Martyn Iles’ best moment, what’s next for the ACL, and wise words from Waleed Aly

An Obadiah Slope column

So what’s a nice moderate person like Obadiah saying nice things about Martin Iles? As Obadiah reported for Eternity, Iles had a good night on Q and A in 2021, when as many remember, he set aside political talking points to emphasise the gospel.

Of course, Iles is not the only Christian to have a good night on Q and A. John Dickson famously ended his debate with atheist Laurence Krauss by declaring, “I get all the science plus Jesus,” one of the best closing lines on Q and A. Ever. Christian or non-Christian. Miroslav Volf, also put up by CPX like Dickson, went well.

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Good question: Alain Millett, a “60-year-old, out-and-proud gay man,” motioned he’d like to live free from employment discrimination “along with being free from hearing and reading hate speech about me.” He asked Iles, “if Jesus came back today, what would he do?” It still seems to  Obadiah to be a pretty good question for a Christian to be asked.

“Alain, thank you for the question, and it’s important, and I’m glad to have the opportunity to answer it in front of you and others who are watching,” Iles began. “There was a word in the question which I’d like to address first, and then I’ll address Israel Folau if that’s OK. The first word I’d like to address is the word ‘hate’. ‘Hate’ is a word that is thrown around a lot. I see it every day thrown at me. It’s a very, very serious word. It refers to somebody’s motive. It’s an attitude of heart that would like to see someone else come into harm. Jesus said, effectively, that if you hate your brother, then you’ve murdered him in your heart. It’s a very serious thing. For a Christian to hate is a bad sin. The reality is this – a Christian never looks fundamentally at another person as an enemy to be destroyed. And that’s the danger of politics – that we can get sucked into that. We never look at the other person as somebody whom we would like harm to befall. We only ever… And I cannot say this strongly enough. We only ever look at people as souls to be saved, and that includes me, and so…

There’s crosstalk, and Hamish MacDonald steers him back to Folau. “Correct. So, on the Israel Folau question – I think it’s crucially important to understand what Israel Folau said because it actually answers everything for me. The media have repeatedly said that Israel condemned homosexuals to hell, condemned homosexuals to hell, and that’s what they’ve said. Now, that is not the overall point of the post that he made. It’s taken as a whole that is not even the main thing that he said or the point that he was trying to make. What he said was that sinners are destined for judgement – and, yes, Christians understand that as hell – and all of us will stand before God and we’ll all be judged. But then he turned to the other side of the coin and said, “And forgiveness awaits to all who repent and put their trust in the Lord Jesus Christ because He died for our sin and He offers us a life unto God.” He said all of that in his post. And either you believe both sides of that coin, in which case, you are free – you have condemnation and salvation, you have judgement, you have release, you have repentance, you have faith – or you believe neither side of the coin, and good luck to us all if we don’t, and you don’t have a problem. And if Israel Folau can lose his livelihood because he said that, then we should hunt out every single Christian in this country who works anywhere and fire them on the spot, because they all believe it and they have all said something similar…”

Now Obadiah thinks that is a good defence of Folau, and given that Iles was a strong defender of the footballer, so unlikely to say Folau was un-nuanced or similar.

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The tough question: Openly gay (then) MP Trent Zimmerman asked, “I’m interested, Martyn… I mean, I have no intention of repenting being gay. I’m wondering where you think that’s going to leave me when I…loose this mortal coil?”

Host Hamish Macdonald handballed it forward: “Yeah, what will happen to Trent if he doesn’t repent?”

“Well, I’ll answer the question,” Marty Iles replied. “And the answer is this simple – the answer is that God commands all people everywhere to repent. It’s not a gay thing. It’s not a trans thing. It’s not an LGBT thing. It’s a person thing. And I always say to people, the day that I found out I was a sinner going to hell was the best day of my life because it turned me in the right direction, actually made me seek God and, actually, that was a gateway to life itself.”

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High scores: Back then, Obadiah talked to some QandA viewers.

“Martyn Iles preached the gospel to Australia tonight”, academic Stephen Chavura posted. “He spoke about Jesus as our saviour. He remained cool, gracious, and articulate in the face of some fairly obvious hostility. He didn’t back down or appear embarrassed by his views. Yeah, #ACLspeaksforme.” 

