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Some remain uncertain about what the Voice to Parliament referendum means. For Christians, there is no need for uncertainty. The Uluru Statement from the Heart makes the issue crystal clear.

The question facing Australians on October 14 is formally about the Voice to Parliament.

But the Voice has not emerged from a vacuum. It must be understood in the context in which it was forged: the Uluru Statement from the Heart.

The statement has been conscientiously crafted, and its words carefully considered. Voice campaigner Thomas Mayo says:

“The Uluru Statement… we’ve actually done the hard work to propose something very specific.”

The Uluru Statement is structured around a story, which is key to unlocking its meaning.

Revealingly, its story and the worldview expressed through that story bear some uncanny similarities to the biblical one. In four-part categories akin to the biblical worldview of Creation – Fall – Redemption – Restoration, the Uluru Statement has Indigenous Sovereignty – British Sovereignty – Treaty – Indigenous Sovereignty.

	Biblical Worldview	Uluru Statement (Cultural Marxist) Worldview
Ideal Beginning	Very Good Creation	Very Good Indigenous Sovereignty
Problem	Sin	Loss of Indigenous Sovereignty to the British
Solution	Redemption: Payment for Sin	Reparation: Payment for Loss of Sovereignty
Restoration of Ideal Beginning	Sin Removed; Very Good Creation Restored	Very Good Indigenous Sovereignty Restored

 

An Edenic Past

The Uluru Statement paints a picture that life for Indigenous people was ideal before 1788. When Indigenous people had “sovereignty”, “Our songlines covered vast distances, uniting peoples in shared stories and religion.” Here, it is implied that the Aboriginal animist religion was wholly good and brought unity across the continent.

Conspicuously absent is any mention of facts that might call this pristine beginning into question, such as inner-tribal conflict and inter-tribal warfare. There’s no room for the thoughts of Tim Flannery, who wrote of “bloody disputes” that were a devasting “feature of… Aboriginal society.”

The Uluru Statement paints an amazingly naïve picture. But that naïve picture is essential in order for the Uluru Statement’s metanarrative to work.

The Problem: Loss of Sovereignty Through Colonialisation

Having set up this pristine beginning, the Uluru Statement can now present what has gone terribly wrong: the arrival of the British beginning in 1788 which “ruptured” that “sovereignty”.

When the Uluru Statement claims “sovereignty is a spiritual notion”, it does not mean this has no earthly bearing. For someone steeped in a modernistic worldview that pits the sacred (if it even exists) against the secular, this point could be easily missed.

Indigenous people do not think in secular, modernistic categories. Nor should they. After all, the Bible’s own storyline is one in which the physical and spiritual intertwine and cannot be segregated.

The Uluru Statement, after declaring a spiritual sovereignty, immediately connects it to “the land”. It puts “the long struggle for land rights and recognition of native title” at “the heart of our activism”. It makes the “taking of our land without consent… our fundamental grievance against the British Crown.”

The Uluru Statement’s authors apparently believe that everything bad in Indigenous communities can be blamed on colonialism with its corresponding theft of Indigenous sovereignty. It lists some of these problems such as high rates of incarceration, youth detention, and alienation of children from families.

The Uluru Statement is, of course, absolutely right in stating that there is nothing “innately criminal” about Indigenous people. The Bible is clear that sinfulness is universal (Rom 3:23).

But then the Uluru Statement makes the following move: “These dimensions of our crisis tell plainly the structural nature of our problem.” The “structural nature” explicitly refers to the “powerlessness” caused by 1788.

The Uluru Statement uses classic cultural Marxist language. Cultural Marxism is an atheistic philosophy that views life as a power struggle between the ‘oppressed’ and the ‘oppressors’. The Uluru Statement wholeheartedly endorses this worldview and segregates “old and new Australians” into those two categories, respectively. Revealingly, ‘power’ language typical of Marxist thought is scattered throughout the document.

That’s why the Uluru Statement believes that until the ‘power imbalance’ between ‘oppressed’ and ‘oppressor’ is rectified, Indigenous people have no hope of positive change. ‘Closing the gap’ will be impossible.

The Uluru Statement explicitly makes this case. It states that “[only] when we have power over our destiny [will] our children will flourish.”

It is crucial to understand that the authors do not believe in the biblical concept of sin. People are good creatures, so bad behaviour must be blamed on oppressive societal structures.

Further, if animist religion is good and if it unified Indigenous people, then it follows that Christianity is part of the evil system that ruptured the idyllic Indigenous world. Christianity must be cast off if Indigenous people are to re-establish their original selves. The Uluru Statement doesn’t overtly say this but its Marxist logic undeniably implies it.

The Solution: Redemption through Treaty (Makarrata)

The Uluru Statement defines its goal, “the culmination of our agenda”, as treaty (Makarrata).

As for what treaty or treaties will involve, constitutional law expert and Uluru Statement co-author Professor Megan Davis puts it clearly:

“Treaties are legal texts… Treaties are about reparations for past injustice and they are about land and they are about resources.”

“Treaties are foundational constitutional agreements between First Nations and the State, and they do involve a redistribution of political power.”

The biblical word ‘redemption’ means “To pay a price in order to secure the release of something or someone.”^[1]

The Uluru Statement doesn’t use the word ‘redemption’. But it does use ‘reparation’ which has the very similar meaning of a “payment for harm, loss, or damage that has been caused”.

Both words centre on the idea of ‘payment’.

The idea of reparation is most necessary in the Uluru Statement. Sovereignty (land, power, etc.) was lost through violent and illegal dispossession. The price for that transgression must be paid. Without such, no resolution is possible.

In Christianity, individuals look to the Saviour, Jesus Christ, who makes payment for sin. Under Marxism, individuals must look to the State to pay reparations for past injustice. Jesus is replaced by the State.

The Resolution: Restoration of Sovereignty

Once “the structural nature of our problem” is resolved through treaty, it will allow “First Nations to express our sovereignty”. The regained sovereignty will constitute a restoration to pre-1788 ‘Edenic’ conditions.

The Uluru Statement envisages that with “substantive constitutional change and structural reform”, “two sovereignties [can] co-exist”. Indigenous sovereignty, as already mentioned, means “ownership of the soil”.

This is effectively a ‘two-state solution’ where the prior (Indigenous) sovereignty enjoys supremacy, being given a special seat at the table to vet legislation. This conclusion seems logically unavoidable. If the Australian continent “always has been and always will be” Aboriginal land, then the second sovereignty involving people whose ancestry dates from 1788 onwards will always be on land not truly theirs.

The Cultural Marxist Worldview of the Uluru Statement is an Antognistic Competitor to the Biblical Worldview

The logic of the Uluru Statement is tightly and carefully woven. Once you accept its assumptions and worldview, its conclusions logically follow.

What was lost at the fall of Indigenous sovereignty through diabolical British colonialism can be regained once more through the striking of a treaty between two sovereign states.

The Uluru Statement’s worldview is false. It fabricates an ‘Edenic’ history and promises a false future. Like all prior Marxist ambitions, its chance of bringing about utopia is zero, while its likelihood of causing division and wreaking havoc is certain.

A vote for the Voice is a vote for the Uluru Statement. And a vote for the Uluru Statement is a vote for cultural Marxism.

And that is something that every Christian should unashamedly reject.

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^[1] Stan Norman, “Redeem, Redemption, Redeemer,” in Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary, ed. Chad Brand et al. (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2003), 1370.

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Photo: Wikimedia Commons