ABSTRACT
The connection between Christianity and the ancestral law of Aboriginal culture has generated considerable debate within Australian Christianity. This chapter explores the intersubjective flow between faith and fear emergent within these two systems and show how external influences have impacted ruptures of ontological thought and experience. Missionary approaches to religious doctrine have differed dramatically across Australia, resulting in varying degrees of acceptance, rejection, and adherence to localized expressions of Christianity. The chapter examines a range of discourses of religious rupture and argue that Christian influences have, at different times, variously competed with, moulded, and naturalized Yolngu ancestral understanding, leading to a surveillance of the social, spiritual, and political relationship between the Gospel and Culture by Yolngu Christians. In Arnhem Land, the relationship between fear of the Devil through sorcery and the power of Jesus is at the heart of Yolngu issues between culture and the Gospel.