Chavura is a consistent pro-ACL voice. But Presbyterian Minister Nathan Campbell isn’t. “Martyn Iles did well on Q&A last night,” Presbyterian minister Nathan Campbell posted. “He articulated some deep Christian truths, the Gospel even, with his feet held to the metaphorical fire. And he did it with a degree of grace.” (Campbell went on to discuss how ACL’s platform is narrow.)

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But today’s question for the ACL is, “what next?

They are in the shadow of Jim Wallace, who led them through the years of Howard and Rudd Gillard Rudd. On the last night of Julia Gillard’s time as PM, the Australian Christian lobby gathered the leaders of all the major denominations (with the Anglicans and Uniting Church represented by evangelicals) to put their views to the PM. It was a carefully choreographed presentation, with each leader sticking to an agreed script. Co-ordinated by the ACL

In a very different time since, the Iles team has taken a different approach – building up an activist coalition, with issues like the Israeli Folau campaign raising millions of dollars and increasing the ACl supporter base by a factor of three, as Iles’ departure note stated.

That’s an impressive achievement. Building up an activist base has made ACL in some respects more powerful, but arguably has pulled it from the church base.

If the issues were still same-sex marriage, and abortion, the new activist base and the church base would complement each other. 

But the Anti-vax/pro vacs divide and the Voice are much more difficult turf in which to link the two. The new activist base for ACL loves the greater emphasis on the gospel Iles bought to ACL. Distributing gospels, and the Babylon rallies, and which some people were saved, created intense support. At the same time, conservative political positions were added to the mix.

The base has a solid anti-vax component, most likely against the voice. Seeing how this can work with speaking with and for the churches is tough.

“We don’t need to ask the church to be able to do a letter box drop”, said one commenter at The Other Cheek. This indicates that the base includes some who are effectively unchurched, maybe because their denomination is Liberal. The answer, Obadiah believes, is not a parallel to the local church which is what the Iles’ ACL has been for this commentator and others, but to build up the orthodox local churches.

This may be the missing ingredient in the Martin lies ACL.

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Inspiration for churches: It seems that changing the name of a church is more and more common. Or is it that Obadiah is getting old? In any case, help for. Pastors and church committees that want to do a re-brand are available! Go to Namemy.church Note the handy use of the dot church old (top-level domain).

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Wise words from Waleed Aly: A stoush between two bands that Obadiah admits he has not heard of causes Aly to write about the rush to cancel. https://www.smh.com.au/national/outrage-offensive-when-did-morality-become-a-blunt-instrument-20230222-p5cms5.html  King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, as Ali notes an excellent name for a band, is boycotting Bluesfest in protest at another band, stick Fingers, being invited to perform.

“Sticky Fingers’ frontman, Dylan Frost, is accused of physically intimidating Indigenous female singer Thelma Plum seven years ago and harassing a trans woman in a pub two years later,” Aly explains.

Where he goes with the topic is fascinating. A boycott these days is more than a gesture; it is a statement of who you are. “Boycotts quickly become attractive because they are a symbolic excommunication; a declaration that someone is so tainted, so beyond the pale, that to share space with them is to be somehow contaminated. Obviously, that demands an absolutist judgment of wrongdoers. When we boycott someone because “this is who we are”, we’re also presuming to say “this is who they are.”

Aly is mourning the death of liberalism. Of our new and current world, at least in the West, he writes: “… it’s a world in which absolutist judgment is itself a moral act. It might even be the greatest moral act. That’s a strange version of morality on any traditional view because it excludes half the moral universe. It talks endlessly about vice – in this case, a range of “-isms” and “-phobias” – but it has precious little to say about virtue. It can’t because to talk about virtue takes you quickly to ideas like restraint, forbearance, forgiveness, patience, generosity. Not only are these ideas presently unfashionable, they’re often deemed complicit in themselves. You act morally now by showing your impatience and refusing to forgive. And that only makes sense when your approach to morality is one that serves a political end.” Note: this story was updated to correct a misspelling of Aly’s name.

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Great Headline: arguably, The New York Times was late to the story about the Asbury revival. But it has a great Headline “Woodstock’ for Christians: Revival Draws Thousands to Kentucky Town”

The Times’ Ruth Graham reported 50,000 descended on the small town of Wilmore, Kentucky. Not quite “By the time we got to Woodstock, we were half a million strong (Joni Mitchell) but probably more significant.