Book
Review:
Chris Budden:
Following Jesus in
Invaded Space - Doing Theology on Aboriginal Land
2009 Princeton Theological Monograph Series
Rev Dr Chris Budden is a UCA minister in
Newcastle
NSW, a former Synod general secretary, and various other positions.
Review [abridged version] by Rev Dr Ian Robinson, UWA Chaplain and co-convenor of the Bringing Them Home C'tee (WA), in collaboration with Rev Dr Anna Killigrew, Anglican clergy WA, chaplain to Koora Retreat.
The full review is available at:
Ian's Blog www.wa.uca.org.au/uwachaplain
Also check out: Tall Trees
http://talltrees.org.au
I was excited, inspired, and challenged with every chapter. Months later, I still feel that this book is the most important theological text written in Australia…
Book
Review:
Chris Budden:
Following Jesus in
Invaded Space - Doing Theology on Aboriginal Land
2009 Princeton Theological Monograph Series
Rev Dr Chris Budden is a UCA minister in
Newcastle
NSW, a former Synod general secretary, and various other positions.
Review [abridged version] by Rev Dr Ian Robinson, UWA Chaplain and co-convenor of the Bringing Them Home C'tee (WA), in collaboration with Rev Dr Anna Killigrew, Anglican clergy WA, chaplain to Koora Retreat.
The full review is available at:
Ian's Blog www.wa.uca.org.au/uwachaplain
Also check out: Tall Trees
http://talltrees.org.au
I was excited, inspired, and challenged with
every
chapter. Months later, I still feel that this book is the most important
theological text written in Australia…
We must face certain facts:
The way racism is still part of our life,
and the way it
shapes our perceptions and discourse and relatedness.
The fact that we, as Second Peoples, and as
church live
on stolen land.
The fact that our relationships in this
land were based
on violence, a violence that still distorts those relationships.
The social location of the church, and the
way this
effects both the way the church sees, and the interests it continues to
protect…
The goal is not to abandon immigrant views
in favour of
indigenous views, as if that were even possible… The goal is to play
with
others, to blend our parts, to develop harmonies, and to share in the
creation
of the whole.
Following Jesus in Invaded Space asks what
interests and
whose interests are protected by the theology and institutions which
come from
within a community that invaded this land. Yes, he uses the word
Invasion.
(What else do you call 1788? Boat People?) And with naked gaze he looks
for a reconciled
path forward together. But as we try to understand this book, skewing
our
very ability to see and hear and think, will be the fear of loss of
place and
loss of our own particular perspective. Budden dares to speak of God,
church,
and justice in the context of past history and today's dispossession. He
examines what we feel is 'normal', what theological constructions that
we feel
are complete, what is privilege and what is fear and guilt. There is a
deep
unconscious resistance to this process in any Australian, especially
people
like me, white educated middle class, any who have done well in the
social
structures that we have set up. Yet, somewhere between the casually
disgraceful rhetoric of a 'black armband' view of Australia and a 'white
blindfold'
view, Budden is building a path. He purports:
If the church is to do theology
in this country as Second peoples it needs to deal with a history that
still
shapes the nation, and the present reality – both good and bad. It needs
to
relate to, sit down with, and speak of faith alongside Indigenous
people…
Theology that is consciously contextual, and which seeks to hear the
voice and
experience of people who are not always heard, will question the way we
have
read the tradition, the assumptions that people take to that task, and
suggest
that the tradition is incomplete. It will suggest that the tradition has
been
constructed by a particular part of the population to meet and pass on
their
experiences of the journey, but does not take account of people who have
found
themselves in a different relationship with the Christian faith and its
practices. The goal of such theology is not simply to describe ‘reality’
but to
enable and encourage a more just, liberated, holistic world that
reflects the
Triune God’s intention for the whole of creation.
The perspective that Budden brings helps me
to update and
globalise my way of talking about this. Language that is new in
Australia, but common in North America discussions of this kind is the
“First
peoples/Second peoples” distinction. Also “Indigenous/Immigrant”. This
irritates some Second/Immigrant people. The titles are after all a
description
of bland historical fact. Who was here first?
…Budden insists that theology has to do with
real
socio-political issues and not simply with spiritual realities. E.g.Mark
9:
17-18 on how we are blind, deaf and dumb to our involvement in racism
and
its bodily effect on indigenous people and our selves in our un-faced
fear and
guilt.
Luke 15:1-2
says, 'he mixes with sinners and eats with them.' Clearly, the
Australian
followers of such a Jesus have an inner and an outer task if we are to
put
aside a centuries-long habit of siding with the wealth-takers to the
exclusion
of all opportunities for Aborigines (except to be the objects of our
charity)…
As I read, I heard the refrain: ‘But I didn’t do anything. It was all so
long
ago. What have I to be sorry about?’ In discussion of the Northern
Territory
Intervention of 2008, Budden suggests:
Intervention does not help people
engage in developing relationships and processes that hold people
accountable,
makes them responsible, and forces them to restore wrong doing… In the
Territory, the police action was needed and appreciated, but all the
rest of it
was just another invasion.
… The work of transforming social
disorder and violence which has its foundation in shame, needs more than
this
sort of action[intervention]. It requires the slow action to transform
the
shame and violence-causing social order. The constant question for the
church is
where it sits in this debate as followers of the Christ who said we
would find
him among the imprisoned and marginalized (Matt 25:31-46).
That sort of statement is certainly nothing
new, but we
are being asked, helpfully I am pleased to say, to practise it.
The central
issue, the one that runs right through this book, is how Second peoples
give up control of relationships, and help build more mutual, and more
equal
lives. The issue is how we place all forms of sovereignty, and control
within
the sovereign, serving lordship of Jesus Christ, and our Trinitarian
God.
...The issue for theology as
it seeks to listen to the
encounter between cultures and theologies is how the hearing can occur
within
the priorities of relationships, and how a culture of written texts and
rules
can be open to change that will sustain the emerging relationships.
How can we be open like that? Do we need to
be reminded
that it is Love (by which we mean as modelled by Jesus at the heart of
the
Trinity as recorded in the matrix of scripture) that is the greatest
thing
- not order, not definitions, not creeds. So our course of action must
include that priority in practise. If the congregations, theological
colleges
and councils of the church aren’t about Love they aren’t worth
attending. I
see three imperatives… We face the risk that we will learn side by side
with
Aboriginal sisters and brothers to join in the praise song of the trees
and the
stars.
This is a turning point book. Hitherto we have looked as far as new theologies written from the point of view of other migrants, because we understand that position. We are at last doing theology that is located honestly in Australia.