Artykuły w czasopismach na temat „Australian Christian Church”

ABSTRACTInitially the Church of England was the one recognized church in Australia. As other churches were established, it became the dominant church among a few others. Subsequently it became one Christian denomination among many. Now it finds itself, with other churches, among a plurality of other faiths. This evolution from singularity to plurality has raised such questions as whether truth is one or many, how unity relates to plurality and how a church conveys its message in a plural society. For Anglicans the intensity of these questions has been heightened by the plurality within Anglicanism itself. This article argues that plurality can contribute positively to a fuller perception of truth and that the pressure for unity continues in the face of pluralism, though it may be a unity obtained by excluding dissenting points of view or an inclusive unity which transcends plurality.

The history of Christianity in Australia had a humble but rich beginning. Its early foundations were built on the sacrifices and hard work of individuals and groups who, although bound by their oath to expand and promote the Crown, showed concern for people who did not share their religious beliefs and norms. Australia provided the Church with an almost unparalleled opportunity to advance the gospel. By 1901, Christianity emerged as the religion of over 90% of the population. Church growth was sustained by a series of revival occurrences, which coincided with momentous social and political events. Missionary work among the aboriginal Australians accelerated. As the nation became wealthier, however, Christian values began to erode. In the aftermath of World War II, new waves of immigrants arrived. When Australia embraced multiculturalism, society slid into pluralism. New players emerged within Christianity, e.g., the Pentecostals and Charismatics. Technological advancement and consumerism impacted Australian society and the Church. By 2016, 30% of the national population claimed to have “no religion.” The Australian Church today navigates uncharted waters wisely and decisively as the winds of change continue to blow across the dry, barren spiritual regions of the nation.

In a context of increasing ethnic and religious diversity, Australia’s future prosperity may depend, in part, on the ability to maintain social cohesion. Drawing on the framework developed by the Scanlon Foundation Social Cohesion Research Program, this study examines data from the 2016 National Church Life Survey and the 2016 Australian Community Survey to compare levels of social cohesion among Australian churchgoers and among the general population. Social cohesion metrics were stronger among churchgoers than the wider population across the domains of belonging, social justice, civic participation, acceptance of others and worth. Differences were also observed between Christian denominations on most domains, but with few exceptions, social cohesion among churchgoers from each denomination was still higher than that observed for all Australians. The findings suggest that Christian groups play a positive role in the promotion of social cohesion by building both bridging and bonding social capital among those who participate, but that these groups are unlikely to be a significant source of agitation to prevent some of the greatest contemporary threats to social cohesion.

What role should Christians play in dealing with the march of displaced people across the globe? What moral and spiritual obligations do we owe the distant stranger — the refugee? We can learn from the experience of the Hebrew refugees leaving Egypt and the inclusive nature of the early Christian Church. In the Australian context, this article explores the historical and current attitudes towards asylum seekers and calls for a faith-led movement to stand shoulder to shoulder with those who are demonised and dehumanised.

This article reports on an historic collaboration between Australian church-based development agencies and their partners in the Pacific – the largest in scale to date. It is now incontrovertible that climate change is damaging health and wellbeing in Pacific communities – especially in terms of climate-related disasters. Churches in the Pacific have a unique role and responsibility within the civil society in the region. This article traces some of the historical factors that have contributed to their social resonance. The article looks at how a network approach can be well suited to tackling difficult social challenges, and makes the case for the involvement of the Pacific churches in building community resilience through disaster risk reduction activities. A shared faith identity and trust are identified as two vital factors that help church-based consortia to coalesce. The article concludes that a focus on orthopraxy in its broader sense by Christian faith-based actors is a helpful perspective in achieving collaboration.

In this article the author, whose experience in cross-cultural communication as a missionary was used by a group of Australian Aboriginal people among whom he had worked to interpret their demand for title to their traditional land, outlines aspects of the traditional life of the Pitjantjatjara people and their conception of their relation to the land. Edwards traces the history of the dispossession of the land following European settlement, and the history of negotiations which led to the recognition of their title to the land under South Australian legislation. He comments on the role of the churches in these events and reflects on a Christian approach to indigenous land rights, noting that churches in other lands, in their mission work, are also involved with indigenous peoples in struggles to achieve just recognition to title for their land.

The article seeks to locate the genealogy of David Coffey’s systematic theology in his original search for a unified account of grace. This led to the recovery of early but forgotten ways of thinking about the central doctrines of the Trinity and Christology related especially to the role of the Holy Spirit in the Incarnation. Coffey’s Spirit Christology, based on the Synoptic Gospels and patristic reflection, complements the traditional Christology of Chalcedon in ways that throw light on Christ’s humanity and the redemptive character of his death and resurrection. It also grounds a theology of grace, Christian anthropology, death and resurrection, the Church, and the salvation of unbelievers. Coffey is a prominent Australian theologian and the discussion of his thought is set within a brief account of the development of theological studies in the Australian context.

Abstract The paper, focused on a few years at the end of the First World War, explores the request of a group of Aborigines in the Australian state of Victoria for freedom of religion. Given that the colony and now state of Victoria had been a stronghold of liberalism, the need for Indigenous Victorians to petition for the removal of outside restrictions on their religious beliefs or practices might seem surprising indeed. But with a Pentecostal revival in train on the mission stations to which many Aborigines were confined, members of the government agency, the Board for the Protection of the Aborigines, preferred the decorum of mainstream Protestant church services to potentially unsettling expressions of charismatic and experiential spirituality. The circumstances surrounding the revivalists’ resistance to the restriction of Aboriginal Christians’ choice of religious expression offer insight into the intersections of faith and gender within the historically created relations of power in this colonial site. Though the revival was extinguished, it stood as a notable instance of Indigenous Victorian women deploying the language of Christian human rights to assert the claims to just treatment and social justice that would characterize later successful Indigenous activism.

Summary This article investigates the ways local mission and national politics shaped linguistic research work in mid-20th century Australia through examining the case of the Church Missionary Society’s Angurugu Mission on Groote Eylandt in the Northern Territory and research into the Anindilyakwa language. The paper places missionary linguistics in the context of broader policies of assimilation and national visions for Aboriginal people. It reveals how this social and political climate made linguistic research, largely neglected in the 1950s (apart from some notable exceptions), not only possible, but necessary by the 1970s. Finally, it comments on the state of research into Aboriginal languages and the political climate of today. Until the 1950s, the demands of funding and commitment to a government policy of assimilation into white Australia meant that the CMS could not support linguistic research and opportunities for academic linguists to conduct research into Anindilyakwa were limited. By the 1960s, however, national consensus about the future of Aboriginal people and their place in the Australian nation shifted and governments reconsidered the nature of their support for Christian missions. As the ‘industrial mission’ model of the 1950s was no longer politically or economically viable, the CMS looked to reinvent itself, to find new ways of maintaining its evangelical influence on Groote Eylandt. Linguistics and research into Aboriginal cultures – including in partnership with secular academic agents – were a core component of this reinvention of mission, not only for the CMS but more broadly across missions to Aboriginal people. The resulting collaboration across organisations proved remarkably productive from a research perspective and enabled the continuance of a missionary presence and relevance. The political and financial limitations faced by missions shaped, therefore, not only their own practice with regards to linguistic research, but also the opportunities for linguists beyond the missionary fold. The article concludes that, in Australia, the two bodies of linguists – academic and missionary – have a shared history, dependent on similar political, social and financial forces.

This paper argues that the christification of the least should shape Christology and subsequently Christian discipleship. Christification is articulated as the process by which individuals or groups, inside or outside the church and marked by displacement, marginalisation or persecution, are recognised as bearing Christ's presence in a special way. Those christified share in Christ's revelatory, soteriological and sanctifying role for the community who encounter, serve and learn from them. This illuminates the ethical and missional impact of christification. Taking Jon Sobrino's argument that Christology must take into account the historically received texts about Christ and the reality of Christ in the present, I argue that Christology cannot be complete without a transformative encounter with the christified least. For those in places of privilege, Christologies employing christification have an immediate effect on discipleship, locating the presence of Christ in the least amongst their community. For the marginalised, christification grants agency; seen as the embodiment of Christ, they facilitate revelation and shape ethical engagement. Attention is paid throughout the paper to how christification, as modelled particularly by theologians writing from or for marginalised or migrant communities, could be applied to my own Australian context, particularly current debates around refugees and Indigenous peoples.

Australia's relationship with its Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples has changed in recent years. A most positive movement towards reconciliation is growing but not without being continually challenged by entrenched racist attitudes and sinful social structures within the community. This article attempts to offer some ethicaltheological parameters around which this fragile desire for reconciliation might mature. It discusses the results of recent data in the light of the concept of collective responsibility with its corresponding ethical implications. An application of these concepts to the Australian Christian churches is initiated and an overall challenge to all Australians will be suggested.

AbstractIn Nostra Aetate – one of the 16 documents of the Second Vatican Council – the Catholic Church firmly declares: 'The Catholic Church rejects nothing of what is true and holy in other religions⃜ The Church, therefore, urges all her sons and daughters to enter with prudence and charity into discussions and collaboration with members of other religious faith traditions…; (cf. NA. 2). The so-called 'other religions' as stated by Nostra Aetate includes traditional religion in the form of ancestral veneration. It is still widely and popularly practiced by Christians of various ethnic groups in Asia and Africa as well as in other parts of the world – Latin America, Melanesia and Australia (the Aborigines). Despite the suppression and expulsion done in the past, this religious tradition is still able to survive and continue to demonstrate its vital force in the lives of many Asians and Africans, including those who have embraced the Christian faith. In this article we argue that ancestral veneration does not contradict the Christian faith. It has a place in the Christian faith and should be incorporated into, at least, in Catholic Christian devotion.

Local, often unconscious, understanding of male and female informs people's views irrespective of the religious ideology of (for Christians) the imago dei. This affects church teaching about and dealings with spousal violence, usually against wives, and can be an indicator of the failure of contextualising, from Edinburgh to Tonga and Seoul to Accra, actually to challenge context and ‘speak the Word of God’ rather than of elite-defined culture. In examining five denominations (Assembly of God, Methodist, Lutheran, Roman Catholic, True Jesus Church) in Ghana, South Australia and Taiwan, ecclesial attitudes to divorce are shown to have a crucial effect on an abused woman's decision regarding the marriage, especially where stated clerical practice differs from precept. Adding that to the effects of church teaching, the side-lining of pressure and support groups and the common failure of churches to censure spousal violence of pastors, leads the writer to suggest that any prophetic voice is strangled by shameful culture-bound collusion.

Arambam Saroj Nalini was born in Imphal, in the then princely state of Manipur, on June 2nd 1933. Her father was a well-known and respected educationalist and government officer. During the war years he was posted to Jiribam, where she received her first education, and later transferred to a convent school in Haflong. She proceeded to Calcutta University, where she became the first Meetei woman to obtain BA and MA degrees, majoring in Philosophy. While in Calcutta she enjoyed close friendship with Christian Naga students, and converted to Christianity. She was baptised at the Lower Circular Road Baptist church, whose minister, Walter Corlett had himself served in Imphal during the war years. The Christian faith was to become a dominant influence on her future life. She came to Britain in the late 1950s to study theology, and obtained a Bachelor of Divinity degree from London University in 1961. Shortly after she married John Parratt. When their desire to work in India was frustrated they decided to work elsewhere in the developing world, initially in Nigeria, where Saroj became a tutor in philosophy at the University of Ile-Ife. When her husband was offered a research fellowship by the Australian National University she enrolled for a PhD in the Department of Asian Studies there, under the supervision of the eminent indologist A.L.Basham. Despite the frequent absences of her husband on field work in Papua-New Guinea and having to care for three young children, the bulk of the thesis was completed before she returned to Manipur for further extended field work in 1972. The doctorate was awarded three years later, one of her examiners being Professor Suniti Kumar Chatterji, who (unusually for the time) himself had a deep interest in India's north-eastern region. Her thesis was published in 1980 (Firma KLM, Calcutta) as The Religion of Manipur. It marked the beginning of a new phase in writing on Manipur by its rigorous application of critical methodology both in the collection and in the analysis of field data, and had considerable influence on younger Meetei scholars.

It has taken many years for different styles of music to be utilised within Pentecostal churches as acceptable forms of worship. These shifts in musical sensibilities, which draw upon elements of pop, rock and hip hop, have allowed for a contemporisation of music that functions as worship within these settings, and although still debated within and across some denominations, there is a growing acceptance amongst Western churches of these styles. Whilst these developments have taken place over the past few decades, there is an ongoing resistance by Pentecostal churches to embrace Indigenous musical expressions of worship, which are usually treated as token recognitions of minority groups, and at worst, demonised as irredeemable musical forms. This article draws upon interview data with Christian-Māori leaders from New Zealand and focus group participants of a diaspora Māori church in southwest Sydney, Australia, who considered their views as Christian musicians and ministers. These perspectives seek to challenge the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous relations within a church setting and create a more inclusive philosophy and practice towards being ‘one in Christ’ with the role of music as worship acting as a case study throughout. It also considers how Indigenous forms of worship impact cultural identity, where Christian worship drawing upon Māori language and music forms has led to deeper connections to congregants’ cultural backgrounds.

Our society is changing the manner in which it communicates. The Internet has catapulted us to a new way of life. Social media has changed the way we communicate. We are creating online communities to share our thoughts and lives. This research investigates effective ways of using social media, particularly Facebook. A sample of the 37 churches represented by the Australian Christian Churches movement in South Australia is utilized. The churches' Facebook posts are classified to determine their purposes, and Facebook metrics are measured to determine the effectiveness of these posts.

This paper examines how two secular nation-states, such as Australia and the Philippines, connect through their shared practice of secularism as Christianity. Through this, the paper argues that secularism in these contexts enables a Christian framework in which ‘mainstreaming’ Muslims becomes a paramount technique in fostering bilateral relations and (trans)national security. In focus is the Basic Education Assistance for Mindanao project, which Australia and the Philippines have established as a pedagogical tool for including Muslim-Filipinos within ‘secular’ society.

Megachurches, although differing in terms of denominational affiliation (or relative lack thereof), spatial logic, liturgy, teaching, and congregational demographics, share the common trait of size and are often fast-growing churches as well. This is particularly true of what might be called (following scholarship on the “experience economy”) the “experience megachurch”: those with a broad attractive appeal, large and growing congregations, and relative freedom from traditional Christian spatial-architectural constraints, rituals, and denominational histories. Such experience megachurches share an emphasis on offering their congregations an “inspiring” experience of the reality of God’s existence and presence in the church. Applying theories of pragmatics, semiotics, and bodily discipline, this article examines two experience megachurches (Lakewood in Houston, U.S.A., and Hillsong, headquartered in Sydney, Australia) to offer a taxonomy of megachurch praxis.

As a social species, humans have developed soundscapes that surround, and to some extent circumscribe, their daily existence. The concept of aural heritage, its conceptualization and its management represent a rapidly expanding area of research, covering aspects of both natural and human heritage. However, there have been no contemporary regional or supra-regional studies that examine the nature of sound making in Christian religious settings, nor the extent to which it is still used. This paper presents the results of a survey into the presence of bells and bell ringing practices among five major Christian denominations in New South Wales, and examines to what extent bell ringing is still practiced and what factors may determine any differentiation. In doing so, it provides an objective basis from which to investigate future changes in bell ringing practices, and provides a solid foundation with reference to aural heritage of sound in a religious setting.

Abstract This article considers the approaches taken in the United States (US) and Australia to prioritising the resettlement of Christians from Syria and Iraq. Focusing first upon respective models and the immediate political factors that lead to their adoption, it analyses in depth the specific role played by the evangelical constituency in the US, and their theologically-infused concern for the “persecuted church” in “enslaved” lands. Recognising this movement enjoys less influence in Australia, the article considers the ways in which Australia’s resettlement policies and political narratives have nonetheless increasingly participated in tropes familiar to classical antinomian political theology, not least that resettlement is tied to a redemptive generosity of the State that works to denigrate and undermine the legal obligations demanded by those who arrive irregularly by boat. The article also critiques the use of “vulnerability” as a touchstone principle for the fair allocation of scarce resettlement places, and its propensity to be used for cherry-picking purposes. Finally, as part of the argument that resettlement is susceptible to being used as a vehicle for those motivated by more explicit theological concerns, the article explores the leveraging for political, redemptive, and eschatological purposes of images and narratives of the “martyred” middle-eastern Christian.

AbstractReconciliation brings together Christological and anthropological dimensions of human thought to illustrate the nexus between religious principles and political means. For the state reconciliation is concerned with social cohesion and political stability. For the church, it extends the sacramental notion of reconciliation between God and penitent to public relationships. This article examines Roman Catholic contributions to secular reconciliation debates. It shows how religious precepts create moral imperatives to engagement with secular discourses as a necessary element of Christian mission. It also argues that the church’s role in the disruption of indigenous societies creates an additional moral imperative to engage in reconciliation as mission and to articulate a Christian vision of indigenous rights.

In 1956, the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge published a work chronicling a subject billed as ‘an unrecorded chapter of Church history’. The author was an elderly Anglican clergyman, George Balleine. The book was Past Finding Out: The Tragic Story of Joanna Southcott and her Successors.Before Balleine, the early nineteenth-century figure of Joanna Southcott, and her eventually global religious movement, had garnered scant mainstream attention. The most extensive work was Ronald Matthews’s rudimentary analysis of Southcott and five other ‘English Messiahs’ in a 1936 contribution to the psychology of religion. Southcott had not, in fact, claimed to be a messiah herself; rather, she was the prophet of a coming messiah named ‘Shiloh’. Southcott’s followers (variously labelled ‘Southcottians’, ‘Christian Israelites’ ‘Jezreelites’, among other names) believed that she and certain later figures were inspired by God to signal the imminence of the Christian millennium. Claimants to be the actual Shiloh messiah occasionally featured within this particular tradition of biblical interpretation, inspiration and theodicy. The splinter-prone movement spread through Britain, Australia, New Zealand and North America, and retained a few thousand members in the twentieth century.

AbstractThis paper reflects on research which discovered a correspondence between the form of the biblical lament psalms and the early Australian Pentecostal (1908 – 1937) practice of prayer. It is argued that this has significant implications for Christians today in relation to the critique that the contemporary church has lost the practice of lament. Specifically four dimensions of lament-prayer were considered for contemporary Pentecostal Christianity, including (1) the lament dialogue, (2) the lament protest, (3) the margins of lament, and (4) the glossolalic lament. Overall, it is proposed that Pentecostal Christians are uniquely situated to forge a path in light of these results and re-incorporate laments into their worship and pastoral care practises.

The ongoing crises of child sexual abuse by Christian institutions leaders across the Anglophone world continue to attract public attention and public inquiries. The pervasiveness of this issue lends credence to the argument that the prevailing ethos functioning within some Christian Institutions is one which exercises influence to repeatedly mismanage allegations of child sexual abuse by Church leaders. This work draws on semi-structured interviews conducted with 15 Personnel in Christian Institutions (PICIs) in Australia who were identified as being pro-active in their approach to addressing child sexual abuse by PICIs. From these data, themes of power and forgiveness are explored through a Foucaultian conceptualising of pastoral power and ‘truth’ construction. Forgiveness is viewed as a discourse which can have the power effect of either silencing or empowering victim/survivors. The study concludes that individual PICIs’ understandings of the role of power in their praxis influences outcomes from the deployment of forgiveness.

