I am the Reverend Canon Auntie Di Langham, Director of Reconciliation for the Diocese of Newcastle. I have always been a Christian, in that my family have always followed Jesus and His teachings, even as far back as my great grandmother who was taken to a mission run by Christina Smith near Mount Gambier in the nineteenth century. My grandmother was also taught Christianity and as children we had to learn the 23rd Psalm and John 14:1-6 off by heart and say them as a prayer at bedtime. We also learnt our stories and traditions. And, just as many communities do today, our stories, traditions and cultures happened outside the Church fence but, when we walked through that gate, we put on our Church hats. Our language, our traditions and our protocols were left at the gate, and we used the Anglican liturgy. I had a lot of trouble trying to understand why this was the case, because in my mind there are many similarities in our spiritualities, but they were expressed in different ways. When I was a chaplain in the gaol many of the men could not relate to the Bible. I realised that the Bible they were presented with was What it has been like to be a First Nations person in the Anglican Church 51
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