Anti-Liberation Theology.

Not Light Viewing: Did the creators of the 1971 television series The Guardians intuitively grasp the political utility of religious extremism, or did somebody they met in a bar tell them? The early 1970s were a dangerous and dubious time. Shadowy figures gathered in great houses and plotted coups. Assassination and terrorism filled the headlines. Certainly, it was no accident that the network broadcasting The Guardians, ITV, decided that it was too close to home to be screened in Northern Ireland.

A GOOD TELEVISION SERIES can alter the way people view the world. Fifty years from now, people will still be drawing lessons from Game of Thrones. Similarly inspired, I continue to draw lessons from a British television series first screened in 1971, The Guardians.

The “Guardians of the Realm” are a paramilitary force set up to enforce the will an authoritarian British government. Confronted with a rapidly disintegrating United Kingdom, shadowy forces, headed by “The General”, seize power and establish a dictatorial regime. The resistance movement, known simply as Quarmby, respond with a campaign of assassination and terror. Like Game of Thrones, The Guardians is not light viewing.

One episode of The Guardians, in particular, left me forever alert to the cynical use of religion as a political weapon. Not entirely happy with the way things are going in the Guardians’ new UK, the CIA sets up a weird religious movement through which it plans to influence public opinion.

Given what has happened in the years since The Guardians first screened, I have often wondered who the creators of the series, Rex Firkin and Vincent Tilsley, had been talking to. Certainly, radical religious movements were frequently to be found buttressing the authoritarian regimes installed by the CIA throughout the 1970s and 80s – especially those whose primary function had been to forestall, or destroy, left-wing governments attracting dangerous levels of popular support.

This was especially the case in Latin America where the Christian socialism of “Liberation Theology”, espoused by a growing number of Catholic priests and prelates, was attracting a growing following among the rural and urban poor. The ascension of the vehemently anti-communist Polish cardinal, Carol Wojtyla, as Pope John-Paul II, in 1979, served – for a while – to stem the spread of Liberation Theology across the Catholic lands. To those responsible for preserving the global hegemony of the United States, however, Catholic Christianity would always be suspect. Popes come and go, but Christ’s “preferential option for the poor” endures as an unacceptable challenge to American imperialism.

The religious expression weaponised by the CIA was evangelical Protestantism. Both at home and abroad, evangelicalism became an extraordinarily potent rejoinder to the latent socialism embedded in the Christian gospel. Where the Catholic Church preached a theology of atonement and imitation, radical Protestantism promised rebirth and redemption – without the need for good works.

“Born again”, the evangelicals could come before God pre-forgiven and debt-free. In combination with the emotional intensity of its services, evangelicalism’s guarantee of salvation constituted a compelling sales pitch. Catholicism’s insistence on confession and penance put them at a competitive disadvantage.

Only three things could keep an evangelical from God’s eternal company: socialism, abortion, and homosexuality. Providing the believer eschewed these three affronts to the Almighty, his or her salvation was assured.

What’s more, evangelical congregations numbering in the thousands were able to give worshippers extremely powerful emotional experiences. They were also large enough to fund comprehensive welfare services to congregants in need. Who needs socialism when you have your church?

Besides, Jesus wasn’t so much a friend of the poor, as a benefactor of the provident. Nor was he the enemy of the rich. Evangelicals were encouraged to see the accumulation of great personal wealth as a sign of God’s approbation. After all, what sort of incentive to Godliness is poverty?

Having just logged-on (3/10/22) to the Brazilian Electoral Commission’s website, the practical effect of this slow but steady spread of evangelicalism across Latin America is staring me in the face. With 99.9 percent of the votes counted, the Socialist candidate, Lula, has fallen agonisingly short of the 50 percent + 1 of the popular vote he needed to avoid a second round against the far-right (and recently baptised evangelical Christian) Jair Bolsonaro.

