However, that does require you to leave your cultural ancestry and identity, your ancient spirituality, Dreaming and song lines at the door. Typically, when I walk into an Anglican church, I feel like I’ve stepped back in time either to colonial Australia or mainland England during the 1700-1800s. There is little to no representation of Australian culture within the churches that I’ve attended, let alone anything to make First Nations people feel welcome. As I’ve said, the church to me – and this is just my opinion – doesn’t feel like it has changed in 235 years, in terms of both its liturgy and ecclesiology. This has been especially noticeable during my studies and training for the priesthood, which was a very cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all process, pumping out ‘Church of England’ priests. There was very little appetite let alone encouragement for me to look at theological topics from a First Nations perspective, while there was even less flexibility when it came to the ability to experiment with First Nations inclusive liturgy and or ecclesiology. In fact, in the second year of my Bachelor of Theology I had to plead my case to study a unit of reconciliation as an elective over the Christmas/New Year break. It has become my experience that the more proactive and outspoken I have become about reconciliation and First Nations issues, and the more the laity and clergy of the Church become open to having this conversation, the more the structures of the institutional Church 39
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