Being white is playing the game of life on easy mode. Being white cis hetero male is like having all the cheat codes. It's about time pakeha people (myself included) recognised their privilege and started dismantling it - not by making life harder for ourselves, but by making life easier for others. Decolonising our minds, our lives, our state - it's the least we owe tangata whenua.
This really is the biggest shake that most white people have ever had to their lives. IT's not time to get insular. It's time to work on making things right for Māori and every other person in Aotearoa.
We live in times unprecedented in most living memory. Let's make some unprecedented moves, restore the sovereignty of tangata whenua, and let them lead us out of this mess. Or at least, you know, if we can't be that revolutionary, give them an equal seat at the table to steer our path.
Let's follow in the footsteps of that brown revolutionary Jesus, not the American Jesus. Let's tear to shreds the moneylenders in the temple. Let's sit at the table with the "undesirables". It's what the whole of the New Testament was originally founded on - radical change.
This pandemic is the second time I’ve felt this kind of trauma. It’s like a complete loss of control over the future, it’s not as defined as it was before.
The first time was during and after the earthquakes in Christchurch in 2011. The initial shock of the earthquake, watching as my walls turned to literal jelly as I stood in a doorway, knowing there was absolutely nowhere I could run. Then for months afterwards, there were the necessary restrictions (water, no go zones etc ).
I was fine. I joined the Student Volunteer army for a few days and helped to shovel silt from peoples homes and saw the destruction through the eyes of people who had lost everything.
This pandemic brings me back to those feelings for the few months after those shakes in Canterbury, but it’s never ending. Now, instead of one ridiculous “Moon Man” causing people needless grief and pain (I’ll always be thankful to John Campbell for his righteous anger as he interviewed him), we now have a whole industry intent on causing as much harm as possible to the most vulnerable, alongside a media who slavishly bullhorn their dangerous and uneducated takes.
I ran the “Anti vax Wall of Shame”, a page and group on Facebook (and a short lived website) for about ten years. Friends and family constantly asked why I have a shit about anti Vaxers. They are a minority, they would say. Nobody takes them seriously, they would tell me. Myself and a core group of people (who I am proud to call friends to this day) who work in medicine, academia and people (like myself) who were concerned laymen - knew what would happen if a pandemic should hit. These people have seriously ruptured the fabric of society, and their numbers have only grown.
Thanks for the work on do on this substack David. The light you bear is far brighter and reaches far further than the little lighter I held for those years I was involved. Thanks for doing what you can to help sew this fabric back together.
Disclaimer that I'm quite sleep deprived so I don't know if this will make any sense, but we'll give it a go: What I see in these people is extreme examples of confirmation bias. You will never convince them of the truth with evidence because their brainwashed little minds will interpret the information in whatever way fits their belief system. That's why there's no hope in changing these people. They've got an answer for everything.
My favourite line from your feedback is ‘play[ing] the race angel’. Wouldn’t it be amazing if all this shit was real and there really was a race Angel! How good would that be? Instead of all this suffering and poverty and colonisation and history of slavery and all that pain and anguish to prove your worth to enter the KOH. Seriously, nobody thought this through properly?
Pentecostal churches are one of the few things in this world that really make my head feel like it might explode. I am VERY non-religious, raised in a family of atheists, but even I know enough about Jesus and the Bible to know that those churches represent the opposite of what Christianity actually is/should be. "Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” I had a classmate at uni who was what I always felt to be a true Christian and your second letter writer reminds me of him - humble, quiet about his beliefs, and him and his wife spent many of their nights and weekends out in the city giving food to the homeless (I didn't know this until we'd been classmates for a year and a half). Genuinely a Christian who I have a lot of respect for.
Glad to see your opinion piece in Stuff and also talking to Jessie Mulligan on RNZ. I was also heartened to read about the woman from the small, kind church as I have the honour of encountering people and organisations like that all over south Auckland. I am always humbled by the amount of community support they provide. When a tornado hit Papatoetoe, we had some many groups offering us good. It was stunning. Common welfare. It is not lacking in NZ but it does not get the attention. Thanks again for including that email and for your willingness to be be abused but handle it with truths..
