Uniting Church Theology and History - Intensive at Pilgrim Theological College, Feb 15th -18th and 20th

This year Pilgrim Theological College and United  Theological College will be co-operating in the presentation of their respective units, "Uniting Church Theology and History" and "Uniting Church Studies"  in mid-February (see dates below).  Dr Damian Palmer and I will be leading the teaching, assisted by a variety of other presenters from various parts of the UCA. We'll be live-streaming into each others' classrooms and facilitating interaction between our respective cohorts of students.

We are very intentional about taking these units beyond being simply opportunities for denominational induction and/or enculturation. Instead, we are wanting to see them as a chance to explore the Uniting Church - its theology and history, its emerging identity, and its changing role and diverse places in Australian society and religion - as a topic of tertiary-level academic enquiry. 

Relative to other 'mainline churches' (itself a designation which invites scrutiny), the UCA has a relatively short history. In many respects, and properly so, it is still a work in progress. Nevertheless, it has also now been around long enough to have generated significant amounts of critical reflection, commentary and debate. There is much to study and evaluate. 

For logistical reasons we can only do four of the five days together. The fifth day will be in our separate cohorts exploring slightly distinct themes. On those first four days we'll cover the UCA's historical and theological roots, the content and status of its Basis of Union, and the various church-shaping debates and decisions about: 

• women's ordination;
• being a multicultural/intercultural church
• its colonial entanglements, the covenant with the Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress and the adoption of the 'Revised Preamble'; 
• sexual diversity and same-sex marriage; 
• innovation and tradition in liturgy; and
• its profile in matters of social justice.  

The following sketches the particular issues/questions/approaches we'll be exploring on the final day in the Parkville cohort.

1. The various histories of the Uniting Church

The UCA's history can be told in a wide variety of ways: telling the stories of its theological disputes, charting and interpreting its numerical decline; appropriating the multitude of local congregational histories; assembling the various academic publications of the UCA Historical Society or those which have marked the various anniversaries of the UCA. After canvassing some of these, this session will focus on William Emilsen's 2019 biography of Charles Harris, a key early First Peoples' leader in the UCA. His story (as told by Emilsen) is powerful personal story, but indirectly it also tells a story of the hopes, achievements and failures of the UCA. 

2. What is 'Uniting Church theology,' how is it produced and by whom, where is it found and what is it for?

In a formal sense, Uniting Church theology is that which is affirmed by the Assembly, the Council with "determining responsibility" in matters of doctrine (glossing over, for now, the distinction between theology and doctrine). Less formally, it is also what is preached by its preachers, articulated in its justice statements, and embodied in its mission etc. This session will explore the tensions and possibilities between these formal and informal theologies, noting how neither can be easily mapped by the frequently invoked but blunt and largely uniformative categories of 'liberal' and 'conservative.' There will be a special focus on what theology is actually for, noting the ways the different groups in the UCA (activists, pastors, deacons, preachers, community services, academics, administrators, and leaders - all of which categories being further differentiated by age, gender, culture) have different expectations of theology. Does the force of these diverse expectations shape the UCA's theological work? How does the UCA's theological work measure itself by the confession of Christ's lordship? 

3. Locating UCA theology in contemporary global theology

The UCA's founding theology - and its confessional, missional and Christologically-based features - was shaped by and in the mid-twentieth century European-centred ecumenical atmosphere. Emerging from that environment it was already alert to the post-Christendom context the West's churches were then entering (and there are definite post-Christendom impulses already evident in the Basis of Union). But the ecumenical diversity of the mid-twentieth century has given way to a more radical diversity of 'global Christianity' with its accompanying theological diversity generated by attention to race, colonialism, gender, religious pluralism, climate change and poverty. What sorts of conversations are possible between the UCA's founding theology and these contemporary theological movements? And what does the rise of new global Christian traditions mean for the Uniting Church's received ecumenical impulses?

