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The Pastor's Heart with Dominic Steele
Christian leaders join Dominic Steele for a deep end conversation about our hearts and different aspects of Christian ministry each Tuesday afternoon.
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The Pastor's Heart with Dominic Steele
Obeying God or the Government? NSW Conversion Practices Law with Neil Foster, Michael Stead & Simon Swadling
New South Wales’ Conversion Practices Ban Act has just come into effect — along with guidelines from Anti-Discrimination NSW that many Christian leaders believe overstep the legal boundaries and impact ordinary pastoral ministry.
We are joined by legal expert Associate Professor Neil Foster, South Sydney Bishop Michael Stead, and Summer Hill Anglican Assistant Minister Simon Swadling.
Together, we unpack the implications of the new law for Christian preaching, prayer, counselling, and discipleship — especially in matters of sexuality, marriage, and gender.
We discuss:
- The difference between the legislation and the government’s explanatory materials
- The implications for pastors, parents, and churches
- The tone and posture of faithful gospel ministry in a hostile legal environment
- Why some pastors are calling for civil disobedience — and others for restraint
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it is the pastor's heart and dominic steel. And what should the christian pastor do about the new conversion therapy legislation just coming to force? Here in new south wales? Neil foster, simon swaddling and michael stead are with us. The message of sy's Anglican Archbishop Kanishka Rafel to Sydney ministers, teach confidently God's plan for sexuality, marriage and gender. We should continue to do this, notwithstanding the confused and unhelpful explanatory material provided by Anti-Discrimination New South Wales. And in another letter he has written we will obey God. We can do nothing less. Today we talk to the law professor, the bishop and the pastor.
Speaker 1:New legislation has come into effect here. It was passed by the Parliament in Sydney around 12 months ago just come into effect and with it a set of guidelines that go further than the legislation in restricting the practice of Christian ministry. At first glance, the flashpoint is in the frequently asked questions of the guidelines, where it says the conversion practices ban does not prohibit prayer. However, praying with or over a person with the intent to change or suppress their sexuality or gender identity is unlawful. It is unlawful even if that person has asked you to pray for them to be able to change or suppress their sexuality or gender identity. Now there has been a range of reactions from pastoral leaders, a wide range of reactions. One group has set up a petition to the Parliament. The lead there is being taken by the Presbyterians, but a significant number of other leaders have signed it. And then there are all sorts of other reactions as well.
Speaker 1:Neil Foster is on the line from Newcastle. He's the Associate Professor of Law at Newcastle University. Michael Stead is with us, the Bishop of South Sydney. He's the Associate Professor of Law at Newcastle University. Michael Stead is with us, the Bishop of South Sydney. He chairs the interfaith group Freedom for Faith and is also chair of the Sydney Anglican Ministry, living Faith, which serves people in the church who have same-sex attraction or gender incongruence. And Simon Swadling is with us as well. Simon's an Assistant Minister at Summerhill Anglican Church in inner Sydney and also involved in the Living Faith ministry. Simon, I wonder if we could start with you and your pastor's heart, your heart for the same-sex attracted person in the church, the gender incongruent person in the evangelical church, with this debate going on around and conflicting emotions.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I think anything that is kind of deeply on your pastor's heart is often things that are deeply personal to you, and so this debate is personal to me and my own experiences of same-sex attraction and that wrestle of thinking about how faith and sexuality and those things all go together, and so that kind of really drives my pastor's heart to care for these people and for people to know that the gospel is good, that God's word is good.
Speaker 2:It's both true and good at the same time and it's good for people in my position who are same-sex attracted, people who struggle with gender incongruence and all of those different things that put you outside of the sphere of the norm that people would assume of you. All of these things in God's word is good for everyone, and I'm really keen for people to know that and to know its goodness and to be confident in the goodness of God's word, because it is better than any other story the world might have for us and for how we should live. And so I really want us to grow in our love and confidence in knowing God and living faithfully for him and why that is actually good for us and not something just hard to be endured.
Speaker 1:Michael, your heart in this.
