Author Archive
Challenges Facing the Anglican Church in Australia
Bishop Peter Brain spoke at a meeting of EFAC WA in Perth on 12 March 2012. His talk entitled, Challenges facing the Anglican Church in Australia, is available here. It includes a question time which covers some discussion of the “marriage” debate.
Have you got any shroves?
Do you know where to get some shroves? It seems they are quite hard to obtain nowadays. Even our customer caring supermarkets don’t have them on sale. Chocolate E**ster eggs, Hot cross (shouldn’t that be crossed?) buns, chocolate festive rabbits have all been there for ages – but no shroves.
I heard a rumour (but didn’t believe it) that some churches have shrove processions. They gather up all the shroves and put them in a paper bag and burn them. Seems a waste.
Actually I have never seen a shrove, but it would be good to get some for Shrove Tuesday. Otherwise all we will have are pancakes. Mind you the pancakes at our church are very good. Or at least the fillings are. Can you fill a pancake? You can cover it, swamp it, drown it, I suppose. Get your fingers, face, shirt all covered with yummy runny… what do you prefer on your pancakes? Sweet sickly treacly honey? Spicy scary chilli mince? Warm watery fishy dishes?
So many yummy things. And all being eaten on Shrove Tuesday as though there was never going to be any more. Maybe the shroves have got something to do with the pancakes. After all Shrove Tuesday is also called Pancake Tuesday. In French it is called Fat Tuesday (or it would be if the French spoke English).
I think perhaps shroves must be the kind of things you use to make pancakes. Fat, butter, eggs, sugar, flour. In the olden days people used up all their shroves so that after Pancake Tuesday there were no shroves left. It’s as though they wanted to clean out their pantry. One reason of course is they weren’t allowed to eat any of this kind of food until Easter.
It was a very serious time. I think they took their Christianity very seriously. Cleaning out their pantry and not eating the yummy food for a while was a kind of pretend game. But there was another non-pretend game being played inside their hearts. What they really wanted to do was have their hearts cleaned out.
Maybe that’s what a shrove is. Maybe it’s the stuff that gets cleaned out of your heart. If so it’s no wonder you can’t buy any at the supermarket (who would want to buy it?). Cleaning out the pantry and making pancakes needs a good cook. Cleaning out the heart needs a Saviour.
Christians and Indigenous Politics
More ignorance from a beginner. My reading of the books I have commented on in recent posts is that a significant change in the debate has taken place in the last decade. It is significant that much of the change of opinion has come from anthropologists and others who once held a different view.
The thing that has surprised some on the Left is that the Welfare-Rights paradigm appears to have overseen a significant decline in quality of life for Aborigines in remote communities. The suggestions as to how to reverse this are varied, although there is a kind of consensus that the younger generation is the key, and education and the life they are taught is crucial.
Christians have been involved in Aboriginal affairs from the time of white settlement. They have had a varied report card, but increasingly there is recognition that their role has generally been positive and in some cases crucial to the preservation of Indigenous life and culture.
It is possible that those who live in the southern cities will hear little about all this. And those who have a heart for it will be working away at it somewhere else. Political persuasion was a crucial part of the establishment of Christian work in Northern Australia. No doubt there are Christian politicians with a heart for Indigenous brothers and sisters. But the public debate is wider than politicians.
Two recent books have pointed the way. In the last chapter of “One Land One Saviour”*, John Harris makes a strong plea for urgent action to help Aboriginal churches. In general, whether it is missionaries or Government Interveners, consulting and listening, he says, is the crucial starting point (p 234).
Murray Seiffert’s “Refuge on the Roper”**, also has a final chapter in which he begins to reflect on the issues connected with the Intervention (p139).
But my feeling is that more is needed in the public debate from the point of view of Christians (Indigenous and non-Indigenous) who know about these things.
*Peter Carroll & Steve Etherington (eds), One Land, One Saviour: Seeing Aboriginal lives transformed by Christ. CMS Australia 2008. ISBN 9780947316051
** Murray Seiffert, Refuge on the Roper : The Origins of Roper River Mission, Ngukurr. Acorn Press, 2008. ISBN: 0908284675.
