Putting some faith in politics
If you are among the 37 per cent of New Zealanders who identify as Christian, according to the 2018 census, reading the news could be a disheartening experience.
You might switch on the radio and hear the host warn that new National Mpchristopher Luxon ‘‘needs to move fast, so he doesn’t become just the Christian guy’’.
You might go online and see headlines like ‘‘Catholic Church formally apologises to survivors of abuse’’ or ‘‘My faith is not a political agenda: Luxon defends Christianity inmaiden speech’’. On another day, the news might light up with responses to polarising comments by Destiny Church leader Brian Tamaki or sports star Israel Folau.
Of course, conflict and drama have sold news since Adam was a boy. But the notion that a politician must ‘‘defend’’ the world’s largest and most historically influential religion, or should avoid being pigeonholed as ‘‘the Christian guy’’, shows how far we have moved into the post-christian era.
Luxon has been talked about as a future leader of National since 2018. Some on the left have talked about his evangelical Christianity for nearly as long, wondering if his belief system is compatible with mainstream New Zealand politics, given the current prominence of such culture war and conscience issues as abortion, euthanasia, drugs and trans rights. It was noted that Luxon’s recent vote against a bill that keeps protesters 150 metres away from people seeking abortions puts him to the conservative right of other churchgoers in National, such as Simon Bridges and Todd Muller.
That background means it was smart of Luxon to put his faith on the table this week and clear the air. He explained that his faith gave his life purpose and puts him in the context of something larger than himself. He talked of Jesus ‘‘showing compassion, tolerance and care for others’’.
He made workplace equality achievements as Air New Zealand CEO sound like extensions of that view, not a contradiction of it.
He said the world was improved by anti-slavery campaigner William Wilberforce, civil rights leader Martin Luther King and women’s suffrage champion Kate Sheppard, who were all motivated by Christianity. It’s hard to disagree with that last part. It is also a reminder of one of the interesting paradoxes of the postChristian era. British historian Tom Holland explained it in his recent book Dominion. Drawing on Friedrich Nietzsche’s ideas about ‘‘the death of God’’, Holland shows how Christian values persist in the post-christian world and continue to shape attitudes towards equality and human rights, long after the belief in a Christian God has faded. According to this argument, even progressive politics has religious roots, despite progressivism now seeming anti-religious.
In his maiden speech, Luxon spoke of Christians being stereotyped as ‘‘extreme’’. Partly that is because moderate
Christians have stayed under the radar in the media and politics, and partly because there is a growing lack of understanding of Christian history and values.
It has been more than 80 years since Michael Joseph Savage described social security in New Zealand as ‘‘Applied Christianity’’. Now, in a way Nietzsche would recognise, most of us agree on the need for social security without considering any metaphysical underpinning. What Luxon did this week, in a thoughtful and open way, is to reconnect such values to the centre of New Zealand politics and show they are not as strange or extreme as some might assume.