Speaker 3:I really feel for people in our churches at the moment who are confused at this moment because where we have in the past and want to continue to offer support for people who want to live faithfully for Jesus, the anti-discrimination New South Wales materials look like they're saying you can't do that anymore. We can't actually provide the pastoral support that people are asking for and looking for and find valuable and, yeah, I'm disappointed in where anti-discrimination has landed but I'm disappointed for what it means for people in our churches who we have been trying to support through ministries, through Living Faith and other ministries.
Speaker 1:Now we've talked about this a lot, but a year ago, when the legislation came out, you were saying it was possible to actually be a biblical Christian and obey the New South Wales government, actually be a biblical Christian and obey the New South Wales government. But actually today, when this month, as the guidelines have come out from the New South Wales Anti-Discrimination Board, they've gone way beyond the law that was passed a year ago.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely, and I'm sure Neil will provide more detail in a moment. But the law is very clear that it's not the same law. That's in Victoria, In New South Wales. The government made very clear that it was not going to be a conversion practice to say to someone if you want to live as a faithful Christian, if you want to follow the teachings of Jesus, then you shouldn't act on your sexual desires. And that was not going to be a conversion practice and that was clear in the legislation, it was clear in the minister's second reading speech and the material from Anti-Discrimination New South Wales says exactly the opposite. It says if you tell someone that they have to be celibate, that's a conversion practice. Maybe a conversion practice is their language, but it leaves the implication that you can't do that.
Speaker 1:Neil Foster, what's your reaction to these guidelines that have just come out?
Speaker 4:Yes, well, I agree with Michael in terms of the fact that it was very surprising really and disappointing to see that aspects of the guidelines actually went further than the law. Guidelines actually went further than the law and in particular, the part that you read where it was sort of asserted as a blanket proposition that seeking to pray and counsel with someone and to help them to change their behaviour would be unlawful, even if they asked you to do so. And that is absolutely not what the New South Wales legislation says in the part of the legislation which deals with what's called the civil regime. So there are two. Just to set the scene a bit, there are two parts to the legislation.
Speaker 4:There is a criminal offence under Part 3, which is only engaged when there's very serious harm that can be proven to be committed beyond reasonable doubt, and that's going to be very rare that that will happen be able to be proven, and very rare that it will have happened actually, but certainly very rare that that will go through.
Speaker 4:And in that criminal provision it says yes, it doesn't matter whether someone asked you or not, but when you come to part four, which is where where most of the discussion is going to be and where there's going to be, you know, possibility of complaints and other things made to the anti-discrimination Board. It does not contain that provision. It does not say that you have to ignore the request that might be given to you by somebody, and that's a very misleading thing for them to have put up in their guidance. And unfortunately, it does seem that what's happened is that some of the people who are putting the guidance together have simply decided to be blunt, to copy the guidance that's been issued in Victoria, and the Victorian law is different. It's not the same law and the New South Wales government was very clear it was not simply going to recycle the Victorian legislation. So it is a matter of some concern that that's been put forward.
Speaker 1:I take it you'll be pointing out to the government that their bureaucrats are doing something that they promised you that they wouldn't.
Speaker 3:Indeed, for the last three weeks, we've been making very clear representations to the government and to Anti-Discrimination New South Wales about this inconsistency. It's disappointing that, to this point, anti-discrimination New South Wales hasn't done anything about it.
Speaker 1:Are they answering the phone? Are they talking to you?
Speaker 3:No, they're not even responding to us. So, yes, it's disappointing that they're not engaging on this issue.
Speaker 1:What about the minister?
Speaker 3:He is talking to us and it's been confirmed to us that our understanding from the minister's point of view and what the Act actually says is what it is actually what it's supposed to be saying. It's consistent with the second reading speech. They've acknowledged that there is a difference between what the Minister said when he introduced the legislation and the guidelines. They've communicated that to Anti-Discrimination New South Wales and Anti-Discrimination New South Wales still haven't made any changes and the difficulty is that at the moment the government can't compel anti-discrimination New South Wales. They are an autonomous agency set up by the government but at the moment they can't tell them to take the guidelines down.
