Reid, Duncan: Time We Started Listening: Theological Questions Put to Us by Recent Indigenous Writing. 114 pp. Adelaide: ATF Press, 2020. ISBN 978-1925679809. AUD 26.98

Abstract

Duncan Reid’s book is a timely piece on the developing field of Australian Indigenous theology. The key is listening to uncover what is unspoken, inasmuch as it is a path to uncovering implicit meaning. Reid derives this meaning theologically. It can help “save Australia”. The approach noted by Reid is helpful in looking beyond analytic approaches to thought. This requires balance: as a reduction to identity politics, but as an ontological belonging, an opening into new knowledge, such as with fire management practice. Reid considers the possible correlation with Eastern Christianity and its reverence for the sense of place, which lends itself to John Chryssavgis’s approach to the desert, metanoia, and a fundamental anthropology. The result is an expansion of insight that contributes to ontological and anthropological discourse.