What might it mean for the Church to recover a prophetic posture in an age of instant opinion, political reaction and managed organisational change?
I find myself increasingly uneasy with the way we use the word prophetic.
A post appears on our screen. It troubles us, angers us, or confirms something we already believe. We respond, repost and comment or tell our friends and family. Sometimes we call this “speaking prophetically”. Sometimes it may be. Yet I wonder whether our social-media world is training us to confuse reaction with prophecy.
The biblical prophetic tradition asks something far more demanding of us.
Speed and opinion is not prophecy. Anger is not prophecy. Being unpopular is not prophecy. Even being right is not, by itself, prophecy.
Prophetic witness asks where our words have come from, whether they are true, whom they serve, what kind of future they make possible, and often what it may cost us. It is not simply saying something brave. It is allowing ourselves—our lives, churches and institutions—to be drawn into God’s work of reconciliation and renewal, into God’s future.
Three voices we can confuse
I think it may be helpful to distinguish between three different voices: reaction, consultancy and prophecy.
By reactionary, I do not mean only conservative or liberal or left-wing or right-wing politics. Any of us can become reactionary. Reactionary politics is politics driven by the latest offence, fear or outrage. It rewards the quickest response and the sharpest line. It sorts people into heroes and enemies and asks, “How do I make clear which side I am on?”
Consultancy is different. A good consultant listens, gathers evidence and recommends practical steps. This can be essential. Yet consultancy normally works within a defined scope, shaped by what leaders have asked, what they may accept, and how much change the organisation can tolerate. Then the Consultant leaves, maybe with a check-in or two.
The prophetic voice asks a deeper and more unsettling question:
What faithfulness does God require of us here?
Prophetic witness may use the evidence and skills of a consultant. It may include a post, a public statement, a protest, a policy proposal or an advocacy campaign. But it cannot be reduced to any of these. Prophecy calls people and institutions towards truth, repentance and a more just way of living. Towards transformation. It also asks the speaker to become part of the change they are calling for.
That is where prophecy begins to become costly.
Where does the prophet stand?
It can be tempting to imagine the prophet as the heroic outsider: alone, fearless and shouting truth at the powerful. There are moments like this in Scriptures. But the biblical witness is more complex.
Nathan confronted David from inside the royal court (2 Samuel 12). Amos came from outside Israel’s centres of power and was told to go home (Amos 7:10–17). Jeremiah spoke at the Temple gate, wrote to people in exile, argued with kings, and continued after being beaten and imprisoned. John the Baptist challenged a ruler and was killed.
Jesus moved among people pushed to the edges. He ate with those considered unworthy, touched those considered unclean, and announced good news to people made poor. Then he entered Jerusalem, confronted the practices of the Temple, and went to the cross.
They stood in different places: palace, street, Temple, prison and exile. What joined them was not one political method but a calling. They exposed the distance between a community’s public claims and its actual life. They named dishonest trade, violence, exploitation, false worship and the abandonment of vulnerable people. Yet they did more than condemn. They opened the possibility of another future, God’s future.
The prophet is therefore more than a commentator. Prophets remain close enough to suffering to hear its cries and close enough to power to name what it is doing. They enter the life of a community and bear some consequences of the truth they speak.
Sometimes the system changes. Sometimes it does not. Jeremiah did not live to see the renewal for which he longed. Jesus did not remove Rome occupation from Judea. The cross reminds us that faithfulness cannot be measured only by visible, tangible success.
Yet suffering does not prove that a person is prophetic. We can be rejected because we are mistaken, careless or cruel. Scripture therefore asks communities to test every claimed prophetic word (Jeremiah 28; 1 Corinthians 14:29; 1 Thessalonians 5:19–22). No one gets to place their words beyond question simply by calling themselves prophetic.
I could be wrong. You could be wrong. Our preferred political movement could be wrong. The institution resisting us could also be wrong. Prophetic discernment needs courage, but it also needs humility, community and a willingness to be corrected. The conviction comes as God’s call for justice and hope of genuine reconciliation.
Our Uniting Church inheritance
The Uniting Church carries within it Methodist and Reformed traditions, brought together in a distinctly Australian, ecumenical church. Both traditions help us understand this prophetic calling.
The Reformed tradition begins with the sovereignty of God. No nation, party, market, corporation or church leader can claim our final loyalty. The Barmen Declaration, written as Nazism sought to control the German church, insisted that Jesus Christ—not political ideology, any political ideology—is the Word the Church must trust and obey.
The Confession of Belhar, received by the Uniting Church as a continuing witness in 2024, brings unity, reconciliation and justice together. Born from Christian resistance to apartheid, it reminds us that the Church cannot preach reconciliation while accepting structures that divide, exclude or diminish people.
Our Methodist inheritance adds a practical understanding of holiness. John Wesley’s General Rules called Christians to avoid harm, do good and remain within the practices through which God forms us. Holiness is not simply holding the right opinion or being seen to be right. Grace reshapes our habits, relationships, use of money and shared life. The prophetic Christian does not only name the sin of others; we allow grace to expose and transform what is disordered in us, each of us.
The Uniting Church’s Basis of Union gathers these traditions around Jesus Christ, the risen crucified One. It speaks of Christ as the beginning of “a new order of righteousness and love” and calls the Church to be an instrument of reconciliation. It describes us as a pilgrim people—always being addressed by Christ and never able to treat our present structures as final.
This means the prophetic voice of the Church must begin with our own repentance.
We cannot demand transparency from governments while hiding our own decisions. We cannot call for shared power while protecting/defending our own positions. We cannot speak about justice in society while ignoring the experiences of people harmed within our churches, agencies and institutions.