Speaker 1:Let's just explore what they're saying, what anti-discrimination New South Wales is saying for a moment. And I mean we've been saying the last couple of minutes that they have copied the Victorian guidelines rather than drawn their information from the New South Wales legislation. And they've copied the. They've taken it from the Victorian legislation, not from the New South Wales legislation, Correct? Let's watch their little promo video and compare it, and Wayne Conner's done the work of comparing the New South Wales version with the Victorian version. For those listening to us, the New South Wales version has the female voice and the Victorian version has the male voice and if you're watching, the New South Wales version is on the left-hand side of the screen.
Speaker 5:Most people are attracted to the opposite sex and live their lives as the gender on their original birth certificate.
Speaker 2:Some people have a different sexual orientation or gender identity.
Speaker 5:There's nothing wrong with being heterosexual or straight or with being lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or asexual All of these are perfectly natural. Everyone deserves to be loved and cared for by their family, friends and community, and people can still be a person of faith or not, whichever they prefer. In Victoria, the law says all people, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity should feel welcome and valued and are able to live authentically and with pride.
Speaker 5:There are those who believe that being LGBTQA is an illness, a choice or a disorder. They believe it can be changed or hidden.
Speaker 2:They believe that things can be done to stop a person being LGBTQA or to fix them.
Speaker 3:These actions might look like counseling or they might be disguised as prayer or pastoral conversation that is intended to change or hide someone's gender or sexuality, or hide someone's gender or sexuality, some people who believe these things also believe that a person who has a different sexual orientation or gender identity can't also be a person of faith, but we know these so-called conversion practices are deeply harmful.
Speaker 5:They don't work and they are damaging to the whole community.
Speaker 2:Victoria's laws protect people's rights to have religious beliefs and people also have the right to be safe.
Speaker 5:The laws in New South Wales protect people's rights to have religious beliefs.
Speaker 1:And people also have the right to be safe and free from harm. Maybe, simon Swadling, we could start with you. I mean, I know you like I have been working really hard to try and see people with same-sex attraction flourish in the Christian church, and so how do you feel when you kind of see the Christian faith or the Christian ministry kind of caricature it in that way?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it can be hard to see it caricatured in that way.
Speaker 2:That is quite negative when, like you say, I and I know many others have worked quite hard to figure out ways of making sure that people from LGBTQ backgrounds would feel welcomed into the church and accepted as part of the church community, even as we preach the gospel to people from all sorts of backgrounds and with all sorts of different histories, as we preach the gospel to people from all sorts of backgrounds and with all sorts of different histories, and so it can be hard to to see something that I believe as good and true and beautiful for everyone, and for me particularly, be represented as something that is negative and harmful alongside things that are negative and harmful.
Speaker 2:You know the Anglican church has said that they don't agree with those forced conversion practices.
Speaker 2:That's statements they've made, and so you know there are those things that we would willfully acknowledge are harmful that people have done in the past, but to then have everything about our faith kind of, and these things that we believe is true and good to be lumped into that is quite hard to see and kind of is painful for me in the way that it kind of pushes a divide between faith and who I am and how I live my life in a way that can be painful and that I've had to work really hard at working out what it looks like to live a holistically faithful Christian life. Sometimes these discussions can push a greater divide there than there should be, even if in those videos they say, hey, that's not what they want to do. You can be both and you can be both. But yeah, it can be hard to see that and kind of wrestle with how I'm feeling, with the positive and negative and the things that are hard and also wanting to be faithful to Jesus.
