thanks for another great piece David. You and your readers might be interested in this blog from AJ Hendry who also writes in this space and works amongst young vulnerable folk.
I don’t know who I’m disappointed with the most: people like this guy, the people that blindly believe and listen to him, or the people (e.g. mainstream media, govt) that let him get away with it and leave him unchecked. It feels so bloody tiring sometimes.
Thank you for highlighting the hypocrisy though. I’m ashamed to say (as a Māori) that I had never even thought about how racial bias could be a key reason why Destiny Church get much more media attention than necessary. I’m running out of sources of news in NZ because biased, ignorant and irresponsible reporting is so widespread. Happy Monday 😜
Apart from everything else about these churches that make me sick, I wish the government/IRD would seriously look at whether they should be exempt from tax. How much of a community service are they really doing spreading hate and misinformation, and are their "employees" paying tax?
Didn't Jesus cure leprosy in the faithful? Technically that makes him more of an antibiotic/steroid combo but i don't think being a vaccination is too much of a stretch. These people are just bullshit. We honestly need to reform how we regulate churches financials in a way that stops allowing funding for the perpetuation of sexist, homomophobic, racist and generally dangerous and damaging beliefs. These institutions have harbored, hid and provided platforms for some of the worst people in our society and manipulated and abused congregations as a matter of course. I'm not for a second dismissing anyone's right to religious freedom or beliefs- but the frameworks we allow churches to exist in are so broken and bad. They keep alive so much of the batshit bullshit we work so hard to get rid of in our wider communities.
As a genuine question, WHY does he want to stop his flock from getting vaccinated? What purpose does it serve him? I’m not sure where he would benefit from his community getting sick or dying. 100% think he’s been vaccinated himself and 100% think he should be charged along with the organizers of the rally. They have mocked the hard work that Aucklanders have put in over the last 7 weeks and no doubt will keep us in level 3 for longer.
Maybe we should send the video to David Icke, with his lizard like movements he might start believing that it’s the lizard people who don’t want us to get the vaccine. What a weird implosion of conspiracy theory this could be if they all started against each other.
High control groups are hard for the public to understand. Why do people join such groups? Why do their leaders behave the way they do? Why do the members stay and put up with them?
The psychology of the leaders at the centre of such groups means they actively resist any accurate understanding of their own nature. They don’t want to know themselves (self-denial), they don’t want those on the outside to realise and they especially don’t want those caught inside and subjugated to know.
As infants, we are born completely dependent on our parents. At first, we can’t feed or move to protect ourselves. Even as we grow, we are emotionally and financial dependent on our caregivers. There should be no shame in this - it’s part of the human condition. However, some parents due to their own traumatic upbringing, resent the dependency and needs of their children. They experience parenting as limiting and burdensome. They criticise, shame and humiliate their children and insist on constant gratitude. The child is made to feel ‘bad’ for their normal needs and the parent is always ‘good’ and the sole source of truth.
One of the pathways for people who experience this is to adapt and operate in the world so that all their feelings of shame and dependency are pushed onto others who they psychologically enslave. They are perfect, godly or divine and can pretend to need no-one, yet are secretly deeply parasitic with a bottomless need for the financial and emotional adulation of their flock of followers. They crush any dissent through subtle manipulation or resorting to public shaming. In effect, they are re-enacting their childhood on a larger stage with themselves in the role of grandiose abuser and they profoundly hurt a lot of people in the process.
The members of such groups are their victims, generally loving caring people who were going through a tough time and believed the facade - the public story the leader presents which hides the emotional and psychological reality within. Out of an all to human hunger for connection and community, they are now they are trapped within. Their care for each other is genuine and can often produce positive experiences.
Yet the core is rotten. The initially seductive leader soon starts telling them they are ‘bad’, not grateful enough, not giving enough, not fighting for the group and defending and praising the leader enough. The leader always frames it that leaving them means abandoning those loving values and accepting that their faith is a lie and that damnation awaits.
Getting out is easier if members come to realise they can preserve the beneficial and loving parts of their faith and begin to see the hypocrisy of the leader for what it is.
I know christians who are adamant the blood of jesus will protect them, better than any vaccine; and if they should die because of covid, then who are they to question when god calls them home. I read somewhere recently, "If some hasn't used logic to get to their belief, then you can't use logic to change their perspective". Indeed.
I can’t comment on his Instagram anymore… but if someone could let him know his username “Ps-Peter Mortlock” is an exact anagram for “Clerk Tempts Poor” I’d really appreciate it.