AbstractChristian public theology extends reconciliation beyond its principal sacramental concern for relationships between God and penitent to the construction of ‘socially just’ public relationships for the settlement of intra-national conflict. In theological terms, reconciliation brings public relationships into what Hally calls ‘the Christ narrative of passion, death and resurrection’ in which the perpetrators of injustice repent and seek forgiveness. This article introduces the conflicts that these discourses aim to resolve in Australia, Fiji and New Zealand and explains and contrasts reconciliation’s relative importance in each of these jurisdictions. Moreover, the article’s cross-jurisdictional comparison shows reconciliation’s limits and possibilities as public theology, and argues that in Australia and New Zealand it has helped to create political environments willing to admit indigenous perspectives on a range of policy issues. On the contrary, however, the article also shows that the Fijian churches have distorted the concept of reconciliation to support political imperatives that are difficult to rationalize theologically, even though they are presented by the churches as being concerned with religious goals.

The Wesleyan-Holiness Churches that emerged in Australia after the Second Word War encountered considerable opposition from other Evangelicals who distrusted their brand of perfectionism. The explicitly American origin of these Churches was both the cause of their exclusion and at the same time a mechanism for their survival. The emergence of the Holiness denominations in Australia is not an example of American cultural and religious imperialism. Rather it has been a creative partnership between like-minded Evangelical Christians from two modern nations sharing a general cultural and social similarity and a common set of religious convictions.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the challenges confronting Christian-based organisations operating in the employment services quasi-market in Australia. It focuses on the tensions that arise for these organisations as they endeavour to deliver services that reflect their distinctive mission and values, while remaining competitive in an environment characterised by the typical market values of commercialism, competition and compliance. Design/methodology/approach – The data on which this paper is based has been derived from 48 semi-structured interviews with church leaders, senior managers and frontline staff in four Christian-based organisations. Findings – The paper demonstrates that the Christian-based organisations under consideration are constrained in their ability to deliver a distinctive and holistic mission. The pressure to survive has resulted in these organisations emulating the business practices of others considered to be more successful in the field. Research limitations/implications – This paper draws attention to the commercialisation that has occurred within Christian-based organisations delivering privatised employment services. As markets are formed in other welfare areas, further research opportunities will present to examine how Christian-based organisations respond to the pressures that arise in these fields. Practical implications – The findings from this study raise significant questions for Christian-based organisations. The particular dilemma being whether they should accept government funding in circumstances where their mission is likely to be compromised. Originality/value – This paper serves to highlight, that despite their intentions to deliver a distinctive mission, Christian-based organisations are indistinguishable from other organisations delivering privatised employment services.

The participation by Australian Christians and Churches in the current peace debate has attracted considerable media attention. Indeed, this matter has probably received greater and more prolonged media coverage than any other issue during the 1980s. Other discrete events, such as the 1986 papal tour, may have received more coverage by way of concentrated attention but the peace issue has been a hardy perennial for about seven years.

Doctor of theology, father-professor Ivan Muzychka. As for him, and many scholars, writers, artists, and clerics who liked him in exile, many of them, talented and faithful to Ukraine, have not long been "only" aware that they are in the overwhelming majority of them, like "Ukrainian bourgeois nationalists ", is supposedly the worst enemies of his people. However, the first meetings and conversations with them completely disperse these versions of the communist era. There is an aversion to what was written and those who wrote the desire to return our people to the spiritual treasures of these, I will say figuratively, of the cranes, the key of which has long been not returned to selflessly and passionately loved by them Ukraine. I, the author of the article, has already returned to Ukraine Orthodox Canadian Father of the Faith Stepan Yarmush, Greek Catholic theologian from the USA Volodymyr Oleksyuk, Greek Catholic historian of the Church of Australia, Ivan Shevtsev. The latter has even devoted even six hundred tens of monographs "Ivan Shevtsev - a biography of a Ukrainian-Christian." On the turn, the editors of selected works of the already fundamentalist historian Ivan Ortinsky from Germany.

For centuries, religious buildings have been using bells to call the faithful to prayer. Bell-ringing activity on church premises does not serve a purely religious function, however, as people in the community may perceive this activity secularly, attributing their own meanings and significances towards these sounds. If bell ringing (or the actual sound) were found to have great significance to a specific community, denomination, or a regionality bracket, this may have future implications in any management of these resources. There is a need to hear the voices of the actual practitioners and their perceptions regarding what they, their congregations, and their host communities feel. This paper represents the first large-scale assessment of the views of practitioners of five major Christian denominations with regards to bell-ringing practice and its role in contemporary society.

Arriving in Western Australia in the early 1970s interest in Religious Education and Christian family nurture ensured that Cynthia Dixon would soon meet Brian Hill, and their families develop friendships. Mutual interest in the ministries of Scripture Union. The Churches Commission on Education, the development of curriculum in Religious Studies and, latterly, the development of a Values Framework have led to joint membership of numerous committees. “As two rather isolated voices in our respective universities,” Cynthia comments. “I always found Brian a constant support and inspiration, willing to offer his expertise to course development.” Brian's willingness to supervise Cynthia's doctoral study in the 1980s was a privilege for her, too.

The article covers the development of the idea of ​​patriarchal status in 1945-1962 within the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in the diaspora, focusing mainly on the third wave of Ukrainian emigration. After the Second World War, about 250,000 Ukrainian refugees found themselves in Western Europe (DP camps), from where in 1947-1955, they moved to the countries of North and South America, Western Europe and Australia. The growing role of the Church, which continued to play a significant role in their lives after their resettlement to the countries mentioned above, marked the experience of their stay in the DP camps. The DP camps became a place of a closer rapprochement between Ukrainian Greek Catholics and Orthodox Christians, one consequence of which was the appeals of a Ukrainian Greek Catholic bishops with a proposal to create a joint patriarchate with Ukrainian Orthodox, which would be in unity with Rome. On the other hand, the expansion of the geography of the presence of the UGCC and the founding of new metropolises in Canada and the United States brought to the fore the question of the unity of all structural units of this Church at the global level, which, as some believed, could have been secured by the patriarchal institution. Finally, the patriarchate was considered by the post-war Ukrainian emigration as a means of preserving the unity of the diaspora in the face of assimilation and disintegration. Furthermore, in the future, as an institution that could effectively help the Church revive at home after independence. The last aspect of the patriarchal idea had a significant impact on the emergence of the Ukrainian patriarchal movement, and its closeness to the goals set by the third wave of Ukrainian emigration provided that movement with a high level of massiveness and passionate vigorousness for the movement.

AbstractEuthanasia is a controversial issue that has attracted heated debate over the last two decades. Cultural, traditional and religious considerations contribute in the forming of individual and social attitudes. Active, voluntary euthanasia is not legally accepted except in Netherlands and Australia. However even in these countries several ethical and legal issues have emerged from the application of euthanasia. In fact medical physicians stand in the frontline of the debate as they are those who should decide to act or not to act when euthanasia is requested by a patient. In Greece the vast majority of people are against euthanasia as a result of tradition and religion The influence of the Hippocratic philosophy and the humanistic teaching of the Christian Orthodox Church have made that doctors and people look at the issue of euthanasia with aversion. In addition, the law considers any such action as homicide and therefore as punishable.However, in Greece as in any democratic country, individual variations exist and the issue attracts increasing debate. This article aims to discuss the legal ramifications of euthanasia within the context of the Greek legal order and to present the religious and ethical considerations that influence the social attitude concerning to euthanasia in Greece.

Under Elizabeth and the early Stuarts the English developed a relationship to time—current time within the cycle of the year and historical time with reference to the past—that set them apart from the rest of early modern Europe. All countries followed a calendar that was rooted in the rhythms of ancient Europe and that marked the passage of time by reference to the life of Christ and his saints. But only in England was this traditional calendar of Christian holidays augmented by special days honoring the Protestant monarch and the ordeals and deliverances of the national church. In addition to regulating the seasons of work and worship, the calendar in England served as a reminder of the nation's distinctiveness, of God's mercies, and of England's particular religious and dynastic good fortune. Other Protestant communities, most notably the Dutch, enjoyed a comparable myth of historical exceptionalism—a replay of the Old Testament—but no other nation employed the calendar as the English did to express and represent their identity. Early modern England, in this regard, had more in common with modern America, France, or Australia (with Independence Day, Bastille Day, Australia Day, etc.), than with the rest of post-Reformation Europe.This article deals with changes in calendar consciousness and annual festive routines in Elizabethan and Stuart England. It examines the rise of Protestant patriotism, and the shaping of a national political culture whose landmarks were royal anniversaries, the memory of Queen Elizabeth, and commemoration of the Gunpowder Plot. It opens a discussion on the vocabulary of celebration and the degree to which festivity was sponsored and orchestrated in the interest of national consolidation or partisan position. And it will show how calendrical observances that at first helped unite the crown and nation became contentious, politicized, and divisive.

It is fitting for this issue of the Christian Journal for Global Health to come to you just before Christmas. We remember the birth of the Christ child, God with us. God with us not just in the ordinariness of human life, but in the calamities, defeats, and suffering entailed in that ordinariness. The coronavirus pandemic, as well as myriad of other human afflictions, is a reminder of those aspects of life. Surely the greatest spiritual lesson of the pandemic is that we are not the masters of our own destiny. The pandemic is a rebuke to the hubris of our age – that human knowledge is the remedy for all ills. Responses to the pandemic have exposed the fissures in our societies as well. While the healthcare community has responded heroically to the challenges, churches have served as a much-needed solace and source of health information, as well as, at times, sources of spread. Some who consider faith non-essential and are antagonistic to it have proposed severe restrictions to much-needed fellowship. In the providence of God, we are able to rejoice at the arrival of effective vaccines to prevent SARS CoV-2 infection, the world-wide calamity that has dogged us for nearly an entire year. The vaccines come out-of-time, as it were, having been developed, produced, and tested with a speed that is astonishing. Hopefully, they will enable this devastating infectious disease to be put behind us. If that proves to be possible, it is salutary to ponder what is able to be anticipated and to appreciate the perspicacity of someone like Dr. Jono Quick, whose book, The End of Epidemics, foresaw in 2018 what came to pass in 2020. For additional insights, we are pleased to feature in this issue a guest editorial by Dr. Quick which surveys some of the challenges that the release, use, and equitable global distribution of the vaccines hold for us, as well as the Christian responsibility to follow the data for both individualized whole-person care and community care as acts of love for our global neighbor. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted systemic vulnerabilities, health inequities, and the ongoing diseases and conditions that continue to threaten individuals and populations. The response to the pandemic has affected the global economy and exacerbated hunger and extreme poverty. Progress in global health to control the remaining poliovirus, HIV, malaria and tuberculosis has also been tragically impaired due to the pandemic.1 Two original articles describe efforts to evaluate health needs for chronically impoverished villages and then to train Christian health workers in the ways to most effectively service those needs. Claudia Bale reports that the results of surveying Guatemalan villages for health needs and barriers to health produced a variety of themes that provided guidance for the organizations seeking to meet these needs. Sneha Kirubakaran and colleagues evaluated a short course in global health from Australia that sought to prepare Christian health workers for international service. This issue features three reviews. Samuel Adu-Gyamfi and his colleagues from Ghana completed an extensive systematic review of the role of missions in Sub-Saharan Africa, finding that although the scope of work changed over time, the aim of sharing the gospel motivated work in a broad scope of activities in development, education, and healthcare which continues to be relevant. Omololu Fagunwa from Nigeria provides a history lesson based on original source documents on how the 1918 influenza pandemic affected the growth of Pentecostalism in Africa. Alexander Miles, Matthew Reeve, and Nathan Grills from University of Melbourne completed a systematic literature review showing evidence of the significant effectiveness of community health workers in dealing with non-communicable diseases in India. Two commentaries offer fresh approaches to persisting healthcare issues. Richard Thomas and Niels French describe the population health model and explain how it is particularly suited to a role in the future for mission hospitals and to address a variety of global health concerns. Melody Oereke, Kenneth David, and Ezeofor Onyedikachukwu from Nigeria offer their thoughts on how Christian pharmacists can employ a model for prayer, faith, and action in their professional calling. The coronavirus pandemic has required healthcare and aid organizations to come up with creative solutions to completely novel circumstances if they were to be able to continue their ministries. Daryn Joy Go and her colleagues from International Care Ministries describe their employment of social networking technologies in the Philippines to continue their work in extreme poverty alleviation as well as spiritual nourishment despite lockdown conditions and severe limitations on travel and communication. Finally, Pieter Nijssen reviews Creating Shared Resilience: The Role of the church in a Hopeful Future, by David Boan and Josh Ayers. In our world of short-term gain and short attention spans, resilience is a commodity in tragically short supply. Pastor Nijssen’s discussion helpfully expands on an ongoing discussion of how faith and justice must be integrated in any faithful gospel ministry and how this, itself, promotes resilience in the face of crises. We call our readers’ attentions to our current call for papers, Environmental Concern and Global Health. Our stewardship of the earth and its resources was part of God’s first command to Adam and Eve and an important aspect of human flourishing throughout the Bible. That stewardship has implications for global health that deserve study and explanation. Click on the link to the call for a list of the subjects we hope to see in submissions on this topic and many others within the unique and broad scope of the journal. During this season of both widespread challenge and enduring hope, we pray for peace on earth, and good will to all people.

Charles Tringham, William Chatfield and Christian Julius Toxward are all alleged to have started practices in Wellington in the mid-1860s. Numerous tenders for building work by Tringham and Toxward can be found in newspapers at the time, but tenders by Chatfield do not appear until 1875. There also appears to have been little other competition at the time. Tringham came to New Zealand from England as a carpenter, progressed to being a builder, and was calling himself an architect by 1867. From then until the end of 1869 he tendered in Wellington newspapers for at least 48 buildings. Toxward, a Dane, spent several years as a draftsman in Victoria, Australia, then traveled extensively in Europe. He came to New Zealand by 1862, working in Dunedin and Invercargill before establishing a private practice in Wellington in 1866. By the end of 1869 his tender notices in Wellington newspapers totaled 25. Tringham and Toxward appear to have had quite different approaches in establishing their Wellington practices. Tringham, the younger man at 26, concentrated on designing houses and shops combined with dwellings; he only tendered for four non-residential buildings in the 1860s. Toxward, aged 35 and a prominent Mason, seems to have concentrated on contracts for more substantial buildings such as schools, churches, stores such as Kirkcaldie & Stains and works for the Provincial Government. He only appears to have designed three houses during this period. Chatfield arrived in 1867 and his obituary claims that he ran a practice from then until 1872 when he joined the Wellington Provincial Government as a draftsman. The lack of tenders in the papers suggests either he had limited success or his work was organised through other means, such as word of mouth. Once his architectural practice was established, his early career (40 buildings in four years) closely paralleled that of Tringham. All three, with the later addition of Thomas Turnbull, dominated the Wellington architectural scene through to the early 1890s. To place their output in context we discuss other architects who appear in Wellington in the late 1860s, and the building profession during this time.

Abstract The historical intertwining of youth work and Christianity is well-recognised, especially in the United Kingdom and in the early establishment of youth work in Australia. However, Australian youth work underwent significant changes from the 1960s to late 1970s. This article uses a representative case study approach to illuminate how Christian youth workers were active in this transitional time. It finds that Christian youth work efforts in this time (1) both entrenched youth ministry as a serious pursuit in Australia, and created space for Christian work in secular settings, thus (2) contributing to a divide between church-based youth ministry and secular youth work. The paper discusses the implications of these findings for contemporary youth ministry, and concludes by proposing areas for further research.

