Father Rod Bower makes headlines around the world for the provocative billboards he posts outside his Anglican church in Gosford, New South Wales, north of Sydney.
He stands on behalf of asylum seekers, women's reproductive rights, marriage equality, poverty and other social justice issues.
His billboards have made him a target online and even in his own church.
A week ago, a group of right wing activists The Cooks Convicts stormed the church and interrupted the Saturday night service, intimidating the congregation.
"We were certainly very afraid of them. It was a very emotionally and spiritually violent act. The congregation was deeply traumatised."
"It's hard say exactly what triggered them," he says. His church had made a statement on Anzac Day against the detention centres on Manus and Nauru.
"It was the beginning of Ramadan also and we wanted to wish all our Muslim friends here and around the world Ramadan Mubarak, a blessing for Ramadan, and that may well have been what provoked this particular invasion."
Father Rod Bower Photo: Facebook
"This group is very Islamaphobic, homophobic, just about every other kind of phobic you could think of."
Father Rod believes this was an "act of terrorism".
"If these people had been Muslims it would have been seen as as a terrorist attack and this was exactly the same thing."
"When you belong to Gosford Anglican Church, there are some dangers", he says.
None of this will deter him from practising what he calls "hardline compassion".
"Take a strong stand and don't be intimidated in terms of love and inclusion. Some people find love and inclusion a very threatening thing and try to promote hate and division. Compassion sometimes requires a very strong stand."
Father Rod put up the first sign outside his church in 2013, while tending to a dying man whose family was anxious to reveal to the priest that their son was gay. It read,
"DEAR CHRISTIANS, SOME PPL ARE GAY, GET OVER IT, LOVE GOD."
"I wanted to send a very clear message to my community and the wider community that ...I [was heading up] a community that was welcoming and inclusive."
Posted online, the sign "went viral. The rest is history."
He realised he had a platform to get out "what I believe is the message of the Gospel: radical inclusivity" - but the use of popular media is nothing new to the pastor.
"The Church has always used cutting-edge media to get the message out. We were the first to use the printing press. The Bible was the first mass-produced book. [It's] still a best-seller. Medieval stained-glass windows were the first memes. We've been doing it for a thousand years."
Growing up in rural Australia, an adopted child, he saw the world as an outsider which he feels has informed his connection for "other people who have experienced the world as an outsider...
Father Rod Bower Photo: Twitter
"What we hear in the Gospel is that God has a special care for the outsider, for the outcast, for the excluded."
While his views might seem liberal or left-wing to some, Father Rod disagrees.
"I do see myself as a political centrist. I reject the left/right political tags." More than that,
"I am just a Christian, a disciple of Jesus. I take very seriously the life of Jesus... and his teachings about the Kindgom of God which for him had nothing to do with the afterlife and everything to do with what we would now call a state of social justice, where the hungry have food and the poor have hope."
Father Rod believes that "bad theology" leads to fear, which "narrows our view and takes away our choices."
"There's power in fear but, as Bishop Michael Curry reminded us at the Royal wedding a week ago, there's more power in love."
