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A former pastor shares why he now speaks more directly about politics, justice and truth — and why staying quiet no longer feels like faithfulness.

Before I stepped into the world of Christian advocacy, I was a pastor in a local church. I look back on my time in ministry with fondness, and I remain an active member of the same church today, even as I serve in a very different role with the Canberra Declaration.

My ministry transition has come with both blessings and challenges. Being an introspective person, I’m keenly aware of the shift in my public messaging — particularly online, where the bulk of my work now takes place. This is especially so when I receive pushback from people who knew me primarily as a pastor.

While I receive far more words of encouragement than I do rebuttal, the disapproval is what I tend to reflect on most. I’ve walked with Jesus long enough to know that criticism is always an opportunity for growth, and that dying to myself and being formed in the image of Christ is a messy, lifelong process.

That said, there is a meaningful distinction between my former and current roles — as well as some key changes in my thinking — that help explain why I now take a more assertive tone when addressing the cultural, political and spiritual issues of the day.

So, for those interested, here’s what’s changed.

1. I’m No Longer a Pastor

The first point is perhaps the most obvious while simultaneously being the hardest for some to adjust to: I’m not a pastor anymore.

Being a local church pastor is one of the hardest jobs in the world, which is why we need to keep praying for and championing our church leaders. One of the toughest tasks? Maintaining unity in a beautifully imperfect group of people who don’t always see eye to eye.

While I was pastoring, unity — both with other staff and among congregants — had to be one of my highest goals. It meant setting aside many of my ideas, priorities and distinctives that weren’t necessarily appreciated in that setting. Others on staff did the same. Like the others, I understood the need for compromise and willingly made that sacrifice.

Today, I have a lot more freedom to speak out on the issues I’m passionate about but that warrant less focussed attention in a local church setting.

To be sure, at the Canberra Declaration, I work with a team made up of vastly different personality types, theological commitments and ministry styles. Unity is still the prize, and I aim to be easy to work with and quick to compromise on things that aren’t mission-critical.

But we are a parachurch ministry with a clear-minded focus: to see Australia renewed by the timeless Christian values that built our nation, like life, faith, family, marriage and freedom. As a result, the majority of what I share in public today revolves around these core convictions.

2. I Saw Australia Become Much Darker

The Israel Folau saga, which unfolded in 2019, was one of the first topics I wrote on for the Canberra Declaration. Less than two years earlier, Australia had legalised same-sex marriage, buoyed by promises from the ‘Yes’ camp that Aussie believers wouldn’t lose their jobs or freedoms if the vote went through.

That’s not how it turned out for Israel Folau.

After Folau paraphrased 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 on Instagram, Rugby Australia tore up his four-year contract just months after he signed it. By the time the league’s major sponsor Qantas (led by openly gay CEO Alan Joyce) had weighed in and the press had enjoyed its feeding frenzy, Folau’s career in Australian rugby was beyond repair.

I watched in disbelief, unaware just how much darker things would soon become. Since then, many more Australians have lost jobs, court cases and life savings for stating what was, until recently, universally accepted as true. What’s more, our society is also:

• Pressuring Christian schools to hire staff who openly oppose their values
• Requiring sports teams to include men in women’s competitions
• Banning “conversion therapy”, even when it’s just consensual counselling for unwanted attractions
• Forcing women and girls to use public bathrooms and changerooms that are also accessible to men
• Teaching young children that gender is fluid and that they should explore their sexuality and “gender identity”
• Inviting drag queens to read storybooks to young children in public libraries
• Performing irreversible surgery on, and giving sterilising drugs to, children who’ve been led to believe they were born in the wrong body

I didn’t take a stand against these issues when I was pastoring because they hadn’t come up yet. But if you’d shown me a crystal ball and asked my opinion, I would have denounced such obvious moral wrongs without a second thought.

It’s not my convictions that have changed, but Australian society. We are now forcing women and girls to share sports and bathrooms with men, banning Christian counselling, exposing preschoolers to drag queens, and sexualising and even castrating children. And yet — ironically — it’s people like me who are considered extreme for daring to speak about it and voice what was once common sense.

If you’ve found yourself growing silent on these issues — and more irritated by the Christians speaking up — perhaps it’s time for a reframe: It’s not what Christians should believe that’s changed — only the number of people willing to say it out loud.

3. I Realised Language is the Battleground

When I use a phrase like “castrating children”, please understand that my purpose is not to be deliberately provocative. I’m doing my best to speak the truth in love in these perilous days.