The return of Jesus Christ, the end of the world, war, devastating earthquakes, invading space ships, asteroid strikes, the Y2K bug, what do they all have in common? Little if anything really, except that they have all been associated with the coming of the year 2000. To many in Australia the year 2000 may well be an end, if not the End. To some of those, however, it may also be the beginning of something else most significant. That expectation will now be examined. You will have a conducted tour through war and peace, demonic activity, and aeroplanes crashing and people flying. The subject is how a significant number of Australian Christians understand the end of the world ("The End Times"), most particularly the return of Jesus Christ. Those who hold this view we will call "EndTimers". That Jesus Christ will return has been the expectation of the church from its conception. The day of Pentecost is usually regarded as the birthday of the church, and a few days before that Jesus ascended into heaven and the astonished disciples who witnessed it were told by two angels that Jesus would return (Acts 1:9-11). An expectation of the literal return of Jesus Christ has been with the church ever since. It being commonly featured in its creeds both ancient and modern. However, some individual Christians do not hold to a literal, physical return, though they would be in the minority. But amongst those who do expect a literal return, there has not always been agreement about its nature. EndTimers are one group among many, but scattered throughout the Protestant churches. They predict that Jesus Christ will return very soon, indeed, he will return in "this generation". This phrase and many of the ideas commonly associated with it are to be found in the Gospel of Matthew chapter 24. In this chapter Jesus predicts some cataclysmic events, and towards the end of his address, in verse 34, says that they will happen in "this generation". The most natural understanding of this phrase in context is that those events would happen in the life time of his hearers. Indeed, events very much like those described by Jesus did happen in the Fall of Jerusalem about forty years later. Such are the similarities between the two, many Christians with a more liberal view of the Bible see Christ's words as a later construct of the church placed on his lips, and thus as prophecy after the event. For reasons that are more complex than logical EndTimers regard the phrase "this generation" as referring to the generation beginning at the founding of the modern state of Israel in 1948. From that, the events predicted by Jesus are regarded not specifically about a fall of Jerusalem, but about his return and the end of the world. Therefore those who hold this view believe that the End Times will begin within a generation of 1948. If these EndTimers, then, believe that Jesus Christ will return within a generation of 1948, the first question one has to ask is, "How long is a generation?" In the 1960s and 1970s, even into the 1980s, the common answer to that was "Forty years!". Consequently, a glut of books and videos appeared predicting that the End would begin in the 1980s, and they included such titles as: Will Christ Return by 1988: 101 Reasons Why; 88 Reasons Why Christ Will Return in 1988; and Decade of the 80's: A World in Spasm. But the most prominent and influential of them was Hal Lindsey's Late Great Planet Earth, published in 1970. That book is said to be the third largest selling Christian book of all time, with over 20 million copies in print (weep your heart out Bryce Courtney). Most books of this type have been published in America, but were frequently available in Australia. Though this system of belief seems to have had its origins in nineteenth century Britain, American fundamentalists have been its main advocates and developers. As so often happens with American ideas and practices, many Australians have enthusiastically adopted it. In Australia one of the leading teachers in the EndTimers' camp is Brisbane's Ray Yerbury, though New Zealander Barry Smith through lecture tours and books has probably had more influence here. The books of Hal Lindsey, Ray Yerbury, Barry Smith and a few other sources will now be used to detail the beliefs of these Australian EndTimers. Lindsey is included because though he is American, Late Great Planet Earth has been a major, perhaps the major, factor in many Australian Christians adopting these beliefs. The starting point must be the establishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948. To EndTimers this is fulfilment of biblical prophecy. Lindsey says that the "paramount prophetic sign" concerning the return of Jesus Christ is that "Israel had to be a nation again in the land of its forefathers". As has already been noted, within this scheme the return of Christ must happen within a generation of that occurrence. Lindsey writing in 1970 was bold enough to say a generation was "something like forty years" (Late, 43, 54), and is said to believe that Christ will definitely return before the year 2000. Yerbury, writing twenty years later, had to have other options, and he stated that a generation could be either 40, 70-80, 100 or 120 years (Vital, 11). Now 1988 is well in the past, many EndTimers seem to expect Christ's return in or around the year 2000. However, this belief is not usually held with great dogmatism or precision. Indeed, End Times expectations in Australia have been quieter in 1999 than many would have expected. There has been little banner-waving or overt demonstration. In addition the sale of books about the End Times through Australian Christian bookshops has also been slower this year than expected. EndTimers commonly believe that further "signs" of Jesus Christ's return include widespread wars, earthquakes and famines. This is based on a particular understanding of Matthew chapter 24. In addition, a decline in Christian moral values (2 Timothy 3:1-4) and a worldwide control of the money markets (Revelation 13:11-18) are also seen as signs that Christ's return is not far away. To what level wars, earthquakes and famines have to rise or moral values decline before they can be considered authentic signs is not usually discussed, but is clearly a difficulty. Another "sign" of the approaching End is the emergence of a demonic political leader, the Antichrist, also known as "the Beast" (Revelation 13:1-18). With the time scale involved it is necessary to believe that this man, and it always seems to be a man, is alive today, so Antichrist candidates have included the present Pope, the President of a rapidly emerging United States of Europe, Bill Gates, and Prince Charles. Australian leaders do not seem to be considered sufficiently important or frightening to feature as Anichrist candidates. The Bible gives the identification of this "Beast": the number 666. Barry Smith, with neat numerics (a = 6, b = 12, etc.), favoured Henry Kissinger for this role, his surname totalling 666 on Smith's method. Yerbury, with characteristic caution, says that we cannot know his identity at this stage. Another figure that must appear is the Antichrist's henchman, "the False Prophet", a religious leader (Smith, Warning, 22-56; Second Warning, 57-66; better, 170-173; Yerbury, Ultimate, 99-112; Vital, 53-4). Central to EndTimers' beliefs is the Great Tribulation, a time of terrible war and suffering. The duration of this cataclysm is variously described as being seven years (Lindsey, Late, 42, 137-8; Yerbury, Vital, 42-4) or three and a half years (Smith, Warning, 102-112). Where does the return of Jesus Christ fit into this? Commonly EndTimers believe that he will return twice, the first time will be immediately prior to the Great Tribulation, the second time will be seven years later. This first return is for a particular purpose: to remove all the "true" Christians from Earth and take them to heaven, in what is usually known as "the Rapture". This is sometimes referred to as "His coming for the saints". On this occasion he does not actually visit Earth; he only appears above it, and "the saints" will literally rise up to meet him in the sky (Matthew 24:37-41; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18). But for those remaining on Earth this will all be hidden, that is they will know that their Christian friends and neighbours have disappeared, but will have no idea where they have gone or what has happened (Lindsey, Late, 135-142; Smith, Warning, 150-157; Yerbury, Ultimate, 119-122; Vital, 33-6). This belief conjures up some extraordinary expectations. A Christian doctor operating on a patient will be whisked away, mid operation. Car drivers will disappear, causing their vehicles to crash. Airline pilots will suddenly vanish with terrible consequences. Indeed, it is rumoured that some American airlines do not allow Christians to be both pilot and co-pilot of the one aircraft. Christians must be teamed with non-Christians, in case the Christian is suddenly "raptured". Though this specific belief may not have as much significance in Australia as it does in America, there is no doubt that it is still held tenaciously by its Australian advocates. After the Great Tribulation Jesus Christ will return once more, this time actually to Earth. This return is sometimes referred to as Christ's coming "with the saints", for he will bring back the previously taken Christians with him. This will be followed by the fearsome battle of Armageddon, which Christ will win. He will then establish his reign over the whole world, ruling from Jerusalem, in peace, with equity. This reign will last for 1000 years, the millennium of chapter 20 of the book of Revelation. It is normal for EndTimers to perceive this as literally 1000 years, whereas many other Christians, often with very different understandings of End Times events, would see it as symbolic for a long period (Lindsey, Late, 169-178; Smith, Warning, 158-160; Yerbury, Ultimate, 137-149; Vital, 78-101). Following the Millennium there will be a Satan-led rebellion, but this will be short lived, possibly once more of a seven year duration (Lindsey, 178; Yerbury, Vital, 105-7). God, however, will then triumph over Satan, and wrap up the events of this world and this age, judge its inhabitants, and create a new Heaven and a new Earth, upon which the saved will live with Christ forever (Lindsey, 178; Yerbury, Ultimate, 150-154; Vital, 108-117). Who in Australia holds the views outlined above? They are held by most Australian Christian fundamentalists and some Christian evangelicals. Who are these fundamentalists and evangelicals and what else do they believe? Both groups hold to the core traditional Protestant beliefs (the deity of Jesus Christ, the Trinity, etc), and are to be found in most, if not all, Protestant denominations in Australia, from the Anglican Church to the more recently formed charismatic churches. Fundamentalists and evangelicals are not always clearly distinguishable from each other, for there is much overlapping in beliefs between them. But there are, however, some basic differences between the two. Fundamentalists have a very strong emphasis on a literal interpretation of the Bible, frequently interpreting in an unnatural way, often taking metaphors, symbols, and other figures literally. They are also frequently anti-intellectual. Evangelicals, on the other hand, would take a more rational approach to the Bible, giving due regard to the form of the specific writing, and are usually prepared to engage in intellectual debate. Both groups believe that Jesus Christ will literally return, though there is disagreement about the details between and within the two groups. How many evangelical and fundamentalist Christians are there in Australia? A survey published in 1994 was conducted amongst the attenders of numerous Protestant congregations, and discovered that 48% of those people believed that "the Bible is the Word of God which needs to be read in the context of the times". These, most of them at any rate, would be what have here been termed "evangelicals". Another 21% believed that "the Bible is the Word of God, to be taken literally word for word", and thus would be "fundamentalists" (Kaldor, 45-7). If the survey was anything like accurate, approaching 70% of those attending Australian Protestant churches are either evangelicals or fundamentalists. As it would also seem that there are over 1 million attenders at Protestant churches in Australia (Kaldor, 344), it is probable that there are more than seven hundred thousand evangelical and fundamentalist Christians in Australia. The specific beliefs outlined in this article are widespread amongst fundamentalist Christians, but also seem to be held by some evangelicals. These Christians can be found in probably all Protestant denominations, though are much more common in charismatic and Baptist churches than in, say, Anglican and Uniting churches. These beliefs are also found in some of the sects outside the mainstream Christian church. The number of EndTimers in Australia is almost certainly well in excess of one hundred thousand, and may be above two hundred thousand. How do these beliefs manifest themselves in current Australian life? First, one would expect EndTimers to be less concerned about certain issues of social concern than other Christians, and this often seems to be the case. For example, one does not often find them championing the protection of the environment. If Christ's Kingdom on Earth is not many years away, then why worry about such things now? They can be attended to when Christ returns. The important issue is to prepare people for that return. Another manifestation is the setting of dates for that return, which is probably more common than many realise. Those writers consulted for this study do not predict exact dates for these events. They rely on the more elastic concept of the "this generation" idea. But other people do predict precise dates and times. It is not uncommon to hear individuals, and it is usually individuals rather than movements, predicting that Christ will return on this date or another. They each have their own schemes of interpreting the numerics of such biblical books as Daniel and Revelation. One of the most famous of these predictions was in 1992 when posters began appearing in various Australian towns declaring: THE FINAL WARNING OF GOD JESUS is COMING IN 1am 29th OCT 1992 IN THE AIR (It's the Rapture) Remember the days of Noah and Lot Reject the 666 of computer bar code Repent your sins to God Ready the 7 years Great Tribulation This particular prediction originated in a movement in Korea, and, indeed, its leader in Australia was a Korean on temporary residence here. Several of the teachings discussed in this article are indicated in the poster, with the addition of a very precise prediction of Jesus Christ's return. When the day approached, the leader of the Australian wing of the movement was interviewed in newspapers and on TV, and he politely but boldly confirmed his conviction to the Australian public. The Current Affair interview with him the day after the prediction was proved false was especially touching. He apologised with great sincerity to those he had misled, and soon after returned to his homeland. Ironically, the organisation of which this man was part seems to have left open the possibility of future predictions. It is one of the astonishing facts of this type of endeavour throughout history, that those who predict the end of the world are not discouraged by failure. They just try again. Why? The answers may vary, but central is a strong belief in the certainty of biblical prophecy and the confidence that some have that they know best how to interpret it. It would seem that it would take more than failure to dent that confidence. References Kaldor, Peter (ed.) Winds of Change: The Experience of Church in a Changing Australia. Sydney: Anzea, 1994. Lindsey, Hal. The Late Great Planet Earth. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1970. Smith, Barry R. "... better than Nostradamus." Marlborough: Smith Family, 1996. ---. Second Warning. New Zealand: Smith Family, 1985. ---. Warning. New Zealand: Smith Family, 1980. Yerbury, Ray W. The Ultimate Event. Brisbane: Cross, 1988. ---. Vital Signs of Christ's Coming. Brisbane: Cross, 1990. Citation reference for this article MLA style: David Bennett. "That Year 2000: The End or a Beginning?." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.8 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9912/end.php>. Chicago style: David Bennett, "That Year 2000: The End or a Beginning?," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 8 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9912/end.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: David Bennett. (1999) That year 2000: the end or a beginning?. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(8). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9912/end.php> ([your date of access]).

IntroductionThe National School Chaplaincy and Student Welfare Program (NSCSWP) has been one of the most controversial Australian news topics in the past eight years. Newspaper representations of the NSCSWP have been prolific since the Program began in 2006/07. In my previous research into the NSCSWP, I found that initially the Program was well received. Following the High Court Challenge campaign, however, which began in late 2010, newspaper reports portrayed the NSCSWP in a predominantly negative light. These negative portrayals of the NSCSWP persisted in the lead up to the second High Court Challenge from 2013 until June 2014. During this time, newspaper representations portrayed the Program as an illegitimate form of counseling for state school students. However, I would argue that it was the newspaper representations of the NSCSWP that were in fact illegitimate. In this article, I contend that illegitimate representations of the NSCSWP became hegemonic because of a lack of evidence-based research conducted into the Program’s operation within state schools. Evidence-based research would have appropriately evaluated the Program’s progress and contributed to a legitimate and fair representation of chaplains in online newspapers. My analysis acknowledges the overwhelming prejudice against the NSCSWP. Whether chaplains were indeed a legitimate or illegitimate form of counseling is not my argument. My argument is that newspaper representations of the NSCSWP were illegitimate because news articles were presenting biased and incomplete information to the Australian community. Defining IllegitimacyIllegitimacy as a term has a long history dating back to early modern England, when it was commonly used to refer to children born out of wedlock (Pritchard 19). However, the definition of illegitimacy extends beyond this social phenomenon. Katie Pritchard states:The understanding of illegitimacy encompasses a kind of theoretical illegitimacy that is nothing to do with birth, referring to a kind of falseness or unsuitability that can be applied in many circumstances. (21)For this article, I will be using the term ‘illegitimate’ to describe how the newspaper representations of the NSCSWP were unsuitable because they were biased and lacked valuable information. Newspaper reports, which can be accessed online via the newspaper company’s website, include important authoritative voices. However, these voices expressed a certain opinion or concern, rather than delivering information that contributed to society’s understanding of the NSCSWP. Therefore, newspapers did not present legitimate facts, but instead a range of subjective opinions.The Illegitimacy of Newspaper ReportingThe ideological bias of newspapers has been recently examined regarding News Corp, the owner of national title The Australian, and many of the major Australian state newspapers: The Daily Telegraph; The Courier Mail, Herald Sun; The Advertiser; and Sunday Times. This organisation has recently been accused of showing bias in its newspaper articles (Meade). Meade quotes Mark Scott, the ABC Managing Director, who states:Given the aggressive editorial positioning of some of their mastheads and their willingness to adopt and pursue an editorial position, an ideological position and a market segmentation, you could argue that News Corporation newspapers have never been more assertive in exercising media power. (1)The market domination enjoyed by large organisations such as News Corp, and even Fairfax Media, leads to consistency in journalists’ writing on political, social, religious, and economic issues, which may predominate over the articles published by smaller newspapers. There is the concern that over time a particular point of view will be favoured. According to Mark Scott “a range of influential voices [is] essential to ensure a fair and open media” (Meade 1). Scott cites Rupert Murdoch who stated, back in 1967, that “freedom of the press mustn’t be one-sided just for a publisher to speak as he pleases, to try and bully the community” (Meade 1). Therefore, it has been acknowledged that a biased news article is illegitimate, and national news articles are to present facts, not the opinions of the newspaper.A Methodological Framework For this article I will utilise Norman Fairclough’s theory of Critical Discourse Analysis. Fairclough states:By ‘critical’ discourse analysis I mean discourse analysis which aims to systematically explore often opaque relationships of causality and determination between (a) discursive practices, events and texts and (b) wider social and cultural structures, relations and processes. (132-133)This method of analysis examines three assumptions: Existential, Propositional and Value. Existential assumptions make claims about what exists with regards to the problem, and refers to social phenomena such as globalisation or social cohesion (56). Propositional assumptions make predictions about what is or will be (55). Value assumptions simply evaluate things as good or bad, needed or not needed (57). These assumptions can be identified through analysis of the various direct quotes included within online newspaper articles.Direct quotations in newspaper articles available online often represent polarised views demonstrating whether people agree or disagree with the topic being discussed. The selection, or framing, of dominant voices within an article can be used to construct or re-present certain ideologies (Entman, 165). Entman explains that “we can define framing as the process of culling a few elements of perceived reality and assembling a narrative that highlights connections among them to promote a particular interpretation” (164). The framing of direct quotes within an article, therefore, assists the reader in identifying the article’s bias. The National School Chaplaincy and Student Welfare ProgramThe National School Chaplaincy Program was first established in 2006 by the Howard Government, and in 2011 Julia Gillard included secular youth workers, expanding it from 2012 to become the National School Chaplaincy and Student Welfare Program. According to the National School Chaplaincy and Student Welfare Guidelines, the Program aimed to “assist school communities to provide pastoral care and general spiritual, social and emotional comfort to all students, irrespective of their faith or beliefs” (6). Chaplaincy in Australia has been a predominantly Christian counseling service with Christianity being the most commonly practiced religion in Australia (Australian Bureau of Statistics). However, there have been chaplains representing other faiths such as Islam, Judaism and Buddhism (Australian Government 8). Chaplains were chosen by their respective schools and were partly funded by the Government to provide support to students and staff.State Newspaper Articles Online: Representations 2013-2014My sample of articles came from nine state newspapers with an online presence: The Sydney Morning Herald, Brisbane Courier Mail, Adelaide Advertiser, Melbourne Age, Northern Times, The Australian, The West Australian, The Daily Telegraph, and The Mercury. A total of 36 articles were collected, from the newspaper’s Website, for 2013 and 2014, and were divided into two categories.The two categories are Supportive (of the Program) and Unsupportive (of the Program). In 2013, two articles were supportive of the Program, whereas in 2014 there were four. In 2013 three articles were unsupportive of the Program, whereas in 2014 there were 27 unsupportive articles, representing the growing interest in the scheme in the final lead up to the High Court Challenge in 2014. An online newspaper article from 2013, which portrays the NSCSWP and in particular chaplains as illegitimate, is Call for Naked School Chaplain to Be Defrocked (Domjen). This article explains how an off-duty school chaplain was preaching naked in the main street of a country town in NSW. The NSW Teachers Federation President Maurie Mulheron, and Parents and Citizens Association publicity officer Rachael Sowden were quoted in this article. It is through their direct quotes that the illegitimacy of chaplaincy is framed. President Mulheron states:We believe the chaplaincy program is wrong and that money should be used for an increase in school-based counsellors. Obviously the right checks and balances are not in place. (1)When President Mulheron states “We” it is unclear to the reader as to whether he is referring to all NSW Teachers or the organisation’s administrators. The reader is left to make their own assumptions about whom he is referring to. The President also makes a value assumption that the money would be better spent on school-based counselors, thus expressing his own opinion that they are a better option. A propositional assumption is made when he claims that the “right checks and balances are not in place”, but is he basing his claim on this one incident or is there other research to support this assumption?Perhaps this naked chaplain appeared fine when the school hired him, perhaps he does not have a previous record of inappropriate behaviour, perhaps it was an isolated incident. The reader is not given any background information on this chaplain and is therefore meant to take the President’s assumptions as legitimate fact. Ms Sowden, representing the Parents’ and Citizens’ Association, also expresses the same assumptions and concerns. Ms Sowden states:We have great concerns about the chaplain scheme - many parents do. We are concerned about whether they go through the same processes as teachers in terms of working with children checks and their suitability to the position, and this case highlights that.Ms Sowden makes a propositional assumption that many parents and citizens are concerned about the Program. It would be interesting to know what the Parents and Citizens Association was doing about this, considering the choice to have a chaplain is a decision made by the school community? Ms Sowden also asks whether chaplains “go through the same processes as teachers in terms of working with children checks and their suitability to the position”. Chaplains do not go through the same process as teachers in their training as they have a different role in the school. However, chaplains do require a Certificate IV in Pastoral Care as well as a Working with Children Check because they are in close proximity to children, and are being paid for their school counseling service (Working with Children Check). Ms Sowden’s value assumption that chaplains are unsuitable for the position is based on her own limited understanding of their qualifications, which she admits to not knowing. In fact, to be appointed to represent parents and citizens and to even voice their concerns, but not know the qualifications of chaplains in her community, is an interesting area of ignorance.This article has been framed to evaluate the actions of all chaplains through the example of a publicly-naked chaplain, discussed without context in this article. The Program is portrayed as hiring unsuitable and thus illegitimate chaplains. However, the quotes are based on concerns and assumptions that are unfounded, and are fears presented as facts. Therefore the representation is illegitimate because it does not report any information that the public can use to better understand the NSCSWP, or even to understand the circumstances surrounding the chaplain who preached naked in the street. Another article from 2014, which represents chaplains as illegitimate, is Push to Divert Chaplain Cash to School Councillors (Paine). This article focuses on the comments of the Tasmanian Association of State School Organisations President Jenny Eddington, and the Australian Education Union President Angelo Gavrielatos. These dominant voices within the Tasmanian and Australian communities are chosen to express their opinion that the money once used for chaplains should now be used to fund psychologists in schools. AEU President Angelo Gavrielatos states: Apart from undermining our secular traditions, this additional funding should have been allocated to schools to better meet the educational needs of students with trained, specialist staff.Mr Gavrielatos makes a propositional assumption that chaplains are untrained staff and are thus illegitimate staff. However, chaplains are trained and specialise in providing counseling services. Thus, through his call for “trained, specialist staff” he aims to delegitimize the training of chaplains. Mr Gavrielatos also makes a value assumption when he claims that the funding put towards the NSCSWP undermines “our secular traditions”. “Secular traditions” is an existential assumption in positioning that Australians have secular traditions, and that these do not involve chaplaincy because the Australian Government is not supposed to support religion. The Australian Bureau of Statistics states:Enlightenment principles promoted a secular government, detached from the church, that encouraged tolerance and supported religious pluralism, including the right to practice no religion. By Federation, this diversity was enshrined in the Australian Constitution, which says that the Commonwealth shall not make any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any religious observance, or for prohibiting the free exercise of any religion. (1)The funding of the Program was a contentious issue from the time of its inception; although it could be argued that it was the prerogative of the Government to support the practice of diverse cultural and religious beliefs by allowing schools to hire religious counselors of their choice. Given that not every student is Christian some would perhaps benefit from chaplains or counselors representing other faiths.These news articles have selected dominant voices to construct and promote an ideology of chaplains as an illegitimate resource for school communities. In these newspaper reports existential, propositional and value assumptions were expressed by dominant voices who expressed concern about the role and behaviour of chaplains in schools. However, research into the Program and its operation within each state may have avoided the representation of unfounded and illegitimate assumptions.Evidence-Based Research: Avoiding Illegitimacy Over the course of the Chaplaincy Program various resources, such as reports and journal articles attempted to provide evidence of how the NSCSWP was funded and operated within state schools.The Department of Education received frequent progress reports by state schools who hired chaplains, although this information was not made available to the public. However, in 2011 then Education Minister Peter Garrett released a discussion paper informing Australians about the current set up of the Program and how the community could have their say on the Program’s fulfillment from 2012-2014. The discussion paper was reported on by The Australian, which portrayed the Program as not catering to the needs of Australian youth because chaplains are predominantly Christian (Ferrari). The newspaper report focuses on the concerns of Australian communities regarding the funding, and qualifications of chaplains, and the cost of the Program. Thus, the Program appeared illegitimate and as though it could not cater to the Australian community’s expectations.Reports conducted by organisations external to the Education Department tried to examine schools communities’ expectations and experiences of the Program. One such report was written in 2009 by Dr Philip Hughes and Professor Margaret Sims from Edith Cowan University who aimed to examine how Australian schools evaluated the Program, and the role of chaplains, but their report excluded the state of NSW.Hughes and Sims state that chaplains’ “contribution was widely appreciated” by schools (6). This report attempted to provide a legitimate and independent account of the Program, however, the report was deemed biased by NSW Greens MLC, Dr John Kaye who remarked that the study was “deeply flawed” and lacked independence (Thielking & MacKenzie 1). According to critics, the study focussed on the positive benefits of chaplains, but the only benefit that was unique to them was that they were religious (The Greens). The study also neglected to report that Hughes was an employee of the Christian Research Association and that his background could impede his objectivity. In the same year, 2009, ACCESS ministries published a report titled: The value of chaplains in Victorian schools. The independent research conducted by Social Compass covers: “the value of chaplains; their social, spiritual and academic impacts; the difference made to the health, well being and quality of life of students; and the contributions made to strengthen communities” (2).This study promoted a positive view of chaplaincy within schools and tried to report on a portion of the community’s experiences with chaplains. However, it was limited in that it pertains only to Victorian schools and received very little media attention online. Even if this information were available online it would have only related to Victoria. Further research conducted into chaplaincy has been published in the Journal of Christian Education. This journal contains many articles on chaplaincy, but these are not easily available online as they require a subscription. The findings from these articles have not been published in newspaper articles online and have therefore not been made available to the general public. The Christian bias of the journal may have also contributed to its contents being neglected by news articles made available online, although they might have assisted in providing a more balanced representation of the NSCSWP.The extent of the research conducted into The National School Chaplaincy and Student Welfare Program has not been entirely delineated here, but these are some of the prominent resources. Nonetheless, the rigorous evaluation of the contribution of the NSCSWP was minimal, and the quality of its evaluation predominantly biased.Robert Slavin states that school program evaluations must “produce reliable, unbiased, and meaningful information on the strength of evidence behind each program” (1). Unfortunately, the research conducted into the Chaplaincy Program was not free from bias, consistent or properly designed in a way that legitimately evaluated the NSCSWP. According to Monica Thielking and David MacKenzie:The fact is that the provision of support services for students in Australian schools has never been subjected to serious research and evaluation, and any analysis is made more difficult by the fact that the various states and territories deploy somewhat different models. (1)Thus, the information on the Chaplaincy Program’s progress and the responsibilities of chaplains in schools was not comprehensive or accurate enough to be appropriately reported in newspapers available online. Therefore, newspaper articles used quotes and information based on a limited understanding of the Program, which in turn produced illegitimate representations of the NSCSWP.ConclusionNewspaper reports available online drew conclusions about the Program’s effectiveness, which had not been appropriately tested. If research had been made available to the public, or published within state-based media online, Australians would have had a more legitimate understanding of the Program’s operation within state education, even if that understanding could not have changed the High Court ruling.The Chaplaincy Program demonstrates how a lack of evidence-based research allows the media to construct illegitimate representations based on promoting the assumptions of dominant, and I would argue the loudest, voices, in society. The bias represented in a consistent approach adopted by newspapers owned by dominant media companies, is a factor in the re-presentation and promotion of certain ideologies. This was made evident by the fact that, in 2014, across nine state newspapers available online, 27 articles were unsupportive of the Program as opposed to only four articles that were supportive. Audiences need to be presented with facts rather than opinions, which are based on very little research. Hopefully newspaper reporting will change in the future to offer audiences a more legitimate representation of news events. ReferencesACCESS Ministries. The Value of Chaplains in Victorian Schools. NSW, 2009. Australian Bureau of Statistics. "Reflecting a Nation: Stories from the 2011 Census, 2012–2013." 2012. Australian Government. National School Chaplaincy Program: A Discussion Paper. Australia: Commonwealth of Australian, 2011. Chaplaincy Australia. "Training." n.d. Commonwealth of Australia. National School Chaplaincy and Student Welfare Program Guidelines. Australia: Australian Government, 2012. Domjen, Briana. “Call for Naked School Chaplain to Be Defrocked.” The Australian 3 Feb. 2013: 1.Entman, Robert. "Framing Bias: Media in the Distribution of Power." Journal of Communications 1 (2007): 163-73.Fairclough, Norman. Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research. London: Longman, 2003.Ferrari, Justine. "School Chaplains Not Representative." The Australian 12 Feb. 2011: 1.Hughes, Philip, and Margaret Sims. The Effectivess of Chaplaincy: As Provided by the National School Chaplaincy Association to Government Schools in Australia. Perth: Edith Cowan University, 2009.Meade, Amanda. "Mark Scott: News Corp Papers Never More Aggressive than Now." The Guardian 3 Oct. 2014: 1.Paine, Michelle. “Push to Divert Chaplain Cash to School Councillors.” The Mercury 21 Jun. 2014: 1.Pritchard, Katie. "Legitimacy, Illegitimacy and Sovereignty in Shakespeare’s British Plays." U of Manchester, 2011.Slavin, Robert. "Perspectives on Evidence-Based Research in Education: What Works? Issues in Synthesizing Educational Program Evaluations." Educational Researcher 37.1 (2008): 5-14. The Greens. "Chaplaincy Program Study 'Flawed and Biased': Conclusions Not Justified." n.d. Thielking, Monica, and David MacKenzie. “School Chaplains: Time to Look at the Evidence.” 2011. Working with Children Check. "Categories of Work." 2008.

