By A/Prof Adam Bowles.
In RELN2410 The Bible: Narratives and Interpretations, students are introduced to historical contexts and indigenous perspectives to think through the relationships of Christianity, the Bible, and colonisation. The material forms a block of three lectures.
The first spans the 15th c. papal bulls, which divided the world between Spanish and Portuguese for the purposes of conquest, and the 1823 American legal case Johnson vs McIntosh, which utilised the papal bulls and other documents to determine that indigenous Americans had no right to sell the lands they occupied. The legal framework developed during this period is often known as 'The Doctrine of Discovery', and was formative for the Mabo case. The lecture opens with the Kev Carmody song Thou Shalt Not Steal, which the students are invited to consider as an example of Biblical exegesis. The song reflects the hypocrisy thesis — expressed also by Bishop Tutu, Mahatma Gandhi, and others — that Christian colonisers have tended not to live by the word of the text with which they have simultaneously missionised. The lecture includes a viewing of the 2015 documentary 'The Doctrine of Discovery: Unmasking the Domination Code', by the American indigenous scholar and activist Steven Newcomb, the co-founder of the Indigenous Law Institute.
The second lecture shifts to South Asia and continues themes of Empire and colonisation. It explores the histories and interactions of the Syriac liturgy Christians of the Malabar coast (dating to around the 2nd c. CE, perhaps earlier), the Portuguese and Catholic missionaries (especially the Jesuits), the merging and splitting of these two communities, the arrival of Protestant colonisers and (eventually) Protestant missions that led to Bible translations into Asian languages and the emergence of Christian conversion movements that articulated Dalit liberation narratives (the term Dalit refers to people once known as 'untouchable').
The third lecture returns to Australia and, specifically, Queensland. It is framed initially within the contexts of colonisation, missionary activities, the displacement (and the concomitant cultural dislocation) of peoples onto missions and government reserves, all of which from 1897 were facilitated by the Opium Act, the Queensland law that enabled the Stolen Generations. Many of these missions and reserves were from 1984 converted into DOGITs (Deed of Grant in Trust), a uniquely Queensland system that granted Indigenous communities within these lands degrees of communal autonomy, although not rights to individual ownership. Students are introduced to three case studies that are derived from research conducted for the Queensland Atlas of Religion.
The first of these case studies is of the One Mob Fellowship, a branch of the Wesleyan Methodist Church in Woorabinda, a DOGIT south-west of Rockhampton. The Indigenous leadership of One Mob Fellowship, who have lived the consequences of cultural dislocation of which DOGITs are in some ways emblematic, argues that Christianity is an avenue to cultural and political restoration. The second is the story of the arrival of The London Missionary Society to the Torres Strait Islands, often referred to on the Islands as the 'Coming of the Light'. Students are introduced to this through two avenues, a short documentary produced for NITV of the arrival of the mission on the island of Erub, the first point of contact with the LMS, and then through oral history interviews with Aunty Pauline Ah Wang and Uncle Willie Wigness, elders of Waiben (Thursday Island) and leaders of the Quetta Memorial Church. We close with the community of Yarrabah, a DOGIT to the east of Cairns, whose population represents the highest concentration of Christians in Australia. Students watch a yarn between Elverina Johnson and her mother Dorita Murgha Wilson, which courses through the brutality of cultural dislocation, the long process of cultural reconciliation, and the formation of an Indigenous Christianity.
This lecture block aims to recognise and clarify colonial disruptions, violences, and dispossessions involving asymmetries of wealth and raw power. Yet it also aims to shine a light on patterns of resistance, adaptation, and agency within the context of such processes. Accompanying the lectures, students read for their tutorials papers by Steed Vernyl Davidson and Peter Harrison describing the ways in which the Bible was used to justify colonial practices (lecture 1), an essay by Peniel Rajkumar on how the Bible is utilised for Dalit liberation in India (lecture 2), and then de-colonised readings of the Bible by Anne Pattel-Grey, the current head of UQ's ATSIS unit (lecture 3). The point is as much about how the Bible is utilised as it is about what it says, the latter being a point of contention, as is the case, perhaps, of any enduring book.
