Australia's Uniting Church has finally admitted what Aboriginal Australians have always known. God did not arrive on boats with Europeans.

Last week the Uniting Church changed its constitution to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders as traditional owners and to admit they had already encountered the creator God when Captain Cook stepped ashore in 1770 to claim Australia for the crown of England.

While some churches have already apologised to Aboriginal Australians for the past misdeeds of their missionary flock, it's the first time one has officially conceded any theological territory.

In a nation where claims that indigenous Australians had no religion were common, the Uniting Church's Reverend Murray Muirhead, a resource worker with its Aboriginal wing in central Australia's Alice Springs, says the change is revolutionary.

"Aboriginal theologians are asking the church to give them the same freedom that was given in the Reformation in the 16th century when the Protestant church said to the Catholic church we have the freedom to go back and interpret the scriptures for ourselves," Muirhead says.

Christianity is stronger in the Aboriginal community than in the non-indigenous community. Around 73% of Aboriginal people identify as Christians compared to around 63% of non-indigenous Australians.

Approximately one-third of Aboriginal Christians say they are Anglican, another one-third say they are Catholic while many of the remainder belong to the Uniting Church, created in 1977 when Methodists, Congregationalists and some 10% of Presbyterians combined.

"As westerners we emphasise that Jesus was born in a certain historical era, we talk about the person and the historical context but Aboriginal people tend to emphasise Jesus, the Christ who exists eternally with God," Muirhead says.

Muirhead attributes their understanding of the eternal theological entity to their perceptions of time where past, present and future are not distinct but continuous. When they perform ceremonies they are not merely mimicking their ancestors but participating with them.

"They often feel comfortable in saying that Jesus came here before you white fellas but they don't mean he got off the boat before Captain Cook," Muirhead says.

For Aboriginal Australians the Uniting Church's constitutional change is a step towards recognising their indigenous faith which was created tens of thousands of years before Abraham was born.

But it was the texts, not the church, that attracted Aboriginal believers like Djiniyini Gondarra, a traditional owner and Uniting Church minister in Arnhem land.

"Rather than listening to Christianity itself, the very important values for me are the gospels," Gondarra says.

John Harris, a linguist who has spent the past 18 years helping translate the gospels into indigenous languages, says he has watched Aboriginal people weep over the tale of Moses receiving the Ten Commandments.

"They say that reminds me of my father or grandfather. They look back to a time when there was [strong traditional] law and the scriptures look back to a time where the law was the Ten Commandments," Harris says.

Aboriginal Australians are storytellers, whose cultural, spiritual and economic laws are codified in tales which often feature animals in a sacred role shaping the landscape and the moral code in which it is entwined.

Among central Australia's Pitjantjatjara speakers, this is called Tjukurpa. Pitjantjatjara speakers have not only re-interpreted the gospels but woven them into their own narrative. They tell the Christmas Tjukurpa, the story of the birth of Jesus, and as a result, they refuse to cull the feral donkeys and camels that wreak havoc on the environment, which as traditional custodians they are bound by their ancestors to protect.

But it's not mere acceptance of their synthesised theological view that Aboriginal Christians are demanding. They are the custodians of the world's oldest belief system.

Arthur Malcolm, the nation's first indigenous bishop, an Anglican who grew up on a mission in far north Queensland, says: "We want acknowledgment."