Introduction to John Bottomley’s Sermon on our Colonial Past
Rev John Bottomley provided a sermon to a Springvale congregation in April 2025, titled Confessing our Church’s Colonial Captivity.
John Bottomley has a long and impressive life of Ministry in the Methodist and then the Uniting Church. Unusually in those days of Theological Training (the 1960’s) his major studies included Sociology and he had great skills in research and Report writing.
His Placements were often in new Church areas, he initiated small group life focussed on Feminism and Women’s Liberation before these were common themes in Church life. He also initiated focus on Men, taking up matters of loneliness, violence, encouraging male networks in which men were able to share their experiences and feelings. He worked at the Centre for Urban Research (CURA) where Rev Brian Howe was a founding influence before he became a member of Parliament and later, the Deputy Prime Minister of Australia.
John’s ministry led him into research and various forms of political activity. He once worked for a Union and among other matters created a significant ministry based on the impact on families and Industry when someone died from an accident on their job. One Placement took John to East St Kilda. A large Church with a tiny membership. His initiative led to an annual gathering there for the families and people effected by the death of people at work and he used to fill the Church.
Now retired he is still active in Supply and contributing to the Theological University.
When he and I share coffee, I find his perspectives resonate in me. They often make me confront matters I have avoided, or assumed I understood, and sometimes helpfully turn me inside out. This Sermon is one such experience. Following on from the call for Truth Telling as an essential step in maturing our understanding and relationship with Australia’s Indigenous people, he tells us the story of one of the great benefactors of the Church in a way that exposes the darker side to what we normally celebrate when we look back at someone who became rich and shared their wealth.
This Sermon asks us to face with fresh depth and awareness the context of what we now are, and at a time when recent publicity about the national “Closing the Gap” programs has made for disturbing reading, especially having rejected the proposed Voice, there are issues here that need to be considered.
Let me make clear that I see myself as meshed in the issues John raises and I find it hard to think through what it means for myself, for the Churches, and for Australia. Putting myself into “the mind of Christ” makes me aware of both my limitations in spirit and the pin pricks of the way-stations that (I hope) see me navigating towards the Kindness of God (sometimes away from it and sometimes towards it). I am not sure how I would do the significant moments of confession and prayer at the end, but if I was in the Congregation I would have been among those who stood and prayed.
Like me I expect some of you will struggle, some will agree, and some will be critics. However, the direction that our Minister has been so creatively leading us into, in which Evolution is the framework through which God addresses us, leads me to think my friend John Bottomley is raising matters that are evolving and that integrity invites us to address.
Terry Trewavas (Rev)