Interesting FARC have chosen to frame this protest as about 'Freedom', obviously it is their definition of freedom. Freedom to spread covid by congregating maskless, freedom to open their businesses and operate without restriction on numbers or masks, ALSO, freedom to deny an individual the right to define their own gender, freedom to restrict someone the right to marry their same sex, freedom to restrict a woman access to abortion, freedom to restrict your right to euthanasia. Next it will be their freedom to restrict who you can worship and what you can and cannot wear in public or what you can eat? Freedom? I find their approach hypocritical to say the least. Its certainly not about our freedoms and rights.
I spent most of yesterday looking for anything written about the ‘freedom picnics’ 🙄 and couldn’t find much of anything. I was musing over what the influences were for why there was very little space for anything other than Tamaki. Your article has enlightened me. I think it also helps me understand why I had been feeling a sense of unease when anybody said the words “I heard at church”. That said, my experience of church was different to yours, and I’m so sorry you had to endure what you did. My mother found confidence and friendship from the little church (CofE) in my home village in the UK. It wasn’t evangelical, it was repetitive and the ageing congregation loved that. My 90 year old mum still gives 10% to the church every week! Seems some of these practices these idiots preaches are very entrenched and will be difficult for people to break free from. Another great piece. Thank you David.
Idiots like this guy make the church look bad. I wish we heard more from lovely little churches who are feeding the poor and encouraging their members to sign petitions banning conversion therapy or there was media coverage of the Sihks giving out food parcels during lockdown. Instead religion is just presented to us, the non-religious, as batshit crazy. Maybe if I heard more nice things about religious organisations, I wouldn't completely support removing tax exemption for them...
christ, that last part about quoting scripture. does he really not see the hypocrisy?
thanks for another great piece David. You and your readers might be interested in this blog from AJ Hendry who also writes in this space and works amongst young vulnerable folk.
https://whenlambsaresilent.wordpress.com/2021/10/03/hey-christians-have-we-made-an-idol-of-individual-freedom-a-j-hendry/
I don’t know who I’m disappointed with the most: people like this guy, the people that blindly believe and listen to him, or the people (e.g. mainstream media, govt) that let him get away with it and leave him unchecked. It feels so bloody tiring sometimes.
Thank you for highlighting the hypocrisy though. I’m ashamed to say (as a Māori) that I had never even thought about how racial bias could be a key reason why Destiny Church get much more media attention than necessary. I’m running out of sources of news in NZ because biased, ignorant and irresponsible reporting is so widespread. Happy Monday 😜
Don't quote scripture, quote Fox.
Apart from everything else about these churches that make me sick, I wish the government/IRD would seriously look at whether they should be exempt from tax. How much of a community service are they really doing spreading hate and misinformation, and are their "employees" paying tax?
I wonder how much these believe their own spiel. I think Mr. Mortlock will be first in line to get vaccinated, if he isn't already.
Also, Peter Mortlock sounds like the name of a dark wizard.
(P.S. Have you heard about the Cat Art Show happening in LA in a couple weeks?)
Didn't Jesus cure leprosy in the faithful? Technically that makes him more of an antibiotic/steroid combo but i don't think being a vaccination is too much of a stretch. These people are just bullshit. We honestly need to reform how we regulate churches financials in a way that stops allowing funding for the perpetuation of sexist, homomophobic, racist and generally dangerous and damaging beliefs. These institutions have harbored, hid and provided platforms for some of the worst people in our society and manipulated and abused congregations as a matter of course. I'm not for a second dismissing anyone's right to religious freedom or beliefs- but the frameworks we allow churches to exist in are so broken and bad. They keep alive so much of the batshit bullshit we work so hard to get rid of in our wider communities.
As a genuine question, WHY does he want to stop his flock from getting vaccinated? What purpose does it serve him? I’m not sure where he would benefit from his community getting sick or dying. 100% think he’s been vaccinated himself and 100% think he should be charged along with the organizers of the rally. They have mocked the hard work that Aucklanders have put in over the last 7 weeks and no doubt will keep us in level 3 for longer.
Maybe we should send the video to David Icke, with his lizard like movements he might start believing that it’s the lizard people who don’t want us to get the vaccine. What a weird implosion of conspiracy theory this could be if they all started against each other.
While maintaining the maximum level of empathy and understanding I can... I'd love it if guys like Mortlock would just kindly fuck off.
