His pitch in yesterday's NZ Herald column covered a wider range than he is sometimes wont to play in the restricted space he is allowed and it suffered just a little from not having a single theme as a consequence. In the light of the Labour Party annual conference this weekend, and the accompanying announcement of a "Constitutional Review", there is among them a thread which is pertinent to current events both here and overseas.
I want to extract those bits which I see as relevant...if you wish to put them back into the context of the other themes you can so do at... (my comment in italics, emphasis is unashamed and intended)...
Herald, 13 Nov
13.11.2004
COMMENT
One of the curses of the first millennium was that religious people of all faiths were trapped inside texts - most notably the Old Testament, the Torah or the Koran.
Because these books are complex and subtle, priests were called upon to interpret the books' meaning and, therefore, to rule on the moral behaviour of the time, which meant lives were lived to the letter, without individual initiative.
That is why the period is now called the Dark Ages. Now I don't know that I agree with that leap of faith...He forgets for a start that this was a period of power for Islam in the areas of mathematics and art. But I quibble...) Life and self-expression came to a standstill compared with what has happened since the Reformation. Almost nothing changed. Literacy among ordinary people was not just discouraged but made a crime where it affected the sacred texts. Attempts to translate the Bible into vernacular languages led to death at the stake.
There is a modern parallel here which many miss or prefer to ignore, and which is fundamental to much of the modern conflict between Christianity and Islam.)
...
Sadly, as Americans have shown, the desire for believers to use the Old Testament texts to enforce by law how the rest of their countrymen should live has not diminished. They want everyone to abide by their texts, or the way they interpret them.
America's fixation with texts - as its reverence for the Constitution attests - has driven it into the conservatism that leads to social and political arthritis. Several times I have read of Supreme Court judges working towards decisions on the basis of what the founding fathers would have wanted. Gordon being subtle? Wishful thinking for the future?
...
Whether this is the sole reason, I'm not sure, but the range of acceptable opinion in the US has narrowed alarmingly. George W. Bush's claim that John Kerry represents the far left of liberalism in the US would be a joke anywhere else but as far as the two main US parties are concerned he was about right.
The main difference between them is Bush's God-bothering, not economic and social policy. ...
You don't hear much from the loony left in the US nowadays but the raving right fears no contradiction. Ann Coulter, fruitcake right-wing columnist, wrote recently that if Americans needed oil and oil was available in the Middle East, why shouldn't they just go and get it. She sells as many books as Michael Moore, by the way.
So let us be proud of our national secularism and of the breadth of opinion we have here and the trenchant debating we have in Parliament, even if sometimes it descends to petty squabbling.
And let us support the attempts to look at our constitutional legislation and not be beholden to old texts. We should not be trapped into old beliefs on things no longer relevant.
Constitutional laws should not be changed quickly or casually, but neither should they be preserved in formaldehyde.
It is one thing to respect the past and quite another to dwell in it.
You see, there are second and third parts to this. McLaughlin is thus far the only columnist that I have found who has been prepared to speak out and as such he gets kudos from me for starters. There are reports, based upon the media releases and proceedings of the Labour Conference, of the announcement. There are included comment (of the one and two sentence kind) from the likes of Brash Donny.
That leads to the second part of this whole Constitution thing - the role of the Treaty of Waitangi in the form of this country's future and the place of the Maori in it. This is a point that Brash Donny flicked up on; it is obvious as the nose on my face. Any consideration of the Constitution has to include the Treaty. What really matter is how you say it.
I agree with McLaughlin; there is a danger in having too much emphasis placed upon the "meaning" of a foundation document. Go back 50 or 60 years in this country and you will find exactly the opposite attitude to the Treaty. Very largely it was ignored. There was no formal national celebration of the formation of the nation. In fact Waitaingi Day did not rate as a holiday at all until late in the 1960s when it became the provincial commemorative holiday for Northland.
Was that "temporary loss" of the Treaty a good thing? In the light of history it is easy to say "No, it was not." I can say that I was fortunate in that my parents lived and worked in areas with large (in one case predominant) Maori populations. That gave me as a start, at least, a glimpse into the Maori culture and people; enough to have me temper my opinion now with the knowledge that there is very much that I still do not know. That at least is one step further than most europeans (including I am embarrassed to say, my son).
If the Treaty had been used then, as it has been in recent years, to redress some of the greater injustices against the Maori such as Parihaka and the Tainui confiscations then who can say where this nation would be today... but that is not the point that I want to follow.