4. The UCA's pilgrimage in contemporary Australian Christianity and society

If the global Christian landscape has changed in the last 50 years, so too has the Christian landscape in  Australia. This landscape is characterised by: 

• a significant decline in Christian allegiance (slightly slowed, but not arrested by the 'growing' churches); 
• the swap in social and political influence between the churches once considered marginal and those once considered central;
• the growing cultural and linguistic diversity of Australian Christianity;
• the churches' collective complicity in child sexual abuse;
• the disproportionate presence of the churches in community services 
• the growing public profile of other religions; and
• politically-charged debates about the relationship between 'Australian' identity and the so-called "Judeo-Christian tradition."

For the UCA, as one of the forms of Christianity that has moved from near the centre to towards the periphery, this context is potentially an opportunity to vigorously explore and develop two images from the Basis: the "strange way" of Jesus Christ and the character of the church as "pilgrim people." Both images are related to the summons from the Basis for the church to be nothing less and nothing more than an "instrument through which Christ may work and bear witness to himself."  They also raise internal questions about what forms of Christian community actually justify the definition of "congregation," the scale and responsibilities of the UCA's inter-related councils, and the dependence on inherited property and occupied land (the latter in terms of both Christian stewardship and the UCA's commitment to First Peoples' sovereignty).

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Dates for Uniting Church Theology and History / Pilgrim / Parkville: 15th - 18th and 20th February

Pilgrim website:pilgrim.edu.au 

Enrolment info: registrar@pilgrim.edu.au

Dates for Uniting Church Studies / UTC / Parramatta: 15th - 19th February

UTC Website: utc.edu.au 

Enrolment info: studenta@nswact.uca.org.au

A Post-Christendom Sort-of Commentary on the Basis of Union: Post 1/4

Last year I published (through MediaCom) a short commentary on the Uniting Church's Basis of Union. It has the slightly (but deliberately) long title, "In His Own Strange Way": A Post-Christendom, Sort-of Commentary on the Basis of Union. The book aims to bring the Basis into conversation with some key contemporary issues. 

Each section of the book focuses on a particular passage of the Basis by way of a short 'commentary' (loosely defined!). This is followed by some discussion starters to locate the text in post-Christendom,  a set of specific questions, and finally a passage from the Bible as a suggested focus for developing connections between the Basis and the Bible. The book has been designed to be used be used for either individual reflection or group study.

In each of this series of four blog posts, the commentary on one selected paragraph from the Basis is reproduced, specifically Paragraphs 1, 5, 10 and 11. 

If this whets your appetite, you can order the book through MediaCom or CTM Resourcing.  There's also a short article about the book in the NSW/ACT Synod magazine, Insights.

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Commentary on Basis of Union, Paragraph 1.


The formation of the Uniting Church on June 22^nd 1977 was big news. It was headlined on the front pages of many of the daily newspapers. The inaugural service held in the Sydney Town Hall was replayed on ABC TV that same evening. Indeed, it even claimed international attention. Firebrand preacher, Ian Paisley, not satisfied with the bigotry he was fomenting in his native Northern Ireland, travelled to Sydney to protest about this new ‘ecumenical’ church. More happily, Synod-based services marking the UCA’s advent were held in Australia’s capital cities on the following Sunday. They were packed.

Have we lived up to the expectation? And how would we answer that question in any case? If we used this opening paragraph of the Basis as a criterion, we might ask whether, when we gather in our various communities of faith week by week, we do so acknowledging “one another in love and joy as believers in our Lord Jesus Christ” and in order to “hear anew the commission of the Risen Lord to make disciples of all nations, and daily to seek to obey his will”? Or to lower the register of the language, we might simply ask: Is Jesus Christ and his mission central to our life as Christian communities? This is a much more serious test of the state of the Uniting Church than any narrative about numbers or any data about demographics.

The union of churches that produced the Uniting Church in Australia was not a denominational merger. Its purpose wasn’t to consolidate resources. It wasn’t a strategy of expansion. It wasn’t driven by a vague sense that it was a good idea. No, at least according to this paragraph, union was embedded in some deep theological convictions: it was intended for the glory of God; it was a call to "sole loyalty to Christ"; its horizon was nothing less than the kingdom of God which Jesus had proclaimed and for which Christians hope.

