It seems that faith is not only unacceptable, but now must be cancelled

The Andrew Thorburn fiasco raises complicated questions that are hard to reconcile.

Do the critics of the Essendon football club CEO, who stepped down after one day in the role over outrage at his religious views, believe that Christian faith disqualifies anyone from public leadership?

Andrew Thorburn resigned as Essendon’s chief executive the day after his appointment.Credit:Peter Braig

How swiftly we have moved to a position where it seems that faith is not only unacceptable, but now must be cancelled in the public arena.

It seems to me that the critics’ fundamental disagreement with Christianity is over its view of sexual behaviour in general, rather than gay sex in particular. The church has believed for 2000 years that sex is part of God’s perfect plan for marriage as a picture of the intimacy between God and his people.

Thus, it condemns all sexual activity outside marriage, be it extra-marital heterosexual sex, adultery or gay sex. Unfortunately, the church has often singled out gay sex for particular opprobrium, for which there is no biblical justification.

Of course non-Christians need not accept these standards (and many Christians also fail to live up to them), but they are no more homophobic than the road rules because they apply to everyone alike.

Inclusion and diversity, the rubric under which Thorburn’s Essendon career was limited to a day, has become a virtue-signalling phrase indicating and requiring support for LGBTQI people. It no longer means inclusion of different groups; it means silencing perceived opponents.

This certainly happened in Thorburn’s case. It seems no one amid the pile-on asked him about his personal views; he was found guilty by association with sermons on the City on a Hill church website. Thorburn would have been running a football club, not a church, and the evidence from his leadership at NAB was that he well understood the difference.

One of those leading the attack on Thorburn was the Premier, Daniel Andrews, who claimed there was no room for “hatred and bigotry”.

I found this rather rich, coming from the man who made COVID-19 lockdown conditions far more onerous for churches than restaurants, and who passed anti- conversion laws prohibiting churches using prayer to change LGBTI people, that seek to control what I might pray in the privacy of my own home and with whom.

Further, if Thorburn is guilty by association with City on a Hill, why is Andrews not guilty by association with the Catholic Church, which holds similar beliefs?

There is an irresolvable paradox in the call for tolerance, because tolerance means tolerating intolerance. On all sides, we must find space for people with whom we profoundly disagree.

Barney Zwartz is a Senior Fellow of the Centre for Public Christianity.

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