With respect, there is always the danger as McLaughlin points out, of the pendulum being allowed to swing too far - of the Constitution becoming " preserved in formaldehyde" as he put it - toward a particular interpretation. In this latest move from the government, and it is important to remember now that exactly the same proposal was made but never followed by the last, the Bolger, National government. As yet none of the regular commentators have flicked up on this point. Nor has anyone yet had the gumption to point out that both Bolger and Clark are equally trenchant republicans (and for american listeners that has the local meaning of supporting total severance from all remaining vestiges of British rule such as the Govenor General; NOT support for the GOP). The conclusion that the formation of a republic is an idea whose time has come at long last is inescapable.
It is at this point that McLaughlin sets the course for future debate. It is a debate that is going to be intense. It is a debate that I know I must have my very small part in. It is a process where some of the dangers that McLaughlin (and I agree totally for reasons I will shortly show) foresees are already past flowering and well on the way to ripening.
That was the banner to Mclaughlin's column. Yes, Gordon, betchadupa I am. I would have it no other way. At the very least while we still have it.
There is already one "political party" representing religion - make that Christianity - in our Parliament... call themselves United Party, shortened down from United New Zealand I think. It is a conglomeration of one ex-National member (Caple) who is also a minister of his particular Christian brand plus four other political hopefuls. As such they have been pretty inoffensive supporters of the Clark government.
The very big danger comes from another direction. It is the formation of "Destiny New Zealand", a right wing political party which is directly linked to the Destiny Church, one of the Christian fundamentalist sects that seem to spring up around charismatic leaders with the ability to link religion with money.. I can understand McLaughlin's reticence in holding this particular example up and saying "this is a spade". The potential for personal criticism and denigration lies all around this topic like a stagnant moat.
On the other side I must add that I am not picking on the Tamaki sect, but it does so well illustrate the direction I fear. If this example had not existed than another would have found the niche. It is a "sign of the times", and is being used as the illustration; nothing else.
Destiny Party...
Our Vision for New Zealand
A nation under the governance of God
Empowered families and individuals fulfilling their God-given potential leaving an inheritance of compounding prosperity to successive generations
A model nation
______________________________________
The Mission
To establish a God-honouring nation founded on Christian principles - order, truth, faith, integrity, and moral responsibility, therefore ensuring the success of present and future generations
______________________________________
New Zealand is a Christian nation, a nation that was founded on Christian principles. New Zealand is currently being lead by a government that has forsaken our Godly heritage. Destiny New Zealand will recover and uphold the heritage of our forefathers and ensure that this legacy is passed on to future generations.
Richard Lewis
Party Leader
Suffice it to say that this particular development shows, in my opinion, the worst of american religious politics. How far will the electorate allow the divisiveness that such "beliefs" might bring us.
We need look no further than there for the dangers of mixing religion too far into government; personal beliefs too far into policy. Yeah, OK we can say the same about Bolger and Clark and the idea of the NZ republic. There is a distinction though; that republican debate is pure politic. It is not religious.
One of the very great attractions of the NZ lifestyle is the (I suspect largely unintended) secularism in government. We do not have the endless debate and division about whether creationism should replace evolution in school science curricula. We do not have the open repression of "other" religions ( I am proud of the fact that 5 or so kilometers down the road is the reputedly largest Bhuddist temple in the southern hemisphere). I am proud of the fact that or immigration policy has collected a polyglot of most religions into this country; most races. Oh how deadly dull might it be if the only permissable variation in this society were the denomination of the church that you attend.
Returning to the opening of McLaughlin's column, I am minded that ;
One of the curses of the first millennium was that religious people of all faiths were trapped inside texts - most notably the Old Testament, the Torah or the Koran.
Because these books are complex and subtle, priests were called upon to interpret the books' meaning and, therefore, to rule on the moral behaviour of the time, which meant lives were lived to the letter, without individual initiative.
Who, in the view of the Destiny Party, is the most appropriate to interpret the meaning of the books and the application of those interpretations to New Zealand Society? The best that one can hope for is the benign guidance of general religious tenets in the formation of the rules that guide society.
At its worst extreme, it is the introduction of Ayatollah Tamaki.
And here I have to set aside my personal beliefs and look for the balance that McLaughlin hints at but ignores. There is a fundamental starting point which it would be better to have in the open from the beginning. It is the reverse of his banner...
1 comment:
Such rigid interpretations of Holy Books bother me. The trouble is that not all societies classify things in the same way. We cannot assume that the societies that produced the Bible, for instance, classified people or their actions in the same way as we do. Whatever our view, we may be inclined, if we take the Bible at all seriously, to want to find that view expressed in biblical texts. That is dangerous for both sides of the argument. It is far more important when reading and studying the Bible, or any other Holy Book, to remember that the social, political, cultural and religious contexts within the different texts were written not for our culture but for one that is very foreign to us and very much in the past. Far better to understand the text and forget the readers' preconceptions and do what we can to discover the author's intention (which of course may turn out to be the same as the preconceptions!)
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