> Bill Peirson Case #72 - Peace and Healing

Editorial: Peace and Healing

April 29, 2025

William L. Peirson

This edition is an opportunity to thank two people for their recent significant contributions to our understanding of the greatest social issue facing contemporary Australia.

Rev. Dr. Antoine Rutayisire accepted our invitation to travel to Australia and deliver the 2024 New College Lectures. These lectures were the outcome of a five year quest to find a suitable international expert who could speak on trauma and community reconciliation, with authority.*

Antoine highlighted the long term impacts of violence and its consequent grief and woundedness, drawing on his own experience of both suffering through the Rwandan genocide of 1994, and working through its aftermath towards national reconciliation. With his wise words, we should each carefully critically examine the trajectory of our families and communities, and also our nation in the light of Australia’s failure to adequately acknowledge the impact of trauma on Indigenous peoples.

Personally, I feel greatly indebted to Antoine’s clear thinking on trauma and how the biblical story shows us how to engage on a journey towards peace and healing for both survivors and perpetrators of harm. New College and New College Postgraduate Village welcome students from all situations and many locations. Some of these bring with them deep histories of trauma, and Antoine’s counsel has greatly strengthened this aspect of our pastoral care.

Are we headed towards peace and healing or are we perpetuating and entrenching wrongdoing of the past? I commend his summary article in this edition to you, and its fuller exposition in the New College Lecture recordings, available here.

My second big thank you is to Rev. Dr. John Harris. We are all of one blood (Acts 17:26 KJV), and it is this image John evoked in his magnum opus One Blood, in which he meticulously documented the impact of colonisation on Australia’s First Nations people and the conflicted role of the Christian churches. In this edition of Case Quarterly, John delves more deeply into one aspect of this story: how the Bible’s teaching was not merely ignored by ‘Christian Britain’, but abused and actively enlisted to justify—even promote—the indefensible treatment of Australia’s Indigenous inhabitants. This article is not merely an account of a historical injustice in which Christians were complicit, but a call for churches to hear, acknowledge and confess as a step towards healing. For as Mike Thompson points out in his article,

Neither justice nor love are reducible to mere listening; but neither justice nor love are possible without it.

Reflecting on the New Testament book of James, Mike understands the act of listening requires a posture of humility and respect. When we fail to listen to our neighbour, we judge them not worthy of our time and honour, and fail also to honour the God in whose image they are made.

This edition is a hard read in places. It’s much easier to turn away than face the many ways we wound one another and prevent healing. Whether an injustice is inflicted on one individual by another, or by entire nations on others, failing to acknowledge and confess wrongs means stymies the healing process. So too does nursing anger and refusing to forgive. It is in the cross of Jesus that justice and mercy, confession and forgiveness meet, as powerfully demonstrated in the Rwandan experience Antoine shares with us. And it is to the foot of the cross we must go for healing.

* I acknowledge the support, encouragement and collaboration of Pastor Ray Minnieconn as we journeyed on this quest. Ray and his wife Sharon have been great servants of many in the name of Jesus and it is humbling for me to have had the opportunity to work with them. I also acknowledge Dr. Dani Scarratt’s support on this journey on behalf of New College.

Image attributions:

Cartoon courtesy of Michael Leunig.

Case #72 Cover: Painting by Arrernte Artists titled Initium Sapientiae Timor Domini
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
Ngkarte-ketye atere-irremele tyerrtye inangkerle irreme.