Politics

New Zealand Christian Network has been busy in the lead-up to the General Election on 26 November.  National Director Glyn Carpenter has been on the road, speaking in Dunedin and Wellington at sessions organised by Otago University’s Centre for Theology and Public Issues.

The Centre for Theology and Public Issues has prepared resources to help church groups and individuals think through some of the important issues we'll be voting on. Click here to access.

Glyn Carpenter had a two-hour session on Radio Rhema, discussing  Christians and politics in general, and this election in particular.

At the Election, New Zealanders will also vote in a referendum on the voting system. NZ Christian Network has produced a short guide to the options, which you can access here,  and a powerpoint resource which you are welcome to use.

Between now and Election Day on 26 November, numerous candidate meetings will be held around the country,  providing good opportunities to question candidates on their policies and values. Click here for  a range of questions suggested by members and supporters of New Zealand Christian Network.

How should Christians vote? What should our relationship with government be? When is government acting legitimately and when is it not? Three Christian politicians from three different parties have collaborated to write a short discussion paper on God and Government to inform and also to stimulate thinking about the proper role of government.

The document can be downloaded by clicking on the link below.

We encourage you to have a read and offer your comments or questions.

NZ Christian Network is helping to promote discussion of election issues through public forums in Dunedin and Wellington in the first week of November.

The first forum will be held in Dunedin at the Burns Hall, First Church, Moray Place, on Tuesday 1 November, 7.30 pm to 9.00 pm. The Rev Anne Thomson will host the event and the panel will  comprise Glyn Carpenter (National Director of New Zealand Christian Network); Dr Andrew Shepherd (Research Assistant at the CTPI); Gillian Bremner (CEO of Presbyterian Support, Otago), and CTPI Director Andrew Bradstock. Rt Rev Kelvin Wright, Anglican Bishop of Dunedin, will be guest 'summariser'.

The second forum is planned for Wellington on Thursday 3 November at St. John's-in-the-City (details to come).

The following paper was prepared by Rasik Ranchord, a member of NZ Christian Network's Board of Reference, prior to the 2008 Election. However, it is just as relevant today.

Click on the link below to download.

It is two months until the referendum, when everyone will get a chance to choose what electoral system they would like going forward. To do this, we all need to understand the nuts and bolts of the systems, the sorts of outcomes they will lead to, and what it means to be represented by politicians in Parliament. There is no perfect voting system. They all have pros and cons and prioritise different outcomes. Choosing a system involves understanding the different factors at play and making trade-offs between those factors, according to what each of us thinks is more or less important for New Zealand. Maxim Institute has written a paper to help New Zealanders do this. Kicking the Tyres: Choosing a voting system for New Zealand looks at criteria that are helpful for assessing a voting system, identifying several important elements that fall under two main headings: how voting systems enable quality representation; and how they affect the workings of parliament and government. No system matches all criteria perfectly-in fact some criteria exclude each other. For example, a voting system that delivers an "effective government" that can do what it promised voters may not deliver strong "opposition and oversight" from competing, non-government parties. The criteria don't work like a simple tally, but they do help to understand the systems so that each voter can make a well-considered decision about what they think is best. One of the main distinctions made between systems is to do...

The West needs to re-moralise itself, or it will continue down a path of cultural weakness and decline, writes Britain's Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks.

It is not clear that the West has successfully met the challenge of 9/11. Worse: it is not clear that the West yet fully understands what the challenge is. To understand 2001 we have to go back to 1989, the year of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the end of the Cold War, and the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was an historic moment that few had expected. What did it mean? It was then that two stories were born, with one of which we are familiar, the other of which we seem hardly to know or understand at all. The first narrative was that the West had won. Communism had imploded. In the end, it failed to deliver the goods. People wanted freedom. They sought affluence. The Soviet Union had delivered neither. Politically it was repressive. Economically it was inefficient. For freedom you need liberal democracy. For affluence you need the market economy. 1989 marked the victory of both. From here on democratic capitalism would spread slowly but surely across the world. To adapt Francis Fukuyama's phrase of the time, it was the beginning of the end of history. The other narrative was quite different but has the advantage of so far being proved correct. Unlike Fukuyama's, it was based not on Hegel but on the fourteenth century Islamic thinker Ibn Khaldun. We don't know much about Ibn Khaldun in the West but we should. He was...

Separation of church and state is a good idea, says New Zealand Christian Network (visionnetwork) National Director, Glyn Carpenter.

Interviewed on Newstalk ZB's Sunday Pat and Petra show, Mr Carpenter said if you look around the world at places where religion and state are intertwined, quite often there are serious problems.

To hear audio from the interview, click on the link below.

National church leaders met the Prime Minister, John Key, and the Minister of Finance, Bill English, in April, and told them it is just as important for New Zealand to emerge from the recession with a robust society as it is to emerge with a robust economy. "To achieve this, we will need policies that have a long-term focus," said the Right Reverend Dr Redding, Moderator of the Presbyterian Church, writing in the Presbyterian magazine Spanz. Dr Redding, says the economic crisis provides us with an opportunity to ask questions about the nature, sustainability and consequences of the current economic order, and to ponder what a different ordering of our priorities and commitments might look like. "From a faith perspective, the current economic order fails to account for three significant truths about our humanity: the possibility that our humanity might have a higher purpose than the pursuit of individual happiness; the possibility that freedom might consist of something more than the freedom to acquire and consume; and the reality of sin. "Our insatiable appetite for consumer goods, and the consequent failure to distinguish between wants and needs, is a sign not of our freedom but of our captivity," Dr Redding said.

"There are a number of things to cheer about in this year's budget," said visionnetwork's National Director Glyn Carpenter. "Faced with the need to deliver a tight budget for challenging times, the new government has still managed to provide some bright spots in an otherwise bleak landscape." The deal struck with the Green Party for home insulation, for example, showed a willingness to work across ideological lines. Mr Carpenter said those in cooler areas of the country particularly would welcome the insulation and clean-heating grants of up to $1800 for over 180,000 homes. Grants for up to $3000 for Community Service Cardholders, some other beneficiaries and those on low incomes who might otherwise have been unable to insulate their homes will benefit from this significant contribution to the cost. Increased funding for school buildings, teacher salaries and special-needs education was also welcomed. Mr Carpenter said the forecast that unemployment will reach as high as 8 per cent by the December quarter of 2010 is a cause for concern and a clear call to Christians to look carefully at the needs of their communities. "This is not the time to pull up the drawbridges," he said, "but to make a special effort to get out beyond the four walls of the church and serve those who are hurting."