A Chris Trotter rewind – What sort of Christian is Chris Luxon?

By
Martyn Bradbury
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135
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TDB looked into Chris Luxon’s extreme evangelical faith in 2019. In an age of science leading policy, will NZ embrace an extreme religious politician?

Chris Trotter from 2019…

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

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.

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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?

Has he?

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135 COMMENTS

  1. I read Luxon’s religion credentials on Wikipedia. Apparently he started life as a Catholic, where the ethos is very much Sermon on the Mount – Give all you have to the poor and come follow me- What you do for the least of my brethren, you do unto me. It looks as if Mr Luxon has abandoned traditional Catholicism, and engaged with other evangelical outfits instead. I think that this is quite unusual for Roman Catholics, who stick with Catholicism, or lapse, or just dump it altogether; constant changes of denominations may also suggest instability.

    A disproportionate number of current and would-be MP’s seem to belong to non-mainstream churches, some probably ok.

    • I thik you are wrong… Evangelical churches are full of lapsed Catholics who miss the pomp & ceremony of their former faith and want more than what the Catholic Corporation can give

      • Earle g. Good luck to them then.

        From ‘ Dover Beach ‘ by Matthew Arnold. 1867. Note : 1867
        ………
        “ The Sea of Faith
        Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
        Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl’d.
        But now I only hear
        It’s melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
        Retreating, to the breath
        Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
        And naked shingles of the world.

        Ah, love, let us be true
        To one another! for the world, which seems
        To lie before us like a land of dreams,
        So various, so beautiful, so new,
        Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
        Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
        And we are here as on a dark long plain
        Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
        Where ignorant armies clash by night.”

        You, of course, will know Arnold as the more or less founder of rugby, and I sat on those cold pebbles of Dover Beach… Try the whole poem – poignant historical comment.

      • Key is from a non NZ background as the offspring of people escaping from central Europe immediately postwar. He grew up in the leafy parts of Christchurch. There is a hierarchy of schools in Christchurch, it is mainly private and single sex and frankly Cashmere High is a bit of a joke. The sort of school serious schools play only in Soccer and Chess.
        The highly blinkered John Key as a politician essentially played the useful idiot CEO role of David Lange. Don Brash the useful idiot selected to play the first part in the Trojan horse operation, was the cover to get Key and Collins into the house and advance the English faction of ultra conservative rural supporters into the National Leadership Bill English was a Catholic farmer, like Key a half trained accountant dabbling in Economics. When John Key brought the least talented National Government into power, he accepted the factional price of making Collins and English his key ministers and unlimited expansion of dairy conversions, surveillance and cameras everywhere. The police given full access to Five eyes, supposedly, etc, etc.

          • Andrew. His father was an Englishman who married an apparently Austrian refugee back in the UK before being fortunate enough to emigrate to New Zealand .

            Key’s ChCh state house was in Bryndwr, a thoroughly middle – class area, and he attended Burnside High School, a large co-ed secondary school which generally produces a more couth product than him. His verbal gymnastics may be something else altogether though – and his trying to change our flag was impudence.

    • He has a right to claim this money so why would he not do so .I look at the waste of money occurring from ill thought out desicions made by this current government as far worse.
      My worry is will his conservative Christianity drive him to try a change the gains over the last few years in acceptance of gay rights abortion end of life and advances in the treatment of women. He has proved his business acumen in make Air NZ profitable but little regard was made of the effects on the regions as he cut services.

      • “He has a right to claim this money so why would he not do so”

        A right to be Greedy, my my – how do you sleep at night.

        • If I get invited to a function, and there’s seafood and roast lamb. Its mine. I’m not greedy, I just don’t want you getting the most of it. Bugger off! Its mine , its mine , – all mine !!! And I will sleep long and dream wonderful dreams !

  5. “ That sunny dome ! those caves of ice!
    And all who heard should see them there,
    And all should cry, Beware ! Beware !
    …
    Weave a circle round him thrice,
    And close your eyes with holy dread,
    For he on honey-dew hath fed,
    And drunk the milk of Paradise.”