In its preamble, The Western Australian Charter of Multiculturalism (WA) commits the state to becoming: “A society in which respect for mutual difference is accompanied by equality of opportunity within a framework of democratic citizenship”. One of the principles of multiculturalism, as enunciated in the Charter, is “equality of opportunity for all members of society to achieve their full potential in a free and democratic society where every individual is equal before and under the law”. An important element of this principle is the “equality of opportunity … to achieve … full potential”. The implication here is that those who start from a position of disadvantage when it comes to achieving that potential deserve more than ‘equal’ treatment. Implicitly, equality can be achieved only through the recognition of and response to differential needs and according to the likelihood of achieving full potential. This is encapsulated in Kymlicka’s argument that neutrality is “hopelessly inadequate once we look at the diversity of cultural membership which exists in contemporary liberal democracies” (903). Yet such a potential commitment to differential support might seem unequal to some, where equality is constructed as the same or equal treatment regardless of differing circumstances. Until the past half-century or more, this problematic has been a hotly-contested element of the struggle for Civil Rights for African-Americans in the United States, especially as these rights related to educational opportunity during the years of racial segregation. For some, providing resources to achieve equal outcomes (rather than be committed to equal inputs) may appear to undermine the very ethos of liberal democracy. In Australia, this perspective has been the central argument of Pauline Hanson and her supporters who denounce programs designed as measures to achieve equality for specific disadvantaged groups; including Indigenous Australians and humanitarian refugees. Nevertheless, equality for all on all grounds of legally-accepted difference: gender, race, age, family status, sexual orientation, political conviction, to name a few; is often held as the hallmark of progressive liberal societies such as Australia. In the matter of religious freedoms the situation seems much less complex. All that is required for religious equality, it seems, is to define religion as a private matter – carried out, as it were, between consenting parties away from the public sphere. This necessitates, effectively, the separation of state and religion. This separation of religious belief from the apparatus of the state is referred to as ‘secularism’ and it tends to be regarded as a cornerstone of a liberal democracy, given the general assumption that secularism is a necessary precursor to equal treatment of and respect for different religious beliefs, and the association of secularism with the Western project of the Enlightenment when liberty, equality and science replaced religion and superstition. By this token, western nations committed to equality are also committed to being liberal, democratic and secular in nature; and it is a matter of state indifference as to which religious faith a citizen embraces – Wiccan, Christian, Judaism, etc – if any. Historically, and arguably more so in the past decade, the terms ‘democratic’, ‘secular’, ‘liberal’ and ‘equal’ have all been used to inscribe characteristics of the collective ‘West’. Individuals and states whom the West ascribe as ‘other’ are therefore either or all of: not democratic; not liberal; or not secular – and failing any one of these characteristics (for any country other than Britain, with its parliamentary-established Church of England, headed by the Queen as Supreme Governor) means that that country certainly does not espouse equality. The West and the ‘Other’ in Popular Discourse The constructed polarisation between the free, secular and democratic West that values equality; and the oppressive ‘other’ that perpetuates theocracies, religious discrimination and – at the ultimate – human rights abuses, is a common theme in much of the West’s media and popular discourse on Islam. The same themes are also applied in some measure to Muslims in Australia, in particular to constructions of the rights of Muslim women in Australia. Typically, Muslim women’s dress is deemed by some secular Australians to be a symbol of religious subjugation, rather than of free choice. Arguably, this polemic has come to the fore since the terrorist attacks on the United States in September 2001. However, as Aly and Walker note, the comparisons between the West and the ‘other’ are historically constructed and inherited (Said) and have tended latterly to focus western attention on the role and status of Muslim women as evidence of the West’s progression comparative to its antithesis, Eastern oppression. An examination of studies of the United States media coverage of the September 11 attacks, and the ensuing ‘war on terror’, reveals some common media constructions around good versus evil. There is no equal status between these. Good must necessarily triumph. In the media coverage, the evil ‘other’ is Islamic terrorism, personified by Osama bin Laden. Part of the justification for the war on terror is a perception that the West, as a force for good in this world, must battle evil and protect freedom and democracy (Erjavec and Volcic): to do otherwise is to allow the terror of the ‘other’ to seep into western lives. The war on terror becomes the defence of the west, and hence the defence of equality and freedom. A commitment to equality entails a defeat of all things constructed as denying the rights of people to be equal. Hutcheson, Domke, Billeaudeaux and Garland analysed the range of discourses evident in Time and Newsweek magazines in the five weeks following September 11 and found that journalists replicated themes of national identity present in the communication strategies of US leaders and elites. The political and media response to the threat of the evil ‘other’ is to create a monolithic appeal to liberal values which are constructed as being a monopoly of the ‘free’ West. A brief look at just a few instances of public communication by US political leaders confirms Hutcheson et al.’s contention that the official construction of the 2001 attacks invoked discourses of good and evil reminiscent of the Cold War. In reference to the actions of the four teams of plane hijackers, US president George W Bush opened his Address to the Nation on the evening of September 11: “Today, our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts” (“Statement by the President in His Address to the Nation”). After enjoining Americans to recite Psalm 23 in prayer for the victims and their families, President Bush ended his address with a clear message of national unity and a further reference to the battle between good and evil: “This is a day when all Americans from every walk of life unite in our resolve for justice and peace. America has stood down enemies before, and we will do so this time. None of us will ever forget this day. Yet, we go forward to defend freedom and all that is good and just in our world” (“Statement by the President in His Address to the Nation”). In his address to the joint houses of Congress shortly after September 11, President Bush implicated not just the United States in this fight against evil, but the entire international community stating: “This is the world’s fight. This is civilisation’s fight” (cited by Brown 295). Addressing the California Business Association a month later, in October 2001, Bush reiterated the notion of the United States as the leading nation in the moral fight against evil, and identified this as a possible reason for the attack: “This great state is known for its diversity – people of all races, all religions, and all nationalities. They’ve come here to live a better life, to find freedom, to live in peace and security, with tolerance and with justice. When the terrorists attacked America, this is what they attacked”. While the US media framed the events of September 11 as an attack on the values of democracy and liberalism as these are embodied in US democratic traditions, work by scholars analysing the Australian media’s representation of the attacks suggested that this perspective was echoed and internationalised for an Australian audience. Green asserts that global media coverage of the attacks positioned the global audience, including Australians, as ‘American’. The localisation of the discourses of patriotism and national identity for Australian audiences has mainly been attributed to the media’s use of the good versus evil frame that constructed the West as good, virtuous and moral and invited Australian audiences to subscribe to this argument as members of a shared Western democratic identity (Osuri and Banerjee). Further, where the ‘we’ are defenders of justice, equality and the rule of law; the opposing ‘others’ are necessarily barbaric. Secularism and the Muslim Diaspora Secularism is a historically laden term that has been harnessed to symbolise the emancipation of social life from the forced imposition of religious doctrine. The struggle between the essentially voluntary and private demands of religion, and the enjoyment of a public social life distinct from religious obligations, is historically entrenched in the cultural identities of many modern Western societies (Dallmayr). The concept of religious freedom in the West has evolved into a principle based on the bifurcation of life into the objective public sphere and the subjective private sphere within which individuals are free to practice their religion of choice (Yousif), or no religion at all. Secularism, then, is contingent on the maintenance of a separation between the public (religion-free) and the private or non- public (which may include religion). The debate regarding the feasibility or lack thereof of maintaining this separation has been a matter of concern for democratic theorists for some time, and has been made somewhat more complicated with the growing presence of religious diasporas in liberal democratic states (Charney). In fact, secularism is often cited as a precondition for the existence of religious pluralism. By removing religion from the public domain of the state, religious freedom, in so far as it constitutes the ability of an individual to freely choose which religion, if any, to practice, is deemed to be ensured. However, as Yousif notes, the Western conception of religious freedom is based on a narrow notion of religion as a personal matter, possibly a private emotional response to the idea of God, separate from the rational aspects of life which reside in the public domain. Arguably, religion is conceived of as recognising (or creating) a supernatural dimension to life that involves faith and belief, and the suspension of rational thought. This Western notion of religion as separate from the state, dividing the private from the public sphere, is constructed as a necessary basis for the liberal democratic commitment to secularism, and the notional equality of all religions, or none. Rawls questioned how people with conflicting political views and ideologies can freely endorse a common political regime in secular nations. The answer, he posits, lies in the conception of justice as a mechanism to regulate society independently of plural (and often opposing) religious or political conceptions. Thus, secularism can be constructed as an indicator of pluralism and justice; and political reason becomes the “common currency of debate in a pluralist society” (Charney 7). A corollary of this is that religious minorities must learn to use the language of political reason to represent and articulate their views and opinions in the public context, especially when talking with non-religious others. This imposes a need for religious minorities to support their views and opinions with political reason that appeals to the community at large as citizens, and not just to members of the minority religion concerned. The common ground becomes one of secularism, in which all speakers are deemed to be indifferent as to the (private) claims of religion upon believers. Minority religious groups, such as fundamentalist Mormons, invoke secular language of moral tolerance and civil rights to be acknowledged by the state, and to carry out their door-to-door ‘information’ evangelisation/campaigns. Right wing fundamentalist Christian groups and Catholics opposed to abortion couch their views in terms of an extension of the secular right to life, and in terms of the human rights and civil liberties of the yet-to-be-born. In doing this, these religious groups express an acceptance of the plurality of the liberal state and engage in debates in the public sphere through the language of political values and political principles of the liberal democratic state. The same principles do not apply within their own associations and communities where the language of the private religious realm prevails, and indeed is expected. This embracing of a political rhetoric for discussions of religion in the public sphere presents a dilemma for the Muslim diaspora in liberal democratic states. For many Muslims, religion is a complete way of life, incapable of compartmentalisation. The narrow Western concept of religious expression as a private matter is somewhat alien to Muslims who are either unable or unwilling to separate their religious needs from their needs as citizens of the nation state. Problems become apparent when religious needs challenge what seems to be publicly acceptable, and conflicts occur between what the state perceives to be matters of rational state interest and what Muslims perceive to be matters of religious identity. Muslim women’s groups in Western Australia for example have for some years discussed the desirability of a Sharia divorce court which would enable Muslims to obtain divorces according to Islamic law. It should be noted here that not all Muslims agree with the need for such a court and many – probably a majority – are satisfied with the existing processes that allow Muslim men and women to obtain a divorce through the Australian family court. For some Muslims however, this secular process does not satisfy their religious needs and it is perceived as having an adverse impact on their ability to adhere to their faith. A similar situation pertains to divorced Catholics who, according to a strict interpretation of their doctrine, are unable to take the Eucharist if they form a subsequent relationship (even if married according to the state), unless their prior marriage has been annulled by the Catholic Church or their previous partner has died. Whereas divorce is considered by the state as a public and legal concern, for some Muslims and others it is undeniably a religious matter. The suggestion by the Anglican Communion’s Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, that the adoption of certain aspects of Sharia law regarding marital disputes or financial matters is ultimately unavoidable, sparked controversy in Britain and in Australia. Attempts by some Australian Muslim scholars to elaborate on Dr Williams’s suggestions, such as an article by Anisa Buckley in The Herald Sun (Buckley), drew responses that, typically, called for Muslims to ‘go home’. A common theme in these responses is that proponents of Sharia law (and Islam in general) do not share a commitment to the Australian values of freedom and equality. The following excerpts from the online pages of Herald Sun Readers’ Comments (Herald Sun) demonstrate this perception: “These people come to Australia for freedoms they have never experienced before and to escape repression which is generally brought about by such ‘laws’ as Sharia! How very dare they even think that this would be an option. Go home if you want such a regime. Such an insult to want to come over to this country on our very goodwill and our humanity and want to change our systems and ways. Simply, No!” Posted 1:58am February 12, 2008 “Under our English derived common law statutes, the law is supposed to protect an individual’s rights to life, liberty and property. That is the basis of democracy in Australia and most other western nations. Sharia law does not adequately share these philosophies and principles, thus it is incompatible with our system of law.” Posted 12:55am February 11, 2008 “Incorporating religious laws in the secular legal system is just plain wrong. No fundamentalist religion (Islam in particular) is compatible with a liberal-democracy.” Posted 2:23pm February 10, 2008 “It should not be allowed in Australia the Muslims come her for a better life and we give them that opportunity but they still believe in covering them selfs why do they even come to Australia for when they don’t follow owe [our] rules but if we went to there [their] country we have to cover owe selfs [sic]” Posted 11:28am February 10, 2008 Conflicts similar to this one – over any overt or non-private religious practice in Australia – may also be observed in public debates concerning the wearing of traditional Islamic dress; the slaughter of animals for consumption; Islamic burial rites, and other religious practices which cannot be confined to the private realm. Such conflicts highlight the inability of the rational liberal approach to solve all controversies arising from religious traditions that enjoin a broader world view than merely private spirituality. In order to adhere to the liberal reduction of religion to the private sphere, Muslims in the West must negotiate some religious practices that are constructed as being at odds with the rational state and practice a form of Islam that is consistent with secularism. At the extreme, this Western-acceptable form is what the Australian government has termed ‘moderate Islam’. The implication here is that, for the state, ‘non-moderate Islam’ – Islam that pervades the public realm – is just a descriptor away from ‘extreme’. The divide between Christianity and Islam has been historically played out in European Christendom as a refusal to recognise Islam as a world religion, preferring instead to classify it according to race or ethnicity: a Moorish tendency, perhaps. The secular state prefers to engage with Muslims as an ethnic, linguistic or cultural group or groups (Yousif). Thus, in order to engage with the state as political citizens, Muslims must find ways to present their needs that meet the expectations of the state – ways that do not use their religious identity as a frame of reference. They can do this by utilizing the language of political reason in the public domain or by framing their needs, views and opinions exclusively in terms of their ethnic or cultural identity with no reference to their shared faith. Neither option is ideal, or indeed even viable. This is partly because many Muslims find it difficult if not impossible to separate their religious needs from their needs as political citizens; and also because the prevailing perception of Muslims in the media and public arena is constructed on the basis of an understanding of Islam as a religion that conflicts with the values of liberal democracy. In the media and public arena, little consideration is given to the vast differences that exist among Muslims in Australia, not only in terms of ethnicity and culture, but also in terms of practice and doctrine (Shia or Sunni). The dominant construction of Muslims in the Australian popular media is of religious purists committed to annihilating liberal, secular governments and replacing them with anti-modernist theocratic regimes (Brasted). It becomes a talking point for some, for example, to realise that there are international campaigns to recognise Gay Muslims’ rights within their faith (ABC) (in the same way that there are campaigns to recognise Gay Christians as full members of their churches and denominations and equally able to hold high office, as followers of the Anglican Communion will appreciate). Secularism, Preference and Equality Modood asserts that the extent to which a minority religious community can fully participate in the public and political life of the secular nation state is contingent on the extent to which religion is the primary marker of identity. “It may well be the case therefore that if a faith is the primary identity of any community then that community cannot fully identify with and participate in a polity to the extent that it privileges a rival faith. Or privileges secularism” (60). Modood is not saying here that Islam has to be privileged in order for Muslims to participate fully in the polity; but that no other religion, nor secularism, should be so privileged. None should be first, or last, among equals. For such a situation to occur, Islam would have to be equally acceptable both with other religions and with secularism. Following a 2006 address by the former treasurer (and self-avowed Christian) Peter Costello to the Sydney Institute, in which Costello suggested that people who feel a dual claim from both Islamic law and Australian law should be stripped of their citizenship (Costello), the former Prime Minister, John Howard, affirmed what he considers to be Australia’s primary identity when he stated that ‘Australia’s core set of values flowed from its Anglo Saxon identity’ and that any one who did not embrace those values should not be allowed into the country (Humphries). The (then) Prime Minister’s statement is an unequivocal assertion of the privileged position of the Anglo Saxon tradition in Australia, a tradition with which many Muslims and others in Australia find it difficult to identify. Conclusion Religious identity is increasingly becoming the identity of choice for Muslims in Australia, partly because it is perceived that their faith is under attack and that it needs defending (Aly). They construct the defence of their faith as a choice and an obligation; but also as a right that they have under Australian law as equal citizens in a secular state (Aly and Green). Australian Muslims who have no difficulty in reconciling their core Australianness with their deep faith take it as a responsibility to live their lives in ways that model the reconciliation of each identity – civil and religious – with the other. In this respect, the political call to Australian Muslims to embrace a ‘moderate Islam’, where this is seen as an Islam without a public or political dimension, is constructed as treating their faith as less than equal. Religious identity is generally deemed to have no place in the liberal democratic model, particularly where that religion is constructed to be at odds with the principles and values of liberal democracy, namely tolerance and adherence to the rule of law. Indeed, it is as if the national commitment to secularism rules as out-of-bounds any identity that is grounded in religion, giving precedence instead to accepting and negotiating cultural and ethnic differences. Religion becomes a taboo topic in these terms, an affront against secularism and the values of the Enlightenment that include liberty and equality. In these circumstances, it is not the case that all religions are equally ignored in a secular framework. What is the case is that the secular framework has been constructed as a way of ‘privatising’ one religion, Christianity; leaving others – including Islam – as having nowhere to go. Islam thus becomes constructed as less than equal since it appears that, unlike Christians, Muslims are not willing to play the secular game. In fact, Muslims are puzzling over how they can play the secular game, and why they should play the secular game, given that – as is the case with Christians – they see no contradiction in performing ‘good Muslim’ and ‘good Australian’, if given an equal chance to embrace both. Acknowledgements This paper is based on the findings of an Australian Research Council Discovery Project, 2005-7, involving 10 focus groups and 60 in-depth interviews. The authors wish to acknowledge the participation and contributions of WA community members. 