When Mark Leach, then the senior minister of Rozelle Anglican Church in inner Sydney, heard of a pro-Palestinian demonatration being held in the CBD within a couple of days of the massacre and kidnappings of October 7, 2023 he protested the protest.
“This was the day when the Opera House sales were supposed to be lit up in blue and white. The city was supposed to all be in solidarity and mourning with Israel, and instead the forces of hatred, the jihadists were planning to occupy the city centre and the police were warning the Jewish community to stay out of the city,” he told the Monday Movement podcast host Mark Bilton. “So I phoned [the Po lice] Central command . And I said, this is, ‘I don’t think this is acceptable. I’m an Anglican clergyman. I’m planning to come down and protest this illegal protest.’ And they said, ‘Well, Mr. Leach, if you come down, we can’t guarantee your safety.'”
That led to Leach in a Clergy shirt, with a large Israel flag, protesting from the cathedral steps (pictured) as the demo rallied in the Town Hall Square – with Leach “hiding behind a police van while they dispersed the crowd.”
But these days you might find Mark Leach with an Israeli flag, but the clergy shirt not so much. He founded the “Never Again is Now” movement which has held rallies around Australia to protest anti-Semitism beginning with a large one in sydney’s domain. The Other Cheek covered it: ‘Never again’ pledges as Jews and Christians rally together.
“And next thing we know, we’ve started a national movement around the country, politicians, faith leaders, people of all religions and none gathering together to push back the hate and say ‘never again is now.’
“We will make sure that Jewish community is safe and secure and loved in Australia. And so that became clear as last year unfolded that I couldn’t keep doing that and running a local church. So in September last year, I went full time with Never Again is Now.”
Leach’s life story reveals the path becoming a minister and also founding Never Again is Now.
The second comes is his family background: through his mother, Leach is a Jew. “My mother was a German Jew, fled Germany, fled the Holocaust in 1938, left Frankfurt with her parents, ended up as refugees in Southern Africa. She married my father, mom became a doctor, married my father who was a Catholic background, white South African guy. Both were secular. My father was certainly not a practising Catholic. He was a mercenary and a diamond smuggler and smuggled precious gems was just a career criminal. And so not particularly religious or Christ-like in his character.”
So, Leach was not born into Christianity. Here’s how he tells Mark Bilton his testimony. “In Cape Town … I was invited to go to a youth group by a friend at school. And so I went to the youth group because it had the potential to fulfil a very deep need that I had in my life at the moment at that time, which was girls, and mostly to meet them. I was at a big boys school in Cape Town. So I went along to meet girls and I met God, I also met girls. But I met God.
“And both are wonderful. I had had nothing to do with Protestants. And so this was an Anglican youth group, and they used weird language. They said, we can have a personal relationship with God.
“Then they used even weirder language. They said, oh, you need to invite Jesus into your heart. And I thought that was very peculiar because my mother was a doctor. I’d grown up with a fairly good working knowledge of anatomy and physiology and medical journals scattered around the house. And I’m like, how do you get Jesus into your heart? That language made no sense.
“Then they used an even weirder phrase and they said, oh, mark, you really need to be born again and again, my basic knowledge of anatomy, much like Nicodemus in John three, I was like, well, how can a man having been born once be born again?
Afterwards at a evangelistic stadium rally, Leach did not respond to the altar call. He was torn between being scared of ridcule and knowing he needed to respond. But he thought he had missed the chance.
“I vividly remember praying and I said, ‘God, if I ever get a chance to become a Christian again, please give me the courage to do it.’
“And no sooner had I said that than [the preacher] said, ‘and now’s your last chance. If there’s anyone in the building who wants to become a Christian and follower of Jesus, now’s your chance.’ And I felt myself propelled out of my seat, just surrounded with love and healing and the presence of God. Tears streaming down my eyes, just carried down the front like the most extraordinary encounter with God. And I said yes to Jesus and everything that the weird things people had said seemed to come true, that God entered my life and started the work of change.”
Image: Mark Leach waves the Israeli Flag at a pro-Palestinian demo