Race and Christianity in Australia

A new essay by Reverend Dr Jason Goroncy.

‘Race and Christianity in Australia’, Post-Christendom Studies 4 (2019–2020), 25–74.

The opening paragraph reads:

The thesis of this essay is that racism in Australia has explicitly Christian roots. In particular, these roots find their beginnings in the European story of Christendom. To defend that claim, the essay does three things. First, it traces the history of racism in Australia, mapping how immigration policies and practices regarding assimilation following the Second World War expose longstanding commitments to the idea of an Australia that is both “white” and “Christian.” Second, it explores how the roots of such racism intersect with and are sponsored by the “biological heresy” of Christendom and its practice of both politicizing and making “barbarians” of “the other.” Finally, it offers three brief theological reflections on the possibilities of an alternative Christian witness amidst the conditions mapped in the first two sections. Here the concerns are with conceptions of power, with what it means to speak of the Christian community as “the body of Christ,” and with the theological task itself.

You can read the rest here.

Jason Goroncy

Jason Goroncy (PhD, St Andrews) is Associate Professor of Systematic Theology at Whitley College, the University of Divinity. His current research broadly engages questions in public theology, theology and the arts, death, and trauma.