This was an article I wrote ten months ago after comment by The Anglican Archbishop of Adelaide in the Church Guardian of March 2008 that Anglicans welcomed the Prime Minister’s apology to indigenous people for the stolen generations. The announcement of Mick Dodson as Australian of the Year seemed an appropriate context in which to dust it off and re-post:
I was a little surprised to read in the March edition of The Guardian that “Anglicans Welcome PM’s Apology.”
Perhaps there has been some specific research I am not aware of to gauge Anglican thought on the matter. Polls of the general public returned varying results. Some groups claimed to find a majority in support, but a Channel Ten poll with 10,000 respondents found that 76% disagreed. Yahoo/Channel Seven reported that a poll of 23,000 showed 62% disagreed. Whatever the actual figures, it is difficult to view the Prime Minister’s apology as an act expressing or contributing to a sense of national unity.
The Archbishop said that people reluctant to apologise complained that it should not be necessary to relive the events of the past before we can move on. This is an argument I have more often heard from Church leaders. Following some disaster in a parish, or some injustice against a lay person or member of the clergy, we frequently hear urgings along the lines of “Well yes, it was terribly sad, but it’s all the past, too much water under the bridge, can’t do anything about it now, we need to forgive and forget, let’s move on together.” Of course the Archbishop is right to point out that such arguments are complete nonsense. The extent to which peace and reconciliation are possible depends on the extent to which there is a commitment to truth and justice.