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Regards
Adolf
No Minister 
Parents who don’t send there kids to schools could see enforcement whilst the illegal church group that is the reason for the longer restrictions on Auckland wont be prosecuted after repeated breaches.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12360873
Oh so now you’re upset about the double standards of law enforcement.
The “law” was not enforced during the great BLM protests back in June either, despite occurring under L2 restrictions.
And for the same reasons: to have done so would have been to attack the very people who support this government. In this case Pasifika people.
Oooo – and I am informed this morning by people who listen to the radio news that our government may start cracking down on social media spreading disinformation, which presumably refers to the congregations spreading information on their Facebook groups and the like.
Watching Labour crack down on that will be … interesting.
Pacific Islanders may be considered by Labour as part of their “reservation/plantation”. However as with Maori who join up with the likes of Brian Tamaki and similar hardcore fundamentalist directly sects accessing the concerns and subculture of North American fundamentalists and sects (abortion, gun control, Israel, big government and the UN restricting freedom…)
…they are quickly thrown under the bus when required. But only after a preliminary softening-up propaganda campaign to ensure they are “separated” from mainstream Maori and Pasifika:
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/425669/churches-with-links-to-the-us-being-blamed-for-spreading-covid-19-misinformation
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12363903&ref=readmore
I assume they will be taping their own mouths shut first.
@Kimbo
Since you seem to know a lot about this stuff, what’s the modern influence of mainstream Protestant religions on the Pasifika populations? I seem to recall that the Methodists were big, and perhaps still are? But what of Anglican, Presbyterian, Baptist, Lutheran (never heard of a Pasifika Lutheran) and so forth?
There seems to be a strong Catholic contingent, but the rise in the fundamentalist/evangelical sects seems to have replaced the mainstream Protestant groups? True or not?
From what I can tell the mainstream denominations, Catholic, Methodist, Presbyterian, Congregational, Anglican and also, for historic reasons the Mormons still reign supreme. And Pacific Island people have very much made them their “own” in the sense that those institutions have been incorporated into their culture and their culture has shaped their churches. In the same way German Americans did once with Lutheranism, the Irish, Italians and Poles with Catholicism, and the Scots with Presbyterianism. Or Jews with the synagogue. Pacific Island people, unlike most European Kiwis, are primarily communal people, not rugged individualists in the Don Brash mode (who tacitly assumes that cultural individualist aspect of the Enlightenment is self-evident truth. I digress…).
Hence, after family and before even the rugby or rugby league club, the institution of church plays the primary social role for Pacific Island community. Especially for migrant people who need to transplant some institutions from the home country from the sake of social cohesion and support. Hence arguably for the “ordinary” Pacific Islander (if there is such a thing) doctrinal distinctives and differences are not necessarily the criteria for church membership, but rather continuity with the past. Which arguably means affiliation to na particular church can become fluid, even if becoming unchurched is still hardly a socially acceptable or personally comfortable option.
But I’ve seen the erudite and knowledgeable Scott Hamilton argue that Pacific Island church affiliation and spirituality is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma and there is a whole lot more going on that outsiders don’t appreciate. Hence, I’m always wary of the characterisation of Pacific Islanders as somehow simple or gullible. For instance, that complex communal/individual dichotomy is one of the interesting and challenging tight ropes Pacific Islanders, especially the young have to walk in the context of our wider individualist culture that Europeans don’t usually appreciate. No doubt more communal communities whether Muslim or from China, India and elsewhere in Asia and the Middle East have the same challenge, including the fear of “losing” their young. But to answer your question at this stage, the traditional churches still reign supreme. Including and especially due to immediate and wider whanau ties.
However, because Pacific Islanders are inherently religious/spiritual and communal, they are also pre-primed with much knowledge of the Christian tradition, and the accompanying expectation that life, including spirituality is communal. As a result, they are arguably more susceptible, as were North Americans of the 19th Century to what the established churches of the time denigrated as “frontier religion”. So yeah, the emotional zeal of the “burned over district”, circuit riders, and heterodox fringe wackiness of that era that gave rise to groups like the Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists and Jehovah’s Witnesses (to mention the three most successful and abiding fringe sects/heretical cults of the many that were spawned in that milieu) has been repackaged in the age of the internet. And arguably they do an especially good job sheep-stealing among the Pacific Island community for the religious, cultural and social reasons I have mentioned.
For instance, there is this Korean Christian/Buddhist syncretistic sect known as Shincheonji/New Heaven and New Earth church,
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11817352
…that seems to come knocking on our door every six months or so because I think their church is located in a suburb nearby. Anyway, in the literalist New Testament tradition they are almost invariably in pairs, with the main shot-caller being a Korean, and the new acolyte learning the ropes and chipping in with moral support and tag-team distractions if the leader starts to lose control
….who is almost invariably a young Pacific Islander or Maori.
You get the impression these kids have had a bit of a tough up-bringing but have imbibed just enough Christian tradition so that when these bastards come-a-knocking they are more susceptible than most to the smoothly-packaged heresy, “us against the world” rhetorical mind-control techniques and love-bombing that cults invariably use. I’m not saying the Mt Roskill Evangelical fellowship is a carbon copy, but there is a continuity with Anglican grannies sipping cups of tea at one end of the spectrum, and Jim Jones insisting you drink his Kool Aid at the other, and they are somewhere in between 😉
It’s a bit of a stretch to call Mormons a fringe cult.
