Around the beginning of this year, Bill Muehlenberg started up his own website, calling it Culturewatch. Bill arrived in Australia from the USA (via Holland) back in 1989 and has since spent most of his time trying to straighten out our ideas about religion, morality and a few other small matters. He’s worked for more Christian right organisations than you could shake a stick at - Australian Family Association, Focus on the Family Australia and Salt Shakers among them - but is currently between gigs.

Bill wants to see a Christian revival sweep across Australia. What would a ‘revived’ Australia be like?

… The police report that jails are emptying out, streets are quiet and little police work is necessary … Many police devote their time to singing in choirs or helping out at church services…

Many of the large sporting facilities like the MCG or the Gabba sit empty, partly due to lack of interest and partly due to so many athletes converting to Christ. People like Wayne Carey, Kieren Perkins, Cathy Freeman, Shane Warne and Andrew Gaze now spend most of their time holding evangelistic crusades and attending prayer meetings. (’Revival in Australia’, Salt Shakers Newsletter, May 1998, 3-4)

Bags be in the prayer meeting with Carey and Warne!

Anyway, Muehlenberg invites the public to comment on his website essays and reviews and a number of people have done just that. A mate and I decided to check out these commentators to see whether Bill’s many years of impassioned ranting have had much of an effect on Australia. We decided they hadn’t.

Up to last month, less than 100 people had offered a comment on one or more of Bill’s articles. And although he warns others against preaching only to the converted, that’s pretty much what Bill himself does. Many of the Culturewatch comments are little more than sycophantic tripe.

There are a few well-known ‘Christian right’ names here, among them Tas Walker of Creation Ministries International (formerly Answers in Genesis). Muehlenberg himself is a committed creationist although he doesn’t say much about this in public. Jenny Stokes of Salt Shakers and Spencer Gear have also made comments on Bill’s site.

Many of Bill’s interlocutors seem to be people he’s met through his contacts with groups such as the Australian Christian Lobby, parties like Fred Nile’s Christian Democratic Party (several of these) and the Christian school movement. Muehlenberg is a Baptist and attends the large Crossway church in East Burwood, Victoria and this accounts for some other commentators. There are a few conservative Presbyterian, Uniting Church and Assemblies of God types dotted around the place, but with a handful of exceptions, an absence of conservative Catholics. All those years working for the National Civic Council’s Australian Family Association don’t seem to have contributed much to Bill’s personal following.

One name that caught our attention was that of Frank Gashumba. Frank once contributed a wildly anti-feminist article to News Weekly, but his main claim to fame is his vitriolic attitude towards this website and towards your humble correspondent in particular. His last email to us concluded with the words:

… [Y]ou can rest safe in the knowledge that I [d]on’t have enough respect for you … ever to visit your webpage again …

So, Frank, if you find yourself reading this … We gotcha!

Filed in: Christian Right, People