As an ex-evangelical who knows the bible inside out - I'm fascinated by the misuse of bible stories and the teachings/word of God. Yes, they've always been into cherry picking - but I find it so interesting the way they use stories that I think are quite clear - for their own ends. This is basically how the bible is though right? You need to read it with the overall teaching of Jesus in mind to guide you as to how to understand it. Because it's all open to interpretation. For example, using the story of the widow's mite (Mark 12:41–44, Luke 21:1–4) The widow presented a a bronze mite - the lowest coin (think a 5c I guess) in the presence of Jesus. "He sat down opposite the treasury and observed how the crowd put money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow also came and put in two small coins worth a few cents. Calling his disciples to himself, he said to them, 'Amen, I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all the other contributors to the treasury. For they have all contributed from their surplus wealth, but she, from her poverty, has contributed all she had, her whole livelihood.'". This church uses this story as "the cheerful giver" and basically pastors like Mortz say: "see, even if you are in total poverty, give me your final dollar". But, if you read it as if Jesus said it, with all that we know about Jesus as a (possibly real, possibly not - let's not get into that) historical figure - it's far more likely he's shaming the church for having a widow give her whole livelihood to the church. Jesus was essentially a radical socialist who flipped tables (Matthew 21:12-13) because he hated rich cunts so much. But - but - the story of the Widow's Mite (and it's just one example) is even clearer - Jesus says: "Beware of the scribes, who like to go around in long robes and accept greetings in the marketplaces, seats of honor in synagogues, and places of honor at banquets. They devour the houses of widows and, as a pretext, recite lengthy prayers. They will receive a very severe condemnation." Mark 12:38-44. Then he just smashed the shit out of the temple. If that isn't a massive fuck you - what is? You can't quote Hebrews 10:25 and not quote literally the entire rest of the bible that never mentions church as a physical place. The Kingdom of God is a 'when' not a 'where'. The mentions of churches are in Revelations and they're literally all "fuck this church" and "fuck that church". Jesus hates churches. Matthew 18:20 - “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” The church is a modern concept - and quite frankly, everything I know of the bible is that the vengeful God would fully go Herod* on Mortz ass if He was here. He would absolutely fuck him up. (Herod got struck down, intestines pulled out, turned to worms etc - good times - for being praised as the voice of God which really shits God). Anyway, TLDR is it's all fucked and it's all about getting rich through making mostly good people believe they'll go to Hell if they don't pay for Mortz to get another facelift or Tamaki to get his eyebrows did. (Another tangent - mentioning Sanballat and Tobiah is interesting because it's literally a metaphor now for antisemitism, but was used during the Trump campaign and is often used by neo-nazis. One part of the story is how the Levites were deprived of what they felt was their share of the offerings from the temple's store rooms being closed off to them (or rented depending on how you interpret it) which is kind of ironic - money is at the heart of a lot of religious BS).
A part of me wonders if the American version of Christianity’s obsession with “freedom” and fear of government control stems from the history of the Puritans fleeing England and settling here in the U.S. so they could practice their faith without government control. And then the Mormons getting persecuted, etc. so it just became permanently baked into the belief system of American Christianity.
Another part of me wonders if the obsession with freedom is a method to avoid facing the impact that their beliefs and privilege have on others.
As an American, I realize that we export both the good and the awful of our culture. Unfortunately, super white mega-churches are part of that culture. If only we could just export things like HBO and the Obamas.
As for tithing 10% to a mega church, that means that those churches raise a ton of money considering that their congregants are in the hundreds if not thousands. I wonder where that money goes. Does it go to helping the poor like Jesus (who was a socialist, btw) preached, or does it go to buying the pastor of the church a mega-mansion. Maybe it should go to helping those who have been impacted by COVID-19 and are in desperate need of assistance, especially since pastors are preaching against masks and vaccinations - the very things that would help put an end to this pandemic and the suffering that it causes.
Just popping on here to say that this coverage of City Impact Church is great. And on a separate City Impact Church issue - there is more than one - I was submitting in favour of the Conversion Therapy Ban yesterday, and one of the other submitters gave evidence that he was attending City Impact Church when he received conversion therapy. I suspect City Impact Church will either have their head in the sand or simply lie about this, but I think there needs to be more accountability on this topic as well. The Pentecostal Church is a real mess.
As a white woman, while I've felt small moments of panic when men have done things, the only time I felt real, long lasting and sustained fear for myself was when I was in the 2011 Tsunami. Having days pass with no knowledge if something worse was coming as aftershocks continuedly raged for days, my American family sending me updates of what the US news was saying and how it differed greatly from Japanese news, and the overhanging fear of possible nuclear meltdown has left me with a bit of PTSD and I only had to deal with that for five days, before I went back to America just a few months earlier than planned. Covid, while dangerous and scary, is more preventable than an earthquake. Precautions can be taken. I'm not really sure where I'm going with this other than these megachurches drive me up the wall as well as the rich white men who've never felt that true fear in their life that run 99% of them.
