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.

‘What they did right’
Some things still need to be rememberd.
I remember people I knew well in the 1940s who worked at Ernabella Presbyterian mission. I have relations who have worked at various other places since. A cousin adopted an indigenous boy in the 1960s with the hope he could inherit the family farm, maintaining contact with the family who did not want him. I have been involved in the education of indigenous children and adults. I have seen the difficulties that well-meaning and dedicated people have faced and still face when they try to care for distressed and unhappy children of any nationality. Today there are still indigenous children who are cared for away from their families – some separations are still considered to be necessary in the children’s interests. What will tomorrow say about this?
The Ernabella people I knew encouraged the indigenous folk who camped around the station to maintain their customs, crafts and skills and traditional walkabouts, while they provided sustenance and gave their children education for the modern world too. They taught literacy in the Pitjitjinjarra language and found the people could learn to read the simple spelling in six months – but even the English-speakers found it too hard to learn English spelling. I have wondered what happened to these literacy initiatives.
I like reading first-hand accounts of the past, with their accounts of the good as well as the blind spots on all sides - such as nurse Anne Wells at the Methodist Mission at Milingimbi in the 1920s; Sergeant Brennan’s lively memoirs as a humane NSW policeman in the 19th century, and the Paton memoirs of the New Hebrides.
Even the very blind missionaries endured long privations for ISAGIATT – It seemed a Good Idea at the Time. They did not intend to do evil.
“The evil that men do lives after them. The good is oft interred with their bones.”

Essay topic. “You live in the year 2080. Write a critique of the well-meaning people of the year 2008.” And, for balance, of the ill-meaning people too.

The hopeless bigot and bible-bashing 'Runner' being admonished to shame? No chance!
To feel shame requires some degree of social conscience and intellectual capacity.

As to the article itself, after the untold damage done to indigenous Australians by any number of god-bothering parsons, priests, ministers, elders etc bringing the 'truth' in one hand and a loaded gun in the other i would have thought it best if all the churches, not only the wishy-washy Uniting Church with its cluster of disparate old women and generally 'frightfully nice' congregations, simply hung their collective heads in shame and kept quiet rather than trying to have a bet each way via bland and self-serving articles such as this one.

And of course Gym Fish is proud of the secularist who brought alcohol pornography and drugs to the communities. You really should be the one keeping your mouth shut but nothing like a self righteous secularist who knows best! It is very convenient to blame the violence, child molesting and drugs on the salvation army.

Runner believes we all lived in a near-Paradise until 40 years ago, when 'secularists' undid the very fabric of God's work.

How mean-spirited of them!

Of course, that would have to be part of God's plan anyway, since He knows all, decides all, and has the power to change all, via a rain-dance and some prayers from his dutiful and devoted acolytes.

He has failed miserably where I live, as the drought continues unabated, even while Anna Bligh believes 'the drought is over', and we are all able to water the car and wash the driveways again.

This is only anecdotal Runner, but my children work with hordes of fundies at their workplaces. It seems that it is these people who are rushing into marriage in order to have sex (which produces children Runner) and then in no time at all, so it seems, the marriage is breaking up... leaving Runner's 'fatherless children', although I did wonder if he was talking about Jesus for a moment, since he was a genuine fatherless child, so we are told.

And I did read somewhere in my researches, I'll post it if I can find it, that the first pregnancy advisory centres were created by evangelical Christians in response to burgeoning sex-acts from unmarried devotees keen to release themselves from pregnancy.

As for homosexuality, I am pretty sure the Vatican is a hotbed (pardon the connection) of such activities, and always has been, or at least since Adam was a (motherless and fatherless) boy.

Really Runner, without the different worldview injected from the secular angle, Christians around the globe would still be stoning women, burning witches, engaged in the slave trade, mission-ising with 'native people' and being more of a destructive force than they currently are.

Let's be honest Runner, 'people' can do the wrong thing at the best of times, but when it's done under the cloak of a God covering the backdoor, this allows the intellectually halt, lame and infirm to operate with (seeming) impunity..."I was only following orders", from the priest, from the dictator, it really makes no difference.

