OPINION
Dieuwe de Boer
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The summit organised by Peter Mortlock was on the North Shore at 7 pm on a Tuesday evening, so I arrived late. It was very well attended, perhaps 700 people, and we needed to park on the road. The speakers consisted of several megachurch pastors, Bob McCoskrie from Family First, a former United Future MP, a former National MP, Ian Johnson from the ONE Party, Helen Houghton of the New Conservatives, Leighton Baker from the Leighton Baker Party, Hannah Tamaki from the Vision Party, and Brian Tamaki from the Freedoms Party. My main motivation for going was to support Helen and New Conservative, but I found the event interesting and enlightening.
I missed Bob McCoskrie’s speech and most of Ian Johnson’s. I don’t know much about the ONE Party’s motivation, but he made a reference to United Future so I gather there is some attempt at continuity from previous Christian political endeavours. The following speaker was a former United Future MP who talked about how they gave power to Helen Clark in return for some kind of “Family Commission” that they didn’t even control the outcome of. This was all before my time and not a part of political history I know much about, but I felt that in the past 30 years or so the political naivety that led to that outcome hasn’t gone away in many modern evangelical circles.
One or two pastors spoke a lot about the need for unity and humility, but it’s apparent that too much “unity” led to some rather disastrous outcomes in the past. At least one made the good point that judgement begins in the house of God, and that we are too quick to assume that it’s just the nation that’s under judgement. I came away with the impression that the older generations haven’t learned many lessons on how power works and failed to adapt to the political reality of conservatives being a minority group. The younger people I spoke with had a much better grasp on this.
Helen Houghton from New Conservative took the time she had to talk about something affecting families directly, in the form of perverted sexuality teaching being forced into every part of the public school curriculum. She explained how speaking out years ago had resulted in her being brought before the Teaching Council, which is how they try to muzzle anyone from speaking out because the consequence can be losing your job. She showed us the new “gender affirmation” standards that teachers will be made to submit to. Helen didn’t focus on party and policy but rather spoke on her personal experience fighting the progressive agenda in education. This was a unique approach that I hope stood out to others, since the other leaders spent much time justifying the reason their parties existed.
Leighton Baker was introduced with reference to his more popular daughter Chantelle. He talked about how he had been inspired by the formation of a self-organising and self-governing commune at Parliament Grounds last year. He told us that he “had a dream” like MLK. This radical decentralisation is something he wanted to bring to politics and believes that everything should be run from the bottom up and not the top down. His party is named after himself because his name is the only thing he’s got after showing up in one January poll with a 3.9% preferred prime minister rating. Without being too cynical, I feel like there was a missed opportunity to go with the “Chantelle Baker Party” if name recognition was the imperative.
The key problem with this idea of “people power” that was expressed by Baker and Tamaki especially is that no one can point to an actual bottom-up political movement achieving lasting success. (The French and Bolshevik Revolutions aside). Even the much talked about European populists rely very much on their own internal elites, charismatic figures, and power politics. True populist movements tend to disintegrate in the chaos that birthed them before they can cement a lasting legacy, and at worst act only as a pressure release valve for the regime. While the idea can sound attractive, power doesn’t flow from the people. God has designed hierarchy into every facet of Creation, both in the material and metaphysical realms.
There was a young woman who spoke as well, and since she’s active in the National Party, I shall leave her anonymous. She talked well about the importance of praying for our leaders and MPs, especially their salvation. She asked everyone to join a party, volunteer, and donate, but didn’t make a pitch for National. When I spoke to her afterwards she said we need to put good conservative Christians into winnable electorates and work from the inside. This is a strategy I support, even though I have doubts about the effectiveness of “conservative sleeper agents” that I have expressed in the past. The real clincher to this plan requires a small conservative party that gets 5% of the party vote in order to put real power behind these MPs who would otherwise be marginalised and muzzled. There has to be a push from the right or else these electorate MPs will always be ineffective at real change. That’s where my focus will remain.
Alfred Ngaro talked about his time as an MP and being thankful that he had the opportunity to be there and speak out during dark times, although he had no ability to stop these things. He repeated his support for Seven Mountains dominionism as a strategy (not a theology) and encouraged everyone to get involved and be active in whatever capacity they could.
The final speakers were Hannah and Brian Tamaki. This was the first time I have seen Brian Tamaki in real life and he was a lot smaller than I expected, perhaps a consequence of the larger-than-life persona he projects. The event seems to have been somewhat of a setup in favour of the Tamakis and as far as I could glean about a third of the attendees were Destiny members as they were the only ones clapping for Brian Tamaki. The large group of young people sitting in front of me clapped respectfully for all the other speakers, but the obnoxious attitude of Tamaki and his supporters was very off-putting. It seems very apparent that trying to sell Tamaki as a political solution to Christians will be like trying to sell ice to the Inuit. He promised that he’d get 20% of the vote come election day.
I made a few good connections and met a few like-minded younger Christians who plan to come to the Forum on the Family. It’s clear to me that there are several different approaches here and one will rise above the rest. Time will tell which it is.