objects of white charity, and all will be well. Be assimilated into whiteness. This is the path to acceptance and love. This is the path to belonging. When I joined the Anglican Church I hoped that the aliveness of gospel tradition and the wise and sensitive leadership of bishops would allow us to restart the relationship with the church. I hoped that the church would find room for us – not as honorary whites, but as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people – to sit at the table and negotiate a new settlement. I hoped we could create, on the basis of our divinely-ordained spiritual seniority in this country, a voice within the senior councils of the church, so that no policy could be made or activated without hearing from us first. I hoped that we, as a national church and as individual dioceses and provinces, could appoint our wisest people to senior positions of pastoral and theological leadership and have those positions funded. I hoped that our theological wisdom, forged through a living dialogue between the spirituality of this country and colonial Christianity, might find a voice in our theological colleges and schools. Turns out, however, that I was spectacularly wrong. Every attempt my Indigenous colleagues and I have made to progress this just agenda has been either ignored or blocked. By bishops, by caucus leaders, and by Synods. By all. Furthermore, we have found few genuine allies 92
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