Dr. Peter Adam in Brisbane – Oct 12

See also – Australia – whose land? A question now on the agenda of the Australian church.

The South Brisbane Aboriginal Intervention

A critique of the mainstreaming of Aboriginal homelessness services in South Brisbane.

In 2005 the Howard federal government abolished ATSIC following a gradual de-funding and winding down process over previous years. . Two clear new policy frameworks appeared in the post-ATSIC period – 1/ The mainstreaming of Aboriginal services and 2/ An obsessive and exaggerated focus of Aboriginal family violence. These two policies became the basis of the much condemned Northern Territory intervention in 2006, however since 2005 they have been the basis of state and federal programs delivering services to Aboriginal marginalised and at-risk people in South Brisbane.

Back to church and contemplating the Song of Solomon.

I went to church the other day, the first time in a very long time. It was a contemplative service at the local Uniting Church. It was contemplative in as much as several bible readings and songs occurred followed by contemplative pauses.

I felt the singing was a bit awkward. The bible readings appeared to be a bit disjointed, they were the prescribed readings from some book or other. But the silent pauses were great, exactly what I was looking for. It is a very different thing to sit in silence by myself or with someone close than it is to sit in silence with a group of people from outside of my personal comfort zone. It was indeed contemplative but also an experience of unconditional collectivism. I was not alone in my meditation.

After each bible reading and contemplative pause people were encouraged to share their thoughts about the passage if they wanted to. One of the passages was an excerpt from the Song of Solomon and, in the midst of this small group of contemplators, a theological disagreement arose. One member said that the song was an allegory for Gods love of the land and people of Israel and this lead him to consider the situation of people in exile from their god given land. I assume he was thinking about Aboriginal Australia also with this comment.

My contribution on that passage was that it is a love poem between a man and a woman. I did not say any more because that would have broken the contemplative momentum. But what I thought was…….

The Christian church and Judaism have long debated whether the Song of Solomon is an erotic poem or an allegory for God and Israel. I believe it is the former and that allegory theory was devised to disguise the obvious sexuality in ancient Hebrew culture and theology, but I could be wrong.

This is how I see it –

The Song of Solomon is an erotic poem and it relates to the wisdom of erotic love. However it is not just personalised erotic art, it is not just about sex. The song is intensely political and this is its central importance.

Who was Solomon? He was the king who inherited the legacy of his father David. Solomon reigned over an established and prosperous kingdom. Solomon’s task was not to win wars or capture territory; his role was to maintain peace. How did Solomon maintain peace? He married women from the ruling families of his neighbours, such as Pharaoh’s daughter.

Solomon loved his enemies rather than fighting them – this is how he maintained peace.

However the story is not so simple as it was Solomon’s wives that became Solomon and Israel’s downfall, when he allowed their foreign idols and temples (and therefore cultural and economic systems) into Israel. Everything fell apart after that.

But in terms of both the peace and the corruption of Solomon’s Kingdom I believe it is very relevant to understand, or at least contemplate, the erotic wisdom of the Song of Solomon.

Anyway, church was a positive experience and I will return.

Australia – whose land? A question now on the agenda of the Australian church.

“Do churches have any responsibilities in these matters? Yes, because the land and wealth of churches came from land stolen from the indigenous people of Australia. The prosperity of our churches has come from the proceeds of crime.”
- Dr. Peter Adam

Something is happening in the church in Australia.

My last post reported on the Uniting Church amending the preamble to its constitution to acknowledge that God was in this country before the missionaries arrived. “Uniting Church acknowledges Aboriginality in Constitution”

This post is reporting on the Baptist Union of New South Wales Social Issues Committee’s annual “John Saunders Lecture”. This year the lecture was presented by Dr. Peter Adam, an evangelical Anglican minister and principle of the Ridley Theological College in Melbourne.

The title of Dr. Adam’s lecture was “Australia – whose land?” and it is a scholarly biblical exploration of the history of this country and the implications for the church.

Here is the lecture – “Australia – whose land”

The following is some excerpts from the lecture that were published in the Sydney Morning Herald.

