The ethics of being church on stolen land

By Lisa Sampson
writing for Insights magazine

Posted in Culture

Rev Dr Chris Budden is the Interim National Coordinator for the Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress. He teaches theological ethics at Uniting Theological College in Sydney, and is a member of the public and contextual theology research centre at the multi-campus Charles Sturt University.

For years Chris has studied and observed relationships with Indigenous people. His interest in justice for First Peoples in Australia – as well as theological ethics and the church’s “truth-telling” capacity in Australia – led him to write Following Jesus in Invaded Space – Doing Theology on Aboriginal Land.

Lisa Sampson recently caught up with Chris to find out more about his views on ethics in our current theological context. She discovered Chris’ wisdom is all about asking the right questions rather than offering the right answer.

How do you teach theological ethics?

I have taught for quite a long time. The difference between theological ethics and what you might call Christian ethics or moral theology is that there is a very conscious and disciplined effort to connect the theological claims of the Church to the behaviour of the Christian community. It actually revolves around the question: What theological claim of the Church is challenged or engaged with when you deal with this kind of issue? What parts of our faith tradition are at stake when we talk about things? It may be about human nature or what it means to be made in the image of God or the nature of the church, or the meaning of salvation, for example. Or, how can you live out the teachings of Jesus? It may be around the question of whether God expresses God’s sovereignty through political dimensions of the state. Or, more broadly, where does God express sovereignty? How do we understand the texts of the scriptures? So, major theological issues are at stake.

How do you see the dilemmas presently facing the Church in decision making around First Peoples and covenanting? How can we use an ethical framework to move into a new direction?

Let me say that I actually don’t believe in a difference between theology and ethics. I think what we have usually done is try to sort out our theological beliefs first. Once we have worked out what we believe in, then we try to work out what we have to do in response to that. Ethics becomes a second order activity. But I think what we do, our usual practices and habits of life, are not just a consequence of what we believe but a statement of our belief.

So when you offer hospitality, for example, you are actually saying something about the nature of God. That is at least as important as the theological statement. They are actually parallel statements.

There is a sense for me that the questions around Aboriginal people are about the moral shape of the church. The question for me in ethics is What kind of people do we want to be? And what do we have to be to be that kind of people? So the question for me is – What kind of Church do we want to be? And how do our relationships with Aboriginal people give expression to that understanding of ourselves? So it is a slight reframing of the question with no yes/no right answer to a simple question about behaviour.

It is about being a certain type of people. I want to start with the nature of community. A lot of ethics is about individual stuff and I think at the heart of our life is relationships with community.

There are some things that mark our church. For instance I think the church is meant to be a truth telling community. Not in the abstract sense because I think truth actually emerges in community and relationships, and obligations. But if you don’t tell ‘truth’ you can’t confess, and if you can’t confess then you can’t grab hold of the meaning of new beginnings.

How do you identify with the Church as a truth-telling community?

I think that social location is really crucial. Where you read from and who you sit with and who you share the world with and where you believe God is located is really crucial. The mark of the early Church for me is that is stood over against empire. It stood up for a view of the world that said God stood for little people and that God was actually God and that those empires that claimed they were God or spoke for God or represented God were wrong. The Church was a counter cultural community.

It is no accident that it took two years to be baptised in the early church because you had to learn a new way of life. When the church became part of the establishment and faith became the official religion of the Empire then we shifted spaces. So the truth-telling question becomes really difficult at the point where you actually join Empire. The Empire does not want to hear the church’s truth.

And so one of the major challenges for me for the truth-telling capacity of the Church is where it wants to keep locating itself socially and theologically. Which people do you actually sit with and whose interest do you represent and who do you talk for? And because we have bought into the argument that in some ways the state represents God, then we have no problem working with Government around a whole pile of issues. I think we lose the tension that is in the New Testament which says that the Empire often works against the interest of God and you can’t always sit with it very easily. If you are telling its story or supporting its story then you are not always telling truth.

There is no easy answer. We struggle constantly with our desire to, if you like, be ‘inside the tent’ and we want to stay at the table with Government and people who can make decisions because we think we can influence decisions that way ….and often it is true.

But it does challenge our capacity to say truthful things. The issue around Aboriginal people is one of those stark illustrations. It is a constant challenge for the Church to be able to speak truthful things about our history, about our involvement in that history and about our continuing impact of that history when in fact we are so caught up in it.

As Walter Brugman said, “We want to cover our ears because we don’t want to hear it. We want truth spoken but we don’t want to hear it.”

 Is part of our challenge understanding Aboriginal theology?

The challenge for me is I don’t try to write or represent indigenous spirituality. I have a role as a second person to keep asking the question – What is it like to live in invaded space? But part of the challenge is what you have asked about Aboriginal theology and belief. I understand that there is a sacred dimension to life, which I believe has been revealed in a unique way in the life of Jesus, which is what make me a Christian. But I also believe that there are multiple ways in which that sacred life is revealed and named in human life. For Aboriginal people that sacred life is found and revealed in earth and in land and in the narratives and celebrations that are needed to sustain the land and the life and the relationships and everything that connects to it. That is another revelation in the one that we name God (and creation).

This is part of what I think the challenge for the Uniting Church is paragraph 3 in the revised constitution is about – What do you do when God has another story other than a Christian story? How is our faith enriched by that other story? So I think part of our challenge as we do theology and as we worship is to be aware that the God we worship in Jesus has another story. It’s a bit like my father, who has a story with me, but also another story with other people that runs alongside and will it enrich my story if I know it.

This article was originally published by Insights magazine. The article above has been edited for length and context. The full article can be read here.


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