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“People live here, they die here so they must leave traces.” (Read 140) “Whatever colonialism was and is, it has made this place unsettling and unsettled.” (Gibson, Badland 2) Introduction What does it mean for [a] country to be haunted? In much theoretical work in film and Cultural Studies since the 1990s, the Australian continent, more often than not, bears traces of long suppressed traumas which inevitably resurface to haunt the present (Gelder and Jacobs; Gibson; Read; Collins and Davis). Felicity Collins and Therese Davis illuminate the ways Australian cinema acts as a public sphere, or “vernacular modernity,” for rethinking settler/indigenous relations. Their term “backtracking” serves as a mode of “collective mourning” in numerous films of the last decade which render unspoken colonial violence meaningful in contemporary Australia, and account for the “aftershocks” of the Mabo decision that overturned the founding fiction of terra nullius (7). Ray Lawrence’s 2006 film Jindabyne is another after-Mabo film in this sense; its focus on conflict within settler/indigenous relations in a small local town in the alpine region explores a traumatised ecology and drowned country. More than this, in our paper’s investigation of country and its attendant politics, Jindabyne country is the space of excessive haunting and resurfacing - engaging in the hard work of what Gibson (Transformations) has termed “historical backfill”, imaginative speculations “that make manifest an urge to account for the disconnected fragments” of country. Based on an adaptation by Beatrix Christian of the Raymond Carver story, So Much Water, So Close to Home, Jindabyne centres on the ethical dilemma produced when a group of fishermen find the floating, murdered body of a beautiful indigenous woman on a weekend trip, but decide to stay on and continue fishing. In Jindabyne, “'country' […] is made to do much discursive work” (Gorman-Murray). In this paper, we use the word as a metonym for the nation, where macro-political issues are played out and fought over. But we also use ‘country’ to signal the ‘wilderness’ alpine areas that appear in Jindabyne, where country is “a notion encompassing nature and human obligation that white Australia has learned slowly from indigenous Australia” (Gibson, Badland 178). This meaning enables a slippage between ‘land’ and ‘country’. Our discussion of country draws heavily on concepts from Ross Gibson’s theorisation of badlands. Gibson claims that originally, ‘badland’ was a term used by Europeans in North America when they came across “a tract of country that would not succumb to colonial ambition” (Badland 14). Using Collins and Davis’s “vernacular modernity” as a starting point, a film such as Jindabyne invites us to work through the productive possibilities of postcolonial haunting; to move from backtracking (going over old ground) to imaginative backfill (where holes and gaps in the ground are refilled in unconventional and creative returns to the past). Jindabyne (as place and filmic space) signifies “the special place that the Australian Alps occupy for so many Australians”, and the film engages in the discursive work of promoting “shared understanding” and the possibility of both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal being “in country” (Baird, Egloff and Lebehan 35). We argue specifically that Jindabyne is a product of “aftermath culture” (Gibson Transformations); a culture living within the ongoing effects of the past, where various levels of filmic haunting make manifest multiple levels of habitation, in turn the product of numerous historical and physical aftermaths. Colonial history, environmental change, expanding wire towers and overflowing dams all lend meaning in the film to personal dilemmas, communal conflict and horrific recent crimes. The discovery of a murdered indigenous woman in water high in the mountains lays bare the fragility of a relocated community founded in the drowning of the town of old Jindabyne which created Lake Jindabyne. Beatrix Christian (in Trbic 61), the film’s writer, explains “everybody in the story is haunted by something. […] There is this group of haunted people, and then you have the serial killer who emerges in his season to create havoc.” “What’s in this compulsion to know the negative space?” asks Gibson (Badland 14). It’s the desire to better know and more deeply understand where we live. And haunting gives us cause to investigate further. Drowned, Murderous Country Jindabyne rewrites “the iconic wilderness of Australia’s High Country” (McHugh online) and replaces it with “a vast, historical crime scene” (Gibson, Badland 2). Along with nearby Adaminaby, the township of Old Jindabyne was drowned and its inhabitants relocated to the new town in the 1960s as part of the Snowy Mountains Hydro-electric Scheme. When Jindabyne was made in 2006 the scheme no longer represented an uncontested example of Western technological progress ‘taming’ the vast mountainous country. Early on in the film a teacher shows a short documentary about the town’s history in which Old Jindabyne locals lament the houses that will soon be sacrificed to the Snowy River’s torrents. These sentiments sit in opposition to Manning Clark’s grand vision of the scheme as “an inspiration to all who dream dreams about Australia” (McHugh online). With a 100,000-strong workforce, mostly migrated from war-ravaged Europe, the post-war Snowy project took 25 years and was completed in 1974. Such was this engineering feat that 121 workmen “died for the dream, of turning the rivers back through the mountains, to irrigate the dry inland” (McHugh online). Jindabyne re-presents this romantic narrative of progress as nothing less than an environmental crime. The high-tension wires scar the ‘pristine’ high country and the lake haunts every aspect of the characters’ interactions, hinting at the high country’s intractability that will “not succumb to colonial ambition” (Gibson, Badland 14). Describing his critical excavation of places haunted, out-of-balance or simply badlands, Gibson explains: Rummaging in Australia's aftermath cultures, I try to re-dress the disintegration in our story-systems, in our traditional knowledge caches, our landscapes and ecologies […] recuperate scenes and collections […] torn by landgrabbing, let's say, or by accidents, or exploitation that ignores rituals of preservation and restoration (Transformations). Tourism is now the predominant focus of Lake Jindabyne and the surrounding areas but in the film, as in history, the area does not “succumb to the temptations of pictorialism” (McFarlane 10), that is, it cannot be framed solely by the picture postcard qualities that resort towns often engender and promote. Jindabyne’s sense of menace signals the transformation of the landscape that has taken place – from ‘untouched’ to country town, and from drowned old town to the relocated, damned and electrified new one. Soon after the opening of the film, a moment of fishing offers a reminder that a town once existed beneath the waters of the eerily still Lake Jindabyne. Hooking a rusty old alarm clock out of the lake, Stuart explains to Tom, his suitably puzzled young son: underneath the water is the town where all the old men sit in rocking chairs and there’s houses and shops. […] There was a night […] I heard this noise — boing, boing, boing. And it was a bell coming from under the water. ‘Cause the old church is still down there and sometimes when the water’s really low, you can see the tip of the spire. Jindabyne’s lake thus functions as “a revelation of horrors past” (Gibson Badland 2). It’s not the first time this man-made lake is filmically positioned as a place where “violence begins to seem natural” (Gibson, Badland 13). Cate Shortland’s Somersault (2004) also uses Lake Jindabyne and its surrounds to create a bleak and menacing ambience that heightens young Heidi’s sense of alienation (Simpson, ‘Reconfiguring rusticity’). In Somersault, the male-dominated Jindabyne is far from welcoming for the emotionally vulnerable out-of-towner, who is threatened by her friend’s father beside the Lake, then menaced again by boys she meets at a local pub. These scenes undermine the alpine region’s touristic image, inundated in the summer with tourists coming to fish and water ski, and likewise, with snow skiers in the winter. Even away from the Lake, there is no fleeing its spectre. “The high-tension wires marching down the hillside from the hydro-station” hum to such an extent that in one scene, “reminiscent of Picnic at Hanging Rock (Peter Weir, 1975)”, a member of the fishing party is spooked (Ryan 52). This violence wrought upon the landscape contextualises the murder of the young indigenous woman, Susan, by Greg, an electrician who after murdering Susan, seems to hover in the background of several scenes of the film. Close to the opening of Jindabyne, through binoculars from his rocky ridge, Greg spots Susan’s lone car coursing along the plain; he chases her in his vehicle, and forces her to stop. Before (we are lead to assume) he drags her from the vehicle and murders her, he rants madly through her window, “It all comes down from the power station, the electricity!” That the murder/murderer is connected with the hydro-electric project is emphasised by the location scout in the film’s pre-production: We had one location in the scene where Greg dumps the body in some water and Ray [Lawrence] had his heart set on filming that next to some huge pipelines on a dam near Talbingo but Snowy Hydro didn’t […] like that negative content […] in association with their facility and […] said ‘no’ they wouldn’t let us do it.” (Jindabyne DVD extras) “Tales of murder and itinerancy in wild country are as old as the story of Cain in the killing fields of Eden” (Badlands 14). In Jindabyne we never really get to meet Greg but he is a familiar figure in Australian film and culture. Like many before him, he is the lone Road Warrior, a ubiquitous white male presence roaming the de-populated country where the road constantly produces acts of (accidental and intentional) violence (Simpson, ‘Antipodean Automobility’). And after a litany of murders in recent films such as Wolf Creek (Greg McLean, 2005) and Gone (Ringan Ledwidge, 2007) the “violence begins to seem natural” (Gibson Transformations 13) in the isolating landscape. The murderer in Jindabyne, unlike those who have migrated here as adults (the Irish Stuart and his American wife, Claire), is autochthonous in a landscape familiar with a trauma that cannot remain hidden or submerged. Contested High Country The unsinkability of Susan’s body, now an ‘indigenous murdered body’, holds further metaphorical value for resurfacing as a necessary component of aftermath culture. Such movement is not always intelligible within non-indigenous relations to country, though the men’s initial response to the body frames its drifting in terms of ascension: they question whether they have “broken her journey by tying her up”. The film reconfigures terra nullius as the ultimate badland, one that can never truly suppress continuing forms of physical, spiritual, historical and cultural engagement with country, and the alpine areas of Jindabyne and the Snowy River in particular. Lennon (14) points to “the legacy of biased recording and analysis” that “constitutes a threat to the cultural significance of Aboriginal heritage in alpine areas” (15). This significance is central to the film, prompting Lawrence to state that “mountains in any country have a spiritual quality about them […] in Aboriginal culture the highest point in the landscape is the most significant and this is the highest point of our country” (in Cordaiy 40). So whilst the Jindabyne area is contested country, it is the surfacing, upward mobility and unsinkable quality of Aboriginal memory that Brewster argues “is unsettling the past in post-invasion Australia” (in Lambert, Balayi 7). As the agent of backfill, the indigenous body (Susan) unsettles Jindabyne country by offering both evidence of immediate violence and reigniting the memory of it, before the film can find even the smallest possibility of its characters being ‘in country’. Claire illustrates her understanding of this in a conversation with her young son, as she attempts to contact the dead girls’ family. “When a bad thing happens,” she says, “we all have to do a good thing, no matter how small, alright? Otherwise the bad things, they just pile up and up and up.” Her persistent yet clumsy enactment of the cross-cultural go-between illuminates the ways “the small town community move through the terms of recent debate: shame and denial, repressed grief and paternalism” (Ryan 53). It is the movement of backfill within the aftermath: The movement of a foreign non-Aboriginal woman into Aboriginal space intertextually re-animates the processes of ‘settlement’, resolution and environmental assimilation for its still ‘unsettled’ white protagonists. […] Claire attempts an apology to the woman’s family and the Aboriginal community – in an Australia before Kevin Rudd where official apologies for the travesties of Australian/colonial history had not been forthcoming […] her movement towards reconciliation here is reflective of the ‘moral failure’ of a disconnection from Aboriginal history. (Lambert, Diasporas) The shift from dead white girl in Carver’s story to young Aboriginal woman speaks of a political focus on the ‘significance’ of the alpine region at a given moment in time. The corpse functions “as the trigger for crisis and panic in an Australia after native title, the stolen generation and the war-on-terror” (Lambert, Diasporas). The process of reconnecting with country and history must confront its ghosts if the community is to move forward. Gibson (Transformations) argues that “if we continue to close our imaginations to the aberrations and insufficiencies in our historical records. […] It’s likely we won’t dwell in the joy till we get real about the darkness.” In the post-colonial, multicultural but still divided geographies and cultures of Jindabyne, “genocidal displacement” comes face to face with the “irreconciled relation” to land “that refuses to remain half-seen […] a measure of non-indigenous failure to move from being on the land to being in country” (Ryan 52), evidenced by water harvesting in the Snowy Mountains Scheme, and the more recent crises in water and land management. Aftermath Country Haunted by historical, cultural and environmental change, Jindabyne constitutes a post-traumatic screen space. In aftermath culture, bodies and landscapes offer the “traces” (Gibson, Transformations) of “the social consequences” of a “heritage of catastrophe” that people “suffer, witness, or even perpetrate” so that “the legacy of trauma is bequeathed” (Walker i). The youth of Jindabyne are charged with traumatic heritage. The young Susan’s body predictably bears the semiotic weight of colonial atrocity and non-indigenous environmental development. Evidence of witnesses, perpetrators and sufferers is still being revealed after the corpse is taken to the town morgue, where Claire (in a culturally improper viewing) is horrified by Susan’s marks from being secured in the water by Stuart and the other men. Other young characters are likewise haunted by a past that is environmental and tragically personal. Claire and Stuart’s young son, Tom (left by his mother for a period in early infancy and the witness of his parents strained marital relations), has an intense fear of drowning. This personal/historical fear is played with by his seven year old friend, Caylin-Calandria, who expresses her own grief from the death of her young mother environmentally - by escaping into the surrounding nature at night, by dabbling in the dark arts and sacrificing small animals. The two characters “have a lot to believe in and a lot of things to express – belief in zombies and ghosts, ritual death, drowning” (Cordaiy 42). As Boris Trbic (64) observes of the film’s characters, “communal and familial harmony is closely related to their intense perceptions of the natural world and their often distorted understanding of the ways their partners, friends and children cope with the grieving process.” Hence the legacy of trauma in Jindabyne is not limited to the young but pervades a community that must deal with unresolved ecologies no longer concealed by watery artifice. Backfilling works through unsettled aspects of country by moving, however unsteadily, toward healing and reconciliation. Within the aftermath of colonialism, 9/11 and the final years of the Howard era, Jindabyne uses race and place to foreground the “fallout” of an indigenous “condemnation to invisibility” and the “long years of neglect by the state” (Ryan 52). Claire’s unrelenting need to apologise to the indigenous family and Stuart’s final admission of impropriety are key gestures in the film’s “microcosm of reconciliation” (53), when “the notion of reconciliation, if it had occupied any substantial space in the public imagination, was largely gone” (Rundell 44). Likewise, the invisibility of Aboriginal significance has specificity in the Jindabyne area – indigeneity is absent from narratives recounting the Snowy Mountains Scheme which “recruited some 60,000 Europeans,” providing “a basis for Australia’s postwar multicultural society” (Lennon 15); both ‘schemes’ evidencing some of the “unrecognised implications” of colonialism for indigenous people (Curthoys 36). The fading of Aboriginal issues from public view and political discourse in the Howard era was serviced by the then governmental focus on “practical reconciliation” (Rundell 44), and post 9/11 by “the broad brushstrokes of western coalition and domestic political compliance” (Lambert, CMC 252), with its renewed focus on border control, and increased suspicion of non-Western, non-Anglo-European difference. Aftermath culture grapples with the country’s complicated multicultural and globalised self-understanding in and beyond Howard’s Australia and Jindabyne is one of a series of texts, along with “refugee plays” and Australian 9/11 novels, “that mobilised themselves against the Howard government” (Rundell 43-44). Although the film may well be seen as a “profoundly embarrassing” display of left-liberal “emotional politics” (44-45), it is precisely these politics that foreground aftermath: local neglect and invisibility, terror without and within, suspect American leadership and shaky Australian-American relations, the return of history through marked bodies and landscapes. Aftermath country is simultaneously local and global – both the disappearance and the ‘problem’ of Aboriginality post-Mabo and post-9/11 are backfilled by the traces and fragments of a hidden country that rises to the surface. Conclusion What can be made of this place now? What can we know about its piecemeal ecology, its choppy geomorphics and scarified townscapes? […] What can we make of the documents that have been generated in response to this country? (Gibson, Transformations). Amidst the apologies and potentialities of settler-indigenous recognition, the murdering electrician Gregory is left to roam the haunted alpine wilderness in Jindabyne. His allegorical presence in the landscape means there is work to be done before this badland can truly become something more. Gibson (Badland 178) suggests country gets “called bad […] partly because the law needs the outlaw for reassuring citizens that the unruly and the unknown can be named and contained even if they cannot be annihilated.” In Jindabyne the movement from backtracking to backfilling (as a speculative and fragmental approach to the bodies and landscapes of aftermath culture) undermines the institutional framing of country that still seeks to conceal shared historical, environmental and global trauma. The haunting of Jindabyne country undoes the ‘official’ production of outlaw/negative space and its discursively good double by realising the complexity of resurfacing – electricity is everywhere and the land is “uncanny” not in the least because “the town of Jindabyne itself is the living double of the drowned original” (Ryan 53). The imaginative backfill of Jindabyne reorients a confused, purgatorial Australia toward the “small light of home” (53) – the hope of one day being “in country,” and as Gibson (Badland 3) suggests, the “remembering,” that is “something good we can do in response to the bad in our lands.” References Baird, Warwick, Brian Egloff and Rachel Lenehan. “Sharing the mountains: joint management of Australia’s alpine region with Aboriginal people.” historic environment 17.2 (2003): 32-36. Collins, Felicity and Therese Davis. Australian Cinema after Mabo. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2005. Cordaiy, Hunter. “Man, Woman and Death: Ray Lawrence on Jindabyne.” Metro 149 (2006): 38-42. Curthoys, Anne. “An Uneasy Conversation: The Multicultural and the Indigenous.” Race Colour and Identity in Australia and New Zealand. Ed. John Docker and Gerhard Fischer. Sydney, UNSW P, 2000. 21-36. Gelder, Ken and Jane M. Jacobs. Uncanny Australia: Sacredness an Identity in a Postcolonial Nation. Carlton: Melbourne UP, 1998. Gibson, Ross. Seven Versions of an Australian Badland. St Lucia: U of Queensland P, 2002. Gibson, Ross. “Places, Past, Disappearance.” Transformations 13 (2006). Aug. 11 2008 transformations.cqu.edu.au/journal/issue_13/article_01.shtml. Gorman-Murray, Andrew. “Country.” M/C Journal 11.5 (this issue). Kitson, Michael. “Carver Country: Adapting Raymond Carver in Australia.” Metro150 (2006): 54-60. Lambert, Anthony. “Movement within a Filmic terra nullius: Woman, Land and Identity in Australian Cinema.” Balayi, Culture, Law and Colonialism 1.2 (2001): 7-17. Lambert, Anthony. “White Aborigines: Women, Mimicry, Mobility and Space.” Diasporas of Australian Cinema. Eds. Catherine Simpson, Renata Murawska, and Anthony Lambert. UK: Intellectbooks, 2009. Forthcoming. Lambert, Anthony. “Mediating Crime, Mediating Culture.” Crime, Media, Culture 4.2 (2008): 237-255. Lennon, Jane. “The cultural significance of Australian alpine areas.” Historic environment 17.2 (2003): 14-17. McFarlane, Brian. “Locations and Relocations: Jindabyne & MacBeth.” Metro Magazine 150 (Spring 2006): 10-15. McHugh, Siobhan. The Snowy: The People Behind the Power. William Heinemann Australia, 1999. http://www.mchugh.org/books/snowy.html. Read, Peter. Haunted Earth. Sydney: UNSW Press, 2003. Rundle, Guy. “Goodbye to all that: The end of Australian left-liberalism and the revival of a radical politics.” Arena Magazine 88 (2007): 40-46. Ryan, Matthew. “On the treatment of non-indigenous belonging.” Arena Magazine 84 (2006): 52-53. Simpson, Catherine. “Reconfiguring Rusticity: feminizing Australian Cinema’s country towns’. Studies in Australasian Cinemas 2.1 (2008): forthcoming. Simpson, Catherine. “Antipodean Automobility & Crash: Treachery, Trespass and Transformation of the Open Road.” Australian Humanities Review 39-40 (2006). http://www.australianhumanitiesreview.org/archive/Issue-September-2006/simpson.html. Trbic, Boris. “Ray Lawrence’s Jindabyne: So Much Pain, So Close to Home.” Screen Education 44 (2006): 58–64. Walker, Janet. Trauma Cinema: Documenting Incest and the Holocaust. Berkley, Los Angeles and London: U of California P, 2005.

