Alison Atkinson-Phillips
Meet Katalina Tahaafe-Williams. She’s a Tongan-Australian woman who has given up Britain and allowed herself to be sent back to Australia.
Unpack the issues...
As a wealthy western country, we’re used to sending people on overseas mission trips. What’s more unusual is to meet someone who has come to Australia for such a reason. However, Katalina is a woman who’s not afraid of challenging stereotypes.
When asked about her time spent in the UK, she talks excitedly about Celtic spirituality and Wuthering Heights.
“I loved it,” she says. “This is ridiculous from a Pacific Islander; I grew up in a tropical climate. But my heart just feels alive to the mystery of the lonely moors — that sort of landscape. It makes my heart sing.”
Katalina had plenty of time to get to know the various landscapes of Britain during eight years she spent as secretary for racial justice and multicultural ministry for the United Reformed Church (URC). As well as working to shape policy around multicultural and cross-cultural issues at a denominational level, she was heavily involved in grassroots work with local community.
“I’d be working with different groups on whatever was the urgent issue in that particular area,” she explains. “Whether it was the elderly or disenfranchised youth or refugee and asylum seekers.
“Sometimes I’d have my car full of furniture driving around to really awful places because the home office would contract out the housing for refugee and asylum seekers and the private companies would just pocket the money...
“Some of the work can really make you question God, question why is this happening.”
Katalina’s passion for justice for building better cross-cultural understanding started as a young person involved in Uniting Church activities like About FACE and the National Christian Youth Conventions (NCYC). She also travelled around Israel and Europe in the mid-90s, attending an International Christian Youth Convention (ICYC) while pregnant with her daughter, Lilliani.
It was also this passion that drew her towards her Anglo-Australian husband, Rev Dr Andrew Williams.
“He was like the Anglo cross-cultural guru,” she jokes, adding that it’s important to her to live the talk.
“If my passion and ministry is to encourage people to cross the boundaries of culture and ethnicity and race, then I should be able to live it in my own life as well,” she says. “But every time I talk about cross-cultural marriage and relationships, I say, don’t look to me for answers, because we’re still working it out!”
The couple originally went to the UK for Andrew’s work for the Council for World Mission. However, it was Katalina’s work who brought them back, when she took on the role of director of Communitas, a contextual mission and theology program of the United Theological College of the Uniting Church in Australia. The position is funded by the Council for World Mission in partnership with the United Reformed Church in the UK, and the Uniting Church in Australia.
Communitas is part of the theological training program for ministers in NSW, and that’s one of the things that attracted Katalina to her the role.
“I know from the work I’ve done how influential ministers are in making a difference in the community,” Katalina explains. “We need to develop colleges as multicultural, inclusive communities. If we are serious about recruiting people for ministry in a multicultural world, we need to start there.”
One thing Katalina likes to remind people is that the Christian church has been multicultural and multilingual from its very beginning at Pentecost (see Acts chapter 2).
“It’s in our DNA,” she says.
However, the reality is that many Christian communities are inhospitable to people from outside the dominant culture — wherever and whatever that may be.
One way to break this down is for Christians to share their ‘contextual theology’; ideas about God that come from their own culture. Katalina's own cultural heritage has played an important role in teaching her about God.
“People who are not Tongan think it’s really hierarchical, but I completely don’t see it that way. It’s a very reciprocal culture. And in that reciprocity, issues of justice and respect are really important. Knowing one’s place is really important, but when everybody does that you’re never left out or diminished.
“You have patience. Your turn will come," she says.
"I think when we say, 'We are all made in the image of God', and we see Christ in each other, it translate into real things when I see every older person as my grandma and my grandpa."
Being well grounded in her own culture has also given Katalina strength and confidence to make her way in the world.
“I know we have cultures and traditions that are not life-giving, and I would just discard that,” she says. “But we have wonderful, great traditions which we should maintain. And that really roots our children in knowing who they are and where they’ve come from. It makes them feel confident to manoeuvre and negotiate all the different things they need to, to make a life for themselves.”
At the same time, Katalina says because of her strong grounding in Tongan culture, she’s able to stand up against those things that are “not life-giving” in the dominant, Anglo-Australian culture in which she finds herself.
“One of the gifts I bring is I really strive to be balanced,” she says.
“On the one hand, I’m completely aware of how destructive the dominant culture can be in all kinds of ways, historically and even to this day... but I’m also completely committed to making a difference and really having compassion.”
Unpack the issues...
- What are the best ideas about God you have taken from your cultural upbringing?
- What ideas about God can you learn/have you learnt from your friends and family who have a different background?
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