Secularism has exorcised many devils, and church inanities deprived us of most counter-availing angels, so it’s no wonder that into the vacuum rush groups like Destiny Church, a Maori-based Pentecostal community with its strength in New Zealand’s North Island but with outliers in Australia.
After a slow start this seven-year old church now hits the headlines with great regularity in NZ. On 4 March, for example, its leader, Brian Tamaki, addressed a ‘pro-family’, ‘Defend the Legacy’ march in Auckland that attracted 5000 people. He took the opportunity to launch a political crusade against NZ’s godless political parties. Prime Minister Helen Clark was denounced as an atheist, and Don Brash, the National Party leader, though of Presbyterian lineage, was also far too liberal to be a true believer. Prayer, Tamaki told his supporters, was no longer enough. They were urged to vote in the recent national election for Destiny New Zealand, the church’s political wing which campaigns under the slogan ‘Nation Under Siege’. Although it made a pitch for the Pacific Island vote, and claims God as its main sponsor, it hardly raised a whimper of interest, polling only 0.5 per cent.
Destiny Church looks, at first glance, like a typical American-style tele-evan-gelist network. It has a simple answer to everything and is very savvy in its use of the internet and the media. Tamaki is a gifted and personable speaker who got himself elected as ‘bishop’ on 18 June, though he does go on at considerable length. Like some of its close allies, such as the City Impact Church in Auckland, Destiny Church operates with big budgets, based on an in-your-face insistence on tithing, and appears to suggest that personal and financial success will flow to believers. Its razzmatazz is impressive and it has an undeniably popular—or should one say populist?—touch. It doesn’t talk, for example, of baptism but of ‘being dunked’.
It communicates enthusiasm, warmth and security. Much is made of Brian and Hannah Tamaki and their three married children as role models for the movement. It sees itself as a ‘breakthrough church’ that is ‘beyond church in the traditional sense’. Its official statement is somewhat coy about its own core values, but much is said about ‘establishing the Kingdom’, and restoring ‘biblical order’.
In New Zealand religion is generally treated with courteous disdain. It has been largely written out of the history books and the public arena. Almost