    Samuel T Coleridge Kubla Khan

  6. Thanks for raising these questions Martyn.
    I hope MSM also grill Luxon about it too so we the people get a bit more insight on the guy.
    Scary if Luxon turns out to be a zealot Nutter!
    Just what NZ needs ….NOT!!!

    • I think you can take it for granted that he already is a zealot nutter if he belongs to The Upper Room religious group. Also, from my personal experience of evangelical Christians there is very little questioning of the status quo, to put it mildly. Group think rules and my way or hell way is the mantra. Not much room for acceptance of diversity or equality of any kind. He would be a bad and scary choice for National, and they may be wary because of the abject failure of the last loaf of white bread they chose as a safe pair of hands to steer the ‘good’ ship National.

      • And yet we parade around wanting ‘stability’ and the ‘familiar’. So long as it is fitting within our modern parameters. Lets not rock the boat, as long as it fits within our postmodern world viewpoint. The post modern viewpoint that shifts in values like the sands of the desert….

  7. Martyn thanks for raising the important questions on Luxon.
    Scary if Luxon is in command and implements nutty religious extreme ideas.
    Not what NZ needs right now….Ever!

  8. What sort of Christian is he? At last count there were multiple thousands of religions listed throughout the world, all as delusional, in a rationalist/materialist philosophical analysis as the others, so tell someone who cares in one sense…but the problem is when these self righteous sky pilots start imposing their whackiness on other citizens.

    The funny old thing is religious nutters that get involved in politics from ScoMo in Australia to the Brethren in NZ always seem to support the capitalist system and exploitation.

    Women particularly, and kids usually cop it. Subjugation and oppression of women and indoctrination of children before they have formed an independent world view is the modus operandi for these fuckers. If Mr Luxon is “upper room” or something he is not going to be a friend of the working class is he?

    So nail him up–metaphorically and figuratively–I say, if he ever gets close to being a Natzo leader. Similarly, Mark Mitchell is dodgy as with his “sell sword” mercenary history. The Nats deserve to go down in a shower of shit once and for all really.

    • +100
      The worst of them do their best to look like Harcourts real estate agents too.

      I’d love to know what the likes of Jim Bolger and Chris Finlayson REALLY think as well. (Check out Bolger on Q+A and Finlayson’s recent comments – I suspect both sanitised for the media)

      It’s possible that the gNats going down in a shower of shit once and for all might be the only ways there might be any sort of meaningful change.

  9. “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,…blah blah…”

    Does he subscribe to this biblical tenet or does he subscribe to that?
    Does it make any difference when they all come from the big book of multiple choice? The ultimate manual for justification of any behaviour. Isn’t the plain fact that they resort to such a manual the real concern?
    I regard faithists as essentially identical in essence to QAnon and conspiracy freaks. That’s because of their ability to believe in fairies and make judgements in the absence of good evidence. Allowing them the power to make decisions that affects my life always fills me with unease.

  10. I wouldn’t vote for Luxon. He has the foul stench of John Key around him and that would make him probably a John Key lapdog(much like Mike Hosking).
    I was bought up in an American created cult that I would say treated females as third class citizens. That cult(yes I am referring to the Jehovah’s Witnesses) deemed that birthdays, Easter and celebrating Christmas was ‘unchristian’. The JWs even said that voting at an election was ‘unchristian’.
    In the JW cult ONLY males could speak directly to the congregation. Females at say the Theocratic Ministry School couldn’t do that. Females, at the aforementioned event, were required to be speaking to another female as to convert the other female of how righteous and true the JW belief system is/was.
    And ONLY males were allowed to wear trousers. Females had to wear skirts and dresses.
    One elder, who I am glad to say is now deceased, had it in for our family. But both my sister and I would call him to this day a sexual deviant. My older sister once had to do a presentation at the Theocratic Ministry School. The elder said she did well but her dress, which was slightly above the knees, was too short. Another time my sister did another presentation and the same elder told her her skirt(which was a midi)was too long. At this point my sister thought ‘bugger this. I am damned if I do and I am damned if I don’t’. And so she got out of the cult.
    Another time that elder turned up at our place uninvited and proceeded to tell our parents as to how to bring up the children. He said I should be put over a knee and given a good thrashing. My father said “How dare you come to OUR place and tell us how to bring up OUR children”. The elder later apologised but the damage had already been done. To this day I have no liking whatsoever for the JWs.
    And so having what may as well be an extreme cult follower of a most likely American based cult as a leader of a political party just doesn’t give me much of an impression of National.
    Luxon is just some white, bald and opportunistic self server. He will always be controlled by John Key because birds of a feather, like those two, flock together.
    Whilst the mainstream NZ media gives the illusion Key was so good for NZ I think we all need to ask ourselves as to why John Key broke so many promises when it suited him and wasted so much of NZ taxpayers money on a piece of fabric just to massage his ego.
    Whilst I don’t have much liking of Simon Bridges I feel he is the best candidate for interim leader of National until someone with more integrity, honest(if that truly exists in National)and vision is found.
    Looking at the potential fall out of the Collins dumping I think there will be a few more National MPs jumping ship and especially those that are obviously sycophantic towards Collins for mostly self wants.