Seriously?!
Sorry, not wanting to threadjack (then again, this is “Friday’s Fulminations”), and I acknowledge Mormons have worked hard in the last 130 or so years since they abolished polygamy so that Utah could be admitted as a state into the Union to become “mainstream” courtesy of the Osmonds, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Mitt Romney. And also dropping in 1978 their racist “black people are punished with black skin because as pre-existent spirits they did not fight for God at the fall of Lucifer so they can’t be admitted to the Mormon priesthoods” doctrine…which was in danger of attracting the prosecution of the US government.
So yeah, they are not like, say, Jim Jones or the branch Davidians and they have acceptance and tolerance in the “public square” to propagate their faith, and form friendships and relationships with non-Mormons. No problem with that, and on that basis, sure, Christians can acknowledge them as peaceable fellow citizens who add to society, and with whom we can have friendships, just as we can with anyone, be they Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, atheist or agnostic.
But are you acquainted with Mormon doctrine?!
Tritheists not Trinitarians, indeed believers in a vast pantheon of Gods all equivalent to Yahweh, of which they are aspiring to be one.
Their marriage ceremonies and priesthoods are a god-making factories for them (hence their founders insisted polygamy was a necessary, indeed unchangeable doctrine, and why some Mormon fundamentalists still practice it).
As per Brigham Young, “as Man is, God once was. As God is, man may become”.
Deniers of the classical Protestant doctrine of salvation by grace alone through faith alone.
Put it this way, if Calvin rightly found doctrinal fault with Servetus (leaving aside the capital punishment he endorsed), there is no way a good Presbyterian who affirms the Apostles, Nicene or Athanasian Creeds, or the Westminster Confession and Catechism should give them the time of day in terms of ecumenical, ecclesiastical or spiritual fellowship.
Indeed, they use the unwitting acceptance of orthodox Trinitarians to leverage their highly deceptive doctrines among the initially unsuspecting, hence they will seldom, if ever tell a Mormon upfront and straight away what their distinctive doctrines really are.
Or that they consider you a “Gentile” who belongs to a church institution gives no access to God. And, no, that’s not in the usually-non-pejorative way in which modern and secular Jews now use that term.
Well, by your measure, Jews also comprise a fringe cult.
No.
Like Islam, Jews are usually considered “infidels” (literally “unfaithful”, i.e., not of the faith) by the tenets of Christian orthodoxy. And the three Abrahamic monotheistic religions usually consider one-another so, although the term is kinda un-PC.
So while the three faiths have much in common, and should endeavour to have as good relations as possible (in the same way we can have good relations with Buddhists, Hindus, atheists, etc), there are distinctives that separate us, and make spiritual union incompatible. After all, the unique Christian claim is that Jesus is both God and Man, the mediator of the salvation of the one true God, a doctrine that is rejected by both Islam and Judaism.
In contrast, because Mormonism is, or at least claims to be a manifestation of Christianity, it is classed by wider Christian orthodoxy as a heresy or cult.
Would suggest this is classical standard Christian, Protestant and Presbyterian doctrine and terminology. Incidentally, I once asked my best friend, a (secular) Jewish convert to Christianity if Christians could worship in a mosque. His answer (and a good one, IMHO): “I wouldn’t even worship in a synagogue. The revelation of the New Testament is that worship is to God the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit. Judaism rejects that”.
But I once did a tour of the Greys Ave Synagogue with a church group I belonged to at the time. Incredibly hospitable and gracious people who accepted and respected our faith perspective just as we did their’s.
And very informative and valuable in giving insights into the faith from which Christianity originally sprang. And they were conscious it was a deliberate act on their part to avoid a perceived or real “ghetto separatism” mentality.
But yeah, despite the growth of Dispensationalism within Christianity and pro-Zionism within that and other conservative Christian circles, and the more open-ended acceptance of the Liberal Christian tradition that goes back to at least the 18th Century Unitarians, in terms of what we believe Christianity and Judaism are incompatible. That acknowledgment doesn’t mean we have to return to the dark days of crusades, pogroms or holocausts. Nonetheless Christians are not Jews and Jews are not Christians for real, substantial and irreconcilable theological reasons. No matter how uncomfortable or intolerant that sounds in our modern age.
But for some reason most Christians have no problem reinforcing the incompatible distinction from Islam…even though Muslims, unlike Judaism, acknowledges Jesus of Nazareth as both a prophet and Messiah. 🙂✝️🔯☪️
And on a completely unrelated note, following on from my comment the other day about the infuence of the Far Left US group from the 1960’s, the Weather Underground…
… I’ve just realised that one of the founders of Burn Loot Murder, Patrisse Cullors, learned all her Marxism and activist shite at the knee of Eric Mann, yet another Weather Underground terrorist group.
And now look at the influence BLM has across the board in the USA. Mann and company must be having orgasms at the success of their spawn.