Meredith Lake: Race and Scripture in Australia
ABSTRACT: The Bible arrived in Australia at a time when Europeans were rethinking both Scripture and race. And from land-hungry colonists to Indigenous evangelists, white supremacists to anti-racism activists – people here have read it very differently, with nothing less than humanity at stake. This lecture will reflect on how the Bible has been taken up to contest what it means to be human and to cross cultural boundaries, as well as some contemporary reverberations of these debates.’
BIO: Dr Meredith Lake is the author of The Bible in Australia: A cultural history, winner of the 2019 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Australian history, the 2019 NSW Premier’s History Award for Australian History, and the 2020 Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature prize for Non-fiction. She has a PhD in History from the University of Sydney, and currently presents Soul Search, a weekly show about the lived experience of religion and spirituality, on ABC Radio National