Right at the outset of the document, union is set within a context of the triune God, the centrality of Jesus Christ, the call to mission, and the hope of the coming kingdom. The UCA was not intended as a ‘new Church’ or a new ‘denomination’ - even if that is the language that might come most easily to us to describe what happened. Indeed, it was probably inevitable that this is how the event of union would be described and understood – both within and outside the church. To counter that inevitability, one way of summarising the spirit of this paragraph might go like this: the formation of UCA was simply a new episode in the history of the ‘Church of God’.

The logic at work in this paragraph is precisely the logic that challenges ‘denominationalism’, the phenomenon of Christendom by which the divided Churches defined themselves over and against each other. 'We are this kind of church.' 'We do communion this way, not your way.' 'We appoint our ministers this way, differently from you.' 'We have this form of government, unlike yours.'  Of course, Christianity has never been homogeneous: it has always displayed variety and diversity. But denominationalism turns that variety and diversity into division. It makes primary, things which should be secondary: forms of government and leadership; modes of worship; theologies of ordination, or beliefs about the sacraments. For instance, consider the names of the three Churches which entered union: each one of them was known by a title which referred in one way or another to the form of government adopted or to the way it structured Christian experience: Presbyterian, Methodist and Congregational. In other words, Christians from these churches identified themselves to each other by the way they organised themselves.

One of the most striking post-Christendom notes in this paragraph is precisely the move away from these denominational labels as markers of identity. They are challenged and subverted by the seemingly innocuous but deeply challenging summons: “In this union, these churches commit their members to acknowledge one another in love and joy as believers in our Lord Jesus Christ.” As noted above, this union was not simply an organisational merger. It was an event that called forth a deeply personal response from the individual members of each of the denominations. No longer would Presbyterians, Methodists and Congregationalists identify themselves or one another in those terms. Nor was the challenge from now on simply to recognise one another as fellow members of the Uniting Church. That would simply replace one form of denominationalism with another. No, something even more fundamental was being called for: an acknowledgement of each other as ‘believers in our Lord Jesus Christ’. We might baulk at the language of ‘believers in’ rather than, say, ‘followers of’ Jesus Christ, but the basic point of Christian identity is stated. Christians are Christians through their relationship to Jesus Christ.

Of course, at one level acknowledging fellow Christians as Christians can be a fairly formal or superficial process. Beneath (and not always beneath!) the acknowledgement can be mutual suspicion, hostility or indifference.  Here, however, the Basis invites those entering union to set those aside and to accompany the mutual acknowledgement with a key Christian virtue and an equally key Christian disposition: love and joy. This is not about whether we like our fellow Christians or whether we can put up with them. It’s about the hard work of acknowledging that in Christ I am connected and responsible to any other person whom Christ calls into the church and that together we are equally called by Christ into his mission.

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The three remaining posts in this series will be published in due course.

Basis of Union Conference, 2014: Part 1

Last weekend, the Assembly Doctrine Working Group, Uniting Mission and Education, and the United Theological College jointly hosted a conference on the Uniting Church's Basis of Union. The theme was Basis of Union: Catalyst for Renewal. This followed an earlier conference on the Basis in Melbourne in 2010. This second conference drew around 80 participants over the weekend. The keynote address was given by the leading scholar of the Basis, Andrew Dutney, who is also the current President of the UCA. You can read his address here.

The range of topics and the various approaches taken can be checked out in the conference brochure.  Some highlights for me included hearing the new Preamble of the UCA's Constitution read by an indigenous person, the appropriation of the Basis by a panel of UCA Young Adults, the input of theologians from the Nanjing Theological Seminary, and Bec Lindsay's engagement between the Basis, Deuteronomy and the churches of South-East Sydney.

Over the next week I'll post some brief reflections on three specific issues raised at the conference and which I've been pondering since. These three issues are: the relationship of the first 13 paragraphs of the Basis to the last 5 paragraphs; the place of the triune understanding of God in the Basis; and the question, 'Whose document is it?'