The emergence of New Age spirituality in Western cultures during the 1960s and 1970s has been described as a rejection of traditional values, fuelled by disillusionment with the Christian church and a feeling of alienation in mainstream social and work environments. While New Age has been characterised as a ‘turning away’ from dominant cultural ideologies, there is comparatively less discussion about what New Age actors are ‘turning towards’ in their pursuit of subjective spirituality. Research from Australia demonstrates that individuals were primarily searching for deeper meaning and looking for spiritual answers when they first engaged with New Age pursuits. In addition, social and intergenerational transmission are both important factors in the cultivation of New Age spirituality.

The issue of land is an important part in the history of human life. In its development, the land was exploited to meet the growing human needs. This is evident from two cases of land use that existed among Aboriginal communities in Australia and Dayak communities in Ketapang, West Kalimantan. One understanding that can be used in this assistance process is that the process of excessive and arbitrary exploitation of land will have a bad influence on human life itself. Christian theology itself places land as part of nature that is inseparable from human life. The church needs to establish itself as part of this awareness process because if it does not, the church will face its responsibilities before God as the Creator. Persoalan tanah adalah bagian penting dalam sejarah kehidupan manusia. Dalam perkembangannya tanah diesksploitasi demi memenuhi kebutuhan manusia yang semakin bertambah. Hal ini tampak jelas dari dua kasus pemanfaatan tanah yang ada di tengah masyarakat Aborigin di Australia dan masyarakat Dayak yang ada di Ketapang, Kalimantan Barat. Satu pemahaman yang dapat dipakai dalam proses pendampingan ini adalah proses eksploitasi yang berlebihan dan semena-mena terhadap tanah akan memiliki pengaruh buruk bagi kehidupan manusia itu sendiri. Teologi Kristen sendiri menempatkan tanah sebagai bagian dari alam yang tidak terpisahkan dari kehidupan manusia. Gereja perlu membangun dirinya sebagai bagian dari proses penyadaran ini sebab jika tidak, maka gereja akan berhadapan dengan tanggung-jawabnya di hadapan Tuhan sebagai Sang Pencipta.

Kylie Minogue, her interviewer tells us in the October 2000 issue of Sky Magazine, is a "fatalist": meaning she "believe[s] everything happens for a reason" (Minogue "Kylie" 20). And what kind of reason would that be? Well, the Australian singer gives us a few clues in her interview of the previous month with Attitude, which she liberally peppers with references to her personal beliefs (Minogue "Special K" 43-46). When asked why she shouldn't be on top all the time, she explains: "It's yin and yang. It's all in the balance." A Taoist – or at any rate Chinese – perspective then? Yet, when asked whether it's important to be a good person, she responds: "Do unto others." That's St. Matthew, therefore Biblical, therefore probably Christian. But hang on. When asked about karma, she replies: "Karma is my religion." That would be Hindu, or at least Buddhist, wouldn't it? Still she goes on … "I have guilt if anything isn't right." Now, far be it from us to perpetuate religious stereotypes, but that does sound rather more like a Western church than either Hinduism or Buddhism. So what gives? Clearly there have always been religious references made by Western pop stars, the majority of them, unsurprisingly, Christian, given that this has traditionally been the major Western religion. So there's not much new about the Christian references of Tina Arena or Céline Dion, or the thankyous to God offered up by Britney Spears or Destiny's Child. There's also little that's new in references to non-Christian religions – who can forget the Beatles' flirtation with Hinduism back in the 1960s, Tina Turner's conversion to Buddhism or Cat Stevens' to Islam in the 1970s, or the Tibetan Freedom concerts of the mid- to late nineties organised by the Beastie Boys' Adam Yauch, himself a Buddhist convert? What is rather new about this phenomenon in Western pop music, above and beyond its scale, is the faintly dizzying admixture of religions to be found in the songs or words of a single artist or group, of which Kylie's interviews are a paradigmatic but hardly isolated example. The phenomenon is also evident in the title track from Affirmation, the 1999 album by Kylie's compatriots, Savage Garden, whose worldview extends from karma to a non-evangelised/ing God. In the USA, it's there in the Buddhist and Christian references which meet in Tina Turner, the Christian and neo-pagan imagery of Cyndi Lauper's recent work, and the Christian iconography which runs into buddhas on Australian beaches on REM's 1998 album Up. Of course, Madonna's album of the same year, Ray of Light, coasts on this cresting trend, its lyrics laced with terms such as angels, "aum", churches, earth [personified as female], Fate, Gospel, heaven, karma, prophet, "shanti", and sins; nor are such concerns entirely abandoned on her 2000 album Music. In the UK, Robbie Williams' 1998 smash album I've Been Expecting You contains, in immediate succession, tracks entitled "Grace", "Jesus in a Camper Van", "Heaven from Here" … and then "Karma Killer". Scottish-born Annie Lennox's journey through Hare Krishna and Buddhism does not stop her continuing in the Eurythmics' pattern of the eighties and littering her words with Christian imagery, both in her nineties solo work and the songs written in collaboration with Dave Stewart for the Eurythmics' 1999 reunion. In 2000, just a year after her ordination in the Latin Tridentine Church, Irish singer Sinéad O'Connor releases Faith and Courage, with its overtones of Wicca and paganism in general, passing nods to Islam and Judaism, a mention of Rasta and part-dedication to Rastafarians, and considerable Christian content, including a rendition of the "Kyrié Eléison". Even U2, amongst their sometimes esoteric Christian references, find room to cross grace with karma on their 2000 album All That You Can't Leave Behind. In Germany, Marius Müller-Westernhagen's controversial single "Jesus" from his 1998 chart-topping album Radio Maria, named after a Catholic Italian radio station, sees him in countless interviews elaborating on themes such as God as universal energy, the importance of prayer, the (unnamed but implicit) idea of karma and his interest in Buddhism. Over a long career, the eccentric Nina Hagen lurches through Christianity, Hinduism, Hare Krishna, and on towards her 2000 album Return of the Mother, where these influences are mixed with a strong Wiccan element. In France, Mylène Farmer's early gothic references to Catholicism and mystical overtones lead towards her "Méfie-toi" ("Be Careful"), from the 1999 album Innamoramento, with its references to God, the Virgin, Buddha and karma. In Italy, Gianna Nannini goes looking for the soul in her 1998 "Peccato originale" ("Original sin"), while on the same album, Cuore (Heart), invoking the Hindu gods Shiva and Brahma in her song "Centomila" ("One Hundred Thousand"). "The world is craving spirituality so much right now", Carlos Santana tells us in 1995. "If they could sell it at McDonald's, it would be there. But it's not something you can get like that. You can only wake up to it, and music is the best alarm" (qtd. in Obstfeld & Fitzgerald 166). It seems we're dealing here with quite a significant development occurring under the auspices of postmodernism – that catch-all term for the current mood and trends in Western culture, one of whose most conspicuous manifestations is generally considered to be a pick 'n' mix attitude towards artefacts from cultures near and distant, past, present and future. This rather controversial cultural eclecticism is often flatly equated with the superficiality and commercialism of a generation with no historical or critical perspective, no interest in obtaining one, and an obsession with shopping for lifestyle accessories. Are pop's religious references, in fact, simply signifieds untied from signifiers, symbols emptied of meaning but amusing to play with? When Annie Lennox talks of doing a "Zen hit" (Lennox & Stewart n.pag.), or Daniel Jones describes himself and Savage Garden partner Darren Hayes as being like "Yin and Yang" (Hayes & Jones n.pag.), are they merely borrowing trendy figures of speech with no reflection on what lies – or should lie – or used to lie behind them? When Madonna samples mondial religions on Ray of Light, is she just exploiting the commercial potential inherent in this Shiva-meets-Chanel spectacle? Is there, anywhere in the entire (un)holy hotchpotch, something more profound at work? To answer this question, we'll need to take a closer look at the trends within the mixture. There isn't any answer in religion Don't believe one who says there is But… The voices are heard Of all who cry The first clear underlying pattern is evident in these words, taken from Sinéad O'Connor's "Petit Poulet" on her 1997 Gospel Oak EP, where she attacks religion, but simultaneously undermines her own attack in declaring that the voices "[o]f all who cry" will be heard. This is the same singer who, in 1992, tears up a picture of the Pope on "Saturday Night Live", but who is ordained in 1999, and fills her 2000 album Faith and Courage with religious references. Such a stance can only make sense if we assume that she is assailing, in general, the organised and dogmatised version(s) of religion expounded by many churches - as well as, in particular, certain goings-on within the Catholic Church - but not religion or the God-concept in and of themselves. Similarly, in 1987, U2's Bono states his belief that "man has ruined God" (qtd. in Obstfeld & Fitzgerald 174) – but U2 fans will know that religious, particularly Christian, allusions have far from disappeared from the band's lyrics. When Stevie Wonder admits in 1995 to being "skeptical of churches" (ibid. 175), or Savage Garden's Darren Hayes sings in "Affirmation" that he "believe[s] that God does not endorse TV evangelists", they are giving expression to pop's typical cynicism with regard to organised religion in the West – whether in its traditional or modern/evangelical forms. Religion, it seems, needs less organisation and more personalisation. Thus Madonna points out that she does not "have to visit God in a specific area" and "like[s] Him to be everywhere" (ibid.), while Icelandic singer Björk speaks for many when she comments: "Well, I think no two people have the same religion, and a lot of people would call that being un-religious [sic]. But I'm actually very religious" (n.pag.). Secondly, there is a commonly-expressed sentiment that all faiths should be viewed as equally valid. Turning again to Sinéad O'Connor, we hear her sing on "What Doesn't Belong to Me" from Faith and Courage: "I'm Irish, I'm English, I'm Moslem, I'm Jewish, / I'm a girl, I'm a boy". Annie Lennox, her earlier involvement with Hare Krishna and later interest in Tibetan Buddhism notwithstanding, states categorically in 1992: "I've never been a follower of any one religion" (Lennox n.pag.), while Nina Hagen puts it this way: "the words and religious group one is involved with doesn't [sic] matter" (Hagen n.pag.). Whatever the concessions made by the Second Vatican Council or advanced by pluralist movements in Christian theology, such ideological tolerance still draws strong censure from certain conventional religious sources – Christian included – though not from all. This brings us to the third and perhaps most crucial pattern. Not surprisingly, it is to our own Christian heritage that singers turn most often for ideas and images. When it comes to cross-cultural borrowings, however, this much is clear: equal all faiths may be, but equally mentioned they are not. Common appropriations include terms such as karma (Robbie Williams' 1998 "Karma Killer", Mylène Farmer's 1999 "Méfie-toi", U2's 2000 "Grace") and yin and yang (see the above-quoted Kylie and Savage Garden interviews), concepts like reincarnation (Tina Tuner's 1999/2000 "Whatever You Need") and non-attachment (Madonna's 1998 "To Have and Not to Hold"), and practices such as yoga (from Madonna through to Sting) and even tantrism (Sting, again). Significantly, all of these are drawn from the Eastern faiths, notably Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism, though they also bear a strong relation to ideas found in various neo-pagan religions such as Wicca, as well as in many mystical traditions. Eastern religions, neo-paganism, mysticism: these are of course the chief sources of inspiration for the so-called New Age, which constitutes an ill-defined, shape-shifting conglomeration of beliefs standing outside the mainstream Middle Eastern/Western monotheistic religious pantheon. As traditional organised religion comes under attack, opening up the possibility of a personal spirituality where we can pick and choose, and as we simultaneously seek to redress the imbalance of religious understanding by extending tolerance to other faiths, it is unsurprising that we are looking for alternatives to the typical dogmatism of Christianity, Islam and even Judaism, to what German singer Westernhagen sees as the "punishing God" of the West ("Rock-Star" n.pag.). Instead, we find ourselves drawn to those distant faiths whose principles seem, suddenly, to have so much to offer us, including a path out of the self-imposed narrow-mindedness with which, all too often, the major Western religions seem to have become overlaid. Despite certain differences, the Eastern faiths and their New Age Western counterparts typically speak of a life force grounding all the particular manifestations we see about us, a balance between male and female principles, and a reverence for nature, while avoiding hierarchies, dogma, and evangelism, and respecting the equal legitimacy of all religions. The last of these points has already been mentioned as a central issue in pop spirituality, and it is not difficult to see that the others dovetail with contemporary Western cultural ideals and concerns: defending human rights, promoting freedom, equality and tolerance, establishing international peace, and protecting the environment. However limited our understanding of Eastern religions may be, however convenient that may prove, and however questionable some of our cultural ideals might seem, whether because of their naïveté or their implicit imperialism, the message is coming through loud and clear in the world of pop: we are all part of one world, and we'd better work together. Madonna expresses it this way in "Impressive Instant" on her 2000 album, Music: Cosmic systems intertwine Astral bodies drip like wine All of nature ebbs and flows Comets shoot across the sky Can't explain the reasons why This is how creation goes Her words echo what others have said. In "Jag är gud" ("I am god") from her 1991 En blekt blondins hjärta (A Bleached Blonde's Heart), the Swedish Eva Dahlgren sings: "varje själ / är en del / jag är / jag är gud" ("every soul / is a part / I am / I am god"); in a 1995 interview Sting observes: "The Godhead, or whatever you want to call it - it's better not to give it a name, is encoded in our being" (n.pag.); while Westernhagen remarks in 1998: "I believe in God as universal energy. God is omnipresent. Everyone can be Jesus. And in everyone there is divine energy. I am convinced that every action on the part of an individual influences the whole universe" ("Jesus" n.pag.; my transl.). In short, as Janet Jackson puts it in "Special" from her 1997 The Velvet Rope: "You have to learn to water your spiritual garden". Secularism is on its way out – perhaps playing the material girl or getting sorted for E's & wizz wasn't enough after all – and religion, it seems, is on its way back in. Naturally, there is no denying that pop is also variously about entertainment, relaxation, rebellion, vanity or commercialism, and that it can, from time to time and place to place, descend into hatred and bigotry. Moreover, pop singers are as guilty as everyone else of, at least some of the time, choosing words carelessly, perhaps merely picking up on something that is in the air. But by and large, pop is a good barometer of wider society, whose trends it, in turn, influences and reinforces: in other words, that something in the air really is in the air. Then again, it's all very well for pop stars to dish up a liberal religious smorgasbord, assuring us that "All is Full of Love" (Björk) or praising the "Circle of Life" (Elton John), but what purpose does this fulfil? Do we really need to hear this? Is it going to change anything? We've long known, thanks to John Lennon, that you can imagine a liberal agenda, supporting human rights or peace initiatives, without religion – so where does religion fit in? It has been suggested that the emphasis of religion is gradually changing, moving away from the traditional Western focus on transcendence, the soul and the afterlife. Derrida has claimed that religion is equally, or even more importantly, about hospitality, about human beings experiencing and acting out of a sense of the communal responsibility of each to all others. This is a view of God as, essentially, the idealised sum of humanity's humanity. And Derrida is not alone in giving voice to such musings. The Dalai Lama has implied that the key to spirituality in our time is "a sense of universal responsibility" (n.pag.), while Vaclav Havel has described transcendence as "a hand reached out to those close to us, to foreigners, to the human community, to all living creatures, to nature, to the universe" (n.pag.). It may well be that those who are attempting to verbalise a liberal agenda and clothe it in expressive metaphors are discovering that there are - and have always been - many useful tools among the global religions, and many sources of inspiration among the tolerant, pluralistic faiths of the East. John Lennon's imaginings aside, then, let us briefly revisit the world of pop. Nina Hagen's 1986 message "Love your world", from "World Now", a plea for peace repeated in varying forms throughout her career, finds this formulation in 2000 on the title track of Return of the Mother: "My revelation is a revolution / Establish justice for all in my world". In 1997, Sinéad points out in "4 My Love" from her Gospel Oak EP: "God's children deserve to / sleep safe in the night now love", while in the same year, in "Alarm Call" from Homogenic, Björk speaks of her desire to "free the human race from suffering" with the help of music and goes on: "I'm no fucking Buddhist but this is enlightenment". In 1999, the Artist Formerly Known as Prince tells an interviewer that "either we can get in here now and fix [our problems] and do the best we can to help God fix [them], or we can... [y]ou know, punch the clock in" (4). So, then, instead of encouraging the punching in of clocks, here is pop being used as a clarion-call to the faith-full. Yet pop - think Band Aid, Live Aid and Net Aid - is not just about words. When, in the 2000 song "Peace on Earth", Bono sings "Heaven on Earth / We need it now" or when, in "Grace", he begs for grace to be allowed to cancel out karma, he is already playing his part in fronting the Drop the Debt campaign for Jubilee 2000, while U2 supports organisations such as Amnesty International, Greenpeace and War Child. It is no coincidence that the Eurythmics choose to entitle their 1999 comeback album Peace, or give one of its tracks a name with a strong Biblical allusion, "Power to the Meek": not only has Annie Lennox been a prominent supporter of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan cause, but she and Dave Stewart have divided the proceeds of their album and accompanying world tour between Amnesty International and Greenpeace. Religion, it appears, can offer more than hackneyed rhymes: it can form a convenient metaphorical basis for solidarity and unity for those who are, so to speak, prepared to put their money - and time and effort - where their mouths are. Annie Lennox tells an interviewer in 1992: "I hate to disappoint you, but I don't have any answers, I'm afraid. I've only written about the questions." (n.pag). If a cursory glance at contemporary Western pop tells us anything, it is that religion, in its broadest and most encompassing sense, while not necessarily offering all the important answers, is at any rate no longer seen to lie beyond the parameters of the important questions. This is, perhaps, the crux of today's increasing trend towards religious eclecticism. When Buddha meets Christ, or karma intersects with grace, or the Earth Goddess bumps into Shiva, those who've engineered these encounters are - moving beyond secularism but also beyond devotion to any one religion - asking questions, seeking a path forward, and hoping that at the points of intersection, new possibilities, new answers - and perhaps even new questions - will be found. References Björk. "Björk FAQ." [Compiled by Lunargirl.] Björk - The Ultimate Intimate. 1999. 26 Jan. 2001. <http://bjork.intimate.org/quotes/>. Dalai Lama. "The Nobel [Peace] Lecture." [Speech delivered on 11.12.89.] His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet. The Office of Tibet and the Tibetan Government-in-Exile. Undated. 26 Jan. 2001. <http://www.dalailama.com/html/nobel.php>. Hagen, N. "Nina Hagen Living in Ekstasy." [Interview with M. Hesseman; translation by M. Epstein.] Nina Hagen Electronic Shrine. Undated. 26 Jan. 2001. <http://208.240.252.87/nina/interv/living.html Havel, V. "The Need for Transcendence in the Postmodern World." [Speech delivered on 04.07.94.] World Transformation. Undated. 26 Jan. 2001. <http://www.worldtrans.org/whole/havelspeech.php>. Hayes, D. & D. Jones. Interview [with Musiqueplus #1 on 23.11.97; transcribed by M. Woodley]. To Savage Garden and Back. Undated. 26 Jan. 2001. <http://www.igs.net/~woodley/musique2.htm>. Lennox, A. Interview [with S. Patterson; from Details, July 1992]. Eurythmics Frequently Asked Questions. Undated. 26 Jan. 2001. <http://www1.minn.net/~egusto/a67.htm>. Lennox, A. & D. Stewart. Interview [from Interview Magazine, December 1999]. Eurythmics Frequently Asked Questions. Undated. 26 Jan. 2001. <http://www1.minn.net/~egusto/a64.htm>. Minogue, K. "Kylie." [Interview with S. Patterson.] Sky Magazine October 2000: 14-21. Minogue, K. "Special K." [Interview with P. Flynn.] Attitude September 2000: 38-46. Obstfeld, R. & P. Fitzgerald. Jabberrock: The Ultimate Book of Rock 'n' Roll Quotations. New York: Henry Holt, 1997. [The Artist Formerly Known as] Prince. A Conversation with Kurt Loder. [From November 1999.] MTV Asia Online. Undated. 26 Jan. 2001. <http://www.mtvasia.com/Music/Interviews/Old/Prince1999November/index.php>. Sting. Interview [with G. White; from Yoga Journal, December 1995]. Stingchronicity. Undated. 26 Jan. 2001. <http://www.stingchronicity.co.uk/yogajour.php>. [Müller-] Westernhagen, M. "Jesus, Maria und Marius." [From Focus, 10.08.98.] Westernhagen-Fanpage. Undated. 26 Jan. 2001. <http://home.t-online.de/home/340028046011-001/Presse/Focus/19980810.htm>. [Müller-] Westernhagen, M. "Rock-Star Marius Müller-Westernhagen: 'Liebe hat immer mit Gott zu tun.'" [From Bild der Frau, no.39/98, 21.09.98.] Westernhagen-Fanpage. Undated. 26 Jan. 2001. <http://home.t-online.de/home/340028046011-001/Presse/BildderFrau/19980921.htm>.