    • I know some JW’s. I also know them before they were pulled back into that cult, and every day I hear them go on about it, the more and more I hate them for taking my special friend from me and turning her into a total prude.

  12. Thanks for that Martyn, I haven’t heard of the Upper Room, will look it up.
    Just to say that there is a big difference between a Christian is an evangelist = one that preaches the word and calls for conversion… And an Evangelical Christian = a theological description of a more Conservative view that takes the Bible more literally than a Liberal Christian.
    Not all Evangelicals are evangelistic

    • Correct N Parry. Although they have the same root word, being “evangelical” does not mean per se that you are an “evangelist”. I’d go a step further in your definition of “evangelical” insofar as the meaning has changed in recent decades. I grew up in what we self-described as a “evangelical” church, which was primarily a theological rather than political label. It’s true that my church tended towards a conservative view on moral issues, but we wanted nothing to do with politics and certainly didn’t see Parliament as an appropriate arena to advance conservative views. That’s a stark contrast to contemporary evangelicalism, which has embraced politics for the purposes of conservative Christian mission. Although the latter form has spread internationally, it is still mainly an American phenomenon. Thus, when a NZer (Chris Luxon for example) is described as “evangelical” it’s still most likely a theological descriptor and should not be confused with the kind of evangelicalism so prominent in American politics; the Republican Party in particular.

    • Like humanism and the atrocity’s of the 20th century such as Stalinism, Pol Pot and all the other ‘non belief’ systems ( which actually are a belief system,…), in fact the 20th century has been called the ‘bloodiest century in human history) .Good luck with that. So what’s another religo thrown into the mix of NZ politics?,…. maybe we should wait and see rather than use broad brush generalizations.

  14. Devils advocate: what if he were Muslim, Bahai, Buddhist or Shinto? At the the risk of sounding trite, lets see what he’s about before we play the faith card. However if he’s just another John Key type, vote him out.

    • I think your missing the point wild katipo, it’s not the faith card being played. It’s the theological card being played. Which we really, really do need to ask. As the whole Wealth Theology / Prosperity Doctrine – is a nasty piece of work.

      I say nasty, when I should have said; bigoted, short-sighted and completely antithetical to what it means to be a Christian.

      Don’t know about you, but as a Christian, I’m sick to death of these fundamentalist zealots perverting the Gospels. It all comes down to the justifying GREED. And in turn ripping off the poor, rather than as Chris so right suggests “to fulfilling Christ’s promise that “the meek shall inherit the earth””.

      • Yep,… the great American prosperity doctrine. Hey ! Look, I’ve had a child who died of cancer, a divorce because of the titanic stress it put upon us, a son that misses his older brother, lost all my wealth because of fatcats in America selling rotten debt far from NZ in the GFC, and now am broken ass poor. I know. I know. And I see it written across our land loud and clear. The American evangelical faith that has been described as a ‘mile wide and one inch deep’.

        And it is sickening. But there are a lot of good Americans who keep the faith and who are not wealthy. They are the salt of the earth. Just like over here.