In my own paper I focused on Paragraph 4, specifically its reminder that we are "called to be disciples of a crucified Lord, and to enter into the fellowship of Christ's suffering". I argued that the appropriation of the discourse of discipleship, so understood, could help us resist moralism, triumphalism and nostalgia. On that basis I suggested that this fourth paragraph could feed into the post-Christendom and post-denominationalist calling of the UCA. (My presentation included a project I've been working on with the Young Adults from the local congregation of which I'm a member. They offered themselves as first time readers of the Basis. Their filmed responses were interesting, diverse and challenging, and injected a form of engagement with the Basis which was well-worth hearing.)

I also emphasised the reference in Paragraph 4 to the claim that "in his own strange way, Christ constitutes, rules and renews [his disciples] as his Church". The priority of Christology over Ecclesiology evident in this paragraph continues the same Christological priority articulated in Paragraph 3, the paragraph described by D'Arcy Wood as 'the basis of the Basis'.

The question was raised in the discussion after my paper as to whether the Christological priority of these paragraphs really do condition the theology of ministry and government in Paragraphs 14 and 15. Are those later paragraphs as open to renewal as the core, intentionally controlling paragraphs would mandate them to be? This question was reinforced in the final plenary session when it was asked, 'What if the Basis had simply stopped at Paragraph 13?' Behind these questions lies a concern - widely articulated - that the paragraphs on ministry and government have made the UCA less flexible, more structure-bound, and less mission-oriented than it was meant to be.

We can only speculate about the possible consequences of the Basis finishing at Paragraph 13. We can, however, engage in a much more concrete discussion about the earlier question: Are Paragraphs 14 and 15 really controlled by the normative Paragraph 3? Or, despite the framers' claims to the contrary, are these later paragraphs the place where a bit of 'ecclesiastical carpentry' does actually come to the surface?

For what it's worth, what follows is simply some unpacking of the presenting question with a few observations and/or questions of my own, and in no particular order.

• Paragraph 14 is not without its note of renewal and openness to reform. This is most explicit in the reference to the renewal of the diaconate. It is also present, if a little less transparently, in the acknowledgement of the 'reconsideration of traditional forms of ministry'. 
• The note of renewal and openness to reform is harder to find in Paragraph 15. Nevertheless, the duty of the councils so mandated is to ensure that the "whole body of believers may be united by mutual submission in the service of the Gospel". Any given council of the church can be called to account by this criterion on the authority of this paragraph itself.
• If these paragraphs have stifled the church's capacity for flexibility (on which see below) is that less because of their content per se and more because of the way they have been received and appropriated? Is it here that the Uniting Church hears the strongest echoes and/or remnants of the language and structures of the predecessor churches that they have become the locus of attempts to resolve matters unresolved at union? And if this is so, might it be that the tensions around this will pass the more distant we are from union?
• How inflexible is the Uniting Church anyway? Attention was drawn in the final plenary session to just how diverse the UCA is and how many different trajectories and diverse forms of ministry it has pursued since union. Is this because of or despite the Basis of Union?
• To what extent are the various demands for extra flexibility a summons to gospel-faithfulness and to what extent are they driven by an anti-institutionalism? I'm not suggesting that the latter can't be a tool for the former. But anti-institutionalism is not a self-evident virtue, even if it is deeply embedded in Australian culture and society. Interestingly, the reference to the post-denominational calling of the UCA in my own paper was heard by various people - approvingly by some and not so by others - as a critique of our institutions. This was certainly not my intent. And the call to renewal in the Basis should not be set against the church's institutional dimensions. The call to renewal of church order and law in the Basis is call to the constant reform of government and law, not their elimination.
• Perhaps the trickiest issue to address here is that of the impact on our readings of these paragraphs, especially Paragraph 14 and its reference to ordination, of our ecumenical commitment and impulse. This issue was also raised in the conference plenary. Paragraph 14 can produce quite different resonances when read through the filter of Paragraphs 1 and 2 than when it is read through the filter of Paragraph 3. This is a big question, and one that requires more than a dot point in response. I hope to publish some posts on this question from various interested parties in due course.

So, the question of the Christological core of the Basis is not a stand-alone question. It unpacks into a range of more specific questions, none of which, in my view, can be answered terribly easily.

The next post will be about the way the question of the  Trinity surfaced at the conference, not least through prompts from our Chinese visitors.