Former Gloriavale residents consider its future
After years of allegations of forced labour, slavery, and sexual and physical abuse, the future of Gloriavale is being considered by its former residents.
The latest attempt to gain some type of accountability from the Gloriavale cult is back in the news and I think it’s time to ask, why we tolerate Gloriavale again?
As a liberal progressive democracy we all have to tolerate religion.
We never want a State to tell you what you can and can’t believe, the powers we would need to give the State to enable that level of coercion over the individual would immediately stop it being any type of State any of us would want to support.
You’d have stormtroopers smashing down temples, do we really want that?
If you want to believe in a magical invisible flying wizard for your day to day decisions, that’s your right, as insanely crazy as I think that is.
As good liberal progressive democrats, we have to tolerate freedom of religion because the alternative, a State that can compel you to believe only its truth, is vastly more damaging and dangerous.
And goodness don’t we tolerate religion here in NZ?
We tolerate that the churches don’t pay tax.
We tolerate Scientology – fucking Scientology!
We tolerate Bishop Brian Tamaki. Ugh.
If you as an adult want to believe this garbage, you are free to, just don’t expect me to have to play along with your fantasies.
What is most difficult however about tolerating these religious lunatics is when they stop educating their children so that they remain brainless worker drones for their magical invisible flying wizard.
The Gloriavale cult purposely stops young women from learning and becoming educated so that they effectively remain in domestic servitude!
What parent could ever hold their head high knowing they have purposely kept their children blind and stupid to the wonders of this world?
And it is this tolerance of freedom of religion that obligates us to fully support all Gloriavale survivors who manage to escape this cult with wrap around services and welfare benefits alongside constant outreach programs to ask if families wish to leave.
We tolerate these cultists because we tolerate religion, but by doing so we write off the children they purposely keep stupid. If anyone manages to escape, we have an obligation to support them because we so willingly turn a blind eye to their abuse in the name of tolerating their fucking religion!
We owe those who escape because we tolerate a system that abused them.
Look, I acknowledge the historic role Christianity had in building academia, the arts and the philosophical creation of the Western sense of the Individual, but we moved passed being scared by that which we couldn’t explain and removed the limitations of angry invisible gods who want to punish us for our lack of faith and weekly tithing to the Church.
In the West, we won’t be controlled by the dead ghosts of yesterdays gods any longer, you want to believe in that, knock yourself out, welcome to freedom of choice, but fuck right off if you want to start making rules for the rest of us.
I have no problem enjoying the beauty of religion, the art of religion, the passion of religion, but I also enjoy the Marvel Cinematic Universe and I’m not praying to Tony Stark each night for an Iron Man flying battle suit with lasers, guided missiles and a billion dollars.
This isn’t just an anti-Christian position, I have this position against all religions. I tolerate them as well, but hold them at the same intellectual standards I would frightened children trying to explain what lightening and thunder is.
We have to allow Gloriavale to exist and we put up with the fake Bishop because NZ is a liberal progressive democracy and if you chose to live this weird life where your invisible magical flying wizard tells you to work on a farm in some strange rejection of modernity, then that is your right and our intrusion as the State should be the same as anyone else who gets accused of crimes and there is evidence.
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I think the tipping point is when they dictate what clothes women wear.
It’s probably education.
How about treating women as “unclean” at certain times of the month. That’s ridiculous.
It’s not difficult providing a better lifestyle to that which Gloriavail provides. I mean where’s the passion. Where’s the conviction. I really love New Zealand convincing these Muppet of another way shouldn’t be this fucken hard.
Gloriavale have their religious leaders doing panty checks like the Chassids? Hadn’t heard of that one.
Ridiculous isn’t it Mo. Best keep an eye on them in lest they start doing the virginity checks beloved by Mohammedans.
Wait until Mo hears about the Taliban he’s going to be outraged . .
You mean the government of Afghanistan, that overthrew the collaborators who were raping little kids under the guise of ‘bacha bazi’ while the NZDF did nothing about it?
Not going to bother commenting on your defence of the Taliban as there is really no need – your defence of them in the first place speaks volumes.
