An Obadiah Slope column
Two ex-CEOs: NSW’s CEO Josh Landis lost his job yesterday because he attacked NSW premier Dominic Perrottet’s religion, talking of Perrottet’s “conservative Catholic gut” as the reason for the Premier supporting cashless pokies. Last year Andrew Thorburn lasted a day as Essendon FC CEO because of his association with an evangelical Anglican church, City on a Hill. Obadiah thinks only one thing is clear, Australia does not know what to do about religion.
Attacking a conservative Catholic Premier gets one CEO sacked. Being a conservative Anglican gets another CEO sacked.
It hurts Obadiah’s brain.
###
Tying Social Justice and Christianity together: Obadiah struck a chord writing about how social justice and plain old Christianity fit together. Actually, it was my twin’s fault for making the January 26 honours list, receiving an AM for his work for the Anglican church and the community of SA – tied together in his service as CEO of a couple of Anglicares.
It’s a topic close to the heart of The Other Cheek. Kindness, “seeking the peace of the city,” and justice for all is indeed required of Christians today as we lose our grip on a social license. One is tempted to quote Micah, although an Obadiah writes this column: “Mankind, he has told each of you what is good and what it is the Lord requires of you: to act justly, to love faithfulness, and to walk humbly with your God.”
###
A hero: Obadiah picked up a copy of an autobiography of a personal hero, Harold Evans, a great newspaper editor, from a beautiful second-hand bookstore. Thanks, Braidwood Anglicans! Evans quotes his predecessor at the Northern Echo, an even greater editor W.T, Stead, one of the inventors of investigative journalism. He famously exposed human trafficking in Victorian Britain by buying a 13-year-old girl.
Stead’s definition of being an editor was on the wall of the Northern Echo editor’s office when Evans walked in on his first day: “What a glorious opportunity of attacking the devil, isn’t it?’
When my family moved across Adelaide to a decaying manor, we found bound copies of The Pall Mall Gazette, the paper W. T. Stead edited at the height of his fame. He was the inventor, Evans informs me, of the subhead used to break up long columns of type. Could The Pall Mall Gazette have given Obadiah his abiding interest in newspaper design and journalism? Maybe. Obadiah certainly remembered The Pall Mall Gazette carrying advanced infographics, which stayed in the back of his mind attempting the same at the SMH.
###
Chit-chat: Obadiah has been reading many admiring comments about the artificial intelligence program ChatGPT. Some preachers are in awe of its sermon writing prowess. But Canadian Biblical Studies Professor Isaac Soon has found that it fabricates sources. So he asks ChatGPT to help write a paper on whether Romans 2 only speaks to gentile proselytes – a controversial subject Professor soon tells us is controversial.
Soon was fooled at first, as ChatGPT lists references by scholars that do exist. He examined the list of references from ChatGPT. “These appear to be good results by reputable scholars. But after a closer look, none of these works actually exists. ChatGPT actually generates imagined resources that look reputable but cannot actually be found.”
Soon, who teaches at Crandall University gives his paper on ChatGPT, “On Using ChatGPT in the Biblical Studies Classroom,” an alternative title “How ChatGPT made me look like an idiot.”
###
Collateral: Progressive gay Anglican priest Trevor Thurston Smith posts something the conservative readers elsewhere – even here – might find prescient on his blog. “A wise priest once said to me, ‘”‘Sexuality isn’t the big issue for the church. The real big issue is what sort of church we want to be, how we approach reading and interpreting the Bible and how we do our Theology. That’s a big can of worms, and the sexuality debate is nothing more than the tin opener.'”‘
“I find those words as chilling and disturbing now as I did then. They do, however, explain how sexuality has bizarrely become a ‘first order’ issue when in reality, it’s the underlying questions of Theology and Biblical authority that are truly ‘first order’. If my friend was right (and I see growing evidence that he probably was) then the LGBTQI+ community is nothing more than collateral in a much bigger battle.”
###
On the waterfront: Sitting in the sail-sheltered courtyard of the Swordfish Club in Sussex Inlet, watching the gum trees across the wide inlet turn from olive to steel blue at dusk, Mrs Obadiah said of our firstborn, “thanks, daughter #1, for giving us a strong connection to a beautiful place.” Yes, our daughter#1’s autistic superpowers made coming each year on holiday to the same place a priority. That turned out to be a blessing for us.