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  • Reconciliation 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.

  • Abstract Christian 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.

  • Nineteenth-century British missionaries and the colonial government in New Zealand adopted a policy of assimilation of Maori into Pakeha (European) culture through actively discouraging Maori language, belief systems and culture. Central to the goal of assimilation was a Native School policy which in particular, emphasised the ‘Europeanising’ of young Maori. Church-run schools for Maori, which were subsidised by the state, aimed to return young Maori to their homes to model a Christian Pakeha lifestyle. This article argues that it was Maori girls, rather than Maori boys who were viewed as critical agents of change in the transformation of Maori society and that the colonial curriculum they were taught led to a political socialisation of generations of Maori women.

Last update from database: 8/17/26, 4:11 AM (UTC)