Also, good job bringing the race angel in. Love that guy.
'On top of this, he’ll be loving the negative attention he’s getting because of the whole “martyr” complex his breed of Christianity is obsessed with.' yeah, well, I am down with the whole martyr thing if those dudes (Mortz and Apostle Bri) are into it - all good - I'll even be okay with providing the nails, or the hammer - no worries. They might as well go the whole hog....
Its scary to face into and admit you've bought into an elitist, sexist, racist system. I'm reminded of your articles around family members and friends falling down conspiracy theory rabbit holes. This is kind of the same, but even more embedded in all aspects of peoples lives. As detailed in those other pieces I think they way out, and reason to keep some hope, is the same too though- just keep challenging the leadership that perpetuates this shit and provide logical, rational, parallel information and narratives. Thanks for doing that ❤
Hmmm, this one hit me a little harder than the usual *I agree with everything David writes* response. I think it is because of my background - my family comes from generations of extremely poor Habsburg peasants, who've been starved, beaten and used as cannon fodder in wars, including two world wars our Austrian overlords started. The multi-generational familial trauma that caused (and which also led to my complex childhood PTSD) is not trivial by any means - and it feels like you are slightly over-trivialising *all* white people here, and thus devaluing the many extreme struggles many poor white, especially women and children have suffered at the hands of colonisers, fascists and the church. For millennia.
OTOH, of course I see your point. We are the supremacist race that has caused by far the most grief in Earth's recent history. The fact that I managed to move to the other end of the world, get a PhD, and buy land in my dream country that has embraced me with open arms, is testament to my skin colour - and the decade I was born in. Neither my Oma nor Mama would have been able to do what I did, coming from their underclass background in one of the world's most classist countries.
So... I hear ya, I mostly agree, and yet I feel that some nuance is missing, which is why you'll probably get trounced by enraged white and Christian folks. Though I don't know how you could bring this nuance in and not be accused of being a fence-sitter either. This topic is a very hard one, and I'm glad we are starting to grapple with it. Kudos for having the cojones to poke the very large hornets' nest again!
Being white is playing the game of life on easy mode. Being white cis hetero male is like having all the cheat codes. It's about time pakeha people (myself included) recognised their privilege and started dismantling it - not by making life harder for ourselves, but by making life easier for others. Decolonising our minds, our lives, our state - it's the least we owe tangata whenua.
This really is the biggest shake that most white people have ever had to their lives. IT's not time to get insular. It's time to work on making things right for Māori and every other person in Aotearoa.
We live in times unprecedented in most living memory. Let's make some unprecedented moves, restore the sovereignty of tangata whenua, and let them lead us out of this mess. Or at least, you know, if we can't be that revolutionary, give them an equal seat at the table to steer our path.
Let's follow in the footsteps of that brown revolutionary Jesus, not the American Jesus. Let's tear to shreds the moneylenders in the temple. Let's sit at the table with the "undesirables". It's what the whole of the New Testament was originally founded on - radical change.
This pandemic is the second time I’ve felt this kind of trauma. It’s like a complete loss of control over the future, it’s not as defined as it was before.
The first time was during and after the earthquakes in Christchurch in 2011. The initial shock of the earthquake, watching as my walls turned to literal jelly as I stood in a doorway, knowing there was absolutely nowhere I could run. Then for months afterwards, there were the necessary restrictions (water, no go zones etc ).
I was fine. I joined the Student Volunteer army for a few days and helped to shovel silt from peoples homes and saw the destruction through the eyes of people who had lost everything.
This pandemic brings me back to those feelings for the few months after those shakes in Canterbury, but it’s never ending. Now, instead of one ridiculous “Moon Man” causing people needless grief and pain (I’ll always be thankful to John Campbell for his righteous anger as he interviewed him), we now have a whole industry intent on causing as much harm as possible to the most vulnerable, alongside a media who slavishly bullhorn their dangerous and uneducated takes.
I ran the “Anti vax Wall of Shame”, a page and group on Facebook (and a short lived website) for about ten years. Friends and family constantly asked why I have a shit about anti Vaxers. They are a minority, they would say. Nobody takes them seriously, they would tell me. Myself and a core group of people (who I am proud to call friends to this day) who work in medicine, academia and people (like myself) who were concerned laymen - knew what would happen if a pandemic should hit. These people have seriously ruptured the fabric of society, and their numbers have only grown.