        All I am saying,… ‘is give peace a chance’.

      • Well, I like the colour of your cloth Ignatius, even if not your profession of religion, which always smacks of some kind of clubism, these days.

  15. I did laugh when reading Hollow Me, Don Brash asked what religion meant. Brash responded that religion was about love and peace. It was probably after that comment,National realised they had the wrong leader.

  16. I have just tried a google search on “Upper Room”. Very little to find apart from their own website.

    Either nobody has been talking about them, or somebody has done a very thorough clean of any reference to them in google.

    Given that anybody with money can do this, I am suspicious.

  18. He has already opened his mouth new view and what came out of it was not a new view but an old antiquated view/s not exactly new. Running an airline is not the same as running a country he will need to ditch some of his strongly held religious views and his privacy.

  21. I am no National voter ever but a clappy happy evangelical fundamentalist nutbar should never be able to be in a position to run this country. Successful businessman he may well be but his beliefs will underpin everything he does in his life. That’s why they are fundamentalist. It takes a hold on their life and it pervades their existence. Key also being his mentor just beggars belief. Collins has given him her vote therefore she will have to be rewarded with a position within the cabinet/shadow cabinet. When will we be forever ridden of this woman. Please let common sense prevail with this vote.

  22. What a lot of pretentious horseshit, Martyn. I mean really, “…they are matters to be explicated, elucidated and explained”. Great that you can use a thesaurus, I guess…but for fuck’s sake, get a life.

  23. It’s totally legit to question the backgrounds – religious or otherwise – of any political leader. But calling Luxon an extreme evangelical is baseless sensationalism, akin to John Key calling the Green Party communists. A quick look at his church’s website shows them to be far more prominently in support of social missions than converting people to Christianity or pushing a conservative moral agenda. Both the views of his church and what we know of his personal views certainly don’t paint an extreme picture, and whilst he may hold views that go against the grain of the majority of NZers, he’s openly said that these are his personal views not his political agenda. Keep an eye on the guy, for sure – all politicians need our constant scrutiny. But, when it comes to religion in politics I’d be far more worried about politicians that claim their personal faith is a part of their political agenda, not those that see it the other way round.

  25. our religious beliefs form our moral and ethical compass though Simon. We are what we preach so they intertwine no matter what

  26. If you want to know more about the kind of Christian Luxon is you should have a look at not just the church he goes to, or the ‘style’ of that church, but who leads that church His name is Craig Heilman and many of his comments and sermons have been scrubbed from the internet since Luxon started to make his way up the leadership ladder. Luckily Russel Brown synopsized the sermon he found concerning as it’s no longer there https://twitter.com/publicaddress/status/1191501840489148416 and if you want to hear Heilmann taken apart have a listen to an interview that I became aware of a few weeks back, where a journalist, a fucking smiling assassin, took him apart and made him look foolish to a point he had to support female circumcision https://soundcloud.com/pat-brittenden/craig-heillman-on-jehovahs. This is the leadership, over the leader of the National Party. Scary.

  27. I wonder if Luxon identified as a Muslim or an atheist if you would making the same demands? If he was an atheist would you demanding of him how he would seek to implement a belief system that entails moral relativism; the rejection of an objective notion of right and wrong? And the devaluing of human life as we are merely accidental collocations of atoms? Everybody has a worldview and everybody has a faith as no one can directly or empirically prove the assumptions their worldview is founded on. Be grateful Luxon actually has a worldview that demands of him honestly, integrity, the valuing of all human life, marriage, compassion, duty and hard work.

  28. I wonder if Luxon identified as a Muslim or an atheist if you would making the same demands? If he was an atheist would you demanding of him how he would seek to implement a belief system that entails moral relativism; the rejection of an objective notion of right and wrong? And the devaluing of human life as we are merely accidental collocations of atoms? Everybody has a worldview and everybody has a faith as no one can directly or empirically prove the assumptions their worldview is founded on. Be grateful Luxon actually has a worldview that demands of him honestly, integrity, the valuing of all human life, marriage, compassion, duty and hard work.

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