Father Rod has a new book Outspoken: All Justice is Social.
Father Rod is probably best known for his roadside signs outside his Gosford Anglican church, the most famous being ‘Dear Christians. Some PPL are gay. Get over it. Love God’ from July 2013 that kickstarted a social media revolution. This one-time butcher now uses his considerable platform to raise questions about Australia’s corporate soul, to assert that we are all brothers and sisters – asylum seekers, Muslims, those identifying as LGBTI, Indigenous Australians…and for such messages, the death threats roll in. But how did this Anglican priest end up becoming one of Australia’s top social justice commentators?
For the first time, Outspoken reveals the details of Rod’s childhood growing up in NSW’s Hunter region with his adopted family, and how the sudden death of his father at just 13 affected him. Rod then quit school as soon as he could, and moved to Newcastle to work as a butcher. But everything changed for Rod when he made a last minute, hungover decision to go to church on Christmas Day in 1984 (the first time since he had been baptized). This decision soon saw him embark on a path to priesthood.