In an Outback Town, Praising the Lord and Improvising the Details

A view of Australia’s Northern Territory, where many roads are dirt and towns few and far between.Credit…Matthew Abbott for The New York Times

The Australia Letter is a weekly newsletter from our Australia bureau. Sign up to get it by email.This week’s issue is written by Julia Bergin, a reporter based in the Northern Territory.

The brick building and gabled roof of the Baptist Church was the backdrop for the service in the outback town of Yuendumu on a recent Sunday. Twenty parishioners — eight men and 12 women — sat out in the full sun, as they often do, in plastic chairs, flipping through a 64-page booklet of songs looking for the next hymn.

“Number 34!” suggested one worshiper, which was followed by whispers of “What page?” and chuckles of “No idea.” There was no formal choir but everyone sang, while one parishioner accompanied the music on an acoustic guitar.

Yuendumu, a remote Aboriginal community about a three-hour drive north from Alice Springs, has a population of roughly 750. It is home to two churches: the Baptists, who took up residence in 1947 after Yuendumu was established by the Australian government as a ration and welfare settlement, and the more recent United Pentecostal Church.

The community is a microcosm of Christianity in Central Australia, where many denominations, including the Catholics, Lutherans and Mormons, are present. And like elsewhere, they diverge in how they practice their beliefs in remote Indigenous settings.

For some, it’s all about music. Others translate scripture into Indigenous languages or enlist local artists to depict Bible stories in their own way. And overall, churches are far more unstructured, relaxed and D.I.Y. than their big-city counterparts.

At the Yuendumu Baptist Church, the pastor is Eddie Jampijinpa Robertson, an elder from the local Warlpiri tribe. As the congregation worked through the songbook, he kept musical time, tapping his heel on the ground and tapping his knee with his hand. Everyone volunteered for prayers and readings and the parishioners took turns — a woman, then a man — to recite in both English and in Warlpiri.