Thanks for the work on do on this substack David. The light you bear is far brighter and reaches far further than the little lighter I held for those years I was involved. Thanks for doing what you can to help sew this fabric back together.
Disclaimer that I'm quite sleep deprived so I don't know if this will make any sense, but we'll give it a go: What I see in these people is extreme examples of confirmation bias. You will never convince them of the truth with evidence because their brainwashed little minds will interpret the information in whatever way fits their belief system. That's why there's no hope in changing these people. They've got an answer for everything.
My favourite line from your feedback is ‘play[ing] the race angel’. Wouldn’t it be amazing if all this shit was real and there really was a race Angel! How good would that be? Instead of all this suffering and poverty and colonisation and history of slavery and all that pain and anguish to prove your worth to enter the KOH. Seriously, nobody thought this through properly?
I display more 'Christian' attributes than this lot and I'm an atheist
It's weird to me for that commenter to accuse you of hiding behind your keyboard when you've very publicly published a piece under your own name.
Pentecostal churches are one of the few things in this world that really make my head feel like it might explode. I am VERY non-religious, raised in a family of atheists, but even I know enough about Jesus and the Bible to know that those churches represent the opposite of what Christianity actually is/should be. "Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” I had a classmate at uni who was what I always felt to be a true Christian and your second letter writer reminds me of him - humble, quiet about his beliefs, and him and his wife spent many of their nights and weekends out in the city giving food to the homeless (I didn't know this until we'd been classmates for a year and a half). Genuinely a Christian who I have a lot of respect for.
Glad to see your opinion piece in Stuff and also talking to Jessie Mulligan on RNZ. I was also heartened to read about the woman from the small, kind church as I have the honour of encountering people and organisations like that all over south Auckland. I am always humbled by the amount of community support they provide. When a tornado hit Papatoetoe, we had some many groups offering us good. It was stunning. Common welfare. It is not lacking in NZ but it does not get the attention. Thanks again for including that email and for your willingness to be be abused but handle it with truths..
As an ex-evangelical who knows the bible inside out - I'm fascinated by the misuse of bible stories and the teachings/word of God. Yes, they've always been into cherry picking - but I find it so interesting the way they use stories that I think are quite clear - for their own ends. This is basically how the bible is though right? You need to read it with the overall teaching of Jesus in mind to guide you as to how to understand it. Because it's all open to interpretation. For example, using the story of the widow's mite (Mark 12:41–44, Luke 21:1–4) The widow presented a a bronze mite - the lowest coin (think a 5c I guess) in the presence of Jesus. "He sat down opposite the treasury and observed how the crowd put money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow also came and put in two small coins worth a few cents. Calling his disciples to himself, he said to them, 'Amen, I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all the other contributors to the treasury. For they have all contributed from their surplus wealth, but she, from her poverty, has contributed all she had, her whole livelihood.'". This church uses this story as "the cheerful giver" and basically pastors like Mortz say: "see, even if you are in total poverty, give me your final dollar". But, if you read it as if Jesus said it, with all that we know about Jesus as a (possibly real, possibly not - let's not get into that) historical figure - it's far more likely he's shaming the church for having a widow give her whole livelihood to the church. Jesus was essentially a radical socialist who flipped tables (Matthew 21:12-13) because he hated rich cunts so much. But - but - the story of the Widow's Mite (and it's just one example) is even clearer - Jesus says: "Beware of the scribes, who like to go around in long robes and accept greetings in the marketplaces, seats of honor in synagogues, and places of honor at banquets. They devour the houses of widows and, as a pretext, recite lengthy prayers. They will receive a very severe condemnation." Mark 12:38-44. Then he just smashed the shit out of the temple. If that isn't a massive fuck you - what is? You can't quote Hebrews 10:25 and not quote literally the entire rest of the bible that never mentions church as a physical place. The Kingdom of God is a 'when' not a 'where'. The mentions of churches are in Revelations and they're literally all "fuck this church" and "fuck that church". Jesus hates churches. Matthew 18:20 - “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” The church is a modern concept - and quite frankly, everything I know of the bible is that the vengeful God would fully go Herod* on Mortz ass if He was here. He would absolutely fuck him up. (Herod got struck down, intestines pulled out, turned to worms etc - good times - for being praised as the voice of God which really shits God). Anyway, TLDR is it's all fucked and it's all about getting rich through making mostly good people believe they'll go to Hell if they don't pay for Mortz to get another facelift or Tamaki to get his eyebrows did. (Another tangent - mentioning Sanballat and Tobiah is interesting because it's literally a metaphor now for antisemitism, but was used during the Trump campaign and is often used by neo-nazis. One part of the story is how the Levites were deprived of what they felt was their share of the offerings from the temple's store rooms being closed off to them (or rented depending on how you interpret it) which is kind of ironic - money is at the heart of a lot of religious BS).