Speaker 1:So, michael'sead, I guess there's two aspects for you. One is there's the annoyance at the misrepresentation in the video, but then, secondarily, the fact that it's come out. It's a direct copy of the Victorian legislation rather than actually.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it is. I mean, it is quite literally a digital cut and paste with a very thin editing, so much so that they've like they haven't even turned their mind to what the New South Wales Act actually says. In the video they lift the part of the Victorian video that says in the legislation it says that everybody gets to live authentically and with pride. That's actually in the Victorian Act. That's not in the New South Wales Act. There's nothing equivalent to that. But they were so literally just cut and paste that they have changed the opening sentence in New South Wales Act. There's nothing equivalent to that. But they were so literally just cut and paste that they have changed the opening sentence in New South Wales, in Victoria. But they haven't even turned their mind to what does it actually say in our Act?
Speaker 3:And we had some engagement with anti-discrimination in New South Wales before the video came out and we said whatever you do, don't copy the Victorian Act. And we highlighted all the things that were offensive, deeply offensive, about that. And, apart from a very minor change of wording, they took out a line that says this might be disguised as prayer and it's changed to this is just prayer. We were offended by disguised as prayer. So I acknowledge they have made one change in response to, but they actually missed the whole point of what we were saying, which was in Victoria. It's a different act.
Speaker 3:There are things which are offences, which are not offences here.
Speaker 1:So I guess the first thing is you're fighting the anti-discrimination board. What's the next round for that fight? Look like.
Speaker 3:So it looks like going back through proper channels, through the government. So the New South Wales Faith Affairs Council, either collectively or members of it, saying to the government this is deeply problematic for our faith communities because that's the body that the government set up to advise it. That was the body that wrote the letter to Anti-Discrimination New South Wales saying don't do this. In the past They've done exactly what we said please don't do. And now we need to say we need you to fix it and we'll have to go back through the channels to tell the government, to officially try and tell Anti-Discrimination New South Wales and in the meantime I take it.
Speaker 1:the word is to ministers ignore the New South Wales Anti-Discrimination Board and follow God.
Speaker 3:Yep, yes, we are sending out communication that says do not rely on the advice, the so-called explanatory materials produced by Anti-Discrimination New South Wales, because they've got it wrong and if you follow them, it's saying things are offences which are not offences according to the Act.
Speaker 1:Neil. However, if we just now put aside the Anti-discrimination guidelines and just come back to the law itself, there are some areas where the Christian is going to have a problem with the law itself.
Speaker 4:Is that right, professor Foster, is going to require careful consideration when some counselling practices are happening and it will present some challenges and, depending on the way that it is interpreted by, I guess, tribunals which well actually the process will be, a complaint might go through the Anti-Discrimination Board first and then possibly to a tribunal, possibly considered at some stage down the track by a court. There are going to be some tricky issues. I mean, there are a couple of things that come up. One of the things is to say that there is explicit, there are explicit provisions in the New South Wales law which provide recognition of faith practices. There's no, it's not a conversion practice to preach to a congregation or to provide teaching to a small group in general about what the Bible's view is of appropriate sexual activity, that it should be between a man and a woman in the context of a marriage and that people ought not to engage in activity outside that. So general subsection 3.4 of the legislation says that, you know, stating relevant religious teachings, all those sorts of things are allowed, but it's subject to this caveat of it still must not amount to a conversion practice, and so defining what a conversion practice is is going to continue to present challenges.
Speaker 4:I think one could argue that the thing that a person who's asked to provide biblical counsel will be saying is I'm concerned about your behaviour and the Bible says you should behave in certain ways rather than dealing with your underlying orientation, rather than dealing with your underlying orientation, and so I think an argument can still be made that you know what we're asking, what God asks from us is obedience to his word, and here is what the Bible says, and let me pray for you that you can obey this in terms of the way you behave.
Speaker 4:But that's going to be challenged in some context.
Speaker 4:So there's going to be some fuzziness and some difficulty around whether that's going to be accepted or not.