Poddy, at last you introduce some rationality. Let us all, except perhaps for Runner, show some honesty in the debate and admit that the stories of the Dreamtime have equal valdity with the stories of Creation as told in the Bible.

Also, let us not be deluded into thinking that the "Bringing them home" report was an unbiased account of the whys and the wherefores of the treatment of aboriginals in the past.

David

The collapse of the Aztec Empire was due to the religious beliefs which made them regard the Spanish invaders as gods. Perhaps the failure of Aboriginal society to stand up with any resilience to our own invasion was at least partly due to its dysfunctional religious beliefs which -- amongst other things -- awarded power on the basis of age and gender rather than competence.

Now these barbaric beliefs have acquired a patina of respectability through their quaintness, and a failing and discredited Western belief seeks to gain credibility by pretending to endorse them. As the number of believers in the West dwindles we can expect to see more and more strange alliances like this. Catholics and Jains? Presbyterians and Animists? Fundamentalists from both sides of the Christian/Moslem divide getting together to harass homosexuals and abuse atheists? It just shows that for Church personnel, hanging on to power is much more important than what you actually profess to believe in.

"Christian mission has, with rare exceptions, tended to condemn Indigenous practice and spirituality wholesale but failed to apply a similar critique to the dominant European culture."
Er Europe before the arrival of Christian missionaries from the East was inhabited by pagans with various spiritual beliefs.Their practices and spirituality were condemned outright by the Early Church but the Church was smart enough to incororporate certain pagan customs into their liturgies. Hence Christmas celebrations, Easter eggs etc.

There was no difference (from Aboriginal perspectives) between the agency ofn the State and that of the Church (Christian religions).
The outcomes of each were exactly the same, reserves and missions, administrative dogma and efficy / biblical scripture- worked hand in hand with each other.

I always find it amusing that some like to declare Aboriginal beliefs as primitive but then blindly celebrate the birth of an illegitimate Jewish child as well as this childs eventual barbaric crucifiction. (not to mention festishing on Santa and the Easter Bunny LOL)

Perhaps runner might explain why the perpetrators of said crime/s are frequently practicing clergy? Then comment upon the churches refusal to allow paedophiles to be charged and judged by a jury of peers. Strikes me that society seeks to stop sexual abuse, and Christians seek to perpetrate not just the act, but the notion that they are "untouchable".

As the Hillsong pastor who faked terminal cancer to scam money from converts to the multi-beneficial rorts of religion blustered as the reason: He has a porn addiction, and said perversion is "a matter between him and god". Secular!?

An "expert" in "sexual integrity" lists all your points like child rape and murder occurring because we turned our backs on belief systems that permit killing of family, neighbours, indeed the ontological "other" to the dominant force. Scroll to "Porns Incredible Powers" to read the point by point debunking. Such fraud only arises in theocratic scams.

http://libertus.net/censor/rdocs/candle3.html

As for the lies about teen sex, please note the biblical religious experiment trialled by Bush failed most shockingly. "The silver ring thing abstinence initiative". STD's are at 70 times [seven zero] those of identical demographics in the Netherlands.

OK. So, oral, anal, group, forced sex coupled with ignorance of ones own body, intentions of other teens and no idea how to manage "sinful behaviour" in others, is a mere part of the outcome of religious practice as public health. Also, vaginal restorative cosmetic surgery specific to 'replacing' the hymen is booking more clients in said demographics than dentistry.

Also been sued by the ACLU for "promoting Christianity".

http://www.themediaproject.com/news/itn/051705_srt.htm

Such events transpired during the Bush Theocracy and destroyed lives without compunction. Refusal of funds unless one is a believer, and non secular, is runners "secularism".

http://blog.au.org/2008/10/20/unholy-inquisition-justice-department-says-faithbased-grantees-can-ignore-antibias-laws-approved-by-congress/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/20/bush-teen-pregnancy-cdc-report

http://www.uydo.org/blog/anna-karina/2009/07/another-failure-bush-era

Harm to the development of students:

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/121583979/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

Do they work?