So much of the harm that’s been unleashed on young Australians over the last decade has only won acceptance because it’s been dressed up in euphemistic language. A little while ago, when the pronouns push began, I drew a line in the sand and decided I could go along with it no more.

“Gender-affirming care” is nothing of the sort. Puberty blockers chemically stunt kids’ natural growth. Hormone treatments make their muscles, hair and voice resemble those of the opposite sex. As a next step, surgeons remove breasts and carve up genitals. All three of these radical interventions are taking place in Australia and come with major risks, including sterilisation and yes, castration — and very often, a lifetime of regret.

My current role requires me to write about these issues. And as a Christian who is seeking to be led by the Spirit, my conscience no longer allows me to use the labels that actively hide the harm.

Similarly, when it comes to abortion, I avoid — and even critique — labels like “termination of pregnancy”, “reproductive healthcare” and “pro-choice”. These phrases function as propaganda, since they veil the violence that is unleashed against pre-born babies whom God lovingly created in His own image. (If you are reading this and have been impacted by abortion, please know that God’s grace is for you, and that help is available).

My prose might occasionally sound offbeat or “fringe” as a result — but that’s not why I do it. I have made a commitment to the truth, irrespective of whether that truth has been relegated to the fringe of polite society.

I do so anticipating that Australians will one day see abortion and “gender medicine” in the same way we now view lobotomies and bloodletting — as horrific acts of barbarism. And I am willing to forego any praise for my stand until that day arrives.

4. I Rethought Christian Advocacy

While in ministry, I embraced Timothy Keller’s third way approach — also known as “winsomeness” or public Christianity — without much scrutiny.

Simply put, Keller urged Christians not to side with the political left or right, and instead to persuade people gently, find common ground, and follow a “third way” that critiques both sides while offering a better path.

But third-wayism has at least three fatal flaws I couldn’t see at the time.

First, it assumes that political engagement is merely an extension of evangelism, not a force for real change in its own right. However, if we tiptoe around issues like abortion or gender ideology to avoid offending progressive ears, we quickly lose the moral urgency needed to bring about any meaningful change.

William Wilberforce didn’t reduce his fight against slavery to an exercise in winsome evangelism. He confronted one of history’s great evils, battling an overwhelmingly pro-slavery parliament for decades, and making countless enemies along the way. Yet in the end, he won both laws and lives for the Kingdom.

Not all Christians are called to political advocacy like Wilberforce. But throughout history, those who were, and who achieved great things — people like Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, Susan B Anthony, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Martin Luther King Jr — did so by rejecting winsomeness as a constraint on their advocacy. I now seek to follow their example.

Second, third-wayism imagines a moral equivalence between left and right that doesn’t exist.

While conservatives at times deserve criticism for lacking grace towards immigrants, love for sinners, openness to other cultures, or sympathy for the poor, there are sound biblical reasons for upholding secure borders, national traditions, and responsible welfare policies.

The same cannot be said for the standard policy platform of a modern progressive party — which variously includes abortion-on-demand, sex-change surgery for children, assisted suicide, unrestricted immigration, discrimination against majorities, and porn and drag queens in public libraries (all dressed up in euphemistic language, of course).

Third-wayism urges Christians to rebuke both sides equally. But there’s no comparison between the right’s lack of empathy and the left’s outright rebellion against God’s created order. Any attempt to confront both equally will inevitably mean nitpicking conservatives while excusing progressives — a pattern aptly described as “punch right, coddle left”.

Ultimately, third-wayism favours the progressive cause by giving Christians equal permission to support political causes that proudly oppose the ways of God. The end result is an acceleration of the culture’s godless drift.

I no longer accept the idea that political symmetry is a spiritual virtue.

Third, third-wayism accepts our culture’s contempt for Christianity as fair and accurate, rather than misguided.

It’s no secret that Western societies are now openly hostile to Christians and Christian values. Yet many Christians downplay this reality. How? By assuming that, when we are faced with hostility from secular progressives, the problem lies primarily with us, and not with the culture’s distorted values.

This is a serious misdiagnosis. It leads Christians to become overly accommodating in an effort to stay “credible”. But when we dilute our convictions to gain the world’s approval, the church weakens its witness and Christian leaders abandon their prophetic calling. Thus, what began as a mission to transform the culture ends with the culture transforming the church. We’ve all seen it.

