Bishop Brian out of touch with his hateful preaching
Just because you can something doesn’t mean you should
Dear Brian Tamaki, I know you’ve noticed that the Earth is moving quite a bit at the moment. That’s why I assumed, when my phone flashed in Parliament this week, that it was yet another notification from GeoNet. I was wrong. It was, in fact, a news alert with a headline that read ‘Brain Tamaki blames sinners for quakes’ Clearly a bit of clickbait, I thought.
But on further reading it became pretty clear that there was no sub editor to blame for this one, and you did indeed give a sermon in which you claimed that the earth ‘‘convulses
under the weight of certain human sin’’. Certain human sin? What or who could that be? Those who neglected to hand over substantial tithes in the past financial year? Nope. Apparently it’s not our restless tectonic plates we should be looking to in the wake of our most recent shakes, according to your sermon and written words, it’s murderers and homosexuals who are to blame. I take issue with this position for many, many reasons. But I can assure you of one thing, despite my severe objection to your views, I will always defend your right to practice your faith. After all, I wouldn’t want my belief in love, equality and inclusiveness to impinge on your right to believe in… well, the opposite of that. But aside from being appalled by what you said, I also couldn’t help feeling like you had somehow expressed everything that, in the face of terrible times, New Zealand is not.
It never ceases to amaze me how Kiwi solidarity is always the most overwhelming force. Students build armies to help their community, marae open their doors to hundreds, New Zealanders everywhere pitch in to support people who lose everything, and those same people in the middle of their loss, open their homes and hearts to tourists and perfect strangers. And we do all of that because that is who we are.
Ultimately I shouldn’t be surprised though. I still remember being on the parliamentary forecourt the day that you brought a group of predominantely young men, all dressed in black, to scream ‘‘enough is enough’’ to the people who had gathered there. You weren’t protesting poverty, unemployment, inequality, or even war. You were there to protest civil unions. We can all hold our own views, but the moment those views spill over into inciting people to believe that their wellbeing is falsely at risk by the mere existence of others, is the moment we need to call that behaviour out. And alongside Trump, you’re the second person in a week to prove why that is just so important.
– Jacinda Ardern