Up from the Mission
I have to confess that Noel Pearson is one of my favourite writers. This collection of writings* brings together various speeches and articles from roughly the mid 990’s through to 2008.
The first part has some memories of his origins at Hope Vale and some of the characters who were part of that community. The paper, “Anthropology and Tradition”, from 1987 was already highlighting both the alienation many Aboriginal people felt from white society as well the “exploitation and parasitism” that continued within Aboriginal societies. This exploitation depended on myths which have been created and perpetuated by anthropologists and other white ‘experts’ (p23). Myths that have been internalised by Aborigines, especially with regard to alcohol and Aboriginal identity.
The second part, “Fighting Old Enemies”, contains lectures an papers to do with land rights, Native Title, Mabo, and include a strong paper related to the 2002 ‘Yorta Yorta’ High Court decision which in Pearson’s view “misinterpreted the definition of native title under the Native Title Act” (p100). Some valuable historical and legal reflections here.
The third part, “Challenging Old Friends”, contains a variety of papers related to the passive welfare debate. Pearson was one of the first to draw attention to the failure of the welfare system and its contribution to the terrible state of remote communities. These lectures and papers all date from 2000 and later and form a crucial deposit of intellectual and social debate on this vexed question.
The fourth part, “The Quest for a Radical Centre”, includes a paper discussing black rights in the US, Barack Obama and the situation in Australia. It also contains articles about Cape York and more on passive welfare. This from 2007 is typical, “In an article about the Aurukun rape case, academic Marcia Langton wrote, ‘It would be a fair bet that each of the adults who pleaded guilty to raping this child was receiving a government social security or Community Development Employment Program payment. It is difficult not to draw the conclusion that dysfunctional Aboriginal behaviour is financially supported by government funding.’ Langton identified the nub of the problem in remote communities: government funds dysfunctional behaviour and there is no connection between what a person or a community does and the income they receive. Money for nothing – passive welfare – is in the long term corrosive.” (p287). Other articles include the Intervention, and Jobs and Homes.
The last part, “Our Place in the Nation”, includes articles about people hood, identity and language. He also take issue with both sides of the political debate and again pleads for an economic development paradigm.
Not included in the collection is the2009 Quarterly Essay, “Radical Hope”**. Pearson’s thesis is that “Our hope is dependent upon education.” (p11). And education depends on good teachers. Not those with good personalities and inspiring pastoral relationships, but those who are effective instructors. This is a big part of Pearson’s thesis. He strongly promotes Direct Instruction, a teaching method that goes back to Ziggy Englelmann.
Controversial as you might expect, but stimulating and challenging and written by someone who has worked hard to try these idea out in his Cape York Institute. This is an essay worth reading – and not only by educators.
*Noel Pearson, Up From the Mission: Selected Writings. Black Inc 2009. ISBN 9781863954280
**Noel Pearson, Radical Hope: Education and Equality in Australia. Quarterly Essay Issue 35, 2009. ISBN 9781863954440
Ngukurr: a Special Remote Community
A long time ago I had the privilege of visiting Ngukurr a couple of times to do some Bible Studies with the translators who were working on the Kriol Bible. It is an historical place because of how it developed as a place of refuge and also because of its strategic location in relation to nearby Communities, such as Numbulwar, and the Communities on Groote Island.
A couple of recent books have added to the history of this fascinating place.
We are Aboriginal. Our 100 years: from Arnhem Land’s first mission to Ngukurr today. Published by St Matthew’s Church Ngukurr 2008. (ISBN 978 1 875126 26 2) and available from Acorn Press. This is a book by the people of Ngukurr. It is their story about their country, their people, their languages and their main modern language, Kriol. It tells their history of how the tribes came together at Ngukurr in the face of the systematic slaughter being carried out by white men. It traces the different eras in the mission times (1908 – 1940; 1940 -1968). Here is eye-witness, source document, history from the people who lived in these places and times. It also deals with the last 40 years and discusses land rights, education and the Kriol Bible. The book also contains a DVD.
It is not just a book that celebrates an anniversary. It can also be read over against the various writings that criticise the work of missions amongst Aboriginal people. This book is not a whitewash, but it does give the view of those who lived and experienced the mission (and the subsequent non-mission) eras from the inside.