Instead, I have decided to let God’s values, not the culture’s shifting standards, guide my witness on these issues.

5. I Recognised Progressivism’s Danger

Throughout my time in ministry, and accelerating in the years since, I’ve noticed a pattern so common it’s almost a rule: When someone walks away from their faith, progressive politics played a pivotal role in their deconstruction.

The reason for this is not complicated: politics is worldview.

And while conservatism isn’t the same as Christianity and still must be measured against God’s Word, a progressive worldview entails an outright rejection of clear biblical truths, like:

• Every human life is sacred from the womb to the grave
• God created humanity as male and female
• Marriage is for one man and one woman
• The nuclear family is God’s design for society
• Parents, not the state, are responsible for raising their children
• Private property is part of God’s created order
• People should be judged as individuals, not by identity groups
• Freedom of speech, conscience and religion should be protected

What I see now, more clearly than before, is that progressivism isn’t just a political preference — it’s a rival worldview fundamentally at odds with core Christian beliefs. Or as commentator Josh Daws has put it, “progressive politics is an off-ramp from the Christian faith”.

Being progressive today means accepting that men can get pregnant, abortion is a “right”, speech is violence if it offends, borders are immoral, white people are inherently oppressive, traditional values mask extremism, and objective truth is a tool of control.

Is it any wonder that progressivism is so effective at causing Christians to deconstruct their faith?

Having come to terms with the fierce rivalry between the Christian and progressive worldviews, I can no longer stay silent about it.

6. I Saw Conservatism Pointing People to Christ

If progressivism is an off-ramp from the Christian faith, I have also noticed the corollary to be true: conservatism often serves as an on-ramp to the Christian faith.

With the possible exception of the United States, progressive beliefs now form the popular consensus across the Western world — so much so that obvious truths (like the list above) have become taboo.

But when something is forbidden, it often becomes desirable again — a phenomenon known as the Streisand Effect. And that is what we are now seeing unfold, as people rebel against the progressive hegemony thrust upon them in school and society.

Of course, not all of the rebellion is positive. But there has been a noticeable shift, one I’ve been writing about anecdotally for years, and that is now reflected in survey data: more and more secular people are rejecting progressivism, first for more conservative beliefs, and then for Christ. For example:

• In England and Wales, church attendance has risen 50% in recent years, driven predominantly by 18-24-year-old men, whose church attendance has quadrupled from 4% to 16% — and 21% of whom now attend monthly.
• In the United States, the decades-long decline of Christianity has ground to a halt, driven by a resurgence of Christian identity among young men, who are also trending back towards conservatism.
• In Australia, despite ongoing decline in overall Christian affiliation, almost 800,000 people identified as Christian in 2021 after previously stating they had no religion, with many driven by a search for meaning and belonging.

What these data points suggest is that secular Westerners — young people especially — are rejecting the progressive worldview in search of stronger foundations, ultimately finding faith in Jesus. For many, that journey took them via conservatism, which gave them a bedrock for human dignity, objective truth, commonsense morality and civilisation itself which they couldn’t find elsewhere.

Here is where we see a fourth fatal flaw of Keller’s third-wayism. It convinces us to tailor the gospel to progressive ears, thereby alienating a harvest field of secular conservatives, many of whom are just a step or two away from committing to Christ.

While the gospel is for all people, I believe God has given me a specific calling to reach “Christless conservatives” — a group too long overlooked by the church but now white for harvest.

7. I Became a Father

The final thing that’s changed for me is very personal: I became a father — which, if you’re a parent, may be all I need to say.

The world we leave behind is the one our children inherit. And I’m committed to making it as safe, free, sane, and virtuous for my kids as I found it. Moreso if possible.

Yes, Jesus warned that persecution will come for Christians. But no, He didn’t command us to sit by as others — whether Christian or secular — suffer harm from oppressive laws and leaders.

We are commanded to speak up for the voiceless (Proverbs 31:8), defend the oppressed (Isaiah 1:17), love mercy (Micah 6:8), establish justice (Amos 5:15), and overcome evil with good (Romans 12:21).

So, if you’ve noticed a shift in my messaging, it’s real. But it’s also intentional and carefully considered.

And while I welcome thoughtful pushback and understand I may sometimes deserve rebuke, I invite my Christian critics to be equally passionate about confronting the injustices in our culture as they are in critiquing my views or tone.

After all, the need is urgent, and the hour is late.

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Image courtesy of Unsplash.