Getting off the Verandah: Contextual Australian Theology In-Land and in Story
In 1998, Stephen Pickard posited the verandah as an appropriate image from which to explore “Gospel and Spirituality in an Australian setting”. A post-colonial reading of the verandah in Australia reveals it is not an image to support positive encounter between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australi...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Sage Publ.
2006
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| In: |
Pacifica
Year: 2006, Volume: 19, Issue: 3, Pages: 323-341 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Parallel Edition: | Non-electronic
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| Summary: | In 1998, Stephen Pickard posited the verandah as an appropriate image from which to explore “Gospel and Spirituality in an Australian setting”. A post-colonial reading of the verandah in Australia reveals it is not an image to support positive encounter between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. This article argues that images of lives immersed in inter-cultural relationships provide more productive material for a contextual Australian theology, and one that could be called a “theology of decolonisation”. Using this material from the life writing I am producing of the lives of two English immigrants - Rebecca Forbes and Jim Page, who lived and died amongst the Adnyamathanha people of the Flinders Ranges in the first half of the twentieth century - I will argue that for immigrant European Christianity in Australia, an immersive encounter in the country and on the terms of Indigenous Australians is necessary before a post-colonial contextual theology by non-Indigenous theologians can arise in Australia. I suggest models of decolonisation put forward by critics of both colonising and colonised heritages, and discuss methods in metaphoric and contextual theology to achieve a theology of decolonisation for non-Indigenous Australians. |
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| ISSN: | 1839-2598 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Pacifica
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1177/1030570X0601900312 |