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Anglican Archbishop weighs in on Andrew Thorburn saga

Tom Elliott
Article image for Anglican Archbishop weighs in on Andrew Thorburn saga

The Anglican Archbishop of Melbourne has offered his support to Andrew Thorburn, the former Essendon CEO who was forced to choose between the job and his church.

Mr Thorburn is chair of City on the Hill church, an offshoot of the Anglican church, which has been criticised for its conservative views.

Anglican Archbishop Dr Philip Freer says Essendon’s process was sorely lacking, and what happened to Mr Thorburn “couldn’t happen in a government department, it couldn’t happen in a local council, it couldn’t happen in an organisation contracting government”.

“You couldn’t go through presumably a fair, and open, and rigorous selection process, and then having appointed someone pull a gun and say ‘Sorry, you’ve got to pick between this and that’.

“That would be totally unacceptable.”

Dr Freer says the City on the Hill church church does good charity and outreach work, and the criticisms angled at it relate to selective sections of sermons from almost a decade ago.

“It’s got a social welfare arm called Many Rooms and they were being celebrated for work with homeless people. I think to pick … as has been done with this matter, a few sentences from some utterances against many others and say that tells the whole story — nothing is as simple as that,” Dr Freer told Neil Mitchell.

Press PLAY below to hear the Anglican Archbishop’s thoughts on the whole saga

Tom Elliott
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