Australia Day

A couple of interesting reflections on the significance and meaning (not?) of Australia Day by Kym at  Larvatus Prodeo and Peter Chambers at  This Blog Harms.

Both reflect on some of the changes to the character of the day and the celebrations over recent years. Kim first:

I think everyone of a certain age can also remember a time when “Australia Day” was pretty much a nothing day. A moveable feast that made a long weekend, where some obscure ceremonies involving firing salutes would take place, and where a few history re-enactors would have their One Day of The Year .... It was, of course, always a day when The Great Forgetting moved into overdrive, and Indigenous people, rightly, sought to remember and remind by renaming it Invasion Day and marching, and being visible. 

But it wasn’t a day when people who – in any way – departed from The Great White Australian Male Norm – had to observe bunches of drunks with Australian flags draped over their shoulders marauding about, demanding people kiss said flags, and generally harassing anyone who visibly departed from said Norm. And chanting “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi!”. 

But what are we left with? Sermons and worthy speeches about unity. But a strange unity between the Official Symbols (Flag, Governor-General, military flyovers, and so on) and the appropriation of those symbols by a minority of nativists who believe that they “grew here” ... This is not unity. It’s actually disunity wrapping itself in the flag of Nation and unity. 

Peter draws attention first of all to the oddness of the day. 

Australia Day is an odd selection for a national day. I mean, most nation-states celebrate independence: independence that they fought for, or won, or were given. I suppose this is impossible in Australia, seeing as we effectively refused it when given the opportunity. Nonetheless, the obvious choice is Federation, which was on January 1, 1901. It would be the technically correct choice, since before that, ‘we’ weren’t a nation, just a bunch of self-governing British colonies. But it would also be the hungover choice, given that it’s also New Years Day… in Australia. Scotch that.

But it gets weirder as soon as you ask what Australia Day actually purports to commemorate. I mean, the arrival of a bunch of stinking prison hulks full of transported convicts, mostly men, and their introduction of smallpox to the local Aboriginal populations… Well, it doesn’t seem like our finest moment. Convict origins, shit food, barely potable water, various types of pox, no toothpaste, insufficient opportunities for conjugal bliss… it seems like an experience that most peoples would prefer to forget.

Then he puts his finger I something that I had been partly conscious of but not got round to fully articulating - the extent to which national identity is now being expressed as consumerism, identity without history and detached from memory. this shifting to a consumerist focus has happened increasingly over the past decade, but has been really noticeable during the past two or three years.

This is a picture of an Australia Day merchandise stall at a Woolworths.No doubt you’ve seen it at yours, if you’re a shopper (and how could you not be, if you’re Australian). When I look at this rack, I see nude capitalism: the emptying out of everything. Rack upon rack of cheap, tacky, Swanston St-quality merchandise, whose only uniting factor is the flag (on which, weirdly, the flag of the colonist still looms large). Check just around the corner at bigger stores, Woolies are also pimping be-flagged boogieboards. Ten years ago, Australians would have laughed at gullible tourists for buying this crap… now, judging from what I’ve seen on the Mornington Peninsula and at the tennis, we’re lapping it up. ... Australia Day has become something irredeemable, full to the hat brim with its own emptiness. But, as I see it, there’s a way through this. It’s the difference between celebration and remembrance.

All this before the actual media event of the Prime Minister and tony Abbott retreating for the Lobby Restaurant and the protest by people attending the 40th anniversary of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy at the comments by Tony Abbott. The two episodes were overlapping, but not identical, but that's to the issue here. What the overlapping episodes showed was that political leadership in Australia has no sense of the importance of truthful remembering about this nation's morally complex history.


Christian "remembering" on Australia Day is going to be even more complex because what we are remembering here involves placing the story of church here in the context of its identity as a pilgrim people, that cannot own the claims of our nation as final and determinative of who we are but place ourselves in a longer and broader story. The Epistle to Diognetus reminds us of some of the tensions of this location for the task of remembering:

Christians are not distinguished from the rest of humanity by country, language, or custom. For nowhere do they live in cities of their own, nor do they speak some unusual dialect, nor do they practice an eccentric lifestyle....While they live in both Greek and barbarian cities, as each one's lot was cast, and follow the local customs in dress and food and other aspects of life, at the same time they demonstrate the remarkable and admittedly unusual character of their own citizenship.