Had the religious demographics of the states of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo remained what they had been when Lula first won the Brazilian presidency back in 2003, it is likely they would have delivered him the votes he needed to win. With the help of the much increased and increasingly pivotal evangelical vote, however, both states fell to Bolsonaro by wide margins.

One does not need to be a conspiracy theorist to see in the bloody alliance of Latin American dictators, reactionary Catholics and fanatically anti-communist evangelical protestants a political combination of enormous utility to the United States. As New Zealanders, inhabitants of one of the most secular societies on earth, we find it difficult to grasp the centrality of religious belief to the politics of Latin America. Nevertheless, we need to understand that the tactics of the CIA-backed anti-insurgents of the 1970s and 80s were born out of what lay about them. If hands needed to be bloodied, it helped to have a religious faith ready and willing to wash them clean.

Did the creators of The Guardians intuitively grasp the political utility of religious extremism, or did somebody they met in a bar tell them? The early 1970s were a dangerous and dubious time. Shadowy figures gathered in great houses and plotted coups. Assassination and terrorism filled the headlines. Certainly, it was no accident that the network broadcasting The Guardians, ITV, decided that it was all just a little too close to home to be screened in Northern Ireland.

Or, in today’s Brazil.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 4 October 2022.

Rating The Contenders.

There Can Be Only One: Some might ask why National MPs would install yet another “successful business person” at the helm of their party? Isn’t one Todd Muller enough? Especially when Simon Bridges could become the first National politician of Māori descent to become Prime Minister.

LET’S GET SOMETHING out of the way from the get-go. There is nothing unprecedented about a former leader of the National Party reclaiming that position some years after losing it. Those “pundits” who blithely dismiss the likelihood of New Zealand following in the footsteps of Australia’s political parties, really don’t merit the description. Was it not Bill English who led the National Party to the worst defeat in its history in 2002? And was it not the same Bill English who succeeded John Key as National Party leader – and Prime Minister – in 2016? That established, I hope readers will find the prospect of Simon Bridges Redux (if that is the final outcome of this contest) just a little bit easier to accept.

Whether Bridges is the right person for the job is, obviously, a very different question. One worthy of just as much careful consideration as the putative candidacy of Christopher Luxon. Given the general agreement among National Party watchers that one of these two contenders will be the next Leader of the Opposition, it seems only sensible to weigh the pros and cons attached to both men.

Bridges first.

That Simon Bridges could become the first National politician of Māori descent to become Prime Minister is, potentially, a very big deal.

Though very few people engaged in mainstream politics are prepared to admit it, the future of Māori, and the future of Aotearoa-New Zealand, are becoming ever more closely entwined. The country’s politics cannot escape being caught up in this uncomfortable fact. The young people of 2021 – as the bitter recriminations surrounding the Pfizer vaccine roll-out attest – are disproportionately Māori. Far too many of these youngsters are inadequately prepared to shoulder the burden of preserving their country’s economic and social well-being in the years ahead.

The aforementioned Bill English understood the frightening dimensions of Māori underperformance better than most of his parliamentary colleagues. It was one of the primary drivers of his “social investment” strategy – an imaginative policy initiative that was, sadly, allowed to falter under Bridges 1.0, Todd Muller and Judith Collins. If he proves successful in his bid to reclaim the National Party leadership, Bridges 2.0 could do a lot worse than to take English’s idea and run with it.

Dramatic policy changes in education, health, housing and corrections cannot be avoided in the years ahead if Aotearoa-New Zealand is to avoid crippling skill deficiencies in its national workforce. A country that becomes dependent on imported skills cannot hope to exercise a decisive influence over its future development. Were Bridges to put himself at the forefront of this debate, and give his party the ideological space to develop new and innovative solutions to the problem of Māori underperformance, then National could steal an election-winning march on Labour.

