Loos, Noel. White Christ, Black Cross: The Emergence of a Black Church. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2007, website.
What was going on in Christian missions to indigenous Australians? This is one of the underlying questions raised by Noel Loos' book White Christ, Black Cross: The Emergence of a Black Church. He addresses this question through an exploration of the Anglican Church's indigenous outreach, with a particular focus on Yarrabah in northern Queensland and the work of the Anglican Board of Missions (ABM).
This kind of detailed study of mission history is essential if we are to move beyond clichés about mission history and its effect on indigenous Australia. Too often, generic statements about missionaries colluding with colonialism and destroying indigenous cultures are presumed to say all that needs to be said about this aspect of contact history. On the other hand, some Christians can whitewash mission history, as though any injustice suffered was justified by the fact that people gained access to the saving Gospel of Christ.
Both these positions call for a more discerning account of concrete mission histories for two reasons: to do justice to indigenous agency in the encounter with Christianity, so that indigenous people are not presented as mere victims; and to do justice to the ways in which the missionary agenda was not only parallel with that of other colonial forces, but also diverged from it.
In Loos' book, we find the sort of case study that helps to offer this nuance. He shows how missionary attitudes, while very much culturally conditioned, were also, in some cases at least, counter-cultural. While not denying the view of many missionaries that indigenous peoples were only capable of being ‘civilised' to the level of the British working classes, he notes also the firm conviction as to their fundamental humanity.
He points to the ABM's early awareness of the devastation caused by dispossession and of the responsibilities incumbent on those who benefited from this dispossession. A major character in Loos' story is Ernest Gribble, a veteran of a number of Anglican missions, who, despite a reputation for being an authoritarian mission superintendent, played a key role in uncovering the Forrest River massacres, leading to a Royal Commission investigation.
Loos also offers a more nuanced picture of Aboriginal responses to missions, one which points to their active agency within the considerable limitations imposed on them. Some indigenous people discerned something