Speaker 4:I think, unfortunately, it has to be said that because we've seen anti-discrimination in New South Wales willing to put out unhelpful and inaccurate guidance and I have to say it doesn't increase one's confidence that when a complaint is made to that same body, that it will be fairly treated. But nevertheless, one would want to continue to say the law should be applied and administrative bodies can't just change the law in accordance with what they think is the best law. They need to follow what the law has been said said and not to buy a whole new conversation, but we've seen that this week in the UK, where the UK Supreme Court handed down its decision on the meaning of sex and woman in discrimination law and said, contrary to what had been said by bureaucrats, it's a biological fact. So you can see that the courts are willing to push back where there's been an erroneous interpretation of law offered, and so I think those are the sorts of issues that pastors are going to have to continue to wrestle with.
Speaker 1:Let's go to you, michael, and this line between, if you like, suppression of thought and behaviour, because that seems to be the issue. I'm just thinking about a conversation I had this week with a man, and it was over his struggle with pornography. And he doesn't just want to be somebody who doesn't look at pornography, he wants to be somebody who isn't tempted to look at naked women who are not his wife, and he wants to suppress that thought, to suppress that temptation. I want to be a one-woman guy and that's a behaviour and a pattern of life that I want to encourage as a pastor. Over to you.
Speaker 3:Again, I still think you can do that kind of counseling without it being characterized as a suppression practice. So what, what we're trying to talk about is the suppression of a sexual orientation or trying to change a sexual orientation.
Speaker 1:So saying to that man you're not trying to change his sexual I. I know we're talking heterosexual here. I'm just making. I've just started with a simple one before I get I narrow in with tougher questions.
Speaker 3:So in that case that is simple, because you're not trying to change his sexual orientation. He is still a man attracted.
Speaker 1:But we're trying to suppress a sexual feeling.
Speaker 3:Well, no, you're trying to suppress a particular expression of a sexual orientation, but his underlying sexual orientation is still a man attracted to a woman. That's not change. You're just saying there are inappropriate ways to express that orientation, and a desire for pornography is not an appropriate action for a Christian. So I'd still want to say that you're not trying to suppress his sexual orientation by praying that he doesn't want to look at porn. That is a distinction I think that you can make. Sexual orientation means who I am attracted to. You're not trying to change that or even suppress that.
Speaker 1:Now I think I've married 90 couples over 20 years. I think about five, 90 heterosexual weddings, I think about five couples have shared with me before marriage that in the past one of them had been involved in gay sex and so that was part of their narrative prior to their wedding. Now, as a Christian pastor going forward, I want to encourage this newly married couple to only have eyes for their new bride or their new husband, and to suppress other sexual thoughts.
Speaker 3:And that would be true whether it was a same-sex attracted or heterosexually attracted couple.
Speaker 3:And that, I think, is the distinction that we want to continue to make is that we're not singling out people because they are gay or lesbian and saying there's special rules that apply to you.
Speaker 3:These are general rules that apply to all Christians. That is, when you get married, you should only have sex with your spouse. You should only be thinking about having sex with your spouse and not desiring sex with somebody who is not your spouse. That's the Christian teaching that we're trying to encourage within the church, and I would be relying on the part of the Act that says I'm expressing a Christian teaching and I'm encouraging people to live according to that, which is one of the explicit exemptions in our Act, which is not in the Victorian Act, and I think that I can do that without risk of that being a conversion practice. So, to be very clear, a conversion practice is when I say to someone I will pray with you or I will exhort you to change you from gay to straight, to use that kind of language, that God can make you straight if you just believe Jesus enough. That's a conversion practice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I wonder if maybe sometimes this language of suppression is a bit unhelpful in that way of thinking, in the way that it leans into that more legal language of what we're trying to do as pastors is not to suppress parts of people but to help people bring all those things under the Lordship of Christ and to know what it looks like to give those things over to Jesus's Lordship.
Speaker 2:So we're not asking people to suppress parts of themselves, but to understand how their whole self might follow Jesus faithfully. And so it's not. We're asking people to suppress bits of themselves, but we're asking them to say what does every part of me living under the Lordship of Christ look like? How can I love Jesus more than these other bits of myself? How can I live faithfully, even with these complexities and with these desires that I might have, and grow to love what Jesus loves more than the things that I just want, which I don't think is suppressing things, but rather growing to love what a godly life looks like more than other things? What if?
