Theology and Aboriginal Religion: Continuing “The Wider Ecumenism”

Abstract

“Wider ecumenism” goes beyond conventional ecumenical and interreligious dialogue to conversation with indigenous religions. While many indigenous theologians today readily employ “Western” thought forms, an additional methodology is needed to articulate aboriginal experience. Cast in the form of a narrative of four decades of field work, this article describes such a methodology, incorporating the symbolic theology of 18th-century missionary anthropologist Joseph Lafitau, Bernard Lonergan's ideas on “data of consciousness” and “mutual self-mediation,” Antoine Vergote's religious psychology, and the complexities of “ethnographic memory” as described by Clifford Geertz.