I don’t think he does. He’s not a great writer or orator - so think a lot of it just sort of spills out as assumed genius, without him clocking any of the irony.
Yes, that "How can this person - who does not know me personally - criticise me?" refrain is particularly Trump-like. Of course, Trump was more impulsive and hostile so it was tweeted out as rage i.e. "How DARE this person - who does not know me - criticise me" rather than appearing to being confused or bemused by it.
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.
This is a great read and hits hard. Really honest.
"Many Christians have been afraid for years that we have been losing our place in this world. That the Government is coming for us, and that if we don’t stand up for our rights, we’ll lose them.
I remember when I was a kid and the Government were enacting what were, I guess, quite significant social reforms of the day, the anti-smacking bill, the prostitution law reform, the introduction of civil unions, the arguments were the same. We were told that we were losing our freedoms, our personal liberties, that our rights were all being taken from us.
The fear within some Christian circles was palpable."
Thanks for this Helen, will share. Have been asking Christian friends if there is any pro-vaccination Christian writing out there for me forward to my Christian whanau, but so far no one has been able to send me anything. This piece still omits tackling the core of a lot of anti-vax belief though, which is that the vaccine is actually dangerous and covid-19 is not, and government/health professionals/media are lying to you - so if you have any links to tackle this from a Christian writer, would appreciate if you could share it also!
Theres a really good video on cmdfa.org.au (christian medical and dental fellowship of Australia) by a Christian clinical immunologist and allergy specialist. It's pretty long. but very comprehensive and he compares the vaccine risk rates of complication to that of other common medications.
Hi Heidi; it is really hard to convince people once they have gone down that rabbit hole as of course they presume anyone who tries is lying; This video panel recorded by Rev Lyndon Drake from the Maori Anglican Church is pretty good - I must admit I haven't watched it all but he has a gentle style that draws people in; he interviews 5 medical professionals.
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 😜
I was uncomfortable and ashamed to find I had unconsciously accepted the racial bias...and am so grateful to you David for pointing it out so I can try harder not to buy into the biased media reporting!! I sent a message to RNZ this morning encouraging them to call it the Tamaki/Mortlock protest!
Thanks Shar - and don't be hard on yourself. It's not all race - Brian is also a master at getting headlines - but in the media there's certainly an easy narrative to tap into with Destiny: Look - "poor dumb minorities!" plays pretty loudly at times. And that misses the points we actually need to thinking about! Giant happy Monday to you too. Well, Tuesday now probably!
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.
Your last line, and all of your points, are bang on. To use the pulpit to send people backwards in their understanding of the world should not be celebrated with a tax free status. It blows.
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.
He needs his congregation to fear everything so they turn to him (and tiiiithe!) Genuinely scary prospects, like getting covid aren't truly real because the government made it up and let gay people marry 😒 It's boring fox news rhetoric and millions of people follow it blindly. You've made the ultimate whoopsie here by implementing critical reasoning 😉
I think you’re spot on here. Keeping the community entirely dependent on the leader is paramount in their psychological needs. They must be the central authority and use fear of everything else as a means of control.
"Many Christians have been afraid for years that we have been losing our place in this world. That the Government is coming for us, and that if we don’t stand up for our rights, we’ll lose them.
I remember when I was a kid and the Government were enacting what were, I guess, quite significant social reforms of the day, the anti-smacking bill, the prostitution law reform, the introduction of civil unions, the arguments were the same. We were told that we were losing our freedoms, our personal liberties, that our rights were all being taken from us.
The fear within some Christian circles was palpable."
I also don't understand this. Churches are generally about bringing people together plus I'd expect tithing is paramount to this church's existence. Tithing would only be more generous in larger congregations so I'd have thought he'd want this. Maybe sermons, tithing etc has gone digital / online - so gathering in person is not as important...
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.
Paul - as usual I feel your casual comments here are worthy of their own newsletter. Thank you.
I am starting to hear from his flock - mainly chastising me for my colourful language - and then just basically going "I don't see the problem!".
