An Obadiah Slope Column:
Fact Check one: Warren Throckmorton, psych prof, and Christian Journo has fact-checked the US Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson.
In his speech to the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson prays a prayer he attributes to Thomas Jefferson:
(The prayer starts about 4 mins in)
Here is the prayer:
Almighty God, Who has given us this good land for our heritage, we humbly beseech Thee that we may always prove ourselves a people mindful of Thy favor and glad to do Thy will. Bless our land with honorable ministry, sound learning, and pure manners.
Save us from violence, discord, and confusion, from pride and arrogance, and from every evil way. Defend our liberties and fashion into one united people the multitude brought hither out of many kindred and tongues.
Endow with Thy spirit of wisdom those who in Thy Name we entrust the authority of government that their may be justice and peace a home, and that through obedience to Thy law we may show forth Thy praise among the nations of the earth.
In time of prosperity fill our hearts with thankfulness and in the day of trouble suffer not our trust in Thee to fail; all of which we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.
It can be found in the 1928 Book of Common Prayer of The Episcopal Church. The 1928 edition had a more conservative theology than the 1979 edition that is in use today.
But as Throckmorton and others point out Monticello.org – a website based at the house he designed and publishers of the Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia – dedicated to establishing true and false quotes from Jefferson, believes it to be false.
But maybe we should go easy on Mike Johnson; he is a Baptist.
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Fact Check Two: Bishop Glenn Davies, former Anglican Archbishop of Sydney who now heads the Diocese of the Southern Cross is someone Obadiah regards as a hero for his leadership of his current and previous dioceses. But here’s a fact check: interviewed by AP (formerly Australian Presbyterian) Bishop Davies gives his interpretation of the Marriage Postal Survey.
“The same-sex postal vote, which we had a number of years ago, and then where 60% of those who did the postal vote or around 60% actually voted in favour of same-sex marriage. But when you realise that only 80% of citizens who could vote actually participated, you’ll see the national [turn out] it was less than 50% of the eligible voting population of Australia because it wasn’t [a] compulsory postal vote. Less than 50% agreed to this change, but nonetheless, the parliament went ahead and followed the will of those who did vote. So with that now, well, some 50% of people have not voted for it. and therefore, we’re stuck with this law in Canberra, and this is now permeating education in our schools with marriage celebrants for same-sex marriages.”
Bishop Davies has his facts right. But his analysis bears examination. Take, for example, the last federal election where 89 per cent of the people enrolled voted. Labor won 52.93 of the two party preferred vote. Using the Davies’ logic it could be argued that less than fifty percent of the people voted for the government we got.
In a parliamentary system you might want to go through and examine the result seat-by-seat. So let’s take Banks where the Liberal Party got 53.2 per cent of the two-party-preference vote and Labor got 46.8. The voter turn out in that seat was 91.55 per cent and the informal vote was 6.64 per cent.
Using the Davies’ logic more people did not vote for the long standing Liberal member David Coleman than those who voted for him.
Obadiah understands Glenn Davies’ wish to emphasise the lower turn out for the marriage postal survey – as he is being interviewed about An Australian Creed for Sexual Integrity, a statement of traditional christian belief. In the interview Davies makes it clear he helped Warwick Marsh of the Canberra Declaration (a similar earlier statement) with the drafting.
The website for An Australian Creed for Sexual Integrity is at australiancreed.org Those wishing to sign it should note that the site works best on a computer rather than a phone.
But the marriage survey’s turnout of 79.5%, compared to the valid votes cast in Banks of 84.9 per cent (Voter turnout – informal votes) does not look too way out of line.
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Fact Cheek Three: This week an old controversy rebounded, by accident. The topic of the Equip Conference (a Sydney-Based evangelical women’s conference) and some comments made about short hair formed the basis of an Eternity report in 2017 which apparently people still feel strongly about, came up on a thread about a diferent event. Obadiah want’s to point to it as an example where many commentators in a long comment thread managed a civil discussion which involved fact checking – not least because the topic was raised mistakenly. The thread is on Obadiah’s Facebook https://www.facebook.com/ObadiahSlope and check out December 27.