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Editorial: the Conundrums of a Public Theology

One of the abiding concerns of a public theology is how do religious theme and practices enter into the pluralist public space. It is a conundrum which can take on several forms. Sometimes the biblical and theological reference point is hidden in history and scarcely even implicit in the present. Sometimes there is a strongly expressed theology but it is unable to secure the right to be heard in the public domain. The opposite can also be true: a strong activism without much of the way in an expressed theology can be persuasive. And then there is the role of the church as an institution. What is the role of the local congregation in the construction of a civil society? Is it possible for a public theology to be Christian if its advocate has no affiliation to the church and its confessional claims? So often now the public Christian voice has become muted in contemporary western democracy. There is no absence of public issues upon which a faith-based activism can be played out. What is not always present is a strong supporting biblical or theological argument which can contribute to the public debate. For Mark Brett and Naomi Wolff the critical issue they seek to address in the Australian context is the matter of Indigenous sovereignty. It is one in which a number of diverse threads are woven into a knot all of which stem from the myth of the land being terra nullius and subsequently being subjected to invasion and colonization. The threads are discrete in and of themselves: they have to do with traditional law and custom, imperial and settler history, racism, politics and economics, dispossession and deprivation, and dignity and justice. It is no longer a foregone conclusion that the Christian faith has much to contribute, especially if and when, at certain points in that past history, it has been sadly complicit in acts of injustice. Brett and Wolff demonstrate how Indigenous peoples are able to draw upon Scripture in an act of resistance and align it with customary knowledge. They probe beneath the surface of historic claims to sovereignty made in the interests of empire and demonstrate how biblical assumptions were able to justify invasive actions. Brett and Wolff contend that hidden away in this history and religious practice, nevertheless, is the potential for a model of sovereignty drawn from a biblical theology that supports the momentum for a long overdue treaty—in particular Deuteronomy 17:15. In contemporary Australia there