If there’s one thing that Christians Like Us makes clear, it’s that Christianity is a broad church.
Fiery clashes erupted as the housemates debated controversial topics like same-sex marriage, gay conversion therapy, abortion and whether women should be ordained.
But it was also a week of friendship. Many have caught up since filming of the SBS series finished, and they use a WhatsApp group to chat.
Most participants left the house with their closely-held beliefs intact, but each walked away having learned something about their faith. Five participants from the series gives SBS Life the lowdown on what they took away from the experience.
Tiffany Sparks
Source: SBS
Sparks came to see The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a Unitarian denomination she previously didn’t consider Christian, in a new light. Meeting Hannah, a 26-year-old Latter-day Saint from Brisbane, and seeing her proselytise in the street made Sparks rethink her position. “I had this epiphany moment,” she says. “I thought, this woman has so much courage, so much compassion, so much empathy, who am I to say she’s not a Christian? If she says she is, of course she is.”
Assumpta Venkatachalam
Source: SBS
Venkatachalam welcomed the chance to get to know people whose views were very different from her own. “We’re so separated from the people we disagree with, we other-ise people. Sometimes, it gets so bad we dehumanise them,” she says. “I grew to have affection and love for these guys.”
Her conservative beliefs remain unchanged, but she now has a greater appreciation of the power of listening. “I think we all had a tag going in – the gay Christian, the woman priest, the survivor, the progressive Catholic, the guy who reaches out to Asian youth. My tagline was probably the Hindu convert,” she says. “I learned that there’s a person behind that label and they’re not one dimensional.”
Steve Smith
Source: SBS
Smith, a retired youth worker, found some of his housemates’ extreme views hard to accept. “I was very disturbed at the views some people had towards sexuality and abortion,” he says.
While a natural split emerged between the liberal and conservative members of the group, Smith struck up an unlikely friendship with his roommate, Pentecostal pastor Marty Beckett.
“The work [Marty] does in his community is extraordinary,” says Smith. “Pretty much every conversation we had was prefaced with, ‘mate, I love what you do but I hate what you say’, but we still managed to get past that and become good friends.”
For his part, Smith left the house satisfied that the Church had no place in his life. The experience also reinforced his belief that religion and politics don’t mix. “One of the things that really concerned me over the years was Christians’ input into the gay marriage debate,” he says. “Some of the religious organisations are so far out of touch with the mainstream community that it’s just silly.”
Daniel Nour
Source: SBS
All the same, it was a week of difficult conversations. “The challenge of telling the truth was sometimes terrifying,” says Nour, whose strict faith forbids things like sex before marriage, ordination of female priests and abortion in the instance of rape.
Taking part in Christians Like Us taught Nour that, for all their differences, the housemates shared some fundamental beliefs. “I think sometimes we’re saying the same thing in different ways,” he says. “The substance of our beliefs, which is a loving and just God who believes in social justice, is something we have in common.”
Steve Chong
Source: SBS
Chong, who comes from a Chinese-Malaysian background, wanted to show that the average Christian isn’t necessarily white. One in four millennial Asians in Australia attend church, he says. “It’s important for the Asian Christian community to be represented.”
While his views didn’t change, he was also reminded of the value of listening. “I definitely gained a much better understanding of other people’s positions and their own personal journey,” he says. “I really learned that God can minister and bring comfort in unexpected ways.”
You can watch Episode 1 of Christians Like Us on SBS On Demand now. Episode 2 airs at 8.35pm, Wednesday April 10 on SBS.
