Abstract
This statement by Gary Bouma is twice repeated in his Australian Soul and cited with approval by Andrew Dutney in his A Genuinely Educated Ministry,2 a study of theological education focused on one old-line church, The Uniting Church in Australia. Bouma’s statement clearly suggests that clergy training is out of touch. My reflections explore reasons why the formation of clergy may be, especially, or particularly, tricky in Australian contexts, though I hold some hope that the task, while awkward, is not futile—though of course much rests on what formation is imagined as entailing. In these explorations, I consider some recent developments in the perception and reception of Christian ministers, as well as aspects of their seeming self-understanding, and suggest that all of that is haunted by longer questions about the legacy of roles clergy accepted and performed in the invasion of Australia, both disastrous for the indigenous people of the land and a lingering problem for second peoples,3 all of whom, across successive generations, remain heirs to that legacy.
Many institutions that train clergy still produce graduates to a society and culture that has now passed for more than a quarter-century.1
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Notes
Gary Bouma, Australian Soul: Religion and Spirituality in the Twenty-First Century (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 105, 128.
Andrew Dutney, “A Genuinely Educated Ministry”: Three Studies on Theological Education in the Uniting Church in Australia (Adelaide: Medicom, [2] 2011), 195.
See Chris Budden, Following Jesus in Invaded Space (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2009).
Lee Miena Skye, Kerygmatics of the New Millennium: A Study of Australian Aboriginal Women’s Christology (Delhi: ISPCK, 2007), 20.
Anne Pattel-Gray, The Great White Flood: Racism in Australia (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1990), 3.
Note, for example, Stuart Piggin’s more positive assessment than that of some others: Stuart Piggin, Spirit of a Nation: Australia’s Christian Heritage (Melbourne: Strand Publishing, 2004).
Tom Frame, Losing My Religion: Unbelief in Australia (Sydney: UNSW, 2009), 71, 72.
As Jione Havea notes, “contextual theology” may or may not help, and the notion invites more critical scrutiny than it sometimes meets: see Jione Havea, “The Cons of Contextuality … Kontextuality,” in Contextual Theology in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Stephen B. Bevans and Katalina Tahaafe-Williams (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2011), 38–52.
Duncan Forrester is sometimes identified as a key figure in the genre of “public theology,” as in the Festchrift for him, William Storrar and Andrew Morton, Eds., Public Theology for the Twenty-First Century: Essays in Honour of Duncan B. Forrester (London: Continuum, 2004) and the consideration given to that book in the International Journal of Public Theology. See also Forrester’s own Truthful Action: Essays in Practical Theology (Edinburgh: T and T Clark, 2000); On Human Worth: A Christian Vindication of Equality (London: SCM Press, 2001) and “The Scope of Public Theology,” Studies in Christian Ethics 17 (2004): 5–19.
For more on this point, see Stephen Burns, “Wandering,” in Home and Away: Contextual Theology and Local Practice, edited by Stephen Burns and Clive Pearson (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2013), 84–103.
Gordon W. Lathrop, The Pastor: A Spirituality (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006), 5.
Philip J. Hughes, The Australian Clergy: Report from the Combined Churches Survey for Faith and Mission (Hawthorn: Christian Research Association [distributed by Acorn Press], 1989).
Philip J. Hughes, Shaping Australia’s Spirituality (Melbourne: Mosaic Press, 2010).
Christian Scharen, Public Worship and Public Work: Character and Commitment in Local Congregational Life (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2004), 221.
For a wide view of sacramentality, see Ann Loades, “Sacramentality and Christian Spirituality,” in The Blackwell Companion to Christian Spirituality, edited by Arthur Holder (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), 250–268, and on Australian settings—and with special reference to the challenges of reconciliation between indigenous and nonindigenous persons—see
Gerard Moore, “Sacramentality: An Australian Perspective,” in Christian Worship in Australia: Inculturating the Liturgical Tradition, edited by Stephen Burns and Anita Monro (Strathfield: St. Pauls, 2009), 139–153.