By contrast is a report called Ngukurr at the Millennium: A Baseline Profile for Social Impact Planning in South-East Arnhem Land, by J. Taylor, J. Bern, and K.A. Senior, published in 2000 by CAEPR ANU as Research Monograph No. 18 (ISBN 0 7315 5102 8). Available here as a pdf. This is “a largely synchronic social statistical analysis” of the community of Ngukurr. It “comes after a generation of self management and land rights and immediately prior to the possibility of major introduced economic development based on mineral exploitation.” (p iv). It is meant as a baseline study against which later studies would be able to assess the impact of large scale mining on the community.
There are some valuable insights in the report. However it seems generally to correspond with reports of other remote communities and indicates a general level of dysfunction across most categories of social and life well-being. It thus reinforces and is consistent with the kind of discussions found in Sutton and Austin-Broos for example.
If this is too depressing, I am looking forward to reading Murray Seiffert’s book, Refuge on the Roper : The Origins of Roper River Mission, Ngukurr. Acorn Press, 2008 (ISBN: 0908284675).
He has also just published Gumbuli Of Ngukurr: Aboriginal elder in Arnhem Land, Acorn Press, 2011 (098713292X). While tracing the story of this remarkable leader, the blurbs indicate that the book also takes up the recent issues of health, education, welfare and so on. Looks like a must read.
A Different Inequality
Diane Austin-Broos is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Anthropology at Sydney University. Her book, A Different Inequality* continues the discussion about remote Aboriginal life. The book is about cultural difference and inequality in the context of a debate that has often been ideological and inadequate.
She has two dialogue partners. One is her own group of anthropologists and the associated group she calls “humanistic social sciences’ , history and indigenous studies for example. This group she thinks has left a space in the debate due “to a failure in critical thought among anthropologists”. (p8) The other is the group of opinion writers “whose pronouncements were not always well informed.” (p8), and who have filled the space left empty by the first group.
The inequality that is described in the book “is that which began to unfold once Aboriginal Australians were encapsulated in a European-derived state and became increasingly positioned by a capitalist economy.” (p10) But the nature of that inequality and how it should be described is what is at issue.
The book has helpful chapters (‘background briefings’) on culture and ethnology, the postcolonial critique, the opposition to separate development (“remote communities had become sites of pathology and suffering” p23), and on the issues to do with land rights.
Austin-Broos argues for a new way of describing the tension between cultural difference and inequality. Has the traditional way of describing remote Aboriginal communities become a kind of abstraction, an ideal concept that does not accurately describe the reality? She sees that the remote communities debate was polarised quite early (p138). The pathology of suffering in remote communities brought some out on the side of government welfare and intervention (the ‘rights-pathology axis’). Others such as Noel Pearson maintained that the main actor in development is the individual not the government.
Austin-Broos seeks a way through these complex debates about cultural difference , marginalisation, poverty, and issues within the culture including violence and the circulation of goods through the kinship network (rather than accumulating them).
She sees political debate focussed on two issues: the maintenance of self-sufficient communities and hybrid economies; and human rights and their restoration in the light of the NT intervention. Austin-Broos thinks these politics are limited. She argues against separatism. She says, “…I propose to add a further dimension to a politics that does support land rights, human rights and appropriate development. I refer to widespread, forceful and persistent support for mainstream primary education on remote communities.” (p159)
Austin-Broos has a nuanced approach, consistent with Sutton and Pearson, with a strong emphasis on primary education as well as giving a voice to the people in remote communities. Clearly written for the choir (in the hope that they will sing together), it is accessible to those on the outside and provides a very helpful education for those trying to make sense of the debates.
*Diane Austin-Broos, A Different Inequality: The politics of debate about remote Aboriginal Australia. Allen & Unwin. 2011. ISBN 9781742370491
The Politics of Suffering
The Politics of Suffering
I have been catching up on my reading about Indigenous issues (starting again might be a better way to put it). I thought I should share some of it in the hope that those who know more might add their wisdom, since the church and Christians have a share in the history but may be unsure how best to contribute in the present confusing debate. Certainly I am unsure. I have lived as an adult through many of the defining moments in changes in relations between Indigenous people and the majority population. Although I voted in the 1967 referendum, many of the terrible events that have happened since then have passed me by (been ignored by me/were unknown to me).