"They live in their own countries, but only as aliens; they participate in everything as citizens, and endure everything as foreigners. Every foreign country is their fatherland, and every fatherland is foreign. 

Religion as idolatry

I am continuing to meditatively read Nicolas Lash's beautifully written lectures, Holiness, Speech and Silence: Reflections on the Question of God. Much of what he has to say on 'religion' turns on its head most of the commonly held assumptions in contemporary discourse about the meaning of the term.

Most religion is, of course, idolatrous. We ascribe divinity to, we treat as sacred, a vast diversity of ideas and institutions, peoples, place stories, customs, which are, at worst, destructive of ourselves and of the world in which we live, and, at best, ambivalent intimations of where true holiness, beyond all our construction and imagination might be found. 

Thus it is that the great religious traditions of this world function as schools in which people learn that there is no feature of the world - no nation, institution, text, idea, ambition - that is, quite simply, sacred. To be a pupil in these schools (and all the teachers in these schools are pupils too) is to learn that we are called beyond the worship of the creature; to learn that that alone is truly 'holy', is quite beyond location and imagination, radically transcends the secular in which we live and die, bearing the gift and burden of contingent freedom. It is within the world, in all the world, in all we think and do and say and see, achieve and suffer, and by no means only in some small margin of the world which people, these days, call 'religion', that we are required to be attentive to the promptings of the Spirit, responsive to the breath of God. (39-40)

'Doing' theology today

Nicholas Lash has an excellent account of what doing theology means today in his series of lecture  Holiness, Speech and Silence: Reflections on the Question of God.

... continuing to hold the Gospel's truth makes much more serious and dangerous demands than mere lip-service paid to undigested information. Unless we make the truth our own through prayer, thought and argument - through prayer and study and an unflinching quest for understanding - it will be chipped away, reshaped, eroded by the power of an imagining fed by other springs, tuned to quite different stories. And this unceasing, strenuous, vulnerable attempt to make sone Christian sense of things, not just in what we say, but in the ways in which we 'see' the world, is what is known as doing theology. (4)

For a helpful unpacking of some of the themes in this fine piece of theology, see Simon Barrow's paper What Difference does God make today?

Lack of focus

I was struck by a news item on the ABC this morning. It was based around the substantial increase of Iranian refugees getting to Australia through Indonesia. The percentage of refugees from Iran has increased over the past two years from 6% to 50%.

This is a really significant shift. So what is the Australian Government doing? The are going to talk to the Indonesian Government about trying to cut off the channel for Iranians getting to Indonesia from Dubai.

Hullo? did I hear right? What about what this increase might tell us about the situation in Iran this is giving rise to this increase? Could this have anything to do with the Iranian Government response to US policy in the region? Could it be the result of action by the Iranian Government in its crackdown on dissent?

Wouldn't this prima facie evidence of increased persecution of dissent and minorities be an issue that might be of concern to Australians?

Apparently not - not is all about us and refugees reaching us - not issues of human rights and the possible impacts of US policy.

A new take on Australia pre 1788

Bill Gammage, in The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia, fundamentally challenges the traditional account of the character of the Australian landscape and the role of the Aboriginal people in creating that landscape. He quotes the account of Charles Darwin during his visit to Australia in the 19th century: ''Harmless savages wandering about without knowing where they shall sleep at night and gaining their livelihood by hunting in the woods.'' 


Darwin, along with most of the European invaders, got the story wrong,Gammage reckons, though they provided much of the evidence on which he build his case for that fundamental misapprehension.


Gammage's book is a big, beautifully presented, intellectual detective story. It is rare to be able to praise a book for both presentation and content, but this is one of those occasions on which I am free to do both. No effort has been spared in the presentation of the argument, with around 35 pages of reproductions of early paintings, sketches of geographical areas and their vegetation and current, comparative colour photos. He makes the case that the Aborigines not only adapted to the Australian environment but that in significant ways they created it and that this creation underlay a lifestyle that was relatively free, independent and provided substantial time for cultural, religious and social activities.  


In making his case for a continent wide consistent pattern of using fire to create a landscape that provided sufficient, sustainable sources of food, Gammage draws heavily on paintings and sketches from the early settlers shortly after invasion when the pre-1788 regime of management was still in place and the situation following the forced abandonment of that regime in a wide range of contexts across the country, along with extracts from diaries and correspondence.