The Government, urged on by its large Māori caucus, clearly grasps the urgency of indigenous underperformance. Its solutions, however, are of a race-based radicalism that many Pakeha (and not a few Māori) reject as constitutionally objectionable. If Labour proceeds along the lines suggested in the He Puapua Report, considerable political division seems inevitable. A National Party led by a Māori politician no less seized of the importance of indigenous underperformance, but promoting policies intended to benefit all underperforming citizens equally, could position itself as a force for unity and progress.

There is strong evidence in Bridges’ autobiography that he has given considerable thought to what it means to be a New Zealander in the twenty-first century. National is not the party most people think of when it comes to these sort of questions – especially those touching upon the future of Māori. It is, nevertheless, the party which, under Jim Bolger and Doug Graham, got the Treaty Settlement ball rolling. Nor should it be forgotten that it was John Key who sent Pita Sharples off to New York to sign the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

In the chapter on race in Bridge’s National Identity, he contrasts his own way of being Māori with that of the Māori Party MP, Rawiri Waititi – with whom he went to school:

“Today Rawiri has a full face moko, which is beautiful and fierce and which I am in awe of. But you couldn’t pay me a billion dollars to get that done to myself. The pain would be one reason; the other is that it would change who I am – it’s not me. Rawiri’s tikanga is not a daily part of my life and never will be. Nevertheless, New Zealand needs to realise that I am just as Māori as Rawiri. Let’s not look down on him, and let’s not look down on me. He’s not too Māori and I’m not too Pākehā. Let’s celebrate [New Zealand’s] diverse garden.”

Is it really that difficult to see Bridges offering National its own “Nixon recognises Red China” moment?

Meanwhile, the other half of the National caucus will be asking themselves whether the former Air NZ CEO, Christopher Luxon, can give the party another John Key moment.

Those of a more ruthless mindset will demand to know how any intelligent right-wing politician could possibly entertain the idea of installing yet another “successful business person” at the helm of the National Party? Isn’t one Todd Muller enough?

When is the National Party finally going to understand that John Key didn’t become one of its most successful leaders on account of his career in business, but because he had an unerring instinct for where “Average Kiwis” positioned themselves politically. That, and a flair for institutional politics that could just as easily have made him head of the CTU as the Nats.

To put it bluntly: Christopher Luxon is no John Key.

Then there’s the question of Luxon’s religious beliefs. Obviously, he’s not the only member of National’s caucus who professes the Christian religion. Bridges, himself, is a pastor’s son who, like Luxon and a not inconsiderable number of his caucus colleagues, proclaims himself to be an evangelical Christian.

Therein, lies the problem. What sort of evangelical is Luxon?

Essentially, there are only two kinds of evangelical. The first (and the most faithful to the biblical injunctions) is the evangelical who proclaims the “good news” of Jesus Christ to the whole world, unceasingly. The second kind of evangelical sees the hand of God at work in society and, in the case of far too many evangelical politicians (especially in the United States) feels the Almighty’s hand guiding them into preordained leadership roles. New Zealanders, a secular bunch for the most part, soon grow weary of the first kind of evangelical, and are profoundly wary of the second.

Now, Luxon is at pains to reassure New Zealanders that he regards his religion as a private matter, not to rammed down people’s throats, or enshrined in their country’s laws. All well and good, but if that really is his position, then he cannot truly call himself an evangelical. Ramming righteousness down the sinner’s throat is the noisy evangelical’s Christian duty. A quiet evangelical, on the other hand, is almost certainly convinced that God has a special plan for him – and the country. Something which should give both his colleagues, and the voters, pause.

On the other hand, Christopher Luxon strikes just about everyone who meets him, or watches him on television, as an intelligent, diligent and resourceful individual. His newness, seen by some as a distinct handicap, is just as easily construed as a recommendation. No, he doesn’t have parliamentary dirt under his fingernails, but neither does he have fratricidal blood on his hands.

By all accounts, Luxon was a very capable CEO. It is entirely possible that, by 2023, that is all most New Zealanders will be looking for.