Totally blinded. Which is to be expected.
The other thing I keep thinking about is that this negative attention he's getting he will be loving, because he'll see himself as a martyr. And he'll feed this back to his flock, no doubt. Irritating.
Between martyrdom and the prosperity doctrine he's really - in his own mind at least - untouchable.
David - I’m sure you are completely correct on the internal stories being told in both organisations. Because criticism like there is in this forum supports the organisational belief that the leader is right. And if you attend a church like this as a broad generalisation you don’t exercise your critical thinking abilities a lot.
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.
That’s a favourite quote attributed to Jonathan Swift: “You cannot reason a person out of a position he did not reason himself into in the first place.”
Thanks for the recs Paul 😀 I honestly think the world is falling apart because people can't question anymore 😅 Don't even get me started on people sharing articles or memes without LOOKING AT WHERE IT ORIGINATED FROM.
Haha that reminds me of a covid vaccine side effects infographic someone posted, with the source at the bottom pointing to WebMD. When I went to the source, the original infographic is for covid effects, and it turns out someone chopped off the title of that original one and put in the "new" title.
Paul is a pretty great Webworm member. His comments are worthy of whole seperate bloody Webworms! Proud to have him here, and cool to see his stuff being read down here. He's doing the mahi that's for sure.
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.
There don't appear to be any references to a "Freedom and Rights Coalition" before this protest that I can find (not that I googled that hard). And given that all the content and domain names appear to be controlled by Destiny Church members...
At this point, we don't know who the other co-founders of FARC are (or even if any exist) and thus who the wider circle of protest organisers might be. I wouldn't be at all surprised if City Impact avoided being directly involved in organising this, leaving that to Brian Tamaki who willingly courts the media spotlight. Well, other than Peter Mortlock suggesting church members attend while maintaining an appearance of deniability as David's article showed.
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.
Thanks, Emma. And yeah, not all churches are terrible. Just a lot of them. For many they are a sense of community and do good work in the community. And, you know, don't spread misinformation and Fox clips during their "services"! Your gran sounds super cute btw. Glad she has found community and rest within that church.
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...
And there are so many good lil' churches that are much more focussed on Jesus' messages than on passing around EFTPOS machines and playing Fox News clips.
christ, that last part about quoting scripture. does he really not see the hypocrisy?
I don’t think he does. He’s not a great writer or orator - so think a lot of it just sort of spills out as assumed genius, without him clocking any of the irony.
Like Trump. Similarities in their linguisitic style are plentiful!
Yes, that "How can this person - who does not know me personally - criticise me?" refrain is particularly Trump-like. Of course, Trump was more impulsive and hostile so it was tweeted out as rage i.e. "How DARE this person - who does not know me - criticise me" rather than appearing to being confused or bemused by it.
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/
Many thanks Helen — as always. Thanks for leading a church that is much more based on what Jesus actually reportedly said. Kudos.
This is a great read and hits hard. Really honest.
"Many Christians have been afraid for years that we have been losing our place in this world. That the Government is coming for us, and that if we don’t stand up for our rights, we’ll lose them.
I remember when I was a kid and the Government were enacting what were, I guess, quite significant social reforms of the day, the anti-smacking bill, the prostitution law reform, the introduction of civil unions, the arguments were the same. We were told that we were losing our freedoms, our personal liberties, that our rights were all being taken from us.
The fear within some Christian circles was palpable."
Thanks Helen.
Thanks for this Helen, will share. Have been asking Christian friends if there is any pro-vaccination Christian writing out there for me forward to my Christian whanau, but so far no one has been able to send me anything. This piece still omits tackling the core of a lot of anti-vax belief though, which is that the vaccine is actually dangerous and covid-19 is not, and government/health professionals/media are lying to you - so if you have any links to tackle this from a Christian writer, would appreciate if you could share it also!
Theres a really good video on cmdfa.org.au (christian medical and dental fellowship of Australia) by a Christian clinical immunologist and allergy specialist. It's pretty long. but very comprehensive and he compares the vaccine risk rates of complication to that of other common medications.