Of course you won’t, James. Did you rape little Afghan boys yourself?
naw that’s the talibans boy dancers scene in kabul khan
Are we referring to the Religion of Peace ™ here?
Martyn I don’t agree that giving tax exemption status for believers of said sky wizard should be tolerated. Believe what you want but the likes of Sanitarium and the Brethren’s running tax free businesses is outrageous
Wheel agree with you on this point re taxes .
It gives the businesses an unfair advantage. We should also tax Maori businesses like Ngi Tahu.
You’ve wandered a bit off-topic there Trevor, but would you like to explain clearly where “businesses like Ngi Tahu” don’t pay tax? Some credible sources would be good.
If you Google does Ngai Tahu pay tax and you will get the answer ,They are looked on as a charity but that charity runs tourist ventures bus companies and have a large property portfolio. it is great that they are making money for their tribe and they do distribute it but it does give them an advantage .
If you want carry off the stumpy little dumb fascist thing then learn to spell first at least. You really are embarrassing yourself, as you do.
“We should also tax Maori businesses like Ngi Tahu.”
https://ngaitahu.iwi.nz/
@Countryboy – Do you think he means the Knights who say “Ni!”?
Your long rambling blogs are usually an embarrassment .
Of course the colonialist state will want to tax our charitable trust organisations as they go about providing our people with the necessities of life from whatever resources remain with us after two centuries of state confiscations. The colonialists will justify this by saying that Maori trusts should not be given a financial advantage over colonialist corporations. However, this is to ignore the fact that the purpose of our trusts is to serve the needs of ordinary people while the purpose of colonialist corporations is to savagely exploit them in the interests of global capital. If the colonialist state starts to tax Maori trusts it will simply be adding another layer of exploitation and finding a new avenue for confiscation. Well, e hoa ma, bring it on.
And Google, Facebook, Apple, Goldman Sachs, ExxonMobil etc etc etc Trevor.
That’s misleading Charles. Those entities are not exempted taxation purely because of what they are, Exxon isn’t tax free because it’s an oil company, Accountancy firms aren’t tax free just because they do accountancy etc.
Sure, they pay less tax than they should, but for reasons involving a myriad of other faults in the system.
In contrast, religious groups can enjoy tax free status simply by claiming to be a religion.
How can it be misleading when those are the facts Richard…
https://insights.nzherald.co.nz/article/nz-multinational-tax-gap/
It’s misleading in context of juxtaposing it with tax free status of churches and religion. The fault is as much Trevor’s for first bringing it up, but you bought into it and took it further..
But it’s still true Richard, it doesn’t make it wrong .
Thank you for highlighting that
“But it’s still true Richard,”
Yes, Charles, it’s true, I never said that it wasn’t, only that it was misleading.
Many people get a tax reduction for their contribution to registered charities as well, there are many unfair things about our tax system & if everyone actually believed what the SDA version of Christianity is supposed to teach we would be crime-free, healthy, with no enemies so that would produce a substantial reduction in the cost of government. Obviously, that is never going to happen & as Martyn has already said the freedom to choose what we believe is essential otherwise we are not really free.
I am disgusted by what has been happening in Gloriavale & do not see any need for it however my greatest fear is that a rapid closure will only result in unscrupulous employers taking advantage of the people from there so any action taken needs to ensure that the innocent members are protected.
Couldn’t agree more. I won’t buy their products. Business pretending to be religious charities eeds a government with some guts to stop their bludging on hard working kiwis.
Top comment Wheel
The Exclusive Brethens are a borderline cult. Won’t associate with the ‘heathen’, but happily employ them to do the ‘worldly work’. And the have their own supermarket ‘campus and co’
I worked with a young girl who was a member of the Brethren, Really nice young lady, heart of gold. Unfortunately her family pulled her back in. Married her with a young bloke down south and packed her off down there.
Why are we not offered an objective assessment of Gloriavale as a minor social phenomenon? Why no reference to the failures of neo-liberal capitalism which inspire responses such as Gloriavale and Destiny Church?
“We owe those who escape because we tolerate a system that abused them.”
