Scars on the Australasian heart: Anzac Day as a contextual atonement image

Abstract

Contextualisation has come of age. However while much
research is evident with regard to contextualisation in
non-Westem contexts, contextualisation within Western
culture has attracted less theological reflection. If Robert
Schreiter’s ethnographic approach to contextualisation is
applied to Pakeha culture in the New Zealand context, the
significance of Anzac Day emerges. A symbol of corporate
identity arising from a national experience of shared grief, it
has contributed toward the formation of a Pakeha spirituality.
The symbolism inherent in Anzac Day can be correlated with
dimensions of the atonement in regard to voluntary sacrifice,
shared solidarity and resurrection motifs. In both the Anzac
Day experience and the atonement, historical reflection on an
experience of shared suffering has resulted in a renewal of hope
and a reconfiguring of corporate identity. This dialogue
between the Anzac Day experience and the atonement, while
open to a feminist and pacifist critique, encourages a more
indigenous expression of Pakeha spirituality.