Nor is prophecy the possession of a lone religious influencer. In a conciliar church, we discern together the costly just love of God in Christ: listening to Scripture, the Spirit, the wider body of Christ, and especially those who carry the weight of injustice. The Uniting Church’s Vision for a Just Australia describes Christian political engagement not as endorsing one party, but as asking hard questions, advocating with compassion, and holding leaders accountable to justice, mercy and love.
When the news feed forms us
Social media can reveal hidden harm, connect people, challenge official stories and help movements organise. These can be real gifts.
Yet social media is not a neutral space. A 2025 field experiment published in Science found that changing people’s exposure to anti-democratic and hostile partisan posts changed how negatively they felt towards political opponents. What is placed before us does not only inform us. It forms our emotions, our relationships and, perhaps, our imagination (Piccardi and colleagues).
If the feed chooses the issue, sets the pace, names the enemy and rewards our anger, then we need to ask a difficult question: is the gospel forming us, or is the platform algorithm of addiction discipling us?
Our conscience can be colonised by this content, and our neighbour can quickly become a target. The prophetic voice moves differently. It listens, prays, discerns what is true, refuses to turn people into objects or issues, and remains present after attention moves elsewhere.
Beyond the protest moment
Public protest remains an essential democratic practice. It can reveal suffering, gather people who have felt alone and show decision-makers that an issue cannot be ignored. At its best, protest is public truth-telling.
But a protest is a moment, not a movement.
Research into nonviolent resistance shows that it remains more effective than violent struggle. It also shows that movements become weaker when they lack lasting relationships, grassroots organisation, strategy and planning (Erica Chenoweth).
The prophetic task continues when the march ends and the cameras leave. It may involve sitting with people who have been harmed, building coalitions, meeting leaders, preparing submissions, changing budgets, protecting truth-tellers, and returning year after year.
It asks not only, “What have I said?” but, “What am I prepared to give to see this change, this transformation through as part of participating in the Mission of God?”
The challenge of One Nation
The present rise of One Nation makes this distinction particularly important.
It would be easy for some Church members to respond with alarm or ridicule or ignorance. Yet mocking One Nation and its supporters may deepen the wounds on which reactionary politics feeds. The reality is there will be Church members who are sympathetic and supportive of One Nation. Economic insecurity (the buying power of our wages has decreased by nearly 20% since the pandemic), rapid cultural change, lost trust in the political process, and high levels of bureaucratic processes that see little progress, as well as political neglect, mean the major parties need to be heard honestly.
Listening does not require us to surrender truth. We can hear the fear without allowing it to define our neighbour. We can recognise economic pain without accepting the scapegoating of migrants, Muslims, First Peoples or other communities. We can take experience seriously while testing political claims against evidence, justice and human dignity, and more importantly, a God perspective that transcends our own.
We must also ask whether movements practise the accountability they demand from others. One Nation speaks strongly about freedom and returning power to ordinary Australians, while its internal structure has attracted continuing criticism for concentrating authority. Electoral analyst Antony Green notes that Australian federal law does not require political parties to give members democratic control over leadership or candidate selection (Green, 2026).
That is a legitimate question for prophetic examination. But our integrity depends on applying the same question elsewhere.
Do the political parties we support practise genuine accountability? Do our churches? Do our boards and agencies? Do I welcome scrutiny when it reaches my own leadership? Or do I react and want such voices to be removed or silenced?
Prophetic integrity is costly because it refuses selective truth; it is committed to the truth.
More than cultural alignment
There is a related challenge within corporate and church institutions. Shared values and cultural alignment can focus a community around a common purpose and protect people from harm.
But alignment can quietly become enforced agreement. Difference is treated as disloyalty and difficult voices are managed. Consultancy can then help an organisation absorb criticism without allowing it to change anything important.
The consultant may be asked, “What change will leadership approve (often economic rational and right-fitting justifications)?”
The prophet asks, “What truth does this institution owe its people, its neighbours and God’s creation?”
This is not an argument against expertise. Moral passion without deep awareness can be very harmful. Prophetic witness needs many of the consultant’s disciplines: listening, research, knowledge of systems, clear goals and practical action.
But prophecy cannot ever allow the comfort, reputation or budget of the client to decide beforehand what truth may be spoken. At some point, a recommendation must become a commitment. At some point, the institution itself must change, must see transformation.
Testing our voice
So, before we call our words prophetic, perhaps we might ask:
- Is it true? Have we checked the facts and resisted exaggeration or political tribal group think?
- Is it accountable? Can the community, including those most affected, question and correct us?
- Is it shaped by Christ? Are we willing to carry some of the cost, or are we placing it on people with less power, it is reflective of the Gospel?
- Is it embodied? What must change in our relationships, policies, structures, power and spending?
- Is it sustained? What will we still be doing when the issue disappears from the feed? Will the prophetic voice continue until God’s kingdom comes on earth?
- Is it hopeful? Do we only condemn what is, or do we help people imagine and build what might be more loving, just and true for all creation?
The prophetic voice is not always the loudest or the fastest. It is a voice that has listened deeply, told the truth, accepted correction, confronted power, remained with people and helped make God’s future possible here on our world.
It may post. It may protest. It may offer recommendations. But it does not stop there.
Perhaps the deepest call of the prophet is not whether our words sound prophetic, but whether we are willing to let the Word we speak judge and change us as well alongside our world. Are we prepared to remain present, share the cost and participate in Christ’s mission of a more just, truthful and loving life for which we are called.
This is the costly witness of the Church: not simply another opinion in the marketplace, but a shared life pointing towards God’s kingdom—or Kin(g)dom—the reconciliation and renewal of the whole creation already begun in Jesus Christ.
Ben Gilmour
