Politics

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."

This New York Review of Books (April 2007) contains a perspective on evangelicalism in the American political context which has some important insights for evangelicals in NZ.  It presents the view that the weight of evangelicalism is separate, or separat-ing, from the Christian right.

The following comes to you as one of a series of papers drawing from the chapters of the recently published Vision Congress ‘08 book New Vision New Zealand Volume III. I am drafting these for use in the Baptist pastors clusters, New Zealand wide.  I have obtained permission for this from Vision Network. They are freely available for use in other contexts also.                         Lindsay Jones                         Baptist National Consultant                         March 2008   You will need to obtain a copy of the book to read the whole chapter for background. Baptist churches can do so at a subsidised rate through This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it Otherwise: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

  In February 2008 the Salvation Army Social Policy and Parliamentary Unit published a "State of the Nation" report titled What Does It Profit Us?  This 20-page report summarises New Zealand's performance over the past five to six years in the areas of Our Children, Crime and Punishment, Social Hazards (for example alcohol and gambling), Work and Incomes, and Our Housing. Vision Network's national director Glyn Carpenter commented on this report in the May Daystar magazine:  

John Stenhouse is professor of History at Otago University.  Given the controversy stirred up by the phrase in the National Statement on Religious Diversity that NZ has no "official or established religion", I asked Professor Stenhouse to comment.