Suze: This Shows Some Disturbing Ignorance

Like oil and water, religion and politics do not coalesce nicely

It used to be a prerequisite of good behaviour not to discuss religion and politics in polite company, certainly not in the same sentence, so imagine my surprise when I received an email from a church leader titled “March and Protest”.

Professing to join 40,000 other like-minded nature lovers marching down Queen Street, this man of the cloth spoke about the high value of our conservation estate and our access to the great outdoors, naturally the work of the Creator.

He was mistaken about the number of protesters after downloading the image below from the Greenpeace website captioned “A crowd of more than 40,000 people March against the New Zealand government’s plans to mine thousands of hectares of prime conservation land, including National Parks. The march up Queen Street was organised by Greenpeace and a range of other groups.”

The photo below is not from Greenpeace’s 8 June 2024 March for Nature but from their 2010 anti-mining protest.

Greenpeace claimed 20,000 people attended the 8 June 2024 March for Nature but the NZ Herald reported just over a thousand people assembled in Aotea Square. The actual number of protesters could be anywhere between one and a few thousand people, certainly not 40,000 and probably not even 20,000. Greenpeace website has no crowd photos, just shots of individual marchers in small groups.

Labelling the protest “March for Nature” was a master class in marketing – find me someone who doesn’t love nature, but how many of marchers were aware of the political statement they made for Greenpeace?

The real purpose of the march is found on the Greenpeace website and it was to oppose the Government’s “Fast Track Approvals Bill in its entirety”. The bill designed to fast-track decision-making and speed up approvals for much needed infrastructure and development projects with significant regional or national benefits passed its first reading in March and is now before a select committee.

A protest march, by its very nature is a political statement.

Did any March for Nature protesters read the Fast Track Approvals Bill and lodge a submission before joining the nature march?

Greenpeace and Twig & Tweet made submissions protesting the bill very easy by providing one page documents. Twig & Tweet’s alter ego claimed “tens of thousands of New Zealanders have submitted on the Fast-track Approvals Bill – including almost 13,000 who used Forest & Bird’s quick submission template” with Greenpeace claiming 14,986 people submitted through their website.

Green groups also lobby government but they carp and whine that industry groups, such as mining, have undue influence on government despite the fact that their own behaviour is far from exemplary.

A portion of nature-loving protesters believe Greenpeace exists to save the planet and endangered animals living here. They trust Greenpeace to do the hard yards on their behalf – which is exactly what Greenpeace wants – unaware that they are the target of Greenpeace; they are willing stooges: the unpaid rent-a-crowd bolstering Greenpeace numbers.

There is one tiny little place on the planet where religion and politics intersect with calamitous results. That place is Gaza, the political hotspot of terrorists hanging refugee signs around their necks while wandering around blowing up Jews.

The political tentacles emanating out of Gaza reached NZ where NZ Greens don a keffiyeh and chant “from the river to the sea”, looking and sounding delusional. Woe betide any church leader harbouring thoughts of emulating them. Standing at the pulpit delivering biblical history is quite acceptable but political treatises on the Middle East or NZ politics won’t be tolerated and naivety is no excuse.

We attend church to worship God, not to discuss politics and smart church leaders won’t touch the subject with a 12-foot barge pole. The result would be at best that some in the congregation take offence; at worst the congregation would become splintered and divided with people leaving. Rules are rules, but there’s always an exception, and in this case that exception is Brian Tamaki.

Tamaki opposed the government’s Covid-19 lockdowns and vaccine mandates, organising more than 100 anti-mandate and government protests. Tamaki leads Destiny Church’s involvement in the community, providing counselling and putting boots on the ground cleaning up after the devastating Hawke’s Bay flooding in February 2023.

Tamaki founded the Freedom & Rights Coalition at the last election and is speaking out about the alleged theft by Te Pati Maori of voter information from at least six government departments.

No church leader would willingly swap places with Brian Tamaki because of the national media sport of vilifying and belittling him. But Tamaki gets involved in politics anyway because it is the right thing to do.

Getting involved means knowing what to do and making a decent job of doing it. There are scriptural guidelines to tread carefully and act as wise as serpents but as innocent as doves, remembering you are sent out as sheep among wolves.

Any church leader fancying themselves a political pulpit basher should first have a word with Brian Tamaki. He will undoubtedly offer good advice and might even show his bruises.

Suze sees herself as a New Zealander whose heritage shaped but does not define, and believes unless we protect our rights and freedoms they will be taken off us by a few powerful people. This article was first published HERE