DAVID ADAMS speaks to the new managing director of the Australian Christian Lobby, Martyn Iles, about the organisation’s priorities and his own Christian journey…
Fighting for Christians to be able to practice their faith in freedom will be one of the top priorities for Martyn Iles, named last month as the new managing director of the Australian Christian Lobby.
Mr Iles, who was formerly the head of the Human Rights Law Alliance – a body established by the ACL in mid-2016 to advocate in the courts for the protection of “fundamental freedoms” of Christians – said his work with the HRLA had been instrumental in highlighting the issue.
“In the course of developing that organisation, I came face-to-face with the emerging problem of religious freedom in Australia,” he says.
“Dealing with people who were getting into trouble with the law for living out their faith…and we had involvement in more than 35 cases between the establishment of that and now. It brought to my attention the need for us to really start to not only fight these cases in the courts but do some upstream work to get Parliament and policy makers to protect religious freedoms. In the wake of the [legalisation of same-sex marriage], religious freedom is certainly at the top of the agenda.”
Martyn Iles, who has taken up the position of managing director of the Australian Christian Lobby following the resignation of Lyle Shelton. PICTURE: Supplied.
Mr Iles has taken over the role of the ACL’s managing director after Lyle Shelton announced last month that after five years in the job, he was leaving to take up a new position as federal director of communications for Senator Cory Bernardi’s Australian Conservatives party.
Speaking to Sight soon after taking up the new role, the 29-year-old describes the Australian Christian Lobby as “voice for truth”.
“In performing that function, it galvanises others to have the courage to speak,” says Mr Iles. “Because ACL has always been an organisation that speaks on those subjects that are matters of truth and conviction; that are controversial and difficult…I see ACL as a great leader in the role of speaking truth in public.”
He says to that end, the ACL is about representing the interests of the church in the political sphere.
“I think the ACL is a platform by which ordinary Christians and churches can have their voice amplified in the political world, particularly around difficult issues that take a lot of courage and even some expertise to speak on.”
“I think the ACL is a platform by which ordinary Christians and churches can have their voice amplified in the political world, particularly around difficult issues that take a lot of courage and even some expertise to speak on.”
While he’s now based in Canberra, Mr Iles hails originally from Queensland, having grown up in a Christian family in Brisbane.
“I couldn’t tell you exactly when I became a Christian – if I had to nominate an experience, they’d be several, so it was really a journey and several experiences over a period of some years,” he says. “But I do remember, definitely, that God was at work in my life as early as around eight-years-old.”
He now attends a non-denominational church in Canberra but has attended churches of various denominations before that, growing up in a Brethren church and later attending a Presbyterian church.
“Now I’m essentially an evangelical,” he says. “So there’s a history there that I think places me well to work with a cross-denominational base…I actually appreciate and respect most of the denominations and I have found that the true church – God’s people – are actually scattered quite widely…[T]he church itself is, as we’ve always known, an amalgamation of people, not buildings.”
Asked who his heroes in the faith might be, Mr Iles – whose favorite passages in the Bible include Isaiah 6 and the Sermon on the Mount – points out that he was named after Martyn Lloyd-Jones, an evangelical Protestant preacher in London in the mid-20th century. He says that after he ‘discovered’ Rev Lloyd-Jones during his early teens, the Welsh minister’s teaching played a “critical” role in the development of his faith and his love for Scripture.
“I credit him with a lot. I think that he was a man with incredible insight, he was a man who was absolutely open to the call of God…” Mr Iles says. “He pulled no punches when it came to declaring what was true and right. I aspire to do the same.”
“I think that [Martyn Lloyd-Jones] was a man with incredible insight, he was a man who was absolutely open to the call of God…He pulled no punches when it came to declaring what was true and right. I aspire to do the same.”
A lawyer by training – Mr Iles studied law after taking a three year break between highschool and university during which he’d established his own tech business, he first joined the ACL after successfully applying for a Lachlan Macquarie Internship with the organisation.
In 2014, he became Mr Shelton’s chief-of-staff and then, in mid-2016, he was involved in the launch of the HRLA and says that over the ensuing year-and-a-half, he came across a “large number of cases that many people would be very shocked to hear had happened here in Australia.”
