Whilst "Aboriginal Christians are endeavouring to hold together two realities in their experience - the truth of their convictions about and experience of Jesus Christ, and the enduring power and place of their traditional law, traditions and ceremonies", it is essential that everybody involved in this type of debate recognise that over-compensation is an unproductive but predictable - even normal - factor in the cycle of response.

This applies whether it be over-compensation by non-Aboriginal people for the perceived political and legal sins of their forebears, or for their own denomination's previous stances; or by Aboriginal people for lack of detailed access to their own peoples' traditions and ways of seeing & being.

It is not necessarily realistic to imagine that we can always 'arrive at a shared account of “truth”' in these very difficult circumstances; and it is very important that we avoid contributing to any more delusionary or distorted accounts of what has, or is, occurring in relation to these matters, regardless of which church or other social, cultural or political field we are ploughing.

In this article, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are described as the first people to live here. I thought that most Aboriginal people are in fact the third group of people to live in Australia. Can someone more informed tell me what happened to the trihybrid theory of Australian history?

"I hope that members of the Uniting Church will continue to lay a foundation of truth that will set us free".

Oh dear. Seeking 'the truth' through Christianity.

A doomed enterprise if ever there was one.

The problem, of course, is that what the Uniting Church of the past did in Australia, and every other colonised land, was considered to be 'the revealed truth' in those days.

But now it is regarded as having been a 'mistake'.

So, if God is unchanging, and His message is always the same, how come this Church thinks it did wrong then, in those enlightened times, but is now doing 'the right thing' in these newly enlightened times?

Could it be that secularists have pushed various cults-of-Christianity to move their brain-adled postions, except for the Vatican of course, who continue to ignore reason and live in their own flat earth?

Rest assured, it was not God that ushered in these Uniting Church 'adjustments' but Guilt, pure and simple.

Blue Cross writes .Could it be that secularists have pushed various cults-of-Christianity to move their brain-adled postions,.

Secularist have shown over the last 40 years that their dogmas lead to more teen pregnancy, more baby murdering, more drugs, more suicide, more fatherless kids, more violence, more disrespect for authority, more homosexuality, more perversion, more paedophiles. The products of secularism was demonstrated on the radio last week with Sandilands and co. Think before opening your mouth or at least put your own advice into practice.

runner you really are the worst kind of bigot i have come across on line for some time. your ideas simply defy reality..it is of course the varrious "gods" that created the "sins" you see all around you.

shame on you.

On first reading the article,I was hopeful that one Christian denomination had recognised that the story of The Dreaming is at least as acceptable as the story of an Adam and Eve in a garden. But no, once again, we have a trade-off- "If you recognise our stories but disregard your own, we'll accept you into our church".As a Unitarian, I am once again disappointed with a Christian denomination's response to indigeneity.