Church Leaders Take a Desert
Trek to Bridge Australia's Divisions
Questions over apology strain reconciliation efforts
between aboriginal and white populations.
By Moira O'Brien-Malone in Melbourne | posted 6/15/00
Leaders of nine Australian churches have completed
a pilgrimage of reconciliation-a week-long 1,900-mile
bus trip to Australia's remote heart.
The pilgrimage-described as a "pilgrimage to
the heart" and a chance for a "just reconciliation
between races, cultures and churches"-began on
June 4 in the Australian capital, Canberra, where
the nation's head of state, the governor-general,
Sir William Deane, bid farewell to the pilgrims. The
journey wound up seven days later at Uluru (formerly
known as Ayers Rock) with an ecumenical Pentecost
service in Australia's massive central desert, with
the Mutitjulu people, traditional owners of the rock,
one of the most powerful symbols of the nation and
of indigenous spirituality.
The journey came as Australians held the final celebrations
for Corroboree 2000, a series of events marking a
decade of reconciliation between the nation's indigenous
and non-indigenous people. It also coincided with
the churches' annual week of prayer for Christian
unity. The church leaders' trek began a week after
200,000 people turned out in Sydney to "bridge
the gap" between black and white Australians
by walking together across the Sydney Harbor Bridge,
and ended on the day 55,000 people turned out for
a similar walk in Adelaide, a city of just one million
people.
But it came also at a time of division: Australia's
prime minister, John Howard, refuses to apologize
to the Aboriginal people for their treatment since
white settlement began more than 200 years ago, most
notably the forcible removal of Aboriginal children
from their families-the "stolen generations"-and
their placement with white families in an attempt
at assimilation, a process that continued until the
1970s.
Prime Minister Howard maintains that today's Australians
cannot be held responsible for the mistakes of their
predecessors. And polls show that many Australian
agree with him-in John Howard's own electorate, the
leafy, affluent northern Sydney suburb of Bennelong,
52 percent of those polled believed no apology was
necessary.
While some Aboriginal people are pushing for a formal
treaty between black and white Australians-a process
the prime minister has labeled divisive-others believe
the country is not ready for one. Others still, such
as prominent Aboriginal lawyer Noel Pearson, say that
breaking the culture of welfare dependency among indigenous
people is more important than any treaty.
The director of the church leaders' pilgrimage, Catholic
priest Tony Doherty, conceded at the trip's outset
that the journey was a symbolic one, but said that
sometimes people understood symbols more clearly than
conferences, discussion and agendas. "People
have likened it to the bus journey in the southern
states of America, which addressed the race issue,"
he told Australian Associated Press. "People
have quite extravagantly compared it to the Gandhi
salt march," he said, admitting, though, it was
really like neither.
"Just as Sydney walked across the Harbor Bridge,"
he said, "we would like to think we are putting
a bridge across this huge continent. "It is a
bridge that will take into account a lot of issues,
not just the Aboriginal issue, central and important
though that is."
After the journey, Doherty told ENI it had been an
emotional but exhausting trip, one in which there
had been reconciliation on the bus and off it. Taking
part in the pilgrimage were Archbishop Peter Carnley,
Primate of the Anglican Church of Australia; Archbishop
Frank Carroll, chairman of the Australian Catholic
Bishops' Conference; Pastor Tim Costello, president
of the Baptist Union; Pastor Barry Ryall from the
Churches of Christ; Commissioner Brian Morgan from
the Salvation Army; Pastor John Mavor from the Uniting
Church; Pastor Dr Lance Steike, from the Lutheran
Church of Australia; Archdeacon Younan Kiwarkis, from
the Assyrian Church of the East; and Uniting Church
Pastor Shane Blackman, from the Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander Commission.
Each churchman was accompanied by a person under the
age of 26.
"We had the churches bound together on the bus,
indigenous people and Anglo-Celts, people from Russia
and Iraq, young women from Taiwan," Doherty said.
"It was quite an unique experience, one of intimacy
and story-telling and of the hours and hours we spent
together".
The trip went from Canberra to Narrandera, on the
Murrumbidgee River in New South Wales, to the former
mining town of Cobar then to outback towns Wilcannia
and Broken Hill and the desert town of Coober Pedy-where
many of the homes are built underground and the Serbian
Orthodox church has been tunnelled out underneath
a slag heap-before heading to Uluru.
Along the way, the pilgrims met local people, black
and white, and listened to their stories.
"That's what reconciliation is about, story-telling
and listening to stories," Doherty told ENI.
The church leaders heard of the hardships of life
in the bush, the mine closures, the isolation, the
lack of jobs and facilities, and of towns with dwindling
populations and uncertain futures.
But there was hope, too. Doherty described arriving
in the town of Wilcannia and being greeted by the
Bakangi indigenous people. "There was a group
of local schoolchildren singing with terrific vigor
'I am Bakangi and I'm proud of it,' and punching up
into the air."