The term “coffee palace” was primarily used in Australia to describe the temperance hotels that were built in the last decades of the 19th century, although there are references to the term also being used to a lesser extent in the United Kingdom (Denby 174). Built in response to the worldwide temperance movement, which reached its pinnacle in the 1880s in Australia, coffee palaces were hotels that did not serve alcohol. This was a unique time in Australia’s architectural development as the economic boom fuelled by the gold rush in the 1850s, and the demand for ostentatious display that gathered momentum during the following years, afforded the use of richly ornamental High Victorian architecture and resulted in very majestic structures; hence the term “palace” (Freeland 121). The often multi-storied coffee palaces were found in every capital city as well as regional areas such as Geelong and Broken Hill, and locales as remote as Maria Island on the east coast of Tasmania. Presented as upholding family values and discouraging drunkenness, the coffee palaces were most popular in seaside resorts such as Barwon Heads in Victoria, where they catered to families. Coffee palaces were also constructed on a grand scale to provide accommodation for international and interstate visitors attending the international exhibitions held in Sydney (1879) and Melbourne (1880 and 1888). While the temperance movement lasted well over 100 years, the life of coffee palaces was relatively short-lived. Nevertheless, coffee palaces were very much part of Australia’s cultural landscape. In this article, I examine the rise and demise of coffee palaces associated with the temperance movement and argue that coffee palaces established in the name of abstinence were modelled on the coffee houses that spread throughout Europe and North America in the 17th and 18th centuries during the Enlightenment—a time when the human mind could be said to have been liberated from inebriation and the dogmatic state of ignorance. The Temperance Movement At a time when newspapers are full of lurid stories about binge-drinking and the alleged ill-effects of the liberalisation of licensing laws, as well as concerns over the growing trend of marketing easy-to-drink products (such as the so-called “alcopops”) to teenagers, it is difficult to think of a period when the total suppression of the alcohol trade was seriously debated in Australia. The cause of temperance has almost completely vanished from view, yet for well over a century—from 1830 to the outbreak of the Second World War—the control or even total abolition of the liquor trade was a major political issue—one that split the country, brought thousands onto the streets in demonstrations, and influenced the outcome of elections. Between 1911 and 1925 referenda to either limit or prohibit the sale of alcohol were held in most States. While moves to bring about abolition failed, Fitzgerald notes that almost one in three Australian voters expressed their support for prohibition of alcohol in their State (145). Today, the temperance movement’s platform has largely been forgotten, killed off by the practical example of the United States, where prohibition of the legal sale of alcohol served only to hand control of the liquor traffic to organised crime. Coffee Houses and the Enlightenment Although tea has long been considered the beverage of sobriety, it was coffee that came to be regarded as the very antithesis of alcohol. When the first coffee house opened in London in the early 1650s, customers were bewildered by this strange new drink from the Middle East—hot, bitter, and black as soot. But those who tried coffee were, reports Ellis, soon won over, and coffee houses were opened across London, Oxford, and Cambridge and, in the following decades, Europe and North America. Tea, equally exotic, entered the English market slightly later than coffee (in 1664), but was more expensive and remained a rarity long after coffee had become ubiquitous in London (Ellis 123-24). The impact of the introduction of coffee into Europe during the seventeenth century was particularly noticeable since the most common beverages of the time, even at breakfast, were weak “small beer” and wine. Both were safer to drink than water, which was liable to be contaminated. Coffee, like beer, was made using boiled water and, therefore, provided a new and safe alternative to alcoholic drinks. There was also the added benefit that those who drank coffee instead of alcohol began the day alert rather than mildly inebriated (Standage 135). It was also thought that coffee had a stimulating effect upon the “nervous system,” so much so that the French called coffee une boisson intellectuelle (an intellectual beverage), because of its stimulating effect on the brain (Muskett 71). In Oxford, the British called their coffee houses “penny universities,” a penny then being the price of a cup of coffee (Standage 158). Coffee houses were, moreover, more than places that sold coffee. Unlike other institutions of the period, rank and birth had no place (Ellis 59). The coffee house became the centre of urban life, creating a distinctive social culture by treating all customers as equals. Egalitarianism, however, did not extend to women—at least not in London. Around its egalitarian (but male) tables, merchants discussed and conducted business, writers and poets held discussions, scientists demonstrated experiments, and philosophers deliberated ideas and reforms. For the price of a cup (or “dish” as it was then known) of coffee, a man could read the latest pamphlets and newsletters, chat with other patrons, strike business deals, keep up with the latest political gossip, find out what other people thought of a new book, or take part in literary or philosophical discussions. Like today’s Internet, Twitter, and Facebook, Europe’s coffee houses functioned as an information network where ideas circulated and spread from coffee house to coffee house. In this way, drinking coffee in the coffee house became a metaphor for people getting together to share ideas in a sober environment, a concept that remains today. According to Standage, this information network fuelled the Enlightenment (133), prompting an explosion of creativity. Coffee houses provided an entirely new environment for political, financial, scientific, and literary change, as people gathered, discussed, and debated issues within their walls. Entrepreneurs and scientists teamed up to form companies to exploit new inventions and discoveries in manufacturing and mining, paving the way for the Industrial Revolution (Standage 163). The stock market and insurance companies also had their birth in the coffee house. As a result, coffee was seen to be the epitome of modernity and progress and, as such, was the ideal beverage for the Age of Reason. By the 19th century, however, the era of coffee houses had passed. Most of them had evolved into exclusive men’s clubs, each geared towards a certain segment of society. Tea was now more affordable and fashionable, and teahouses, which drew clientele from both sexes, began to grow in popularity. Tea, however, had always been Australia’s most popular non-alcoholic drink. Tea (and coffee) along with other alien plants had been part of the cargo unloaded onto Australian shores with the First Fleet in 1788. Coffee, mainly from Brazil and Jamaica, remained a constant import but was taxed more heavily than tea and was, therefore, more expensive. Furthermore, tea was much easier to make than coffee. To brew tea, all that is needed is to add boiling water, coffee, in contrast, required roasting, grinding and brewing. According to Symons, until the 1930s, Australians were the largest consumers of tea in the world (19). In spite of this, and as coffee, since its introduction into Europe, was regarded as the antidote to alcohol, the temperance movement established coffee palaces. In the early 1870s in Britain, the temperance movement had revived the coffee house to provide an alternative to the gin taverns that were so attractive to the working classes of the Industrial Age (Clarke 5). Unlike the earlier coffee house, this revived incarnation provided accommodation and was open to men, women and children. “Cheap and wholesome food,” was available as well as reading rooms supplied with newspapers and periodicals, and games and smoking rooms (Clarke 20). In Australia, coffee palaces did not seek the working classes, as clientele: at least in the cities they were largely for the nouveau riche. Coffee Palaces The discovery of gold in 1851 changed the direction of the Australian economy. An investment boom followed, with an influx of foreign funds and English banks lending freely to colonial speculators. By the 1880s, the manufacturing and construction sectors of the economy boomed and land prices were highly inflated. Governments shared in the wealth and ploughed money into urban infrastructure, particularly railways. Spurred on by these positive economic conditions and the newly extended inter-colonial rail network, international exhibitions were held in both Sydney and Melbourne. To celebrate modern technology and design in an industrial age, international exhibitions were phenomena that had spread throughout Europe and much of the world from the mid-19th century. According to Davison, exhibitions were “integral to the culture of nineteenth century industrialising societies” (158). In particular, these exhibitions provided the colonies with an opportunity to demonstrate to the world their economic power and achievements in the sciences, the arts and education, as well as to promote their commerce and industry. Massive purpose-built buildings were constructed to house the exhibition halls. In Sydney, the Garden Palace was erected in the Botanic Gardens for the 1879 Exhibition (it burnt down in 1882). In Melbourne, the Royal Exhibition Building, now a World Heritage site, was built in the Carlton Gardens for the 1880 Exhibition and extended for the 1888 Centennial Exhibition. Accommodation was required for the some one million interstate and international visitors who were to pass through the gates of the Garden Palace in Sydney. To meet this need, the temperance movement, keen to provide alternative accommodation to licensed hotels, backed the establishment of Sydney’s coffee palaces. The Sydney Coffee Palace Hotel Company was formed in 1878 to operate and manage a number of coffee palaces constructed during the 1870s. These were designed to compete with hotels by “offering all the ordinary advantages of those establishments without the allurements of the drink” (Murdoch). Coffee palaces were much more than ordinary hotels—they were often multi-purpose or mixed-use buildings that included a large number of rooms for accommodation as well as ballrooms and other leisure facilities to attract people away from pubs. As the Australian Town and Country Journal reveals, their services included the supply of affordable, wholesome food, either in the form of regular meals or occasional refreshments, cooked in kitchens fitted with the latest in culinary accoutrements. These “culinary temples” also provided smoking rooms, chess and billiard rooms, and rooms where people could read books, periodicals and all the local and national papers for free (121). Similar to the coffee houses of the Enlightenment, the coffee palaces brought businessmen, artists, writers, engineers, and scientists attending the exhibitions together to eat and drink (non-alcoholic), socialise and conduct business. The Johnson’s Temperance Coffee Palace located in York Street in Sydney produced a practical guide for potential investors and businessmen titled International Exhibition Visitors Pocket Guide to Sydney. It included information on the location of government departments, educational institutions, hospitals, charitable organisations, and embassies, as well as a list of the tariffs on goods from food to opium (1–17). Women, particularly the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) were a formidable force in the temperance movement (intemperance was generally regarded as a male problem and, more specifically, a husband problem). Murdoch argues, however, that much of the success of the push to establish coffee palaces was due to male politicians with business interests, such as the one-time Victorian premiere James Munro. Considered a stern, moral church-going leader, Munro expanded the temperance movement into a fanatical force with extraordinary power, which is perhaps why the temperance movement had its greatest following in Victoria (Murdoch). Several prestigious hotels were constructed to provide accommodation for visitors to the international exhibitions in Melbourne. Munro was responsible for building many of the city’s coffee palaces, including the Victoria (1880) and the Federal Coffee Palace (1888) in Collins Street. After establishing the Grand Coffee Palace Company, Munro took over the Grand Hotel (now the Windsor) in 1886. Munro expanded the hotel to accommodate some of the two million visitors who were to attend the Centenary Exhibition, renamed it the Grand Coffee Palace, and ceremoniously burnt its liquor licence at the official opening (Murdoch). By 1888 there were more than 50 coffee palaces in the city of Melbourne alone and Munro held thousands of shares in coffee palaces, including those in Geelong and Broken Hill. With its opening planned to commemorate the centenary of the founding of Australia and the 1888 International Exhibition, the construction of the Federal Coffee Palace, one of the largest hotels in Australia, was perhaps the greatest monument to the temperance movement. Designed in the French Renaissance style, the façade was embellished with statues, griffins and Venus in a chariot drawn by four seahorses. The building was crowned with an iron-framed domed tower. New passenger elevators—first demonstrated at the Sydney Exhibition—allowed the building to soar to seven storeys. According to the Federal Coffee Palace Visitor’s Guide, which was presented to every visitor, there were three lifts for passengers and others for luggage. Bedrooms were located on the top five floors, while the stately ground and first floors contained majestic dining, lounge, sitting, smoking, writing, and billiard rooms. There were electric service bells, gaslights, and kitchens “fitted with the most approved inventions for aiding proficients [sic] in the culinary arts,” while the luxury brand Pears soap was used in the lavatories and bathrooms (16–17). In 1891, a spectacular financial crash brought the economic boom to an abrupt end. The British economy was in crisis and to meet the predicament, English banks withdrew their funds in Australia. There was a wholesale collapse of building companies, mortgage banks and other financial institutions during 1891 and 1892 and much of the banking system was halted during 1893 (Attard). Meanwhile, however, while the eastern States were in the economic doldrums, gold was discovered in 1892 at Coolgardie and Kalgoorlie in Western Australia and, within two years, the west of the continent was transformed. As gold poured back to the capital city of Perth, the long dormant settlement hurriedly caught up and began to emulate the rest of Australia, including the construction of ornately detailed coffee palaces (Freeman 130). By 1904, Perth had 20 coffee palaces. When the No. 2 Coffee Palace opened in Pitt Street, Sydney, in 1880, the Australian Town and Country Journal reported that coffee palaces were “not only fashionable, but appear to have acquired a permanent footing in Sydney” (121). The coffee palace era, however, was relatively short-lived. Driven more by reformist and economic zeal than by good business sense, many were in financial trouble when the 1890’s Depression hit. Leading figures in the temperance movement were also involved in land speculation and building societies and when these schemes collapsed, many, including Munro, were financially ruined. Many of the palaces closed or were forced to apply for liquor licences in order to stay afloat. Others developed another life after the temperance movement’s influence waned and the coffee palace fad faded, and many were later demolished to make way for more modern buildings. The Federal was licensed in 1923 and traded as the Federal Hotel until its demolition in 1973. The Victoria, however, did not succumb to a liquor licence until 1967. The Sydney Coffee Palace in Woolloomooloo became the Sydney Eye Hospital and, more recently, smart apartments. Some fine examples still survive as reminders of Australia’s social and cultural heritage. The Windsor in Melbourne’s Spring Street and the Broken Hill Hotel, a massive three-story iconic pub in the outback now called simply “The Palace,” are some examples. Tea remained the beverage of choice in Australia until the 1950s when the lifting of government controls on the importation of coffee and the influence of American foodways coincided with the arrival of espresso-loving immigrants. As Australians were introduced to the espresso machine, the short black, the cappuccino, and the café latte and (reminiscent of the Enlightenment), the post-war malaise was shed in favour of the energy and vigour of modernist thought and creativity, fuelled in at least a small part by caffeine and the emergent café culture (Teffer). Although the temperance movement’s attempt to provide an alternative to the ubiquitous pubs failed, coffee has now outstripped the consumption of tea and today’s café culture ensures that wherever coffee is consumed, there is the possibility of a continuation of the Enlightenment’s lively discussions, exchange of news, and dissemination of ideas and information in a sober environment. References Attard, Bernard. “The Economic History of Australia from 1788: An Introduction.” EH.net Encyclopedia. 5 Feb. (2012) ‹http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/attard.australia›. Blainey, Anna. “The Prohibition and Total Abstinence Movement in Australia 1880–1910.” Food, Power and Community: Essays in the History of Food and Drink. Ed. Robert Dare. Adelaide: Wakefield Press, 1999. 142–52. Boyce, Francis Bertie. “Shall I Vote for No License?” An address delivered at the Convention of the Parramatta Branch of New South Wales Alliance, 3 September 1906. 3rd ed. Parramatta: New South Wales Alliance, 1907. Clarke, James Freeman. Coffee Houses and Coffee Palaces in England. Boston: George H. Ellis, 1882. “Coffee Palace, No. 2.” Australian Town and Country Journal. 17 Jul. 1880: 121. Davison, Graeme. “Festivals of Nationhood: The International Exhibitions.” Australian Cultural History. Eds. S. L. Goldberg and F. B. Smith. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1989. 158–77. Denby, Elaine. Grand Hotels: Reality and Illusion. London: Reaktion Books, 2002. Ellis, Markman. The Coffee House: A Cultural History. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2004. Federal Coffee Palace. The Federal Coffee Palace Visitors’ Guide to Melbourne, Its Suburbs, and Other Parts of the Colony of Victoria: Views of the Principal Public and Commercial Buildings in Melbourne, With a Bird’s Eye View of the City; and History of the Melbourne International Exhibition of 1880, etc. Melbourne: Federal Coffee House Company, 1888. Fitzgerald, Ross, and Trevor Jordan. Under the Influence: A History of Alcohol in Australia. Sydney: Harper Collins, 2009. Freeland, John. The Australian Pub. Melbourne: Sun Books, 1977. Johnson’s Temperance Coffee Palace. International Exhibition Visitors Pocket Guide to Sydney, Restaurant and Temperance Hotel. Sydney: Johnson’s Temperance Coffee Palace, 1879. Mitchell, Ann M. “Munro, James (1832–1908).” Australian Dictionary of Biography. Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian National U, 2006-12. 5 Feb. 2012 ‹http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/munro-james-4271/text6905›. Murdoch, Sally. “Coffee Palaces.” Encyclopaedia of Melbourne. Eds. Andrew Brown-May and Shurlee Swain. 5 Feb. 2012 ‹http://www.emelbourne.net.au/biogs/EM00371b.htm›. Muskett, Philip E. The Art of Living in Australia. New South Wales: Kangaroo Press, 1987. Standage, Tom. A History of the World in 6 Glasses. New York: Walker & Company, 2005. Sydney Coffee Palace Hotel Company Limited. Memorandum of Association of the Sydney Coffee Palace Hotel Company, Ltd. Sydney: Samuel Edward Lees, 1879. Symons, Michael. One Continuous Picnic: A Gastronomic History of Australia. Melbourne: Melbourne UP, 2007. Teffer, Nicola. Coffee Customs. Exhibition Catalogue. Sydney: Customs House, 2005.