I encourage you to read the full lecture as it is much more comprehensive than the following and looks at implications for the church including modes of mission and action.

“Pay up or leave: our duty to the Aboriginal people”

Uniting Church acknowledges Aboriginality in Constitution

“The First Peoples had already encountered the Creator God before the arrival of the colonisers; the Spirit was already in the land revealing God to the people through law, custom and ceremony. The same love and grace that was finally revealed in Jesus Christ sustained the First Peoples and gave them particular insights into God’s ways.”

The following is an article from the website of the Uniting Church of Australia’s 2009 national assembly.

Church adopts historic new Constitution preamble

text of constitutional changes

See also my essayBabylon and the Christian Church in Australia which looks at some of the theological issues raised by the church’s acknowledgment of God existing in Australia before the European missionaries arrived.

Talisman Sabre, Jesus, Bonhoeffer, Jaegerstaetter and the evolution of the Australian Church.

by John Tracey

I write this at a time when seven Christian activists have illegally entered the Talisman Sabre war games area with the intention of disrupting the war games. A few days ago another four did the same thing.

“The Bonhoeffer 4″

The activists have organised into small cells, such as “The Bonhoeffer 4”, the “Grana 3” and the “Jaegerstaetter 3”

“The Bonhoeffer 4”

the “Grana 3” and the “Jaegerstaetter 3”

I do not know how seriously the protesters are taking the mascot names of their action groups, but this reflection will explore two of them – German Lutheran, Dietrich Bonhoffer of the “Bonhoeffer 4” and Austrian Catholic conscientious objector Franz Jaegerstaetter of the “Jaegerstaetter 3”.

Both Bonhoeffer and Jaegerstaetter were executed by the Nazi regime. A superficial comparison would suggest that they were both martyred because of their Christian faith and its imperative to resist Nazism. However, I suggest that the two represent separate and contradictory paradigms of Christian faith and resistance to injustice.

Indigenous Theologians Discuss Christianity and Culture

From Solourners blog

What is (or is not) “Dreaming”?

Too Obvious to See: Aboriginal Spirituality and Cosmology

Penny Tripcony, Manager (at the time of the speech), Oodgeroo Unit, Queensland University of Technology)
(Paper initially presented at the National Conference of the Australian Association of Religious Education, September, 1996.)
from – QUT Oodgeroo Unit

“It is not a word that Aboriginal groups have used; it is a non-Aboriginal anthropological term which does not acknowledge the diversity amongst Aboriginal groups.”

“The term has become debased. It has gained currency amongst non-Indigenous Australia and is being used in contexts which have no relationship to the complexity of Aboriginal spirituality. The Dreaming is not the product of human dreams (is not referred to in Aboriginal languages for dreams or the act of dreaming. The use of the English word ‘dreaming’ is more of a matter of analogy than translation.)”

J.T.’s Christmas message to the workers, peasants and hunter-gatherers of Australia.

Reject the religions of empire, embrace the spirituality of land!

December 25 is the birthday of Mithra, the Persian god of light a.k.a. the sun god. We remember Mithra every Sunday but Christmas time is a season of festival dedicated to Mithra, who was born of a rock in a cave and was crucified by the Assyrians who used a T shaped cross, unlike the Romans who impaled people on poles and trees, as would have happened to Jesus in Jerusalem a long time after the crucifixion of Mithra.

“Making common cause with the poor” – the Liberation Theology of Leonardo Boff and Clodovis Boff

“There is a failure to see that the poor are oppressed and made poor by others; and what they do possess – strength to resist, capacity to understand their rights, to organize themselves and transform a subhuman situation – tends to be left out of account. Aid increases the dependence of the poor, tying them to help from others, to decisions made by others: again not enabling them to become their own liberators.”

“The historical subjects of this liberation are the oppressed who must develop a consciousness of their oppressed situation, organize themselves, and take steps that will lead to a society that is less dependent and less subject to injustices. Other classes may, and should, join this project of the oppressed, but without trying to control it.”