Much as Henry Reynolds forced a revision of the contemporary wisdom on the issue of the Aboriginal response to the European invasion, Gammage has laid the basis for a revolution in the understanding of Aboriginal management of the environment pre-1788. He  concludes his argument with the following observations:

This book interrupts Law and country at the moment when terra nullius came, and an ancient philosophy was destroyed by the completely unexpected, an invasion of new people and ideas. A majestic achievement ended.. Only fragments remain. For the people of 1788 the loss was stupefying. Australia, of how to be Australian, vanished with barely a whisper of regret. 
We have a continent to learn. If we are to survive, let alone feel at home, we must begin to understand our country. If we succeed, one day we might learn to be Australians. (p.323)

Christmas is not for children

Christmas is not for children. This observation seems at odds with the sights and sounds that have blitzed our senses in the shopping malls over the past few weeks, with children lining up for photos with Santa Claus and suggestions of both the cute and the glitzy manger scenes. 


The source of our confusion and our inability to grasp this reality lies in the fact that the Christian Church's celebration of the feast of the Incarnation has become completely overlaid by a celebration of family driven by the unrelenting consumer logic of late capitalism. Christmas for us is about family, therefore becomes centred on children, creating an immense source of pain for those whose families are dysfunctional, those who are single and separated.


A look at the readings for the Christmas service that I attended in Canberra yesterday will start to make the point about how little the whole festival is about family, middle class selection and generally having a good time. The reading in the lectionary for the Old Testament for Christmas morning strikes quite a different note:



The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness,
on them has light shone.
You have multiplied the nation;
you have increased its joy;
they rejoice before you
as with joy at the harvest,
as they are glad when they divide the spoil.
For the yoke of his burden,
and the staff for his shoulder,
the rod of his oppressor,
you have broken as on the day of Midian.
For every boot of the tramping warrior in battle tumult
and every garment rolled in blood
will be burned as fuel for the fire.
For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given;
and the government shall be upon his shoulder,
and his name shall be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Of the increase of his government and of peace
there will be no end,
on the throne of David and over his kingdom,
to establish it and to uphold it
with justice and with righteousness
from this time forth and forevermore.
The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this. (Isaiah 9:2-7 ESV)



This is an account about politics and government. The debris of warfare and battle will be burned up and destroyed and what we are to look for beyond that is one who will bring a reign of peace, characterised by justice and righteousness. This is  a perspective that is supposed to frame the discussion of the Gospel reading in Luke 2 on Christmas morning, but I suspect usually doesn't. It certainly didn't at the church service I attended. The passage takes away any excuse for a sentimental account of the significance of the birth of Jesus and places it in a context of empire and exile.


As it is if you manage to ignore the political frame of God's project for the achievement of peace and justice in Isaiah, the account of the birth of Jesus in Luke Chapter 2 opens with a clear account of the political context. Debra Dean Murphy from the Ekklesia Project makes this very clear in her lectionary reflections on this passage:

In Luke, we glimpse what the tyranny of the imperium romanum meant for its subjects, especially those on the margins of empire geographically, ethnically, and religiously. In verses 1 through 5 it is clear that the events leading up to Jesus’ birth were no picnic – nothing like the familiar, beatific stuff of greeting-card sentimentality. Rather, despots and oligarchs populate the scene and the treacherous journey to the stable – labor pains upon labor pains – includes refugees on the run, authorities asking for papers, and risky border crossings.   

We can miss this, of course, and often do – especially when we rush to the later, more palatable and more accessible passages of Luke’s narrative. The Christmas pageant version of verses 8 through 14, for instance, has long colonized our imagination, with toddlers in bathrobes and bed sheets, coat-hanger halos on their wee heads.

But as Dorothee Soelle once observed, “the boot of the empire crushes everything in its way in the narrative from Bethlehem to Golgotha.” The terror of the shepherds was real and, as those among the poorest of the poor, the glad tidings they received from the angels (in whatever form these heavenly messengers appeared to them) signalled something of the radical politics of the infant king and his own future dealings, as one among the poorest of the poor, with the imperial powers.(The Logic of the Incarnation)

Tom Wright spells out the contrast between two kingdoms that Luke sketches in his account of the birth of Jesus:

Luke's scene ceases to be a romantic pastoral idyll, with the rustic shepherds paying homage to the infant King. It becomes a clear statement of two kingdoms destined to compete, kingdoms that offer radically different definitions of what peace and power and glory are all about. 