In 2000 Peter Sutton gave a lecture in Perth that signalled a watershed in new and more realistic discussions about indigenous policy (although he credits Noel Pearson with getting the discussion going in the late 90s). It was such a momentous speech that it developed into a book*, now in its second edition.
Sutton is a linguist and anthropologist who has spent a lot of time in indigenous communities, particularly Aurukun, since the 1970s.
His book has aroused a lot of controversy, partly, he says, because of his “unqualified position that a number of the serious problems Indigenous people face in Australia today arise from a complex joining together of recent, that is post-conquest, historical factors of external impact, with a substantial number of ancient, pre-existent social and cultural factors that have continued, transformed or intact, into the lives of people living today. The main way these factors are continued is through child-rearing.” (p7)
The book represents a turning away from the simplistic idea that Indigenous disadvantage arose merely from external impacts, particularly the colonial invasion, and that it can be helped by the victims being given various kinds of support. What has brought about a change of mind is the overwhelming evidence that, in the period of massive welfare support, the key indicators of quality of life have consistently continued to decline.
Sutton gives a very helpful review of the recent history of policy debates and government action. He discusses community violence, culture, rage, the way old practices have been transformed by modern pressures, and grapples with issues of integration and separation. He puts forward many radical and controversial suggestions about a realistic way forward. He has a wonderful chapter called “Unusual Couples” in which he relates some of the impact of relationships between Indigenous and European partners, including Biraban and Lancelot Threlkeld. He has a balanced and sympathetic view of much mission work, and his comments complement and are consistent with John Harris’ One Blood.
He concludes with a chapter called “Feeling Reconciled”. Reconciliation is a relational category. It may require a retreat from legal racism, he says. Removing “race itself as a legal category of distinction in Australian Law and bureaucracy.” (p212) It will require new thinking about national oneness on the part of both Aborigines and Whitefellas. In passing he notes the very high percentage of Indigenous people marrying non-Indigenous.
It is an amazing and forthright book. Beginners like me would benefit greatly by reading it. In another blog I will comment on some other recent books in the field.
*Peter Sutton, The Politics of Suffering: Indigenous Australia and the end of the liberal consensus. Melbourne University Press. 2011. ISBN 9780522858716
John Stott – some memories
John Stott taught me my first Greek phrase, “ouk engkakoumen” (“we do not lose heart” 2 Cor 4.1). He repeated it a number of times during Bible Studies at a CMS Summer School I attended when I was a teenager. It gave me an incentive to learn more of the Greek alphabet than I had already learnt in maths, so I could read the words myself.
However the great impact of the Bible studies was the clarity of the exposition. It was orderly, and it drew out what was in the text. Indeed it gently teased apart the text so that we could see the beauty and meaning of what was there. His teaching stirred me along to want to understand – and teach it – in that kind of way as well.
The expositions also “landed” as he would say in his later book on preaching. You heard how the text might apply to the present. You were helped to practise, not just admire.
John Stott laid a foundation for biblical exposition that has had a great impact in the ministries of later preachers. He has helped many not to lose heart.
What kind of eulogy?
A month ago I delivered the eulogy at my father’s funeral. I don’t like the term eulogy, although it has a good ancestry (Paul uses it in 2 Cor 1, and Ephesians 1 and so does Peter in 1 Peter 1). It sometimes sounds like whitewashing, especially at funerals. Sometimes they are just opportunities to talk about ourselves (I have heard some terrible ones).
But most of us want to say something about a friend or father who has died. Of course there are far too many things that could be said, and many that probably should not be said. Many are anecdotes, memories, recollections, views from different angles. In the same family people have different memories and views – sometimes radically different.
So what to say? And who to say it to? No use talking to the coffin as some do. We talk to ourselves. We say out loud what we may have never put into words. Or perhaps what we often said out loud. We consolidate our group or family memory. We speak a little song of praise, we say something good, we bless (the meanings eulogy derives from).
We also speak to God if we are believers. Because we know that the things we remember are also blessings received from him by his grace (Paul and Peter knew that). God the father richly blessed my father. Not only in the era and location in which he lived, and the genes he was given, but by his Spirit, through his Word and in his church.