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/24467/do_abstinenceonly_programs_work.html

And 'cause I'm only here to help these articles simply beg a response;

http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-178428497.html

Despite the deaths, disease and ruined societies the only response is bigoted rhetoric. God as runner uses the notion, kills. Whether with guns or lies, death/disease/exploitation/ignorance are always there.

What secular equivalent exists?

Rainier

Agree with your post. Christianity does have a long and undistinguished history of ripping the heart and soul from other spiritual beliefs and implanting its myopic vision.

God's place in the Dreaming? That would have to be a form of heresy wouldn't it? Perhaps one could equally ponder if there's a place for the Rainbow Serpent in Genesis.

The arrogance of the Abrahamic religions is as breathtaking as it is destructive.

Let's be honest Bluecross, 'people' can do the wrong thing at the best of times, but when it's done under the cloak of a pseudo science covering the backdoor, this allows the intellectually halt, lame and infirm to operate with (seeming) impunity..."I was only following orders", from the from the dictator (Mao or Stalin or Hitler), it really makes no difference.

Firesnake you really know how to twist the truth. The reason many priests turned out paedophilles is obviously the employment of men with homosexual tendencies. They mainly targeted boys. Of course your own dogma won't accept this fact. I doubt however whether the number of priests is any higher than school teachers, journalist or artist. Your favourite press outlets would not allow this to be known of course.

Your hatred and rantings about Mr Bush really shows you are unable to think rationally. I will admit that your hatred is shared by many of the loonie left media who still have nothing better to do than vent their hatred toward Mr Bush and Mr Howard. With the performance of Mr Obama and Mr Rudd I would of thought you would be shamed into being quite.

The fact that a teenager wants to wear a ring to show they are not going to be immoral before marriage is an admirable thing. Would you prefer for them to tell others how many diseases they have passed on via casual sex. I am sure parents would be real proud that the kids have surpassed their own immorality.

Since when did Aboriginal Australian's believe in 'God' as defined by the Uniting Church?

Runner and the Angry Atheists have derailed another one. Gosh

Getting testy Runner.

Hitler was a solid Vatican boy, and knew very well he had to keep the priests on-side, which they all rather enjoyed too, especially when Jews started to cop it, along with homsexuals (did the boy-fiddling priests fear they'd all be in the ovens too, I wonder?).

I doubt that Stalin or Mao relied on 'science' of any variety to justify their campaigns, so you're off-beam there old chap.

I'm not sure that being homosexual is at all the same as being a paedophile, Runner>

A very long and unpleasant bow you are attempting to draw there.

As for 'the loonie left media', what a joke! Certainly no hint of any 'leftie' media in Australia, unless you're thinking of The Australian, that hotbed of riot-fomenters leading the world back into Communism, Diggers, Levelers, and other nasty types?

Oh yes, Rupert Murdoch, the well known 'leftie'.

Of course, how silly, you mean the ABC, don't you?

Well, even there they dumped the communist gardener sometime ago and I've yet to hear a leftwing voice uttered anywhere since.

I quite agree about wearing a ring to show that you won't be immoral before marriage. Much better to wait til after, and have a real go then.

And I agree with you that Rudd is a dead duck, and just as interesting. I'm rather looking forward to his early demise, but what/who next? Not Swan, surely?

It would be great if Indigenous Christians could respond to some of the issues raised here. Anyone?

Meanwhile, as a reporter who listened fairly carefully to the Indigenous contributors to the debate at the UCA Assembly in Sydney last month, a couple of observations:

Is seeking ‘truth’ via the Christian faith a doomed enterprise as Blue Cross suggests? No. But declaring one has found it absolutely is.

Is it fair to say that “untold damage (was) done to indigenous Australians by any number of god-bothering parsons, priests, ministers, elders etc bringing the 'truth' in one hand and a loaded gun in the other ...” (Gym-fish)?

And is it true that “there was no difference (from Aboriginal perspectives) between the agency of the State and that of the Church (Christian religions). The outcomes of each were exactly the same ...” (Rainier)?

