Crosslight - Edition April 2020

“Many bikies refer to us as priests,”
Peter Whitefield says.
Image: Carl Rainer
very much seen as outcasts of the
day, probably a bit like the LGBTIQ
community today,” Peter says.
“Out of this there was a ministry that
wasn’t just about bike clubs. It was about
working with a broad cross section of
the community including, for example,
Indigenous people at arts festivals such
Black Stump.”
Considering the original and most
famous outlaw motorcycle club
defines its relationship to conventional
Christianity and morality in its name,
Hells Angels, these groups might seem
a particularly unpromising group for
Christians to reach out to. However,
Peter, or “Bubba” as he is called by family
and friends, says by simply hanging out
with bikers and being genuine, the God’s
Squad members have come to be widely
accepted and even respected.
“We’re friends with each other, we get
invited to family events – it’s broader
than just the bike club stuff,” he says.
“We’ve been doing that over many
years of hard work and it hasn’t always
been easy for the people who’ve gone
before us, but many bikies will refer to
us as priests and, if they need funerals or
weddings, they’ll come to us.”
Peter sees a side to outlaw motorcycle
clubs – God’s Squad does not call
them “bikie gangs” – that might not be
immediately apparent to those whose
main perception of the one percenters
comes from lurid news reports of drug
running and gang warfare or violent TV
shows such as Sons of Anarchy.
“There’s a sense of family, for many of
them it is their family,” he says.
“You’ll get young men, often who’ve
grown up in foster care, who don’t have
family or their family relationships have
been strained so they’ve found another
family.
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