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website of Monday, 29 November 2021.

The End Of Their World.

God's Instrument? At the very heart of the President’s electoral coalition are the evangelical Christian churches who see Donald Trump as God’s chosen instrument: the means by which the ancient prophecies contained in the Bible will be fulfilled. Painting by Marco Ventura.

WHEN THE VICTORY of a political party becomes confused with the end of the world, society has a problem. Democracy, if it’s anything, is an agreement to surrender power without a fight. If an election ends with anything other than an uncomplicated re-confirmation of the status-quo, or the peaceful transfer of political authority, then democracy, like Elvis, has left the building. What remains inside the building is seldom pretty.

That President Donald Trump has refused to guarantee a peaceful transfer of power should he lose the 3 November election bodes very ill for the American republic. At the very least, it signals his unshakeable conviction that he is politically invincible in a “free and fair” fight. It serves no purpose for Trump’s opponents to point out that, in a democracy, acknowledging the possibility of defeat is almost as important as accepting it. Trump is so certain that he speaks for the “real” America, that he “knows” he can’t be beaten.

Who is the “real” America? We all know the answer to that question. The real America is white. The real America repels “socialism” as naturally as water repels oil. The real America puts its trust in God – and in the special people He chooses to do His will. What’s more, we all know who Donald Trump does not count as real Americans. They are Blacks. They are Hispanic. They are Muslims. And, they include all those who challenge the idea that White, Christian, Capitalist America is an unequivocal force for good in the world.

It’s that idea of the United States being a “force for good” that holds the key to understanding the formidable threat to democracy which Trump has become. At the very heart of the President’s electoral coalition are the evangelical Christian churches who see the USA as God’s chosen instrument: the means by which the ancient prophecies contained in the Bible will be fulfilled. That’s why there are no more fervent defenders of the State of Israel than American evangelicals. Israel, they are certain, is destined, alongside the USA, to usher-in the great reckoning described in the Book of Revelation.

Unbelievers are often puzzled by the evangelicals’ unswerving support for Trump. How can they tolerate such a self-confessed sinner at the head of God’s chosen nation? Their two-word rejoinder: King David.

The ancient Israeli king was not a good man. David spied on Bathsheba as she bathed and was consumed with lust for her body. Her soldier husband, Uriah, he ordered into the front lines, thus ensuring his death, and making it possible for the Hittite’s wife to be enjoyed by her king undisturbed. Covetousness, murder and fornication! And yet, God loved David, and David loved the Lord. If God could overlook the sins of King David, then he will overlook the sins of President Trump. The Lord moves in mysterious ways!

Perhaps He was at work in the Republican Party-controlled state legislatures when all those voter-suppression laws were passed. Perhaps He was guiding the hands of Republican Governors when they signed the contracts tasking Republican Party-friendly companies with purging the voter rolls. Perhaps it’s His voice that speaks through the mouths of all those Fox News “journalists”.

You can’t be an evangelical Christian without believing fervently that God reveals his will through his chosen servants. That all human history positively snaps, crackles and pops with the electricity of His divine will. Right now, the evangelicals of America are looking at Trump’s nominee for the US Supreme Court, Amy Coney Barrett, a devout Christian who will turn America away from what she and her co-religionists regard as the sinful judicial decisions of the last 50 years. On their knees, with fervent devotion, they will thank God for his perfectly-timed decision to send Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the everlasting reward she so richly deserves.

The ancient Greek word apokalypsis, is best translated as “unveiling”. “Apocalyptic” thinking, therefore, is all about what you think you’ve been shown of the “End Times”. For the evangelical Christian, the showman, obviously, is God himself. For those Trump supporters who prefer not to live on their knees, however, the unveiling of hidden truths requires a slightly less supernatural agent. No worries, if God won’t do, then there’s always the anonymous “Q”.

God, or no God, if Trump loses, their world ends.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 2 October 2020.