The Gruen Transfer should be compulsory viewing for professional communicators. And that means you, preachers!

If you haven't seen it, then you may want to pray for a third series. The show bowed out on a high this week with 1.3 million viewers.

The show's most brilliant segment is The Pitch, where two advertising companies battle it out to sell the unsellable: invading New Zealand, plastic surgery for kids, and cancelling all Australia's public holidays. And perhaps most memorably for me: that Shane Warne was a far better human being than Don Bradman. 

Earlier this week, this segment hit the headlines when Adam Hunt from The Foundry produced an advert that attempted to equate the pain caused by punchlines aimed at fat women to the damage caused by jokes that vilify other minority groups.

While the ABC banned the advert from our TV screens because it included anti-Semitic and homophobic jokes, the ensuing controversy drove the advert's point home even more strongly.

For those not easily offended, the advert can be viewed elsewhere on the web.

Christians and persecution

I was reflecting on the Gruen Transfer controversy after being asked to give testimony at a Human Rights Equal Opportunity Commission hearing this week.

HREOC is examining whether Australia should introduce anti-vilification legislation amongst other potential measures to curb 'religious hate'. 

How do we explain to the wider community that the abuse and discrimination Christians sometimes experience can actually be persecution?

One truth the Australian community must get its head around is 'power' and the way it shifts depending on the context, and how this impacts the reality of vilification and persecution.

Christianity is seen as 'fair game' because it is perceived as the most powerful religious force in our society. There is (somewhat understandably) far more empathy for the abuses suffered by minority groups such as Muslims and Jews.

As Christians we find it difficult to understand why other religious groups perceive Christians as being so powerful. But taken together, the various Christian churches do present a very loud and dominant voice in public debate.

And yet within the Christian community there are minority groups - such as evangelicals - who are ruthlessly maligned and face genuine discrimination in the secular West (as catalogued by Russell Powell yesterday).

'Proselytism' is a particular sore point and the right to evangelise is set to come under sustained attack. And yet people are free to evangelise and seek to change people's beliefs when it comes to other value systems - political parties being a case in point.

So in order to untangle these threads, is satire a technique that may work for Christians?

Satire changes lives

Back at the Gruen Transfer we saw a different kind of conversion.

For his part, Adam Hunt, who has made a fortune from selling obnoxious 'comic' T-shirts (including one that read 'police targetting fat chicks')  told the Herald that the experience of making the advert was a 'genuine epiphany' claiming that he has repented of his 'crass and tasteless' ways. 

Satire is a powerful tool for both challenging people's assumptions and imparting wisdom and knowledge.

This is a point made endlessly by the expert advertising panel on the Gruen Transfer.

The ongoing 'little pinkie' anti-speeding adverts in NSW are an excellent case in point. Apparently the evidence shows that this cheeky approach has made progess in changing attitudes where decades of 'hail and brimstone' fear campaigns have crashed and burned.

In my view this is a point that HREOC must also take on board. If they really want to change negative Australian attitudes to certain minority religious groups then education (especially satirical advertising) would be a smarter approach than anti-vilification legislation.

Humourless Sydney Anglicans?

Sometimes Sydney Anglicans can come across as an earnest and humourless lot.

OK. There is one high-profile exception. But he only serves to prove the rule.

Indeed the Grumpy Old Bishop's career goes a long way to proving my point.

The infamous poster war between his Barneys ministry and their neighbouring pub is one of Sydney Anglicanism's finest moments: where our message genuinely entered the popular consciousness.

Given that the gospel is so utterly counter-cultural, satire should be a natural ally as we confront the powers and principalities.

That we find satire so difficult probably indicates that we are far less counter-cultural than we imagine.

We can't all be funny. I for one don't claim to be a comic writer.

But the point is that we don't really value those who are, and struggle to harness them effectively for communicating with the wider world.

In this regard the Muslim and gay communities have put Christians to shame in recent years.

But there is a flip side. I have an important question for my comedian friends, like Four Horsemen of the Apocryphal.

Do you have your satirical guns pointing in the right direction?