Yes, you do. You (I am talking about the Labour left here) tolerate the abusive capitalist system, you weaponize it with neo-liberalism, and then abuse those who attempt to escape into religious communities. You owe those who escape capitalism something more than an abusive rant, especially if it is a case of out of the frying pan and into the fire.
Any crimes committed at or by Gloriavale can be punished under New Zealand law. The same should be true of any farm, business, school, church or political party in the country. Follow the rule of law without fear or favour. You should not tolerate the massively widespread and gross exploitation of migrant labour, which keeps the New Zealand capitalist economy running and “growing”, while punishing people who choose to voluntarily enter into non-money-based communities.
Even Karl Marx had a more intelligent understanding of religion and its role in society.
Gloriavale and Destiny Church are very small outliers which are symptoms of the collapse of values in New Zealand’s colonialist society, and they express many positive values along with certain practices or views that we may regard as abhorrent. The “whole of government” attack on Gloriavale is not a rule of law approach. It is a test run for a “whole of government” clampdown on other individuals and groups which depart from neo-liberal doctrines.
Certainly the various sky pilots should be allowed to operate–on condition of supporting appropriate labour and other rights, and paying tax like other citizens!
Brethren and Jehovah’s have been taking the piss for years with their no vote stances, yet actively interfering in others democratic rights and election processes.
I have little time for any religion because they relentlessly oppress women and indoctrinate children before they are mature enough to develop an independent world view.
Thee noxious influence of religious cults is one thing but economics is inhabited with cults. There is Classical, Neo-classical, monetarists, Austrians, Liberal, Neo-liberal, Keynesian, Neo-Keynesians, Post-Keynesians, etc. These cults are dangerous because they have an influence on Government policies.
I feel the same about Jolly King Chuckles, The Crown and all monarchies.
Why do we tolerate being lorded over by a British toff with a divine right to rule over Aotearoa.
Every 3 years we vote to perpetuate their system of governance and judiciary. The faces of our overseers change but the crack of the whip doesn’t.
Martyn – Not sure about linking Brian Tamaki to Gloriavale…some common ground, but far more differences.
Yep, Destiny Church is prominetly a low income Maori operation that signed up the poor and downtrodden that were thrown on the scrap heap after Rogernomics, while Gloriavale is a hang over from the cults in the 1970’s that married evangalical Christianity with hippie commune lifestyles.
millsy – Well written.
Destiny Church is what you get when the gangs come to Christ. Complete with leather jackets and Harley-Davidson motorcycles. But having said that, I personally believe that Destiny Church is a better option than the Mongrel Mob. I would rather see younger people forsaking drugs, dishonesty and gratuitous violence and becoming productive members of the community, and if Brian Tamaki’s politics are the price we have to pay for that, then so be it.
Yes, asking how long we should tolerate Gloriavale and Destiny Church is a bit like asking how long we should tolerate ACT and Te Pati Maori. Both Gloriavale and Destiny profess Christianity but Destiny is predominantly Maori, overtly capitalist and colonialist in its politics while Gloriavale is predominantly European, communist and “apolitical”. (I put that in quotes because there was one occasion on which the predecessor of Gloriavale, the Christian Church at Rangiora, swung a parliamentary election by block voting). The communism of Gloriavale is Bible based. It does not really owe anything to other manifestations of communist thought such as Marxist-Leninism or the hippie commune movement.
What other organisations are allowed to sell and promote literature that calls for murdering women (witches), homosexuals, adulterers and apostates. What other organisations are allowed to justify slavery in their magical spell book by laying out the rules that govern it?
Soon you will wake up to the Muslim morning call to prayer in Wellington if the Green lunatic fringe get their way. They must have solved all the environmental and social problems.
I actually like listening the call tp prayer, it’s about the only thing about Islam I genuinely like.
Much more musically interesting than out of sync cathedral bells, about which, I have no doubt, you have never moaned about.
I like your own fringe lunatic comments KCCO, keep those conspiracies coming.
If there is a some sort of major cataclysm (e.g. nuclear war, or solar flare), Gloriavale will ironically be one of the few communities that survives. While we’ll all be at each other’s throats, looting, burning and raping as civilisation collapses around us, Gloriavale will barely notice anything has changed.