See Chris McGillion and John O’Carroll, Our Fathers: What Australian Catholic Priests Really Think about Their Lives and Their Church (Mulgrave: John Garrett Publishing, 2011), 87–89.
See Tom Frame, A House Divided? The Quest for Unity within Anglicanism (Melbourne: Acorn Press, 2010) and on “Sydney Anglicanism,” Muriel Porter, Sydney Anglicanism and the Threat to World Anglicanism: The Sydney Experiment (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2011). Note also the Sydney Diocese theological college lecturer (and archbishop’s son, and dean’s nephew)
Michael Jensen, Sydney Anglicanism: An Apology (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2012). I feel obliged to make a personal note to acknowledge that I am an Anglican, though the Uniting Church receives the lion’s share of my reflection here—having originally being written in the context of a Uniting community which I hold in great affection. While it is not a major focus here, I have plenty to criticize in Sydney Anglican theology and practice, some of which emerged, if obliquely,
as Nicola Slee and Stephen Burns, Eds., Presiding Like a Woman (London: SPCK, 2010).
Robert W. Gribben, “Contemporary Worship: The New Cultural Cringe,” in Praise and Thanksgiving: Essays in Honour of the Rev’d Dr Graham Hughes, edited by William W. Emilsen and John Squires (North Parramatta: UTC Publications, 2003), 59–60.
Robert W. Gribben, “Sharing Mary MacKillop,” in In the Land of Larks and Larrakins: Australian Reflections on Mary MacKillop, edited by Alan Cadwallader (Adelaide: ATF Press, 2011), 69–82, 77.
National Assembly of the Uniting Church in Australia, “A Pilgrim People: Flexibility in Structure” (1996). For critique, see Stephen Burns, “‘Limping Priests’ Ten Years Later: Formation for Ordained Ministry,” Uniting Church Studies (2011): 1–16 and
Stephen Burns “Ministry,” in The Uniting Church in the Twenty-first Century, edited by William W. Emilsen (Melbourne: Mosaic Press, 2013/4).
J. Davis McCaughey, Commentary on the Basis of Union (Melbourne: Uniting Church Press, 1980), 82.
“The Church: Its Nature, Function and Ordering,” B.II(i) The Functions of the Ministry. (Cf. Rob Bos and Geoff Thompson, Eds., Theology for Pilgrims: Selected Theological Documents of the Uniting Church in Australia (Sydney: Uniting Church Press, 2008), 102, 173), quoted in McCaughey, Commentary, 71–72.
Compare Stephen Pattison, Pastoral Care and Liberation Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994),
Stephen Pattison, A Critique of Pastoral Care, 3rd ed.(London: SCM Press, 2000),
and Stephen Pattison, The Challenge of Practical Theology (London: Jessica Kingsley Publications, 2007).
I draw the image of “shyness” from Clive Pearson, “How Shy Can a Reformed Theology Be?” Journal of Reformed Theology 1 (2007): 340–57, but here relate it, where Pearson does not, to the practice of ministry.
Cf. Sheryl Kujawa-Holbrook, Ed., Seeing God in Each Other (Harrisburg: Morehouse, 2006).
Cf. Kujawa-Holbrook, Seeing God and Sheryl Kujawa-Holbrook and Karen Montago, Eds., Injustice and the Care of Souls: Taking Oppression Seriously in Pastoral Care (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010).
Lydia F. Johnson, Drinking from the Same Well: Cross-Cultural Concerns in Pastoral Care and Counseling (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2011). Johnson does advocate “protest at injustice” (p. 139) though she does not develop strategic practices akin to, say, Pattison in his Pastoral Care and Liberation Theology. Nor does she consider that ordained ministry may have particular dynamics.
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Burns, S. (2014). Formation for Ordained Ministry: Out of Touch?. In: Havea, J. (eds) Indigenous Australia and the Unfinished Business of Theology. Postcolonialism and Religions. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137426673_11
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