land, but they also were placed here by God. They know God in their land, and in the stories that speak of relationships, law and meaning.
What holds us in the covenant relationship is our shared belief in Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour, in the gracious hospitality of God that forever seeks people and calls them into relationship, and in the new life found in him.
As the Basis of Union says:
“The Church preaches
Christ the risen crucified One and confesses him as Lord to the glory of God the
Father. In Jesus Christ ‘God was reconciling the world to himself’ (2
Corinthians 5:19 RSV). In love for the world, God gave the Son to take away the
world’s sin.” (Paragraph 3)
The nature of God is community, the three persons of the Trinity in joyful, dancing inter-action. To be made in the image of this God is not simply about individual worth, but is about the way we exist as a community of people who reflect God’s loving, just and open life in the world.
To follow this God, to share faith in this God as we do, means we will build relationships based on cooperation and sharing and the desire to struggle together, rather than on hierarchical power and the need to force others to follow our way and will.
The relationships we build
will reflect the God who suffered in Jesus Christ.
It will be a relationship
that reflects the desire and heart of God for hospitality, for making space for
the life of others, for the welcoming of others into our lives in generous ways.
Covenanting is about divine hospitality, and not simply organisational change and new structures.
Covenanting is about justice, the sort of redistributive justice that is central to the scriptures. It is justice that speaks of the shift of resources of power and wealth from the rich and powerful to the poor and oppressed in order to create a fair and equitable society that reflects the Kingdom of God.
In seeking to renew the Covenant, we cannot simply speak nicely of our relationship and care for each other. There needs to be a serious conversation about how we honour indigenous people as “first people” in the Church, how Congress’ voice is heard and respected, how resources are shared, how structures allow and encourage mission.
A conversation about the renewal of Covenant, and what this means for the life of the Uniting Church, was begun after the last Assembly. It was a conversation initiated by the Synod and Assembly general secretaries (on behalf of the Assembly Standing Committee) and the Congress. Resources are being prepared and will be made available later this year in order to encourage a conversation to occur across the whole church.
Indigenous theology, theology and faith expressed in the light of indigenous life, and Covenant — these are three issues that the church needs to explore as it seeks to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ in a land occupied by people from an ancient culture and by those who have just arrived. +
The Rev. Dr Chris Budden has had a long association with indigenous people. Involved in the formation of the Congress in the Northern Synod, he also took part in the land rights movement and wrote his DMin on the challenge provided to the church by indigenous people at the time of the bicentennial (1988). Active with New South Wales Congress, he also has been writing on Covenant, and helping to plan the upcoming UTC course on theology on indigenous land.