The Jesus Christians. 4. The Nullarbor Walkers
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Walking through a treeless desert for 1,600 kilometers without food, water, or money was an attempt to wake up a dormant country for God.
May 5, 2025
While members were commuting to India, they experimented in Australia with “faith outreaches,” where they went on the road distributing tracts without money or food, trusting God would provide to meet their needs. Relying on Biblical precedents, and perhaps on the inspiration of the Indian padayātrā as well, such experiments often took the shape of long walks, during which they would also interact with passers-by and offer tracts. Such walks were a way to testify to their faith in God.
In 1982, McKay’s daughter Sheri, despite lung problems, decided to walk some thirty kilometers from their home in Rappville to downtown Casino. Her father agreed to accompany her. The walk was successful, and they decided to continue for another 160 kilometers, visiting nearby towns in seven days, joined by six other group members. Later, they walked the 290 kilometers separating Casino from Brisbane and started attracting the attention of some local media.
According to “The Northern Star,” “they reported that all of their needs were filled. At one time, Jesus Christ said to His followers that they should travel from town to town with no money and with no bags or other clothes—and that is what eight Rappville Christians have been doing… The group walked without money or food, only the ‘good news’ they were giving out to interested people on the way. People from the towns helped with food and places to sleep.”
Then, in April 1985, the group started discussing what they could do to awaken their country, which seemed to remain deaf to God’s call. They read 1 Kings 18, which tells the story of a dispute between Prophet Elijah and the priests of the pagan god Baal. Both prepare an altar with a bull to offer in sacrifice and pray their respective gods to send fire from heaven to light the pyre. Only Elijah’s god, being the true God, answers and sends the fire.
A debate followed within the group on whether doing something spectacular to publicly demonstrate God’s power would not amount to trying to “force God to do a miracle,” which for Christians would be a sin. To outsiders, it may seem a fine theological point but it would become the subject matter of a bitter debate between the group and its opponents for years. Having considered and rejected other options, they decided that some of them would walk through the treeless Nullarbor Desert for 1,600 kilometers without food, water, or money.
For various reasons, several members decided not to participate. In the end, then 15-year-old Christine McKay, Dave and Cherry’s daughter, was selected to lead the group, which consisted of her brother Gary, who was 16, Malcolm Wrest(22), Robim Dunn (18), and Roland Gianstefani (21). Although she was initially excluded as she did not have an Australian passport and would run the risk of being repatriated in case of controversies, 11-year-old Rachel Sukumaran, from Bangalore, India, insisted that she felt called by God to join and was included, although she was told that she could stop walking after the first days if she wanted to.
The Nullarbor Desert can be crossed through a road where few cars a day are encountered, although there are about a dozen gas stations called “roadhouses” where drivers can also buy food. In late April 1985, the walkers started training by walking up to thirty kilometers daily. They announced their plan to the media and, as they expected, they gathered widespread attention. While some admired their faith, most media and even police officers predicted they would die and expressed special concern for the 11-year-old Rachel. Christian pastors, also not unexpectedly, criticized them with the argument that they were “tempting the Lord” for a miracle. They were prepared to answer that in fact it was God who had shown them in prayer that they were called to this demonstration of faith.
As they later reported, “Police… promised that the group would die. If freezing weather did not kill them, then they would die without food or water in the Nullarbor Desert. Church leaders across Australia argued that the trip was the work of the devil, saying that the young people were trying to force God to help them with a miracle. Friends asked them to drop their foolish plan to show that God is real to a world that was not interested.”
There were also misunderstandings. Some media believed they would avoid the road, where cars would be passing them. In fact, they planned to follow the road, where car drivers could help them with food and water. They would also later report that they “cooked and ate kangaroos that had died beside the road, drying the skins to be used for clothes. They ate wild berries. And when they needed water, God sent rain to fill holes that had been dry for many months. At night, clouds protected them from the cold as all around them rain was falling on other parts of the Nullarbor.”
They also printed a leaflet to be given to people in any cars that chose to stop, explaining why they were doing it, signed simply “Christians” (the name “Jesus Christians” was not yet in use at that time): “On May 6 we left Port Augusta, South Australia, without any food, water, money, or blankets, and we are trying to walk across the Nullarbor to Norseman, Western Australia. We are doing this because we believe people in today’s world do not have enough faith in God or even in other people. We believe that if people would put God first and do what they can to help others, then God will meet their needs. He often does it through ways that we would not call miracles, but we feel we must take this very serious step to make people see that things like faith and love are just as strong in a place away from the help of others as they are in a very big town. We pray that our action will help others to think about giving some of what they have to others. For only by doing that can we build a better world. Thank you for your time.”
Dane Frick, from Townsville, Queensland, who had been corresponding with the group for one year and had heard about the walk on television, joined the walkers on the second day, so that there were seven of them.
Eventually, the media, including the critical ones, played a decisive role in the success of the initiative. The more the media predicted they would die, the more the walkers found people willing to help them. The publicity virtually guaranteed that all drivers crossing the desert would look for them, and most of those who sold gas and food along the road were also ready to welcome them (although some were hostile). There were also a handful of people who drove hundreds of miles to the desert with the specific purpose of seeing and helping the walkers. “They had agreed between themselves not to ask for help from anyone, but their faith was winning the hearts of thousands. Whole churches were praying for them, and a number of people believed that God was telling them to travel up to 600 miles just to bring them a meal or a blanket. The few people who lived in houses or worked selling petrol and food on the road gave them hot meals and a place to sleep when they were close enough to receive this help. Bags or boxes of food were often left for them beside the road, or hanging from a fence, put there by humble helpers.”
