Chosen To Rule? What Sort Of Christian Is Chris Luxon?

National Messiah? Chris Luxon identifies himself as an evangelical Christian. If he is genuine in this self-characterisation, then he will take every opportunity his public office provides to proselytise on behalf of his faith. He will also feel obliged to bear witness against beliefs and practices he believes to be evil. To do all he can to save the souls of those who are in the grip of sin. Christian evangelism is, above all else, faith in action.

CHRIS LUXON has some explaining to do. He has been identified as an evangelical Christian, which, if you’ll pardon the religious cliché, covers a multitude of sins. That’s why I believe Chris Luxon owes New Zealanders a working definition of evangelical Christianity – and how he intends to practice it.

A private matter? Well, that  might be true if Luxon was a person moving into private life. Clearly, however, that is not the case. Luxon has opted to become an even more public person than he was as Air New Zealand’s CEO. The core motivations of public persons are not matters to be evaded, they are matters to be explicated, elucidated and explained.

What, then, is generally understood by the term Christian evangelism? At its core, evangelism is about the active spreading of Christ’s teachings – especially among those who are ignorant of his message. For a politician to identify himself as an evangelical Christian is, therefore, a matter of considerable importance.

If such politicians are genuine in their self-characterisation, then they will take every opportunity their public office provides to proselytise on behalf of their faith. They will also feel obliged to bear witness against beliefs and practices they believe to be evil. To do all they can to save the souls of those who are in the grip of sin. Christian evangelism is, above all else, faith in action.

It is, therefore, disingenuous (to say the least) for Luxon to present his evangelical convictions as having relevance only to himself and the congregation of the Upper Room Church to which he belongs. The very name of his faith community argues against this claim.

The “Upper Room” mentioned in the gospels is the room to which Jesus and his disciples repaired on the night of his arrest. In biblical tradition, it is the location of Christ’s last supper. The Upper Room thus represents the ignition-point of the chain of events that led to Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection. It was Christianity’s first church: Ground Zero, if you like, for Jesus’s universal mission. In the Messiah’s own words:

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.

Does that sound like a private matter? Was the Upper Room really nothing more than the venue for a catered meal for Jesus of Nazareth and a few close friends? Is that it?

Obviously, not. A non-denominational congregation of believers calling themselves The Upper Room Church clearly draw their inspiration from the conviction that, gathered in that celebrated biblical space, were a group of human-beings charged with securing nothing less than the salvation of the whole world. Equally clearly, however, at least some of the church’s members – including Luxon? – are expected to secure the obedience of the nations by using techniques very different from the open preaching of the disciples who left that original Upper Room at Jesus’s side more than 2,000 years ago.

It's about this point that things begin to get murky. A swift consultation of Wikipedia’s entry on Evangelism reveals the following curious sentence:

Some Christian traditions consider evangelists to be in a leadership position; they may be found preaching to large meetings or in governance roles.

What in the name of all that is good and holy does that mean?

To answer that question it is necessary to go back to the time and place in which groups like The Upper Room came into existence – the United States of America in the 1930s.

It was a time of tremendous social and political upheaval, during which the traditional relationships between those at the summit of society, and those at its base, were challenged in ways that made the ruling elites, business leaders in particular, profoundly uneasy. The Upper Room was founded in 1935 with the objective of disseminating biblical verses highlighting the duty of Christians to obey “the powers that be” and eschew rebelliousness in all its forms.

The following year saw the formation of what came to be known as “The Family”. Established in response to the Seattle General Strike of 1936, The Family gathered together in “Christian fellowship” prominent and powerful politicians, state officials and businessmen, for the purposes of re-establishing the dominion of the godly throughout the USA – a mission which included the destruction of those unnatural instruments of Satan, the trade unions. The Family would grow in strength and power, extending its tendrils of influence through the US capital, drawing-in Congressmen, Senators – even Presidents – to its deeply heretical interpretation of the gospel.

This is what Chris Luxon needs to explain. Does he subscribe to Christ’s “preferential option for the poor”? And, is he committed spiritually to fulfilling Christ’s promise that “the meek shall inherit the earth”? Or, does The Upper Room, like The Family, preach a gospel of worldly wealth and power, in which the Mighty rule by God’s special favour, meaning that all his true servants are bound to do everything they can to further God’s plans for the men and institutions he raises above them?

More specifically, if Luxon should, at some future date, receive an invitation to attend the National Prayer Breakfast, staged annually in Washington DC by The Family, and attended by every President since Dwight Eisenhower (along with a mighty host of foreign potentates, corporate CEOs and lobbyists) will he accept and attend?

Or, has he already done so?

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 8 November 2019.

Ten Years Ago This Week: Punishment No Cure For Violence Bred In The Home

As the sapling is bent, so groweth the tree: It is in our homes that violence is bred, and that is where it must be cured.

I HAVE NEVER MET Norm Withers, the man behind the Citizens Initiated Referendum on violent crime, but if his interviews on radio and television are any guide, he is a very open and honest person. I can scarcely imagine the horror he felt when confronted with the bloody wreck of his elderly mother’s face – nor his rage at the senseless brutality of the thief who very nearly beat her to death for a handful of dollars – but I can, and do, admire the way he has transmuted his experience into practical civic action. By gathering the 200,000-plus signatures required to set the referendum process in motion, Mr Withers has provided New Zealanders with a means of registering their concern at violent crime. But is Mr Withers’ solution – longer sentences with hard labour – the most helpful response to the problem of violent offending?

Now before anyone trots out that facile quip about a liberal being a conservative who hasn’t been mugged, let me state for the record that I know what it is to be beaten up on the street, and to lose irreplaceable possessions to burglars. The feelings of vulnerability and violation took many months to subside, and there were times when I was seized with a murderous rage. "Just five minutes alone with those bastards," I would tell my friends, "five minutes with a baseball bat!" But then my rage would subside and reason would take over. "Violence breeds violence", I would tell myself, "how can the infliction of even more pain and suffering be the answer to the pain and suffering already experienced by the victim of a crime?

Let’s examine that phrase "violence breeds violence" a little more closely, for it is in the intimate setting of the family that violence is learned – and taught. This is dangerous ground: - the family remains the fundamental building block of our society and we hold it up as a bulwark against what songwriter, Leonard Cohen, calls "the blizzard of the world". It is our first, our final, refuge; but it is also the source of terrible social pathologies – behavioural and ethical diseases that are passed down through the generations like an obscene family heirloom.

Family violence can take many forms: from the casual beating of terrified children, to the brooding menace of incestuous desire, to the refined torments of relentless emotional abuse; the family environment can be a waking nightmare not only for children, but also for adults – as any Women’s Refuge will attest.

But we do not like to think of these abuses – let alone act on them. The Family Court shrouds the deeds of dysfunctional families in secrecy, not only to protect the children, but also to shield the public from the awful facts that emerge when activities formerly hidden behind locked doors and drawn curtains are hauled kicking and spitting into the light of day.

The very fact that we live in society – that we are social animals – requires us to accept the products of these appalling childhood experiences as a fact of our daily lives. The bullying superior at work, the vindictive public official, that idiot in front of you on the motorway this morning; we accept their behaviour – up to a certain point – simply because we have to. And that requirement, that need to accept the unacceptable, breeds within us its own special rage – a rage that finds an outlet in political crusades like Mr Withers’.

The awful deeds of violent offenders are the intolerable proof of a pestilence we would rather punish than cure. But how can we lock away what we cannot even acknowledge?

This essay was originally published in The Dominion of Friday, 15 October 1999.