One Religion is Increasingly Encouraged in the Public Square

Evil spirits are cast out of Fraser Island as the Queensland Premier looks on approvingly

At the very time Christianity is being punted from the public square, Indigenous spirituality is being welcoming into every aspect of Australian life.

A few weeks ago I was at an AFL game when, during the now mandatory Welcome to Country, the local indigenous elder acknowledged the local spirits.

No-one in the crowd batted an eyelid.

But if someone acknowledged Jesus our Lord and Saviour at an AFL game, you can be sure all hell would break out.

The latest example of Aboriginal spiritism going mainstream came this week as the Queensland Government announced Fraser Island would be renamed K’gari.

Fraser Island was named after Eliza Fraser who survived a shipwreck on the island in the 1830s.

That wasn’t her only claim to fame. Once rescued, she told tales
(now disputed) about being captured by Aborigines who lived on the sandy island.

But Eliza’s namesake is no more. The island - it’s located just off the Queensland coast and attracts hundreds of thousands of tourists every year - will revert to the name Aborigines used for it.

K’gari means paradise and, as local elders told journalists, is the name of the spirit princess who created that part of the earth.

The Guardian Newspaper dutifully reported in its story on the renaming …

K’gari was the spirit princess who helped create the island and then fell in love with it, deciding to rest there for ever.

The story goes that lakes on the island were created so the princess could look up to the heavens, thick flora was created to clothe her and animals born to keep her company.

Yindingie, the creator spirit, then created the Butchulla people to protect the paradise.

Now if a preacher had stood and read Genesis Chapter 1, there would have been outrage and ridicule.

“What happened to separation of church and State?” people would have complained.

“Stop taking about your sky god!” they would have taunted.

But it’s a very different attitude when Aborigines talk about K’gari and Yindingie.

Aboriginal spiritism is not loopy, it’s exotic and romantic.

And far from being inappropriate in the public square, Aboriginal spiritism is welcomed and encouraged.

“Our oral history, our creation story will now be told and learnt as it should be,” a local elder told The Guardian.

In other words, the renaming of the Island was about more than reclaiming language, it was about promoting the Indigenous religion.

As the Queensland Premier watched on, local Aborigines performed a ceremony.

“We have chased away the bad spirits and now have the protection of the good spirits,” Butchulla Aboriginal Corporation chair Gayle Minniecon told journalists. “This is just amazing.”

It is amazing.

If the local preacher had invoked the name of Jesus and asked the blessing of God upon the Island … well, we all know that wouldn’t happen.

But when Aboriginal people perform an exorcism, the assembled dignitaries applaud and say how enlightened it all is.

By all means let Aboriginal people do their thing.

But don’t miss the incredible hypocrisy from those who say from one side of their mouth that religion (ie Christianity) has no place in the public square and, from the other side of their mouth, that Aboriginal spiritism is important at public events.