Speaker 1:I'm not married yet and I've been involved in gay sex and straight sex and I'm coming to Christ, you know, and I'm now wanting to live the new life in Christ. Or maybe I'm not even sure that that's what I want, but I'm the pastor talking to that person about what it looks like to live the new life in Christ, am I? I've got a clear sense of what God would have me do, but it feels to me like not just the guidelines, but the law is not allowing me to. Is that right? Am I reading it right or not?
Speaker 3:It depends what you're trying to, what the pastoral intent of the conversation is. If you're saying to that person in order to be a Christian, you have to become straight, you can't be gay anymore and you have to… I'm not saying that.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 3:And that's what I'm saying that definitely is a conversion practice. At the other end, if you're saying to someone that every Christian, when we follow Christ, it's a call to worship him with all of our life, which includes worshipping him with our bodies, and that does mean saying no to the expression of desires which are contrary to the will of Christ.
Speaker 4:And that's the truth for every person coming to Christ, gay or straight. I'm sorry, I just wanted to add. I think it's always important to remember that part of the legislation that says that conversion practices under Section 3.3b do not include genuinely facilitating an individual's coping, skills development or identity exploration to meet the individual's needs, including by providing acceptance, support or understanding to the individual. An individual approaches you. They want to cope with life In terms of being a Christian person obeying God. It seems to me that that's another part of the legislation that would authorise you helping them in those ways, and that would be the sort of thing that many people would like to, would be able to rely on in those contexts.
Speaker 1:So are you saying, then, that there's nothing in the Act that I need to worry about?
Speaker 3:I wouldn't say that because there are some Christians who do want to engage in they would describe it as a deliverance ministry, believing that if they do pray with people, they can change a person's sexual orientation. That will be a change practice. If I say, come and if you pray with me and we will pray, that God will change your underlying desires so that you no longer have desires for men but for women, that's a change practice and that would be prohibited by the Act.
Speaker 1:Are you saying then, in our regular evangelical churches, whether they be Presbyterian or Baptist or Anglican, you're not seeing that there's a clash between the act and….
Speaker 3:I'm not aware, so it's not a concern. I'm not saying it's not a concern for any Christian, but in the circles in which I move I don't know of any Christians who are holding out the promise of a changed sexual orientation, and in the ministries that I've involved with we're acknowledging that people have a same-sex attraction and we're helping them to live faithfully to Jesus with that attraction, people are praying to reduce my temptations to sin.
Speaker 3:And that's about the expression of the desire which I'm distinguishing about the expression of the desire which I'm distinguishing between the expression of living out our desires as distinct from a change of orientation. So I can be to take it away from the same-sex attracted. I'm a heterosexual man. I have sexual desires which are not compatible with following Jesus and therefore part of being a faithful Christian is not acting on those desires. That's not a conversion practice. It's not a suppression practice, because I'm not trying to either change my underlying orientation or even suppress it. So you have to pretend that you're not heterosexual. I can acknowledge that. That's not the problem. The problem is having that orientation leads to desires which are not appropriate for me as a Christian, and it's entirely appropriate for me as a pastor to encourage people to not act on temptations which are inconsistent with Christian faith. Simon.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I agree with that. I think it's helpful for us. Sometimes we can be confused with what we mean by language. There's a lot of different ways that people talk about these things. That can leave us to be a little bit confused. But I think, speaking from a personal perspective, I don't ever expect my attractions to change across my life. I mean they might but I don't expect that. But what I have noticed a change in me is what I want is more and more to be faithful to Jesus.
Speaker 2:And so while those attractions are there and they remain, I actually have a greater desire to be faithful to Jesus, and what that looks like, and so actually, I'm more and more convinced that being faithful to Jesus is good for me, and so if I'm convinced of the goodness of those things, then it's a joy and a privilege for me to live faithfully to Jesus. Convinced of the goodness of those things, then it's a joy and a privilege for me to live faithfully to Jesus, even if I don't expect those underlying attractions to change. The thing that I want to do is changing, because I am wanting more and more to be faithful to Jesus, and so there's that tension there that maybe we can be confused about with language that the people we're attracted to may not change, may change. That's a complicated thing that is somewhat separate from then how we live our lives, because that's the choices we make to be faithful to Jesus and to love him more.