But he admitted that reconciliation was not always
the pressing issue for indigenous people. "Frankly,
for the Mutitjulu community, I don't think it looms
large in their minds," he said. "Their pensions
are paid on Wednesday, and they buy food Wednesday,
Thursday and Friday, and they go hungry the other
four days of the week.
"We put on a barbecue and the whole town came.
The pilgrims couldn't get a sausage and went away
hungry, which was a lovely little turning of the tables."
He went on: "Reconciliation is about forming
new relationships, about breaking down stereotypical
hurdles, and trying to make a bridge across fear and
unfamiliarity.
"The more comfortable we are with difference,
the more reconciled we are," he said. When would
the reconciliation process be over? ENI asked. "When
we are a country of justice and peace."
- Copyright ⓒ ENI. Used with permission.
17-Aug-2000 -- EWTN News Brief
AUSTRALIA TO BAR "IN
VITRO" FOR SINGLE MOTHERS
CANBERRA, Aug. 16 (CWNews.com)
-- The Australian government has submitted legislation
prohibiting the use of in-vitro fertilization techniques
by unmarried women.
The proposed new legislation, submitted by the Conservative
government headed by Prime Minister John Howard,
drew immediate protests from feminist groups and
lesbian activists. Leaders of the opposition Labor
Party also said that they would oppose the measure.
The legislation, introduced by the government on
August 17, came in response a court ruling in July,
which found that Australia's anti- discrimination
laws were violated by a policy banning single women
from in-vitro clinics in the state of Victoria.
The new bill would amend the anti- discrimination
law to allow for such a ban.
A spokesman for Prime Minister Howard explained
that the prohibition against artificial forms of
achieving pregnancy in single women was a legitimate
function of government authority, since society
has an interest in seeing children born into two-parent
families.
The Olympics are more than
fun and games for Anglican churches in Sydney, Australia
Posted by KerygmaComputing on Tuesday September
05, @02:46AM
from the dept.
The congregations plan to become ministry centers.
"The opportunity to make people aware of the
Christian message" is unprecedented, said Daniel
Willis, an assistant minister at St. Andrews Cathedral,
which adjoins Sydney Square, the focal point of
much activity. About 500,000 people will be in the
city every day during the Summer Olympic Games this
month, according to an Anglican news service.
St. Andrews will conduct evangelistic outreaches
to Olympics fans in cooperation with Quest Australia,
an interdenominational group. Christian literature
will be distributed through kiosks, and dramatic
and musical performances will be held on three stages,
the news service said.
Archbishop Harry Goodhew will hold an ecumenical
service Sept. 17 and local Christian leaders will
give daily morning and afternoon talks. The "church
on the water," a 200-seat boat, will feature
entertainment, Christian speakers, and guided tours
of Darling Harbor.
- www.ReligionToday.com
Australia's Church Leader's
Views on Sexuality Ignite Controversy
Head of country's Anglicans calls for blessing of
same-sex "friendships"
By Margaret Simons in Sydney | posted 6/4/01
As the Anglican Church of Australia prepares for
its general synod in July, major divisions have
appeared following an archbishop's request that
the church bless lifelong homosexual "friendships."
The Primate of the Church in Australia, Peter Carnley,
has suggested the church should bless such unions
and concentrate on the spiritual quality of the
friendship without inquiring into intimate physical
matters.
In a paper prepared for the synod, Carnley, a liberal
theologian who is also Archbishop of Perth, capital
of the state of Western Australia, said that friendship
was "essential for providing an appropriate
and supportive context for working out the details
of a life of moral goodness. The church's calling
is to foster such friendships."
He said that for the church to "specify limits
of [physical] touch" would be as inappropriate
for a relationship between people of the same gender
it would be in heterosexual marriage. "Does
the church become involved in this, or is to do
so merely an expression of the modern obsession
with sex, an example of the voyeurism endemic in
the modern world imported into the ecclesiastical
environment?" Carnley's paper asks.
Following publication of an edited excerpt of his
paper in The Bulletin, a national news magazine,
two senior members of the Sydney diocese, both possible
candidates for the position of archbishop of Sydney,
Australia's biggest city, strongly criticized the
Primate's views. Robert Forsyth, Bishop of South
Sydney, told The Sydney Morning Herald that "any
suggestion that the Anglican Church should bless
a sexual relationship that is not fully marriage
of a man and a woman is not possible if we are to
remain faithful to Lord Jesus Christ and the Scriptures."
"If it means the Christian faith has nothing
to say about what you do in your bedroom-about sexual
behavior-he must be kidding. Sexual behavior is
a crucial part of human behavior. The Christian
faith has crucial things to say about work, how
we earn money, how we treat other people and our
sex lives."
Canon Peter Jensen, principal of Moore Theological
College and another contender for the position of
archbishop of Sydney, said that if Carnley "is
suggesting this [blessing a committed homosexual
union] is a good thing for us to do, he has gone
beyond the border."
Full Story - http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2001/123/15.0.html
|
Taiwan
성회지 정보
4. 호주 기독교 선교 Report
Daily Bible