Actually really helpful for non christian sceptics too!
Hi Heidi; it is really hard to convince people once they have gone down that rabbit hole as of course they presume anyone who tries is lying; This video panel recorded by Rev Lyndon Drake from the Maori Anglican Church is pretty good - I must admit I haven't watched it all but he has a gentle style that draws people in; he interviews 5 medical professionals.
https://www.facebook.com/lyndondrake/videos/523072332106417
Thank you! Will check it out
That was a brilliant read. Thank you for sharing that!! Very insightful.
Thank Helen. There is a huge amount of really interesting reading there. My only comment is his strange use of capitals! But the content is great.
Thanks Helen, a good read
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 😜
I was uncomfortable and ashamed to find I had unconsciously accepted the racial bias...and am so grateful to you David for pointing it out so I can try harder not to buy into the biased media reporting!! I sent a message to RNZ this morning encouraging them to call it the Tamaki/Mortlock protest!
Thanks so much Jo. Jesse Mulligan had me on the other day to talk on this stuff, which I appreciated.
Thanks Shar - and don't be hard on yourself. It's not all race - Brian is also a master at getting headlines - but in the media there's certainly an easy narrative to tap into with Destiny: Look - "poor dumb minorities!" plays pretty loudly at times. And that misses the points we actually need to thinking about! Giant happy Monday to you too. Well, Tuesday now probably!
Oh snap, it'll be Wednesday! Where is the time going!!!
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?
Unfortunately spreading religions is seen as charitable, and boom - tax exempt. It needs to change, and maybe one day it will. I hope so.
Totally agree!
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?)
OMG David please go to the cat art show 🙀😭😻
PS: please email me about the Cat Art Show: davidfarrier@protonmail.com
Mortlock the Warlock
Yeah, I write in part I that I'd say he's definitely vaxxed.
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.
Your last line, and all of your points, are bang on. To use the pulpit to send people backwards in their understanding of the world should not be celebrated with a tax free status. It blows.
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.
He needs his congregation to fear everything so they turn to him (and tiiiithe!) Genuinely scary prospects, like getting covid aren't truly real because the government made it up and let gay people marry 😒 It's boring fox news rhetoric and millions of people follow it blindly. You've made the ultimate whoopsie here by implementing critical reasoning 😉
I think you’re spot on here. Keeping the community entirely dependent on the leader is paramount in their psychological needs. They must be the central authority and use fear of everything else as a means of control.
Whoops haha
Agreed. I don't understand how these calls for "freedom" and against vaccination are related to their "cause" except maybe to just get media coverage
Helen (who leads Auckland's wonderful St Matthews-in-the-City church) dropped this piece earlier and it answers this wonderfully:
https://whenlambsaresilent.wordpress.com/2021/10/03/hey-christians-have-we-made-an-idol-of-individual-freedom-a-j-hendry/
"Many Christians have been afraid for years that we have been losing our place in this world. That the Government is coming for us, and that if we don’t stand up for our rights, we’ll lose them.
I remember when I was a kid and the Government were enacting what were, I guess, quite significant social reforms of the day, the anti-smacking bill, the prostitution law reform, the introduction of civil unions, the arguments were the same. We were told that we were losing our freedoms, our personal liberties, that our rights were all being taken from us.
The fear within some Christian circles was palpable."
It's all worth a read.
I also don't understand this. Churches are generally about bringing people together plus I'd expect tithing is paramount to this church's existence. Tithing would only be more generous in larger congregations so I'd have thought he'd want this. Maybe sermons, tithing etc has gone digital / online - so gathering in person is not as important...
I'm betting if others can't see that you're not titling it impacts amounts.
Fear. It's all about the fear. That'll keep them coming back and negate any loss from any potential deaths.
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.
This made me laugh. Which I needed. Thank you!
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.
Yeah, I feel ya. I mean, he definitely has enough to retire. But he's miss the power too much.