“Cases like a Christian couple seeking to become foster parents who had their foster care application declined purely on the basis of their Christian convictions around sexuality and gender issues,” he says. “Public servants who have been placed under disciplinary investigation for explaining their Christian convictions at work. A university student who was suspended and had other disciplinary action taken against him because he prayed on campus for a friend of his. A university lecturer at a Christian school being sued by an activist wishing them to adopt radical transgender policies and so on.”
Mr Iles says such examples illustrate a “trend” against the Gospel and against people wanting to live out their Christian faith which has become “critical and is getting worse”, noting that the passage of the same-sex marriage bill had “further weaponised” attacks on religious freedom.
Asked whether he thought its involvement in the campaign against same-sex marriage had helped or hindered the ACL, Mr Iles says that in the wake of the campaign, the ACL had emerged “stronger than it’s ever been”.
“I inherit a much stronger ACL than Lyle did…[W]e certainly are one of the largest political campaign movements in the country, we’re bigger than the political parties, and I think we can become the largest.”
“The reason I say that is our support base is larger than it’s ever been – we have 110,000 supporters and that is rapidly increasing. I also say that because the campaign infrastructure and the volunteer base that was built at that time still exists and, if anything, the people who participated in that campaign are more motivated now than they were then. And also those who didn’t participate but were watching from the sidelines – amongst those ranks there’s a greater level of enthusiasm and keenness to become involved.”
Mr Iles ascribes that enthusiasm to a “real sense” among Christians and people who have followed the issue of same-sex marriage that it’s time to engage further.
“Now that the fruit of the change in the law which we forewarned of are coming true…it’s time for Christians to take a stand and fight them and to speak up for truth. So…I inherit a much stronger ACL than Lyle did…[W]e certainly are one of the largest political campaign movements in the country, we’re bigger than the political parties, and I think we can become the largest. And if we do that…then I am confident that we will be highly effective long into the future.”
As well as religious freedom, Mr Iles says other issues the ACL is keen to continue talking about is the “gender agenda” and initiatives like the controversial Safe Schools program, as well as “life issues” like euthanasia and abortion.
Asked how he responds to criticism that the focus of the ACL remains too narrow, Mr Iles points out that the ACL can’t be involved, effectively, on every issue.
“We have to choose – we’re a small team, we have limited resources,” he says, adding that if that is the case, it “then becomes a question of what is ACL good at, what is our competitive advantage, what do we understand the best and what do our people care about?”
“There are many, many very, very important issues out there…domestic violence, sex trafficking, homelessness, Aboriginal recognition in the constitution, housing affordability – all of these things. These are all very, very important…to Christians. But there are organisations that have far greater ability and far greater technical and intellectual ballast on those issues and we would seek to work with them on those issues.
“There are other issues, however, like the marriage issue, like the religious freedom issue, like the life issues and gender issues, that ACL finds itself uniquely equipped to engage with. And we find that it’s very important that someone engage on these issues because they are critical issues of justice and truth.”
“There are many, many very, very important issues out there…domestic violence, sex trafficking, homelessness, Aboriginal recognition in the constitution, housing affordability – all of these things. These are all very, very important…to Christians. But there are organisations that have far greater ability and far greater technical and intellectual ballast on those issues and we would seek to work with them on those issues.”
Back to the issue of religious freedom. Asked why the issue has become so important now in Australia, Mr Iles says while religious freedom has long been assumed, the burgeoning amount of human rights legislation in more recent years had seen a rise in the potential for conflicts between various rights including the right to religious freedom.
Add to that the increasing fragmentation of opinion in society around questions of conviction and truth, and, says Mr Iles, “we now find ourselves in a position where the Government needs to do something to ensure that…religious freedoms are not taken away”.
“Because there are activists who disagree very strongly – and I saw this with the Human Rights Law Alliance – they disagree very strongly with the claims of the Christian faith and with the expression of the Christian faith so they will use whatever tools are available to them, whether legal or whether lobbying, to silence those expressions of Christian faith. And we need to ensure that people are free.”
Mr Iles says the ACL has been closely watching what has been taking place in nations like the US, UK and, in particular Canada, in the wake of the passing of same-sex marriage laws there and the subsequent impacts on religious freedom.
“Because that is a profound cultural change that goes to the very heart of Christian conviction on a range of issues including marriage, family, gender and sexuality and once the law is against that, we’re in a whole lot of trouble,” he says, adding that based on what the ACL has seen overseas and the “early warning signs” it was seeing in Australia, “we predict…that things will become a lot harder in terms of living out the Christian faith in Australia.”