Speaker 1:So, michael, we're seeing different Christians respond differently and some doing petitions, some writing quite strong blog posts and those kind of things. Talk to me about both. Well, firstly, just when we respond differently in debates, what's your sense there?
Speaker 3:I think in these things we want to give each other grace and not be overly critical of the different positions that people take, as though one of them is more faithful to Jesus or not. They are, if you like, different strategies towards the same end. So at the moment, my strategy is about getting the Anti-Discrimination New South Wales to change its advice so that it actually reflects what the legislation is supposed to be providing, and to provide some clear guidance to what is permissible for faith communities. So that's what I'm trying to achieve at the moment. Other people are trying to achieve a wholesale repeal or amendment of the legislation. I don't think that that's either necessary at the moment nor politically likely Now. The second thing is a judgment call, and so I'm happy that we land differently on that, but at the moment, I think the most important thing is to get clarity about what is already the state of the law before we try and change the Act.
Speaker 1:Neil.
Speaker 4:I guess I'm very, in general, supportive of approaches made by folk like Michael, for whom I'm very grateful, and others in conversations with the government to talk about clarifying the way the law works.
Speaker 4:And I think, from that point of view, in a democratic society one would hope that people would listen to members of the community and, in particular, you know, it's very important that where you've got again not to harp on it too much but where you've got public servants who are meant to be implementing what Parliament has passed, that that's what they do, rather than implement their own view of what the law should be.
Speaker 4:So I think that that's an appropriate way to go. If I can step out of my legal framework just for a second, I guess there's an issue about what's the wisest course of action in terms of saying I'm going to do what the Bible says, regardless of what the law says. I think that all Christian folk will acknowledge that there does come a point where one will have to say I can't disobey God and I have to obey God rather than man. But I would not be looking for that fight. I think my view at the moment is we should be seeing how the law works, how the law is put into practice through the courts and other things like that, before jumping too quickly to taking stands that may not be necessary. So I guess and again as Michael says, that's a question of wisdom and different Christian folk will have different views on those matters.
Speaker 1:Simon, I wonder whether we might finish just by asking you to lead in prayer, just particularly for well, the Christian in our church who's navigating same-sex attraction or gender incongruence, yeah yeah sure.
Speaker 2:I pray, heavenly Father, thank you that you are sovereign over all things, that you are in control, and that you are good and your word is good.
Speaker 2:I pray in times and seasons where we feel this tension of living in the world, but living for you in the world. You would help us to be wise, help us to be humble and gracious, help us to be confident in you and your goodness, and help us seek the goodness of your word and be confident in that, even before others. Father, we pray for those in our churches for whom these issues we're discussing today are personal and painful and complex. I pray that you would help them to know your love, your goodness and grace and that, through those working in ministry and to care for those people, that they would know your love through them as well, and that they would be encouraged to continue following you, to be faithful to you and to grow in their love for you. May we all be pointing each other to grow in our love for Jesus and grow in our likeness of Jesus as we grow to love him more and more.
Speaker 1:Amen. Thanks, simon. That is Simon Swadling. He is an assistant minister at Summerhill Anglican Church in inner Sydney and also involved in the Sydney Anglican Ministry, living Faith. Also with us today, michael Stead, bishop of South Sydney. He chairs the interfaith group Freedom for Faith and is also the chair of the Sydney Anglican Pastoral Ministry, living Faith, attempting to minister to same-sex attracted Christians in the churches and gender incongruent people in our churches. And also today joined on the line from Newcastle the Associate Professor of Law, neil Foster, who is also the author of the Law and Religion in Australia blog. My name's Dominic Steele. Thanks for joining us on the Pastor's Heart. We will look forward to your company next Tuesday afternoon.