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.
Paul - as usual I feel your casual comments here are worthy of their own newsletter. Thank you.
I am starting to hear from his flock - mainly chastising me for my colourful language - and then just basically going "I don't see the problem!".
Totally blinded. Which is to be expected.
The other thing I keep thinking about is that this negative attention he's getting he will be loving, because he'll see himself as a martyr. And he'll feed this back to his flock, no doubt. Irritating.
Between martyrdom and the prosperity doctrine he's really - in his own mind at least - untouchable.
David - I’m sure you are completely correct on the internal stories being told in both organisations. Because criticism like there is in this forum supports the organisational belief that the leader is right. And if you attend a church like this as a broad generalisation you don’t exercise your critical thinking abilities a lot.
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.
That’s a favourite quote attributed to Jonathan Swift: “You cannot reason a person out of a position he did not reason himself into in the first place.”
Of course, the sting in the tail is that we all generally make emotional decisions and then use reason to rationalise them after the fact. Thomas Gilovich’s “How We Know What Isn’t So” https://www.amazon.com/How-Know-What-Isnt-Fallibility/dp/0029117062 and Daniel Kahneman’s “Thinking, Fast and Slow” https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/0374533555 are fascinating explorations of the limitations and quirks of human reason.
I have bought to many bloody books of evil Amazon because of you, Paul!
Damn! FTC regulations require that I have to come clean now. I am actually Jeff Bezos.
I hope you liked our new recommendation prompt with your book purchases: "Would you like a curiously shaped rocket with that?"
Totally normal. And like - for science.
https://slate.com/technology/2021/07/bezos-blue-origin-resembles-penis-rocket-scientist-explains-why.html
Thanks for the recs Paul 😀 I honestly think the world is falling apart because people can't question anymore 😅 Don't even get me started on people sharing articles or memes without LOOKING AT WHERE IT ORIGINATED FROM.
Haha that reminds me of a covid vaccine side effects infographic someone posted, with the source at the bottom pointing to WebMD. When I went to the source, the original infographic is for covid effects, and it turns out someone chopped off the title of that original one and put in the "new" title.
Aww gawd yess 🤣 so baaad
OMG this explains it brilliantly 🙀 This is why I love the comments section on webworm 😅
Paul is a pretty great Webworm member. His comments are worthy of whole seperate bloody Webworms! Proud to have him here, and cool to see his stuff being read down here. He's doing the mahi that's for sure.
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.
This is very funny. Love it. And yes - he figured out how to limit all his comments. Classic move.
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 think the whole Freedom and Rights Coalition thing is an attempt to make it look broader in appeal and distinct from Destiny Church as organisers.
The tfrc.org.nz domain name was registered on the 6th of September 2021 by Jenny Marshall per the WHOIS record. Jenny Marshall is the financial controller of Destiny Church per this article: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/destinys-empire-worth-20m/FUZXJQ5F3EHVGH2ZR77LPJJKEM/
There don't appear to be any references to a "Freedom and Rights Coalition" before this protest that I can find (not that I googled that hard). And given that all the content and domain names appear to be controlled by Destiny Church members...
At this point, we don't know who the other co-founders of FARC are (or even if any exist) and thus who the wider circle of protest organisers might be. I wouldn't be at all surprised if City Impact avoided being directly involved in organising this, leaving that to Brian Tamaki who willingly courts the media spotlight. Well, other than Peter Mortlock suggesting church members attend while maintaining an appearance of deniability as David's article showed.
You're bang on: Total whitewashing of the whole thing - trying to make it look sane, measured and irreligious.
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.
Thanks, Emma. And yeah, not all churches are terrible. Just a lot of them. For many they are a sense of community and do good work in the community. And, you know, don't spread misinformation and Fox clips during their "services"! Your gran sounds super cute btw. Glad she has found community and rest within that church.
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...
And there are so many good lil' churches that are much more focussed on Jesus' messages than on passing around EFTPOS machines and playing Fox News clips.