An Obadiah Slope Column
Gold star award: John Steenhof, the lawyer who heads the Human Rights Law Alliance, a body fairly described as conservative, which defends the human rights of Christians in legal trouble – Jereth Kok, whose medical licence has been suspended, for example, has spoken up for the rights of those he disagrees with.
(Steenhof makes the disagreement plain in his language, but Obadiah says look past that, even if it annoys you, and read on. And he would have been making a personal comment, not on behalf of his practice.)
But first we have to put up a pic Obadiah disagrees with.
“Christians should reject calling for callous-death-celebrating-ideologues to lose their jobs or social privileges,” Steenhof writes responding to Charlie Kirk assasination that moved him to tears. “Comments like in the photo are risible. Here’s a thought: Meet awful public speech with better public speech. Sure, take people off your Christmas card list. OK, don’t invite them to your Australia Day BBQ. Kick them out of your Pacifist Club. Disciple them if they are local church members. But don’t celebrate when they lose their jobs, and don’t advocate for them to lose employment or social rights and benefits. US visa refusals for people who post celebration of Kirk’s death are unprincipled. Public servants should not be fired for their ghoulish public celebration of Charlie’s death. Unless it’s direct incitement to violence or completely essential to their employment (e.g. journalist neutrality), no one should lose their job over speech outside work. No one. Even within work, we should promote open speech and robust exchange of ideas. The Western workplace is already a blancmange hivemind. Policing speech has made watercooler conversation about as interesting as a post-match interview with an AFL player. Plus it’s the right thing to do.”
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My friend Checkers checks out: He was an ordinary black and white cat, just old enough to losing his teenage ungainliness. His name was Checkers, and he lived over the road from me. Until 6.30 Wednesday night, when he was the victim of a fast car that zoomed off. He had been spooked by a dog walking down the street, and the poor guy with the dog screamed in shock and went and told Checkers’ poor family.
Obadiah had just begun to get to know Checkers, complicated by our two house-bound cats being freaked out by his insouciant presence in our garden.
It was simply a small suburban tragedy. But Obadiah has an obsession to share with you. Obadiah was indeed obsessed, spending months building a cat run. It runs out the laundry window and up over a corner of the roof, then down towards a cat run (or “catio’) in the slice of our backyard.
You might not go to such lengths, but please take this as a plea to keep your cats and local wildlife safe. But here’s Obadiah’s trade secret, “Connect-it”: aluminium tubing and cat net available at your local Bunnings.
And Obadiah should make a further confession: he walks one of the cats on a lead each morning.
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Conversion week: the word “conversion” cropped up twice last week, both times at the Sydney Anglican Synod (church parliament), which at 830 members is almost the same size as the House of Lords, but much less grand. “I believe in conversion” was the theme of Archbishop Kanishka Raffel’s speech at the gathering’s outset. He was talking about himself and other people calling on Jesus as their Lord. “I believe in conversion because I was converted. Next January, it’ll be 40 years since by God’s grace, he opened my eyes to see the sin in my own heart and the grace that flows from the cross of Christ. A death of limitless power, a sacrifice of matchless beauty to satisfy a just wrath to atone, immovable and infinite sin, to overwhelm and heal a deep and deadly corruption.
“Reading the gospel alone in my room, not because I was on a search for God, but because God was on a search for me…”
And then there was a debate on responding to the Conversion Practices Ban Act. Conversion in that law is of sexual orientation or sexual activities – the Synod motion only opposes the second.
Obadiah only mentions the two uses of “conversion” because it seemed quite ironic that the word meant two different things. Well, maybe not, in one sense, because all who are converted to Christ will experience conversion regarding their sexual lives.
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Statistic time: By 2056, the Sydney/Wollongong population will have grown to 8.5 million, with 50 per cent living West of Parramatta, the Sydney Anglican Property annual report tells Obadiah. In effect, Parramatta will be the centre of town. By contrast, with growth to the west, Melbourne’s CBD may become geographically central to Australia’s largest city.
It points out a problem for all churches – of having property mostly located in one part of town. In Sydney, currently 70 per cent of church properties are east of Parramatta.
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The Prof was ripped off: Obadiah is in two minds about whether he should have called a point of order in Synod. Maybe he was gutless. That is not unusual. The indefatigable mover of progressive motions in the conservative synod, Professor Bernard Stewart, moved a motion to recognise “that some women resident in this Diocese are called by God to be deacons, priests and bishops.”
But instead the Synod adopted an amendment that referred “the question of the calling of women to, and the ordination of women to, the priesthood (and therefore their potential to be consecrated as bishops) to the Doctrine Commission for its advice, in light of the best recent scholarship on the questions.”
To Obadiah, that seemed to be a direct negative of the Stewart motion.
The seconder of the amendment said the Stewart motion would overturn the doctrine of the Sydney Diocese, which opposes women priests or presbyters. Obadiah agrees, which is why he thought the motion was a direct negative of the Professor’s motion.
The rules of the Australian Parliament state “An amendment may not be moved if it is a direct negative to the question. An amendment is not regarded as a direct negative unless it would have exactly the same effect as negativing the motion.”
But Obadiah can’t find that rule in the Standing Orders of the NSW Legislative Assembly which is what the Synod follows.
So it appears that Obadiah would seem his point of order overturned by the chair. And moving dissent in the chair would have riled up the Synod, so no good outcome there.