Ep110. Decolonisation and the Preamble to the UCA Constitution, Garry Deverell and Chris Budden

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Ep110. Decolonisation and the Preamble to the UCA Constitution, Garry Deverell and Chris Budden

Rev Dr Garry Deverell and Rev Dr Chris Budden join Rev. Tau’alofa Anga’aelangi, Rev Dr Katalina Tahaafe-Williams, and myself to discuss the preamble to the Uniting Church in Australia's constitution. Garry opens by discussing his critique of the document from an Indigenous perspective as one which rein-scribes colonial narratives, Chris then offers some insights into the motivation and process behind the production of the document, after which we all enter into a discussion on the lineage and impact of the document and ask where to from here for a church seeking to continue to engage in decolonisation, repair, and justice.

This episode is a re-post of most recent of the monthly Black Lives Matter and the Church in Australia panels hosted by the Uniting Church Chaplaincy at Charles Sturt University in Port Macquarie and the Social Justice Pilgrim Presbytery NT. This episode is a re-post of most recent of the monthly Black Lives Matter and the Church in Australia panels hosted by the Uniting Church Chaplaincy at Charles Sturt University in Port Macquarie and the Social Justice Pilgrim Presbytery NT. These panels happen on the final Sunday of the month at 3pm EST. To find out more contact Rev. Tau’alofa Anga’aelangi at ucc.csu[@]gmail.com

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Ep104 (Live). Indigenous Theology and Decolonising Theological Edu, Naomi Wolfe

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Ep104 (Live). Indigenous Theology and Decolonising Theological Edu, Naomi Wolfe

Naomi Wolfe sat down with Rev. Tau’alofa Anga’aelangi, Rev Dr Katalina Tahaafe-Williams, Emma Jackson, and myself to talk about Indigenous theology and spirituality, theological education, decolonising liturgy and language for God, and much more.

This episode is a re-post of most recent of the monthly Black Lives Matter and the Church in Australia panels hosted by the Uniting Church Chaplaincy at Charles Sturt University in Port Macquarie and the Social Justice Pilgrim Presbytery NT. This episode is a re-post of most recent of the monthly Black Lives Matter and the Church in Australia panels hosted by the Uniting Church Chaplaincy at Charles Sturt University in Port Macquarie and the Social Justice Pilgrim Presbytery NT.

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Ep87. Reading the Magnificat in Australia, Anne Elvey

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Ep87. Reading the Magnificat in Australia, Anne Elvey

I spoke with Anne Elvey about her new book, Reading the Magnificat in Australia. We discuss her approach to the project as a poet and biblical scholar who has creatively engaged the Magnificat for many years, and how this combination connects to a hermeneutics of creative imagination and need for creative writing to 'turn the breath' toward empathy and resistance. We talk about keeping an aspect of unknowing central to the book's epistemological frame and the hermeneutic of restraint. I also ask about how the Magnificat offers a call to "reconfigure the learned desire of the will of white possession", and finally the concept of entanglement as a way toward a broader (less anthropocentric) reading and rewriting of Magnificat.

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Ep73. Abolition in the Colony, Robyn Oxley

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Ep73. Abolition in the Colony, Robyn Oxley

I sat down with Robyn Oxley to talk about the criminal justice and need for abolition in the lands now called Australia. We talk about her journey into and with abolition, why community resourcing and accountability make so much more sense, how prisons simply do not achieve what they purport to achieve (especially in terms of rehabilitation), and the racism and colonial violence that runs all the way through the system – a violence that is entirely in keeping with the colonial project that has wrought trauma, displacement, and death on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples since British invasion.

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Ep64. Spirit Outside the Gate, Oscar García-Johnson

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Ep64. Spirit Outside the Gate, Oscar García-Johnson

I sat down with Oscar García-Johnson to talk about Spirit Outside the Gate: Decolonial Pneumatologies of the American Global South (IVP Academic, 2019). We discuss doing theology in the colonial difference and centring indigenous practices, values, and ideas; we talk about Transoccidentality and how it repositions Christian identity toward a community-in-movement (and the implication of this in conversations around migrants and migration). We also go deep on pneumatology, discussing his view of the Spirit as Decolonial Healer and his response to one of the book’s central question: “What are Christians to make of the Holy Spirit’s occasional encounters with cultures and religions of the America’s before the European conquest?”

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Ep47. Biblical Experiments in Decolonisation, Steve Heinrichs

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Ep47. Biblical Experiments in Decolonisation, Steve Heinrichs

Is it possible for the exploited and their allies to reclaim the Bible from the dominant powers?

I sat down with Steve Heinrichs, Director of Indigenous-Settler Relations for the Mennonite Church Canada, to talk about Unsettling the World: Biblical Experiments in Decolonisation, a volume he edited, out now through Orbis Books.

In Unsettling the Word over 60 Indigenous and Settler authors come together to wrestle with Scripture, reimagining ancient texts for reparative futures. With poem, essay, art, proverb, and provocation this is an excellent and essential work.

In this episode we discuss Steve's own journey with Scripture and decolonisation, how this work came together, what surprised him in its compilation, how churches in settler-colonial contexts might start hard, but necessary conversations, what his job entails, and much much more.

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