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. 

Consumeris as addiction

A thought provoking column in the Age last weekend by Simon Moyle on consumerism and addiction in the context of the Federal Government's proposed stimulus package- with a reference to one of the authors who I am founding challenging but also entertaining - Wendell Berry.

http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/fostering-a-dangerous-climate-of-addiction-20090206-7zyy.html

Subvertising

Jonathan Bartley in his column in Ekklesia in commenting on the Atheist advertising on the buses in the United Kingdom raises questions about the Christian response by a Bible Society affiliate, Theos, to this campaign, questions that address the issue of the commodification of religion and the need to understand what this really means.

Christians in Australia might care to think about his comments and transpose them to the Australian context. He is I think on to something.

No sooner had the atheist campaign been announced, than Theos – the Bible Society’s thinktank - made a £50 donation. It was of course a public relations stunt which attempted to take the wind out of atheist sails in the ongoing war between some religionists and secularists. But it sought to make a point. They suggested that the adverts would backfire. The campaign would, they said, inevitably point more people in the direction of their own product (faith in God).

Beyond a charge of 'cynicism', nothing much wrong with their tactics many Christians might argue. Except that churches are amongst those who in recent years have been the most vocal critics of consumerism, and the advertising that drives it. Advertising is usually destructive. More often than not advertising is built around creating and fostering a sense of inadequacy or fear, in the hope that the product on offer will be seen as a cure, and bought in large quantities.

Theos chose not to make this point. Quite the reverse in fact. They have instead bought into the advertising strategy. Indeed, it is what they are banking on. They have supported the campaign in the hope that the atheist ads will sow enough doubt and discord to get people looking at their own alternative brand. In their zeal to upstage and subvert their secular opponents, the religionists have taken on the very consumerist values that Christianity ought to stand against.

The atheists it is claimed are poor advertisers for leaving room for diversity of viewpoint, or questioning. “Where did that ‘probably’ come from? It doesn't suggest the sales staff is overly confident about its product” ...

The Christian faith on offer, by implication, seems to be one which leaves little room for doubt. Gone are the notions of spiritual journey, exploration and discovery. But this is a dangerous route to take. Where does it stop? Do we also dispense with Christianity's message of weakness, vulnerability and sacrifice? Turning the other cheek and love of enemies would perhaps have to go too. Such things will only weaken the appeal of our faith in an increasingly competitive market, after all.

... The message must not change to suit the medium. Playing the consumerist game and supporting your opponent's ad campaign because you believe it will work in your favour, isn't the best way to go about it. Better surely to show that your faith can challenge and transform the values of society rather than pander to them.

Bartley suggests that Christians should be into subvertising.

Recovering Christmas? Bringing Herod back into Christmas

Australian Christians are faced with the problem about how to celebrate the birth of Jesus appropriately in a context where consumerism happily drives the mongrelisation of the secular festival further and faster. Christmas has morphed into a celebration of family, accompanied by relief for those with a demanding job at the possibility of a holiday break.

What can be done to recover in the life of the church the radical character of Christmas?

A couple of suggestions that point to changing our practices as well as re-narrating the Christmas story.

Firstly we can begin to disengage from Christmas as commercial event. Substantially reduce the amount of money we spend on presents for one another and start giving sacrifically to assist community development amongst our brothers and sisters in the global south. (TEAR's Arguably the World's Most Useful Gift Catalogue is great place to start. www.usefulgifts.com


Secondly, we can bring Herod back into Christmas. Genocide and the politics of an Imperial puppet at the edge of the Roman empire that we meet in the Gospels have little to do with the sentimental blather that passes the Christmas story and its commercial images. The Gospel writers (Matthew and Luke) confront us with the political aspirations of the people of Palestine hoping for liberation. The poetry of the Magnificat is soaked in the language of politics, of justice, pulling down princes, lifting up the poor, freedom from fear and guiding our feet into the path of peace.

The intention of Matthew leaves us in no doubt that Herod should be afraid of Jesus. Jesus’ vision was of overturning everything Herod believed in – unaccountable power, privilege and violence in the cause of injustice.

Such a truthful, politically relevant account of Christmas if repeated often enough might even bring the advertising agencies mongrelising of Christmas to a halt - perhaps making it indigestible. It might make preaching on Christmas day a bit harder and more challenging. and uncomfortable for the clergy.