A part of me wonders if the American version of Christianity’s obsession with “freedom” and fear of government control stems from the history of the Puritans fleeing England and settling here in the U.S. so they could practice their faith without government control. And then the Mormons getting persecuted, etc. so it just became permanently baked into the belief system of American Christianity.
Another part of me wonders if the obsession with freedom is a method to avoid facing the impact that their beliefs and privilege have on others.
As an American, I realize that we export both the good and the awful of our culture. Unfortunately, super white mega-churches are part of that culture. If only we could just export things like HBO and the Obamas.
As for tithing 10% to a mega church, that means that those churches raise a ton of money considering that their congregants are in the hundreds if not thousands. I wonder where that money goes. Does it go to helping the poor like Jesus (who was a socialist, btw) preached, or does it go to buying the pastor of the church a mega-mansion. Maybe it should go to helping those who have been impacted by COVID-19 and are in desperate need of assistance, especially since pastors are preaching against masks and vaccinations - the very things that would help put an end to this pandemic and the suffering that it causes.
Just popping on here to say that this coverage of City Impact Church is great. And on a separate City Impact Church issue - there is more than one - I was submitting in favour of the Conversion Therapy Ban yesterday, and one of the other submitters gave evidence that he was attending City Impact Church when he received conversion therapy. I suspect City Impact Church will either have their head in the sand or simply lie about this, but I think there needs to be more accountability on this topic as well. The Pentecostal Church is a real mess.
Loved this, per norm.
As a white woman, while I've felt small moments of panic when men have done things, the only time I felt real, long lasting and sustained fear for myself was when I was in the 2011 Tsunami. Having days pass with no knowledge if something worse was coming as aftershocks continuedly raged for days, my American family sending me updates of what the US news was saying and how it differed greatly from Japanese news, and the overhanging fear of possible nuclear meltdown has left me with a bit of PTSD and I only had to deal with that for five days, before I went back to America just a few months earlier than planned. Covid, while dangerous and scary, is more preventable than an earthquake. Precautions can be taken. I'm not really sure where I'm going with this other than these megachurches drive me up the wall as well as the rich white men who've never felt that true fear in their life that run 99% of them.
Also, good job bringing the race angel in. Love that guy.
You're my favorite piece of prick, David 😊
'On top of this, he’ll be loving the negative attention he’s getting because of the whole “martyr” complex his breed of Christianity is obsessed with.' yeah, well, I am down with the whole martyr thing if those dudes (Mortz and Apostle Bri) are into it - all good - I'll even be okay with providing the nails, or the hammer - no worries. They might as well go the whole hog....
Its scary to face into and admit you've bought into an elitist, sexist, racist system. I'm reminded of your articles around family members and friends falling down conspiracy theory rabbit holes. This is kind of the same, but even more embedded in all aspects of peoples lives. As detailed in those other pieces I think they way out, and reason to keep some hope, is the same too though- just keep challenging the leadership that perpetuates this shit and provide logical, rational, parallel information and narratives. Thanks for doing that ❤
Hmmm, this one hit me a little harder than the usual *I agree with everything David writes* response. I think it is because of my background - my family comes from generations of extremely poor Habsburg peasants, who've been starved, beaten and used as cannon fodder in wars, including two world wars our Austrian overlords started. The multi-generational familial trauma that caused (and which also led to my complex childhood PTSD) is not trivial by any means - and it feels like you are slightly over-trivialising *all* white people here, and thus devaluing the many extreme struggles many poor white, especially women and children have suffered at the hands of colonisers, fascists and the church. For millennia.
OTOH, of course I see your point. We are the supremacist race that has caused by far the most grief in Earth's recent history. The fact that I managed to move to the other end of the world, get a PhD, and buy land in my dream country that has embraced me with open arms, is testament to my skin colour - and the decade I was born in. Neither my Oma nor Mama would have been able to do what I did, coming from their underclass background in one of the world's most classist countries.
So... I hear ya, I mostly agree, and yet I feel that some nuance is missing, which is why you'll probably get trounced by enraged white and Christian folks. Though I don't know how you could bring this nuance in and not be accused of being a fence-sitter either. This topic is a very hard one, and I'm glad we are starting to grapple with it. Kudos for having the cojones to poke the very large hornets' nest again!