Less than eight weeks after they had started the walk, the seven walkers arrived safely in Norseman, greeted by a significant number of reporters. The coverage was not unfavorable, although some maintained that Christine’s sister Sheri and her husband Boyd (they had gotten married in April) were following them with a van and providing them with food, so they were not really living on faith. This was not true, although the walkers shared some meals with Sheri and Boyd as they approached Norseman in the last days of the walk.
The walk did achieve the purpose of making many Australians aware of the radical approach to Christianity of the group, although few followed them or changed their way of living because of their example. It also earned them some enemies in the media, which would soon become more aggressive, at a time also characterized by the defection of some members.
While in the 1980s and 1990s India was a main priority for the group, they also brought their message to other countries. As early as 1986, Dave and Cherry conducted an outreach in their native country, the United States, mainly in Texas and Georgia. England followed in 1988. Some activity started in 1989 in New Zealand. Eventually, the group spread to several Latin American, African, and European countries, going from a few dozen to nearly a hundred members.
Because of the lower cost of printing, India had become a convenient place to print their tracts. They were both distributed in India and shipped internationally. Tracts from India were distributed at a rate of up to 15,000 per week. In 1998, the group decided to prioritize evangelistic outreach with respect to the sewer project in India. The official adoption of the name “Jesus Christians” (as “Christians” was easily confused with other groups) happened at this time.
While still committed to charitable activities, the Jesus Christians tried to avoid becoming permanently committed to a “project,” to the point where the project could become their whole life. While they were still doing charitable work in India, Cherry McKay denounced in 2001 the “Martha Syndrome.” She referred to Jesus’ visit to two sisters, Mary and Martha, described in Luke 10:38–42. While Mary sat at Jesus’ feet, listening to him, Martha was busy with domestic chores and blamed Mary for not supporting her. But Jesus told Martha: “You are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her (Luke 10:41–2).”
According to Cherry, “Martha’s problem came from (1) ignoring social and spiritual needs in order to meet the physical needs of those around her; (2) ignoring her own need for rest; and (3) being driven by a social conscience which was not in submission to the true conscience,” Apart from the use of “social conscience” with the peculiar meaning of people doing things out of fear about what society may think of them, it is by regarding as more important “being a Christian” rather than “doing Christian things” that Jesus Christians try to avoid the “Martha Syndrome.”
Around this time, several members left the group, including Dave’s and Cherry’s daughter Sheri and her husband Boyd. The reasons for this split were diverse. Some, while maintaining some criticism of mainline Christianity, wished for a more ecumenical approach or a tuning down of the radicalism in lifestyle. Almost all criticized Dave for imposing his personal authority with the same style he decried among mainline church leaders (something he firmly denied), while the community should have had no other leader than Jesus.
Dave tried not to make public the split and hoped for a reconciliation, but eventually in 2000 declared them rebellious not only against him but against God himself: “All the evidence suggests that the rebels are acting in complete contradiction to the principles that Jesus has given us for resolving our differences, despite having once acknowledged them as being God’s will.” Dave encouraged “members to avoid private correspondence or discussions with them, until there is some move toward official reconciliation.”
The split in 1998 did not create a schismatic group. Those who left adopted very different attitudes and never formed a movement. An attempt by other ex-members to create a separate organization would surface twelve years later, in 2010.
That year, because of the anti-cult campaigns discussed below, the Jesus Christians announced that they had disbanded. Dave McKay told Geraldine Smith in 2017 that “the disbandment was ‘real and fake at the same time.’ On the one hand, individual team still operated under the same teachings and practices as the Jesus Christians. However, the decision to disband caused a restructure in the community. Each of the teams, which were spread across Australia, Kenya, the United States, the United Kingdom and South America, became autonomous bodies and members minimized and/or ceased contact with relatives, friends and contacts. Assets had been divided several years before and many members parted ways on the instruction to manage their own evangelizing activities. Most importantly, they no longer identified as Jesus Christians. Thus, the Jesus Christians announcement of disbandment was not necessarily dishonest, but neither does it capture the nuance of the transition that occurred in the community at that time.”
In subsequent years, starting in 2015–16, material from the Jesus Christians was primarily disseminated via the web, especially through YouTube channels, under brands such as “Endtimes Survivors,” “A Voice in the Desert,” “The Teachings of Jesus,” “Christian Cartoons”—and “Cómo Vivir Por Fe” (How to Live by Faith) in Latin America. They have been highly successful.
While opponents believe that these are just new names hiding the Jesus Christians, the situation is in fact more complicated and is also connected with the transition from the leadership of Dave McKay to the collegial coordination of a committee including representatives of the six major international “bases,” with Dave playing an emeritus role. At any rate, the group’s main website, offering hundreds of texts and books, still operates under the name “Jesus Christians.”
Some disagreed with the “real-fake” dissolution, feeling the move was deceptive and not from God. They included long-time members Susan and Roland Gianstefani. Roland had been one of the Nullarbor Walkers, and the Gianstefanis played a crucial role in confronting the anti‑cult opposition. The Gianstefanis had already been expelled in the summer of 2010, over a disagreement on how to discipline their 15-year-old son who had been caught stealing from the group, before the dissolution announcement in November of the same year.
The Gianstefanis tried to reorganize independently of McKay, criticizing his leadership, and gathered other people in a project called “Jesus Christians UK.” They presented themselves as “a remnant of the Jesus Christians community that falsely claimed to have disbanded in November 2010.” They maintained several core beliefs of the Jesus Christians and also engaged in political activities such as supporting Julian Assange.
McKay believes that disciplining those who cause divisions is needed, but on the other hand, “division may actually be a step in the overall development” and part of God’s project in its own way. “God may want us all to move from organizational dependency into a deeper understanding of his universal, invisible church.”
Source: bitterwinter.org
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