Our capacity to tell stories is a skill that can be considered both natural and learned. Storytelling and oral history are parts of all human societies, and we seek to understand ourselves and each other through our stories. Our individual and collective memories collide in our stories, and reconcile to construct what Kansteiner calls our "collectively shared representations of the past" (182). It is our personal narratives that are the building blocks to public understanding, and as Harter, Japp and Beck maintain in Narratives, Health and Healing, "narrative is a fundamental human way of giving meaning to experience" (3). Adding to this idea of narrative as way of illuminating meaning, Goodall posits narrative as also being a way of knowing and as a research methodology, stating "narrative provides us with a range of forms and styles for discovering meaning and communicating it to readers through stories. It is an epistemology" (13). This re-imaging and re-purposing of narrative and storytelling has the capacity to significantly influence and shift the ways in which cultural and social research is carried out. This emerging approach can also influence the ways we understand the experiences of marginalised groups, and consequently how we respond to issues around social inclusion through policy and community based solutions. For researchers personal stories and narratives have the capacity to illuminate the nuances of broad issues; this potential also means that seemingly intractable social problems are given a human face with which to engage. It is in this way that personal narratives energise public narratives and shape our ways of thinking and collective understandings (Harter et al. 4). This paper investigates a digital storytelling project conducted in late 2009 with a group of Forgotten Australians in the months leading up to the public apology in the Australian Parliament, and how the personal stories of the participants brought to life previous research about the marginalisation of individuals who had experienced out-of-home care as children. This paper also explores how the endemic, institutionalised abuse of a group of people was translated to the broader community and galvanised support through the impact of their personal stories. Digital Storytelling As a dynamic practice storytelling, in all its forms, must be nurtured and developed if it is to contribute to the lives of individuals and communities. The number of storytelling, and in particular digital storytelling, initiatives and projects in Australia has increased rapidly since the early 2000s, and are utilised by various public and community organisations for a variety of reasons. Digital technology has had a profound impact on the ability for "ordinary" people to tell their stories, and research has identified the potential of digital storytelling in these contexts to assist in the representation of multiple voices and viewpoints in society through inclusive processes of co-creation (cf. see Burgess; Hartley, Uses and "TV"; Klaebe and Burgess). The storytelling project that forms the basis for this paper used some traditional written storytelling practices but was mainly concerned with digital storytelling. Digital stories are generally a two to four minute multi-media story that uses photographs, film and drawings to convey a personal story which the author narrates in their own voice over the series of images. Much has been, and continues to be written, about digital storytelling as a site of participatory culture and as a means of improving digital literacy in pockets of the community traditionally absent in the realm of digital citizenship (cf. Hartley, Uses; Hartley and McWilliam; Burgess; Meadows; Lundby). As Hartley points out digital storytelling has become such a compelling medium in which to record stories in communities because it "fills a gap between everyday cultural practice and professional media" (Uses 122). As a means of creating narratives digital storytelling has proven to be a significant mode, due in part to its ability to reach a large number of people relatively easily. The rise of digital storytelling partially mirrors the broad shift towards more participatory online culture that privileges user generated content and ordinary voices over official content. The origins of digital storytelling lie in a response to the absence of "ordinary" voices in mainstream media and policy making and grew with the increasing affordability of digital technology. The potential for social inclusion and participation along with the promise of self-representation is implicit in the discourse surrounding digital storytelling. "The ability to express oneself in digital media and in the case of digital storytelling using digital video editing, has become a central literary for full participation in society" (Lambert 85). Social Inclusion in an Australian context is defined by the Australian Government as all Australians feeling valued and having "the opportunity to participate fully in the life of our society. Achieving this vision means that all Australians will have the resources, opportunities and capability to" learn, work, engage in the community and have a voice (Social Inclusion Unit). The aims articulated by Lambert in the previous paragraph and the philosophy of social inclusion and the belief that individual stories have the capacity to impact on national agendas and policy lay at the heart of the digital storytelling project outlined later in this paper. The Forgotten Australians As cohort the Forgotten Australians are defined as individuals who were removed from their families, or were orphaned or child immigrants from the United Kingdom. These children were placed in institutions where they suffered abuse or neglect between 1930 and 1970, and it is estimated that up approximately 500,000 children were placed in out of home care during this time. In November 2009 the Australian Parliament delivered a bi-partisan apology to the Forgotten Australians for the pain and suffering they experienced in church and state run institutions. The stories of the Forgotten Australians were beginning to make their way into the consciousness of the Australian public in the lead up to the apology through documentaries on the national broadcasting service and stories in the mainstream media. Like most large groups the demographic of the Forgotten Australians is diverse, within those who identify as part of this group are successful and well-known Australians, along with ordinary Australians many of whom have struggled significantly as a direct result of their childhood experiences. Those involved in this project were considered to be individuals who were quite profoundly marginalised in mainstream society. A number lived with mental illness, the majority lacked stable housing and all had been severely emotionally, physically and sexually abused during their time in State or Church run institutions as children. The apology to the Forgotten Australians was preceded many years of advocacy and activism by community groups and individuals. They utilised personal stories, the digitisation of records and as the apology drew closer a number of digital storytelling projects to bring the personal narratives into the public arena in the hope of affecting change. Stories from these projects were broadcast across a variety of platforms such as YouTube, the websites for the major advocacy groups and community organisations and more recently the National Library Australia website. The stories differed from site to site and served different functions depending on the place from which they were disseminated. Hildebrand identifies the role of YouTube as a site for the intersection of personal experience, popular culture and historical narratives, and, as such, a vehicle for cultural memory "allow[ing] users to seek out the media texts that have shaped them and that would otherwise be forgotten in 'objective' histories" (54). YouTube videos relevant to the Forgotten Australians ranged from locally made stories and documentation, news items and presentations recorded by major organisations, but uploaded by individuals, and also those posted by these institutions themselves. A notable feature of all of these contributions is their role in the representation of witnesses' stories. In the case of reports on Forgotten Australians from major news organisations the commentary they attracted was largely from those who identified as fellow forgotten Australians attesting to—and corroborating—the interviewees' stories. Whether they were posted by survivors themselves or by mainstream media or other institutions, they exhibited a unity around a particular will to memory: setting the record straight through testimony. Here, the clips and posts were characterised by the provision of information as evidence for the assertion of cultural trauma as a shared experience and focus of identification (Adkins et al. 15). Storytelling functions as one of our most powerful forms for experiencing, expressing, and enacting sorrow and pain...it is pivotal in the process of sense making, allowing individuals to cope with chaotic, equivocal, and confusing conditions of everyday life, including illness and suffering. (152) Advocacy and community groups such as CLAN were focused on creating a sense of community amongst survivors with no story or artefact too small or insignificant to be included, which differed slightly from the agenda of the National Library of Australia—the institution of public memory that has been most closely involved in recording and disseminating the stories of the Forgotten Australians. The Forgotten Australians and Former Child Migrants Oral History Project conducted by the National Library Australia was one of the recommendations of the two Senate Community Affairs References Committee reports following the Senate Inquiries and receives funding from the Commonwealth Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs. According to the National Library Australia website, this oral history project will run for three years and aims to document a rounded history of the experiences of the children in institutional care and the lifelong impact of these experiences on their lives and their families. This project will also interview a selection of advocates, and allied professionals including welfare officers, employees of institutions and administrators. (Project Team) In many important ways the purposes served in this project were those of the governments—previous and present, which was to capture and keep the stories, memories, documents and artefacts, and to share the officially selected stories with the rest of the nation, and those stories would support and affirm the government's roadmap for moving on from the apology. These digital storytelling projects, to varying degrees and levels of impact, served to provide the public with the personal narratives behind the issue being presented in the media and by advocacy groups as a large scale issue concerning hundreds of thousands of victims. Although the sheer size of the numbers of children affected was confronting, it was the personal stories that created a momentum towards the public apology. The findings of both Senate Inquiries recommended a formal apology; however this did not occur until the individual experiences of the Forgotten Australians were translated and represented in narratives and, through this, the construction of a sense of cultural memory resulting in formal recognition. Many Australians were sceptical about the importance of a public apology to the Forgotten Australians, as they had been of the apology to the Stolen Generation in 2008. To be a genuine act of reconciliation an apology requires the act of listening as much as speaking, fittingly Prime Minister Rudd quoted predominantly from personal oral history testimonies that had been collected over the years and that were of public record, but had not been digitally accessible to all, as many stories now are in the Bringing Them Home report. The Case Study In August 2009 I was funded by the Australasian Centre for Interactive Design (ACID) to conduct a series of digital storytelling and writing workshops in conjunction with Micah Projects, a community building and social justice organisation based in Brisbane. Micah delivers services for people experiencing homelessness, runs programmes for young mothers and is responsible for the Historical Abuse Network which is a network servicing the Forgotten Australians. After some discussion with the CEO of Micah it was decided that the clients involved with the Historical Abuse Network would benefit most from this project. Many of the participants had been involved in the 2003 senate inquiry into the treatment of children in institutional care. In the intervening years they had told the story of their abuse many times in official contexts and provided statements of harm for the inquiry. However, for this project we wanted to encourage the participants to create stories that allowed them some agency in their own lives rather, to re-claim some of their story from the official framework of abuse, and to use digital storytelling as a tool for this. The participants were between 45 and 65 in age, and were divided equally between women and men. There were a number of complexities inherent in this project, some of which were specific to this particular cohort and some specific to all marginalised individuals and groups. The most significant problem arose out the expectation that the "authors" will bring with them photographs and keepsakes from their lives to use in the stories. Many of the participants did not have photographs of their childhoods or of their families; some did not know how old they were (in many institutions all birthdays were celebrated on a single day, and consequently most lost track of their age and birth date) or had not had contact with their biological family for decades and as a result had few keepsakes. These hallmarks of legitimate biography were absent from their pasts and their presents. The combination of these factors meant that for many the ability to create a coherent narrative about their life or to feel ownership over their life had been seriously compromised. However, it became apparent that by using sounds and images in the digital story the technology was able to create a materiality out of memory for the participants. As it became clearer that the foundation of the stories was memory rather than a narrative arc, the more it became imperative to embrace the fragmentation, inconsistency and incoherence of the memories, and to incorporate these aspects into the digital stories. Instead of being easy to follow or emotionally satisfying narratives, some of the stories had much more in common with what is referred to in psychology and health frameworks as "chaos narratives". A chaos narrative has a sense of disconnected events characterised by a lack of closure and the presence of day-to-day uncertainty (Harter 4). Often such stories seem too incoherent to be told and too painful to be heard by others, as was certainly the case with some of the stories created for this project. Conclusion The Finding a Voice digital storytelling project led by Professor Jo Tacchi aligns with the aims of this project in its social innovation, and the role of storytelling and voice as having the genuine potential to impact on the understanding of poverty and disadvantage. Tacchi states that it "is an approach that allows those who are living in conditions that might constitute 'poverty' to tell those who are not what this experience is like, in their own words. Such an approach might challenge our 'expert' conceptions of poverty itself" (170), and confront mainstream or approved versions of social issues. Carabas posits that the agency embedded in the narrative act reforms or reframes the meanings of events through counter narratives and the act of telling transformed personal and social suffering. Those who had been objects of other's reports started to tell their own stories and rewrite official history in the first person singular (154). For the Forgotten Australians, those involved in this project and in similar ones the opportunity to tell their stories in their own words allowed them to push past the detached, impersonal representation of their experiences. Instead they could re-position the debate to being about individuals and the effect of government policy on their lives, and in doing so agitate for a formal apology. Storytelling and narrative as a research methodology, and as a way of knowing, is continuing to be refined by social and cultural researchers and by community organisations. Despite the emerging and nebulous nature of this field one thing is clear: our human desire to tell stories has the ability to be harnessed to build narratives which create understanding and insight and consequently demand that as communities and nations we respond to injustice and disadvantage accordingly. References Adkins, Barbara, Donna Hancox, and Helen Klaebe. 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