EIGHTH ALTERNATIVE

A potentially schismatic theological debate over the vexing issue of asylum seekers on Christmas Island had erupted during the Ecumenical Forum held in Melbourne last week 

There had emerged two major and divergent positions, one propounded by the contemplative monk, the Very Reverend Anthony Abet from Canberra, the other by the secular minister, the Reverend Kenneth Roddish from Queensland.

Reverend Roddish held great sway over the plenary sessions early in the week by means of a series of profoundly critical analyses of the theology of ‘outsiderhood’ and of the Scriptures’ injunction to welcome the stranger. This injunction, he pointed out, was the central message of the original Christmas Story of the family in Bethlehem.

Today’s Christmas story, he said, no less than the original Christmas Story, is about the revelation of the Incarnation of God amongst us whereby such an exegesis led inexorably to the imperative to welcome the family from Bethlehem – to welcome the foreign asylum seeker on our shores at Christmas Island.

The Very Reverend Abet, however, held equal sway in the latter stages of the Forum and argued forcefully that Reverend Roddish’s position on the Scriptures represented a plausible and very fine humanist response to the issue but that this position was, theologically speaking, untenable.

Essentially, the Very Reverend Abet pointed out that the original Christmas Story of the family of Bethlehem is in fact not about welcoming the stranger.

Rather, a contemporay exegesis of the Christmas Story, he said, has led to a profound and fuller understanding that the Christmas Story is in fact about rejection, about there being no room at the inn and in turn about being providentially sent off into some great unknown to contend with forces of Herodic proportions.

It this understanding of the Christmas Story, said the Very Reverend Abet, which needs to inform our response to today’s seekers of asylum on Christmas Island.

The two opposing views, held each by the Very Reverend Abet and by Reverend Roddish, polarised the discourse during much of the Forum and indeed raised allusions by some participants to long-buried notions involving sectarianisms and schisms.

Yet after much anguish, the last day of the Forum nevertheless resulted in an opportunely agreed-upon exegesis.

Only a very small minority of the clergy present was resistant to what was claimed to be ‘Machiavellian pragmatism’.

The agreed and stated position of the Forum was that the Christmas Story was indeed a living source of inspiration in relation to Christmas Island asylum seekers who would, therefore, in the spirit of the Scriptures be, in the first instance, not rejected but received and welcomed at Christmas Island, and, thereupon, after processing, be sent into the great unknown of a mystically Herodic West Australian wilderness.