Here is the old king in Rome, turning 60 in the year Jesus was born: he represents perhaps the best that pagan kingdoms can do. At least he knows that peace and stability are good things; unfortunately, he has had to kill a lot of people to bring them about, and to kill a lot more, on a regular basis, to preserve them. 

Unfortunately, too, his real interest is in his own glory. Already, before his death, many of his subjects have begun to regard him as divine.

Here, by contrast, is the young King in Bethlehem, born with a price on his head. He represents the dangerous alternative, the possibility of a different empire, a different power, a different glory, a different peace. The two stand over against one another.
Augustus's empire is like a well-lit room at night: the lamps are arranged beautifully, they shed pretty patterns, but they have not conquered the darkness outside. Jesus' kingdom is like the morning star rising, signalling that it is time to blow out the candles, to throw open the curtains, and to welcome the new day that is dawning. Glory to God in the highest-and peace among those with whom he is pleased!

You see the two empires squared off against each other toward the end of John's gospel, when Pilate confronts Jesus with two questions: Don't you know that I have the power to have you killed? And, what is truth? That is the language of kingdom, power and glory that the world knows.The Most Dangerous Baby

Why Samuel Wells ponders do we turn Christmas,  into an event that is really just for children? After all ... 

 this is a story about political oppression, harsh taxes, displaced people, homelessness, unemployment, vulnerable refugees and asylum-seekers. That's the danger of performing it in a place like Delhi and having it acted out by adults who themselves know the very real possibility of any or all of these realities. We might have to recognize what it's really about.

And the truth is, we don't want to think about such realities. We don't want to think that our own political system and the demands of our own economy could have comparable effects on far-flung places to those brought about by the Roman Empire and its client regimes all those years ago.

We don't want the cozy Christmas story besmirched by such tawdry human and political realities. We don't want to spoil things by thinking of the oppressed - and more than that we absolutely can't face the possibility that we might be counted among the oppressors.

So we get youngsters to perform our nativity plays. We talk about how magical this season is. We say "Christmas is really for the children." How ... convenient. Christmas is really for Grown-Ups

If it is for children we can then evade all the hard and the difficult questions that follow if we read it for the hard disturbing tale that it is. We are then faced with the call to discipleship, the call to follow, to become people who are on the Way, no longer at ease with the world in which we are so deeply invested. And we in our churches provide a chaplaincy service to a society, giving a religious veneer with our affirmation of the importance of family and personal generosity to those who live and work on the margins every day of the year.

I got given this year the DVD of the movie Of Gods and Men, the disturbing story of the monks in the Atlas Mountains of Algeria who made the choice to stay and accompany the people in the local village in the midst of a dirty war between the Army and Islamist guerrillas. This story I think provides a parable of the Incarnation, of the costly choice of identification with the pain and brokenness of the world. As a parable of the Incarnation it makes it clear why Christmas is for grown-ups and not for children.

An Advent Credo (courtesy of Daniel Berrigan?)

I found the following while doing an annual tidy up: I have no idea where I got it from, or the accuracy of the attribution to Daniel Berrigan. It seems appropriate as an affirmation for Advent, so here it is.

It is not true that creation and the human family are doomed to destruction and loss ...
This is true: For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life;


It is not true that we must accept inhumanity and discrimination, hunger and poverty, death and destruction ...
This is true: I have come that they may have life, and that abundantly.


It is not true that violence and hatred should have the last word, and that war and destruction rule forever ...
This is true: Unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, his name shall be called wonderful, councillor, mighty God, the Everlasting, the Prince of Peace.


It is not true that we are simply victims off the powers of evil who seek to rule the world ...
This is true: To me is given authority in heaven and on earth, and lo I am with you, even unto the end of the world.


It is not true that we have to wait for those who are specially gifted, who are the prophets of the Church before we can be peacemakers ...
This is true: I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh and your sons and daughters shall prophesy, your young men shall see visions and your old men shall have dreams.


It is not rue that our hopes for liberation of mankind, of justice, of human dignity, of peace are not meant for this earth and for this history ...
This is true: The hour comes, and it is now, that true worshippers shall worship God in spirit and in truth.


So let us enter Advent in hope, even hope against hope. Let us see visions of love and peace and justice. Let us affirm with humility, with joy, with faith, with courage: Jesus Christ - the life of the world.