For non-Indigenous people to make such claims on behalf of Indigenous people, which they don’t make themselves, is this perhaps another form of paternalism?

Most Aboriginal people I know say the missionaries stood between them and the guns.

Yes, the author is right that most missionaries rejected Indigenous spirituality. But they saw Aborigines as God’s children to be loved and protected.

Finally, to answer Laura Mathison’s question, Indigenous Australians prepared this report which was tabled at the UCA Assembly:

http://www.assembly2009.uca.org.au/images/Reports/uaicc.pdf

A rsvp to Alan A

"For non-Indigenous people to make such claims on behalf of Indigenous people, which they don’t make themselves, is this perhaps another form of paternalism?"

The others can speak for themselves, but I do not seek-have not sought, to put forward any view on behalf of any Indigenous person, Xtian or otherwise.

Besides, how can you tell who is and who is not Indigenous here? Or can you tell how 'they' write from your readings?

How paternalistic is that?

I suspect that the nature of 'Truth' as expounded by philosophers and religious spruikers, with a capital T, is such that none of us will know it, irrespective of what we use to seek it, and if we were to discover it-what then?

A solitary existence whilst others caught up?

And while we're on the subject of paternalism, how's this line?

"But they saw Aborigines as God’s children to be loved and protected."

Hmmm, how paternalistic is that? Protected from what? Whitie created sin?

Why couldn't they just regard Indigenous peoples, where ever found, as fellow 'humans' and get on with them?

It's fine to 'look after' one's own children, or those who are unable to protect themselves in whatever situation may be on offer, but really.... "protecting the natives" is a tad old hat, surely?

The missionary zeal is a blind-faith force that discounts the existence of 'others', be they beliefs, feelings, emotions, values, peoples relationships, and seeks to impose a pre-constructed template of conformity, to exploit whatever resources are available under a blanket of untruths, shibboleths, half-truths and misdeeds.

'Oh, but they stood in front of the guns'.

Doubtful... there is a local story here of how down at the locally known spot 'Darkies Flats', that tells of how the pastor rang the church bell one Sunday and the 'natives' came a-running across the fields, for their blankets and glass beads, to be shot down with a hail of lead from the locals.

"Job's right", said the pastor to the gunmen.

Oh yes, "God’s children to be loved and protected", indeed.

Runner,

>>The reason many priests turned out paedophilles is obviously the employment of men with homosexual tendencies<<, is quoting soft atheists like Richard Dawkins. A long known fact. Homosexuality is natural, and if the Church is a gay club, so be it. Welcome to our secular world. As always, it's the non theists who accept the abused become the abusers. Your answer is the old Howard years Gay = child abuse discrimination. It is wrong, a lie and quite creepy to know you're on the inside [no pun intended] such that you easily voice these crimes.

No, homosexuality is not anything like child abuse. Homophobia is unwelcome, barbaric, archaic and born of guilt.

I have presented only hard evidence, with a minimum of elucidation. Ergo; the eye of the beholder is where any 'dogma' lies. The psychological conformity required to submit to instutionalised crime is famous for recruiting lackeys as your good self.

As for attributing what I feel, as well as what I think about the identities in the evidence I've referenced I'm sorry, but you've lost me. I do not know the feeling "hate". I'm a non theist, and thus fortunately rejected the teachings of "hate". May I suggest your [quite bizarrely tangential] attacks on Rudd and Obama - both already historical figures by "undoing" the human rights abuse labels earned by their religious predecessors - is perhaps the type of "hate" you were ordered to feel when free thought is in evidence. And, the only ranting in evidence. Projection matey, Projection.

Nonetheless, 'tis fascinating how easily you can project your own sewer thinking dysfunctionality onto others. Now if you care to address the evidence supplied, rather than parrot irrelevance, please resubmit.

>Would you prefer for them to tell others how many diseases they have passed on via casual sex. I am sure parents would be real proud that the kids have surpassed their own immorality.<

Are you insane, or joking? You suggest lies over honesty, not "honouring thy parents", and dying young is what Xtian folks aim for?!