What sort of things do we want to say about a Christian who has died? What kind of speech do I want people to make at my funeral? What is it that distinguishes a Christian life from that of unbelievers?
Paul said that David served God’s purpose in his own generation (Acts 13.36). Hebrews says that “Moses was faithful in all God’s house as a servant.” (Heb3.5). “… those who have been given a trust must prove faithful.”, according to Paul (1 Cor 4.2).
These are wonderful testimonies to be said about a person both during and after their life on earth. The Lord may or may not have accomplished wonderful deeds through us. But to be remembered for being a faithful servant who served the interests of Christ Jesus, and not one’s own (Phil 2.21) is a blessing devoutly to be desired.
Is apologetics any use?
An overview and comments on Christology in Dialogue with Muslims. A Critical Analysis of Christian Presentations of Christ for Muslims from the Ninth and Twentieth Centuries, by Mark Beaumont. Carlisle, Paternoster, 2005. ISBN 1-84227-123-7.
Mark Beaumont’s PhD thesis is a careful and detailed study of three Christian apologists from the ninth century, three from the twentieth century plus a twentieth century harmonisation of the gospels in Arabic using Qur’anic language, and the way they dialogue with Muslims of their era.
Theodore Abu Qurra (c.755-c.829) was one time bishop of Harran in Syria before being deposed by the Patriarch of Antioch. He was a defender of the Chalcedonian definition against other Christians, Jews and Muslims. He defends the incarnation to Muslims by identifying common ideas about God limiting himself to one place (his throne) but also being everywhere – so why not limit himself to a human body while still ruling the universe. He also “questions the Islamic belief that God’s forgiveness can be obtained directly without the help of an intermediary.†(p39). Only the death of Christ on the cross allows for forgiveness of sins. Others had tried to argue for the death of Christ by using various Qur’anic texts. Abu Qurra’s approach here might be termed polemical rather than apologetic according to Beaumont. He says, “Abu Qurra’s aim is to show the necessity of the sacrificial death of Christ by spelling out the conditions laid down in the Bible. So the truth of Christ’s sacrificial death for sin is based on the premise that God must judge sin rather than overlook it. … Whether Muslims would be impressed with such an argument is doubtful given the denials of the crucifixion of Christ and human ransom for sin in the Qur’an. His unwillingness to tackle these Qur’anic beliefs, even in an indirect manner, means that his argument for the death of Christ as an atonement for sin would most probably fail to convince a Muslim.†(p41). More about this later.
Habib ibn Khidma Abu Ra’ita as a Jacobite theologian upheld the miaphysite theology of the Council of Ephesus and opposed the Chalcedonian definition (not one hypostasis and two natures but one hypostasis and one nature which was the same as the hypostasis of the Word). Abu Ra’ita debated with Melkites (the Chalcedonian’s), including Abu Qurra, as well as Muslims, but approached the two groups differently. He explains to Muslims that the human and divine in Jesus are two attributes of Jesus. As for Mary’s role, it was not that God took to himself a son, but rather that “the Word took flesh from Mary, so the eternal Word is the actor, not the product.†(p65). He appeals to various Qur’anic ideas to support his argument. In general Abu Ra’ita “attempts an encyclopaedic survey of all the issues Muslims raise on the topic.†(p66). His is a model approach of taking seriously the questions Muslims have, according to Beaumont.
`Ammar al-Basri represents the Nestorian church. He attempts a broad explanation, in terms he hopes the Muslim will accept, of both the incarnation and the death of Christ. In terms of the latter, it is the glory given by God after his suffering that mitigates the humiliation; the distinction between divine attributes related to Christ’s human nature and others that are not part of his humanity helps explain that “there is a temporary loss of these divine attributes between the time of death and the resurrection of Christ in God’s power and authority†(p91), and the resurrection is the guarantee that death can be overcome.
Beaumont’s evaluation of these approaches is to note that Abu Qurra and Abu Ra’ita tried to argue for the incarnation on Islamic grounds. Ammar tried to present arguments based on Islamic ideas, from within an Islamic thought-world, but neither he nor Abu Qurra wanted to use Islamic terminology. However his analysis of Muslim responses was that arguments based on Islamic foundations were regarded as weak at the time, but a century later Muslims were still taking issue with their arguments which started with the gospels’ portrayal of the incarnation and an explanation that tried to distinguish between God’s transcendence and his immanence. In the process the apologists themselves were pressed to refine and develop their ways of presenting the faith.