Of course. The Lord will protect them from a nuclear winter. What are you on?
@ Nitrium. Baha!
Ideally Gloriavale should close, but the closure should be the result of the community deciding it should end.
Rosanna Overcomer, who was one of the first to leave, thought it would be dangerous to close the community using outside force. To close it from the outside, she thought would rebound dangerously and prove the leaders right in their scaremongering.
So, yes, it needs to close but the push to do so has to come from within.
The link https://www.1news.co.nz/2024/04/03/former-gloriavale-residents-consider-its-future/ shows that
this document is an argument from “leavers” who remain Christian (“followers of the invisible flying wizard”) and who evidently still strongly relate to the Gloriavale community.
They argue for “The freedom to choose to be part of the church at Gloriavale or another Christian church or no church at all while still living at Gloriavale.” In other words they are proposing that Gloriavale remain as a Christian community but ceases to be the property of a Christian sect. That sounds reasonable to me but it is the members of Gloriavale who must be convinced, not those of us who are outsiders. Many Gloriavale residents would argue that the community was founded on the donations of people who wanted a community with a defined theology, and that most, if not all, desire to keep a tight community with common adherence to strictly defined beliefs. They would fear that without a common belief the community would begin to break apart.
The document argues “People should be allowed to marry who they want, earn and keep their own money .. and hold beliefs based on their own understanding and conscience of the Bible…” To me that means that members should be allowed to marry non-believers from outside the community, the communist principle derived from Acts 2:44-45 should be abandoned, and the only condition for membership should be possession of a Bible-based belief system. All of that means that Gloriavale would move at least halfway towards becoming a secular community. I personally don’t have a problem with that. After all I live in an unintentional secular community that respects freedom of religion (which the leavers might support, although there is some ambiguity around that) and adheres to communal principles (which the leavers might not support). However it is not for us or the leavers to say how Gloriavale should evolve. Obviously the leavers retain a sentimental attachment to the place and the people they have left, but left they have. It is those remaining who must decide the future of Gloriavale. Not the leavers, not some branch of the state, and not the writers of The Daily Blog.
“The freedom to choose to be part of the church at Gloriavale or another Christian church or no church at all while still living at Gloriavale.”
This would be analogous to Benedictine monks or Dominican nuns who no longer ‘believe’ and don’t want the rigours of the discipline, yet demand to continue living in the monastery because they like the scenery and the singing.
You are a bit unfair claiming that the communist principle in Gloriavale is the same as in Acts 2:44-45, you only need to go back a verse to see that signs and wonders were happening and earlier 3000 people were baptized, what happened was a Holy Spirit movement which is completely different to Neville Cooper deciding that he should be telling people what to do. Apart from that the rest of your comment sounds fair.
Acts 2:44: “All the believers were together and had everything in common”. That is why some believe that to be Christian one must be communist – not of the Marxist ilk, but as of those filled with and directed by the Holy Spirit. Nev Cooper argued that Gloriavale was communist because it was spirit-filled, and that Christian churches which are not communist cannot be spirit-filled. I think he had a point there, even if he was wrong about other things and even if his own actions and attitudes fell short of the Christian ideal. Communism is a defining feature of spirit-filled Christianity, and it is equally true that communism can only be sustained through the flourishing of the Holy Spirit, in the absence of which it rapidly descends into tyranny.
No atheist and few Christians really understand the creation story in Genesis. (This is following a topic in a previous thread now closed). The fundamental error is to suppose that the first three chapters of Genesis are purely concerned with the material world, rather than human consciousness. Thus the mistaken apprehensions that the story of Cain and Abel is about “the first murder” (it is really about the violation of the proper relationship between the temporal and spiritual sides of our nature and by extension between church and state), that the “fall” was occasioned by “sin” (it is really about human acquisition of the ability to distinguish good from evil, and the consequent acquisitions of self-awareness, empathy and moral understanding which are the necessary conditions for us to live in the mass societies which we have created beyond the garden) and that the creation itself was about the formation and awakening of human consciousness (that is why the “light” and “day and night” precede the creation of the heavenly bodies that are the source of light in materialist cosmology). So despite the repeated incredulous refrain from one quarter of “the magical invisible flying wizard” there is nothing fatuous about the book of Genesis or the other books of the Bible. While they may be written in the ancient style of metaphor, allegory and parable they are deeply philosophical works which bring us to a true knowledge of our Creator – if we want to go there.