Immediately, if possible.
High control groups are hard for the public to understand. Why do people join such groups? Why do their leaders behave the way they do? Why do the members stay and put up with them?
The psychology of the leaders at the centre of such groups means they actively resist any accurate understanding of their own nature. They don’t want to know themselves (self-denial), they don’t want those on the outside to realise and they especially don’t want those caught inside and subjugated to know.
Psychotherapist Daniel Shaw terms such leaders “traumatising narcissists” who build controlling communities with them at the centre which Shaw calls “relational systems of subjugation”. https://www.amazon.com/Traumatic-Narcissism-Recovery-Relational-Perspectives-ebook/dp/B097T7YC65
As infants, we are born completely dependent on our parents. At first, we can’t feed or move to protect ourselves. Even as we grow, we are emotionally and financial dependent on our caregivers. There should be no shame in this - it’s part of the human condition. However, some parents due to their own traumatic upbringing, resent the dependency and needs of their children. They experience parenting as limiting and burdensome. They criticise, shame and humiliate their children and insist on constant gratitude. The child is made to feel ‘bad’ for their normal needs and the parent is always ‘good’ and the sole source of truth.
One of the pathways for people who experience this is to adapt and operate in the world so that all their feelings of shame and dependency are pushed onto others who they psychologically enslave. They are perfect, godly or divine and can pretend to need no-one, yet are secretly deeply parasitic with a bottomless need for the financial and emotional adulation of their flock of followers. They crush any dissent through subtle manipulation or resorting to public shaming. In effect, they are re-enacting their childhood on a larger stage with themselves in the role of grandiose abuser and they profoundly hurt a lot of people in the process.
The members of such groups are their victims, generally loving caring people who were going through a tough time and believed the facade - the public story the leader presents which hides the emotional and psychological reality within. Out of an all to human hunger for connection and community, they are now they are trapped within. Their care for each other is genuine and can often produce positive experiences.
Yet the core is rotten. The initially seductive leader soon starts telling them they are ‘bad’, not grateful enough, not giving enough, not fighting for the group and defending and praising the leader enough. The leader always frames it that leaving them means abandoning those loving values and accepting that their faith is a lie and that damnation awaits.
Getting out is easier if members come to realise they can preserve the beneficial and loving parts of their faith and begin to see the hypocrisy of the leader for what it is.
I know christians who are adamant the blood of jesus will protect them, better than any vaccine; and if they should die because of covid, then who are they to question when god calls them home. I read somewhere recently, "If some hasn't used logic to get to their belief, then you can't use logic to change their perspective". Indeed.
I can’t comment on his Instagram anymore… but if someone could let him know his username “Ps-Peter Mortlock” is an exact anagram for “Clerk Tempts Poor” I’d really appreciate it.
Interesting FARC have chosen to frame this protest as about 'Freedom', obviously it is their definition of freedom. Freedom to spread covid by congregating maskless, freedom to open their businesses and operate without restriction on numbers or masks, ALSO, freedom to deny an individual the right to define their own gender, freedom to restrict someone the right to marry their same sex, freedom to restrict a woman access to abortion, freedom to restrict your right to euthanasia. Next it will be their freedom to restrict who you can worship and what you can and cannot wear in public or what you can eat? Freedom? I find their approach hypocritical to say the least. Its certainly not about our freedoms and rights.
I spent most of yesterday looking for anything written about the ‘freedom picnics’ 🙄 and couldn’t find much of anything. I was musing over what the influences were for why there was very little space for anything other than Tamaki. Your article has enlightened me. I think it also helps me understand why I had been feeling a sense of unease when anybody said the words “I heard at church”. That said, my experience of church was different to yours, and I’m so sorry you had to endure what you did. My mother found confidence and friendship from the little church (CofE) in my home village in the UK. It wasn’t evangelical, it was repetitive and the ageing congregation loved that. My 90 year old mum still gives 10% to the church every week! Seems some of these practices these idiots preaches are very entrenched and will be difficult for people to break free from. Another great piece. Thank you David.
Idiots like this guy make the church look bad. I wish we heard more from lovely little churches who are feeding the poor and encouraging their members to sign petitions banning conversion therapy or there was media coverage of the Sihks giving out food parcels during lockdown. Instead religion is just presented to us, the non-religious, as batshit crazy. Maybe if I heard more nice things about religious organisations, I wouldn't completely support removing tax exemption for them...