Hundreds of Australian Christians have repudiated the Australian Christian Lobby following an offensive twitter remark made by the ACL leader on ANZAC Day.
Jim Wallace, the managing director of the Australian Christian Lobby and former SAS brigadier drew heavy criticism for the comment, ‘just hope that as we remember Servicemen and women today we remember the Australia they fought for – wasn’t gay marriage and Islamic!’
Wallace quickly withdrew the offending tweet and offered an apology which he later repeated on channel Seven’s Sunrise program.
Following the ANZAC Day comments, Sydney Star Observer reported on a new online petition lobbying Australian governments to ‘spend less time listening to and seeking to appease the ACL’. At the time of publication, the petition had notched up 641 signatures within its first week. The petition read: ‘We are Australian Christians, and we’d like you to know that the Australian Christian Lobby does not speak for us… we are much more diverse than the Australian Christian Lobby.’
Luke Arms, the petition’s founder told SSO the ANZAC comments had been ‘the final straw’.
‘I’m angry that non-Christians hear what they say and then think that the majority of Christians might think that when there is so much more variety in what Christians think than what they represent,’ he said.
Benn Dorrington
