What Makes a Nation? Faith, Story, and Aboriginal Sunday

Australia Day has become one of the most emotionally charged days on our national calendar. For some, it is a day of celebration and gratitude. For others, it is a day of grief and anger. The intensity of the disagreement suggests that what we are really wrestling with is not just a date, but something deeper.

What makes a nation?

People who study societies often point out that nations are held together by stories. Long before laws or borders, there is a shared narrative — a way of explaining who “we” are, how we came to be, and what matters enough to hold us together. These stories shape identity. They legitimise power. They help people decide who belongs and who does not.

Australia’s story is not simple.

Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson has described Australia as a nation in three parts. There is the ancient Aboriginal story, written into the land itself and painted across its land and seascapes. There is the British inheritance — the legal, political, and cultural structures that shaped modern Australia. And there is the multicultural story — the extraordinary achievement of migration, as people from all over the world have made this place home.

Holding these three stories together is difficult work.

In Tasmania, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people make up around 5.4% of the population. Nationally, more than a quarter of Australians were born overseas. And in 2021, Australia became the first English-speaking nation in the world where more than half the population is either a first- or second-generation migrant. That reality tells us something important about who we are — and who we are becoming.

When stories shift, people often feel unsettled.

Every national story is a bit like joining the dots to form a picture. With only a few dots, it is easy to draw a simple image. But as more dots appear, the picture becomes harder to control. For a long time, Australia’s dominant story largely ignored Aboriginal experience. It also struggled to properly include the migrant story. Those missing dots are now impossible to avoid.

At moments like this, the temptation is to simplify. To insist that one story is the real story, and that everyone else must fit into it. That temptation is understandable. It is normal to feel anxious when familiar narratives feel threatened. It is normal to want clarity, certainty, and control.

Movements built around identity often grow out of that fear. Their promise is simple: one culture, one narrative, one way of belonging. If everyone looks the same, talks the same, and shares the same story, then things will feel stable again.

Christians, however, do not get that option.

The New Testament repeatedly describes followers of Jesus as foreigners and exiles. That language is unsettling by design. It reminds us that our deepest allegiance is not to a nation, a culture, or a founding story, but to Jesus himself. That does not mean disengaging from the place we live. It means refusing to make any national story ultimate.

This is why the Christian vision of unity is so different from political versions of unity. Scripture speaks often about being one — but never about being the same.

“There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free… for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

“Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ.”

And in Revelation, the final picture of God’s people is not sameness, but worshipping diversity — people from every tribe and language and people and nation.

The church is meant to be the place where this vision is practised. Where unity is not achieved by forcing sameness, but by learning how to live faithfully with difference. This is not theoretical. Many churches already live this tension week by week, learning what it means to be one community made up of different cultures, histories, and ways of seeing the world.

That same tension exists at a national level.

This is where Aboriginal Sunday comes from.

On January 26, 1938, as Australia marked the 150th anniversary of British settlement, Aboriginal leaders including William Cooper gathered for what became known as the Day of Mourning. While the nation celebrated, they mourned. They called for equality, justice, and full citizenship — something that would take another thirty years to be realised.

In the wake of that day, Aboriginal leaders asked Australian churches to respond.

They called on churches to set aside the Sunday before January 26 as Aboriginal Sunday — originally known as Aborigines’ Day — a day for Christians to act in solidarity with Aboriginal peoples and to pray in the face of the injustices being experienced. The first Aboriginal Sunday is thought to have taken place in 1941, though it was already being discussed in letters written by William Cooper in 1938 and referenced publicly the following year.

This matters, because Aboriginal Sunday did not begin as a modern political initiative. It emerged from Aboriginal Christian leadership and from a conviction that faithfulness to Jesus required honesty, prayer, and solidarity — not silence.

Today, Aboriginal Sunday continues as churches are invited to reclaim that original vision. Each year, resources developed by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Christian leaders help congregations listen well, tell the truth, and pray for justice and flourishing.

Aboriginal Sunday is not a political protest. It is not about resolving every complex question in Australia’s history. And it is not about asking everyone to become Aboriginal.

Following Jesus does not flatten identity. As C.S. Lewis once observed, the closer we come to Christ, the more truly ourselves we become. Aboriginal people do not become less Aboriginal by following Jesus. Migrants do not lose the beauty of their cultures. Neither do those shaped by British heritage.

What changes is where our loyalty sits.

For Christians, our primary culture is the Kingdom of God. That kingdom teaches us to tell the truth about history — including the painful parts. It teaches us to recognise the gifts different cultures bring without demanding sameness. And it calls us to the slow, relational work of reconciliation rather than the quick work of denial or control.

For those of us who live in Tasmania, this is not abstract. God has placed us here — in this place, with this history. The story of this land includes beauty, resilience, and generosity. It also includes deep loss and violence. Not far from where many of us live, the first recorded massacre of Aboriginal people in Tasmania took place. That proximity matters. It reminds us that we are not observers of history, but people living within its consequences.

Aboriginal Sunday is one way the church practises faithfulness in that reality. It is a discipline — a way of forming our hearts to tell the truth, to listen without defensiveness, and to place our hope in Jesus rather than in any national story.

We gather for Aboriginal Sunday because we believe truth matters. We believe prayer matters. And we believe that being one — without demanding that we all be the same — is part of what it means to follow Christ in this place, at this moment.

Find out more about Aboriginal Sunday HERE