Rev. Dr Stephen Robinson’s Churchill Fellowship project

Each year, the Churchill Memorial Trust in Australia awards Churchill Fellowships to allow people to travel overseas and connect with experts in their field.  This allows them to conduct research to benefit their field of endeavour in Australia.

Rev. Dr. Stephen Robinson has been a Uniting Church Minister for 30 years. For most of that time he has been involved in crisis or emergency settings, first as a Rural Fire Service member and chaplain, then as a trainer and coordinator of disaster recovery ministries with the Uniting Church in Australia.

Recognising instances of extreme violence towards religious groups across the world, Stephen’s project sought to: learn from the experience of leaders and survivors of congregations which had experienced violent attacks on their houses of worship; better understand the effects of these on congregations and their leaders; and gather key lessons into a resource to better train and equip faith and congregational leaders to prepare and respond to such attacks in Australia.

This Fellowship was awarded to Stephen in 2020 but was held off, due to COVID-19 travel restrictions, until September 2022. The original proposal was to join with congregations in New Zealand, Indonesia, and the USA but for numerous reasons this was modified to New Zealand, USA and England and included connections following up on incidents that had occurred since the awarding of the Fellowship.

Congregations visited or shared with were:

• The Christchurch mosques (Al Noor and Linwood) shooting in 2019
• First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs shooting in 2017
• St Stephen’s Episcopal Church, Vestavia Hills, Alabama - shooting in 2022.
• 16th Street Baptist Church, Birmingham, Alabama (historic bombing of 1963)
• Tree of Life Synagogue, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania - shooting in 2018 (virtual visit)
• Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, Charleston - shooting in 2017
• Belfairs Methodist Church, Leigh on Sea, UK – knifing assassination of an MP in 2021

The project uncovered the extreme impacts of such events on these religious communities but also an extraordinary resilience to overcome and continue in the face of loss, scaffolded by faith and hope which gave each congregation meaning. It also recognised the ways in which most leaders had engaged to make change and support others affected by violence.

The project documents ways in which each congregation created memorials, cared for their people, and made changes in relation to their (in some cases new) buildings. The study discovered the benefit of the general public having interaction with religious groups to understand their common humanity to overcome ignorance and prejudice which might give rise to hate speech and violence.

The project highlighted the importance of building genuine relationships of trust and understanding amongst faith leaders at a local, regional, and wider level before such events happen, and the need for trauma-informed pastoral care to be incorporated in ministry education and formation. Stephen recommends that lessons from these congregations’ experiences be gathered into a fuller resource, designed to educate and engage faith and congregational leaders to better prepare for and respond to acts of violence on houses of worship in Australia and beyond.

For more information about Rev. Dr Stephen Robinson's project and the Churchill Fellowship here.

Pictured above: rev. Dr Stephen Robinson with Rev. Eric C. Manning at the Mother Emmanuel AME Church in South Carolina.