An Obadiah Slope Column
The Libs do an ‘Essendon’: The expulsion of candidate Renee Harris from the Victorian Liberal party room by opposition leader Matthew Guy has some Christians suggesting it is a repeat of Andrew Thorburn being rejected by the Essendon Football Club as their CEO.
After all, Thorburn was rejected because he is Chair of City on a Hill Church. Heath is rejected because she is a member of, and daughter of the senior pastor of Citybuilders Church.
Sounds similar, not just because both churches have “city” in their name.
Australian Christian Lobby’s Wendy Francis is convinced.
“The Australian Christian Lobby has labelled Victorian Liberal Leader Matthew Guy’s extraordinary attack on Renee Heath’s church affiliation as hypocrisy and called on him to withdraw his proposed expulsion of Renee Heath from the Liberal party room, post-election.
National Director of Politics for the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL), Wendy Francis, said, “In a display of hypocrisy, Victorian Liberal leader, Matthew Guy has followed the Essendon playbook in promising to expel a democratically selected Liberal candidate, Renee Heath, because of her church affiliation.
“Matthew Guy described as ‘ridiculous’ Andrew Thorburn’s sacking from the Essendon Football Club because of his church affiliation. Now Mr Guy is doing the same thing to Renee Heath because of her church affiliation. This expulsion is not based on anything that she has said or done.”
Ms Francis and the ACL have a point, Obadiah believes. The 60 minutes report on Renee Heath had a constant mantra of “Abortion, transgender rights and conversion therapy” as defining unacceptably extreme Christian views. Which meant being against abortion, having a cautious approach to transgender treatment (in particular surgery), and believing that the Victoria government’s “Conversion Therapy” bill has gone too far. That would include many Christians with any streak of conservatism.
In The Australian, Greg Sheridan goes further writing of “Daniel Andrews’ crusade against Christianity.”
But, focussing on the Renee Harris issue, just maybe there is a difference between Andrew Thorburn and Renee Heath, and between City on a Hill and Citybuilders.
It is in the ACL statement’s following par. “Armed only with scurrilous, unsubstantiated, serious allegations, all of which are denied by Ms Heath, Mr Guy’s outburst has Victorians of faith concerned that they and their vote are not welcome in the lead up to Saturday’s election.”
Yes, Christians should be concerned that they are being “othered.” By Mr Guy. But Obadiah believes they should take the “serious allegations” in the 60 Minutes reports seriously.
The allegations included extremely authoritarian pastoring – with the example of Pastor Brian Heath setting up Renee’s sister Clare to marry a gay man, exorcism attempts and actual conversion therapy attempt on LGBTQIA people. It’s almost as though this particular church set out to give the Victorian government a basis for the new laws many Christians are protesting.
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Sounds weird but it is true: At an invite-only Canberra meeting, Canadian controversialist Jordan Peterson said (according to Martyn Iles who attended along with reportedly some conservative politicians) that fatherless girls reach puberty a year early. The link between earlier puberty and fatherlessness has been found in a number of studies.
The most credible reported study found that the effect of fatherlessness was more pronounced in white higher income households. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3079910/ (That study was particularly credible because it measured the onset of puberty in a sample of girls, rather than relying on the memories of older women.)
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Oh Eric: Historian John Fea, who wrote the definitive history of the American Bible society among other books has contributed a tweet. ‘Evangelicalism has now come to the point where an evangelical with a large platform thinks that Rick Warren, Tim Keller, and Andy Stanley are “Hitler’s favourite kind of pastors.” https://twitter.com/ericmetaxas/status/1586710616043315203
Sadly he is talking about Eric Metaxas, https://currentpub.com/2022/10/31/eric-metaxas-believes-rick-warren-tim-keller-and-andy-stanley-are-hitlers-favorite-kind-of-pastors/
“Eric Metaxas is hawking a book that condemns evangelicals for failing to stand-up to Joe Biden and the Democratic Party. He compares Biden and the Democrats to Adolph Hitler and the Nazis in the 1930s and is using his widely panned biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer to suggest that he and his pro-Trump cronies are today’s Bonhoeffers, standing-up for righteousness and liberty against the demonic forces of secularism, Bidenism, woke-ism, and COVID-19 science.”
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Quote of the week: People are not all that interested in praying for people they don’t like. But try it! Pray for people you do not like. You really have to work at it.
“Jesus, I pray for him whom I can’t stand at all.”
The enemy is an internal presence, so we are dealing with something very intimate to us
It is very important. Go to prayer and pray. Pray for your enemies because when you do you are acting out God’s love.
Prayers for our enemy can open the way to a new divine knowledge of the basic unity of the human family.
Following Jesus, Henri Nouwen