Kenneth Cragg is perhaps the best known twentieth century apologist. He begins with what Muslims know about Christ from the Qur’an and focuses his understanding of Christ on the synoptic gospels. Unlike the ninth century apologists he avoids creeds and Johannine Christology and argues ‘from below’, “away from the Incarnation of the eternal Son, to the human Jesus who is recognised as being in a unique relationship with God.†(p150). He attempts to “read new Christian meanings into the text of the Qur’an to encourage Muslims to see Christ in a fresh way …†(p151). He has a lot to say about forgiveness through the cross and little to say about the union of the divine and human in the person of Christ. He wants to proclaim Christ to the Muslim because only through faith in Christ can a Muslim find peace with God.
John Hick and Hans Kung are two others discussed by Beaumont. Hick’s Christology has changed over the years and seems to have abandoned all traditional beliefs in favour of living in harmony with others, but Muslims realise that he also does not accept their claims to revelation and are not happy with a reductionist attempt to see Islam and Christianity as essentially the same. Hans Kung starts with the Qur’anic portrayal of Jesus and wants to improve on it. But Muslims see the Qur’an as the complete and authoritative Word of God. Nevertheless Kung favours leaving aside the creedal statements and trying to move from Qur’an to gospels. However his later writings suggest he may allow more than way for people to be saved (p170).
Beaumont sees that the three twentieth century apologists have not developed their Christology in relation to Islam but have presented a Christology they held prior to the dialogue. What they have done is to try to make connections between Christian and Muslim understandings of Christ.
Beaumont also reviews an attempt to produce a harmonisation of the four gospels in Arabic using the terminology of the Qur’an in 30 chapters. Sira al-Masih was published in 1987. It uses the Qur’anic name Isa for Jesus for example. Beaumont thinks it should be seen more as an exercise in indigenous theology for Arab Christians from a Muslim background (p175). Sira downplays references to sonship, and the Johannine idea of being ‘one with the Father’ (a unity of thought or will), but makes clear the importance of crucifixion.
Overall Beaumont concludes that the “response by the Muslim dialogue partners shows that any insistence on aspects of Christology that contradict the Qur’anic account of Christ fails to convince.†(p198). But there is an appreciation when Christians reinterpret Christ in human terms. This may be a way forward according to Beaumont.
Beaumont offers a number of reflections on prospects for dialogue between Christians and Muslims. These will depend on how Qur’anic denials of sonship, incarnation and crucifixion are handled. Some suggest ethics may be way to go, thus avoiding the big issues. But ethics involves listening to the teaching of Christ, which raises issues of his authority to teach and thus leads back to Christology.
This is a fine study. It provides many perceptive insights and clarifies lots of issues in the dialogue between Christians and Muslims. In the end, however, it seems from this study that little progress is likely in the face of a determined, principled and unmoving commitment on the part of Muslims to the absolute truth and completeness of the Qur’anic testimony.
Beaumont’s evaluation of Abu Qurra’s approach “that his argument for the death of Christ as an atonement for sin would most probably fail to convince a Muslim.†(p41), reminds one of Paul’s statement in 1 Corinthians 1 that when Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom he preaches Christ crucified – a stumbling block and foolishness maybe, but God’s power to save nevertheless.
Answering questions of those who want to know is very important. But trying to explain the truth about Christ on terms that deny its truth seems quite difficult. There is a difference between answering those who really desire to understand, and responding to objections from those who seem just to be opposed. Of course it is not always possible to see the difference at first. Questions and objections can have the effect of controlling and diverting the conversation away from the main topic. And although we want to respect those who question, there is a kind of respect that ends up not respecting the Lord Jesus and his proclamation.
In the case of dialogue with Muslims, as perhaps in a different way with modern Australians, part of the task is first to understand the language and thought-world of those we are talking with and then to attempt to express the message of Jesus in ways that could be understood in that world. The tension arises when we want the message to be accepted as well as understood. “Understood†and “accepted†are different ideas. I suppose apologetics always struggles with the tension.
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