Oddly enough, we also tolerate Islam which also notably stops young women from even being seen let alone learning and becoming educated so that they effectively remain in domestic servitude
I’ll accept that this isn’t the case everywhere but it is in those parts of the world where Islam is the dominant religion and much of the midlands.
Destiny Church owes its existence to Rogernomics and Ruthenasia as much as it does the Tamakis.
That is at least partially correct. Destiny Church is also a response to the social havoc wreaked by two centuries of colonialist distribution of alcohol, tobacco and other drugs, and the violence, nihilism and hopelessness that the narco-colonialist state has induced in New Zealand society.
One church has more brown people the other more white people and I don’t think Brian is touching anyone other than his missus whereas the Brethens are like pedos hence the name exclusive.
He touches their wallet
Actually, Millsy makes a good point. Tamaki is an ACToholic. He backs the Treaty Principles Bill, his brothers are Tainui entrepreneurs and his prosperity gospel ideology trashes the centre-left social gospel theology that supported the emergence of the comprehensive welfare state, public health and education back in the thirties. One of the reasons Tamaki is currently going apeshit is possibly due to the decline of his sect and impliedly, the erosion of his bank balance from his rackrent titheing of his poor parishioners. Decline? Well, yeah. Currently, according to his website, the sect has branches in Auckland, Wellington, Hamilton, Whakatane, Whangarei, Christchurch, Nelson, the Gold Coast, Gisborne, Rotorua and Tauranga- but it closed branches in Porirua, Whanganui and Dunedin and either merged or closed others in Kaitaia, Opotiki, Taumauranui and Hawkes Bay. He doesn’t have a clue about concrete political strategy, as evidenced by the failure of his four puppet microparties and his frequent “prophetic” delusions. Eventually, gravity is going to assert itself with that crowd…
as far as the rich/prominant goes our judiciary are as weak as piss
Two things there. Tamaki is an everyday dumb cunt who recruits dumb people who need belonging. Gloriavale needed sophisticated mechanisms to stop it. Leaving it alone has seen it destroy itself, at the cost of those innocent people. Maybe a few laws could help there. But fools will be fools and it’s not the job of laws to stop that.
How would your communist commune work, who is gonna be the first one to snitch someone not working hard enough for same amount of silverbeet and potatoes
Tax churches, tax cgt asap. Tax ngai tahu. Tax weetbix
Sick of freeloaders.
” Why do we tolerate Gloriavale and Brian Tamaki?”
God only knows we need a laugh.
I have no problem tolerating other people’s religious beliefs – as long as they are not sacrificing virgins at the new moon or whatever. The problem arises when they want to impose those beliefs on everyone else. Then we run into the paradox of tolerance – we tolerate someone whose aim it is to end toleration.
I have absolutely no tolerance for their tax-free status however. If it’s because they engage in charitable works, then they should file a tax return that explains exactly how much of their income goes to charitable works, and the rest should be taxed. In the US there is an agreement – formal or informal I don’t know – that as long as churches stay out of politics they maintain their tax-free status. In that situation Tamaki would theoretically lose his, except that when I tried to find out once how many churches had lost their tax-free status over the years, you can pretty much count them on half the fingers of one hand.
What kisses me off horribly though is that Bishop Tamaki and his little friends seem to think they should get away with breaking the law. Painting over pedestrian crossings puts people’s life at risk. At the very least they should be fined, I think they should be forced to repaint the crossing, and if they refuse, let’s make martyrs of them and put the bastards in jail.
True. To be more specific, vandalising pedestrian crossings is in violation of Section 11 of the Summary Offences Act 1981. If it involves serious damage to property or endangerment of life, then Section 269 of the Crimes Act 1961 kicks in. Ah. I see one of the folks who vandalised the Karangahape Road crossing was in fact the Bi$hop of Bling’s grandson in law (he’s married to Brian’s eldest granddaughter).