The Man In The Black Hat
AUTHOR’S NOTE: I came across this column quite by accident while searching for information on another matter altogether. It was written about a certain evangelical gentleman of sinister mien, whose antics are still discombobulating liberals an astonishing eighteen years after these words were written. I didn’t know whether to laugh, or cry, at how very little has changed since late-August 2004.
MY OLD MATE PETE left high school before I did and got himself a job at the General Motors warehouse in Upper Hutt. This was thirty-odd years ago, when New Zealand had a real labour shortage, and well-paid labouring jobs were everywhere.
Pete would regale me with all kinds of stories about the people who worked alongside him in the sprawling GM complex, but there’s only one that has withstood the vicissitudes of thirty years. The sight of the Destiny Church marching through Wellington streets brought it all back: the story of Pete’s workmate – Lance.
Lance was a big Māori guy who claimed to be a Vietnam vet. Pete was never quite sure if Lance was telling him the truth, but he liked listening to his war stories anyway. The other thing Lance liked to talk about – apart from Vietnam and the army – was politics. Not “normal” politics – he had no time for National or Labour or even Social Credit. No, Lance was into a weird, far-right mixture of politics and religion. The book he swore by was Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth.
An incipient lefty, like me, Pete was spellbound by Lance’s radical right-wing riffs. One in particular made a lasting impression. “When we come to power,” Pete remembered Lance declaring, “we’re going to liberate the police, and police the liberals.”
People talk about “Māori radicals”, tino rangatiratanga and the Treaty of Waitangi, and it sets off all kinds of political depth charges in New Zealand’s collective memory. We think of Syd Jackson and Nga Tamatoa, of Hana Te Hemara’s “kill a Pakeha and die a hero” speech, and of the tense stand-offs between Police and protesters at Waitangi throughout the early eighties. We remember, too, that since the 1930s Māori have voted for the Labour Party. Mention Māori politics, and most people think left-wing.
But it ain’t necessarily so. Māori, like so many of the Polynesian peoples whose traditional religions were more or less destroyed through their contact with Christian missionaries in the 19th Century, adopted the conservative moral strictures of the new religion with extraordinary fervour. Christian sexual morality, in particular, fastened heavy chains of guilt around what had been the carefree and sexually polymorphous Polynesian spirit. To this day, the Samoan, Tongan and Fijian churches preside over some of the most sexually intolerant societies on Earth. And the recent comments of New Zealand’s Anglican Archbishop on the subject of homosexuality, suggest that Māori Christians are no less intolerant than their Pacific Island co-religionists.
More worrying still are the affinities many Māori leaders have indicated for the rigidly hierarchical and undemocratic social structures of their Pacific Island neighbours. Chiefly power is entrenched in both the Fijian and the Tongan constitutions – to the ultimate disadvantage of Tongan “commoners” and Fijian Indians. The Fijian Methodist Church openly endorses and supports the political claims of this indigenous Fijian aristocracy, and, to its eternal disgrace, failed to condemn either of the Fiji coups.
Add this strong affinity for aristocratic political organisation to a deeply conservative Māori Christianity, and then mix in the powerful historical legacy of a social system in which warriors wielded enormous cultural power, and the resulting socio-political profile is anything but “progressive”. Indeed, conservative Christian Māoridom is a place where men like Lance – not to mention Brian Tamaki – can strut their stuff with far more self-assurance than any Māori radical.
So, when I saw the footage of thousands of Destiny Church members marching down Lambton Quay on Monday afternoon, I couldn’t help recalling Lance’s promise to “police the liberals”, nor the strange millenarian fantasies drawn from his Late Great Planet Earth. I wondered if he was there, somewhere in the midst of it all, and whether this tightly disciplined movement, with its supremely confident and charismatic leader, represented everything he – and thousands of conservative working-class Māori like him – had been waiting for since 1973.
Some people – dear, brave Georgina Beyer among them – heard in Monday’s noisy display of fierce racial pride, aggressive political intolerance and fanatical religious belief, frightening echoes of Nuremberg.
But what Brian Tamaki reminded me of was a poem, written by Sam Hunt, and published about the same time that my old mate Pete and I were kicking round the Upper Hutt car plants.
It’s called Beware The Man, and three decades on, I can still recall some of the lines:
Beware the man who tries to fit you out
In his idea of a hat
Dictating the size and colour of it …
… Beware! He’s fitting you
for more than that.
This essay was originally published in The Dominion Post of Friday, 27 August 2004.
Tithing is thriving
You always get people in vulnerable economic circumstances, wag there finger and grift saying anything they like for financial gain. Even Mother Teresa did it preferring to hord millions in donations. Perhaps there is no reason for accepting financial innovation except that the alternatives are brutally worse.
“Tithing is thriving” So why the outsize criticism for Tamaki but not the Catholic Church or any other church and who are we to say how people should spend their money.
Tamaki is working class Maori as are many of his followers. How dare we tut tut at who they chose to follow and believe.
Lance in the story is called far -right, an extreme slur, with only the following evidence: he’s a christian, he liked a book, he said “police the liberals”. I looked up the book which is about biblical prophecy, not that different to the end- is- nigh stuff being promoted by progressives and globalists who also use their end fo the world fearmongering to tithe countries with the promise of salvation.
As white liberal elites who know best, forcing people to think like us how different are we from early missionaries. Maybe Tamaki has something to say. Maybe you disagree. Just disagree. There’s no evidence that Tamaki’s position is extremist. He stood for freedom. He stood for bodily autonomy, the right to choose and liberty. He paid the price of jail. Where were the so called liberals?
Why do people have a go at Brian? Because he is dodgy.
My son studied cults in Yr 13 at school, because he is lazy, I gathered up a large lot of research on our Bri and ended up reading it all.
I dont have a problem with his politics or his Freedom views, good on him.
What I have a problem with is that he runs a Christian like cult (Meets the definition of various “Cult detailing’ methodologies and when compared with Catholic ideology has a few striking non Biblical diversions which also put it into Cultlike territory) and there are many, many indications that he does it for financial gain. He is quite literally fleecing some of Aucklands poorest and to me this is unforgivable. Its not just a 10% tithe, it is ‘offerings’ to the Bishop and myriad money making schemes. And the fact that genuine pressure is (or at least at that stage, was), put on people to pay the tithes.
On the other hand, I concede Tamaki provides a community for some of our lost souls and he helps them to reorient themselves into society with reasonable success. I suspect that this is the reason the government has largely left him alone for so many years. But I daresay he’ll come under the gun if he pushes his politics too much.
No the man in the black hat is simply a fat cat. He does not provide for anyone other than himself. Why because he would do it for nothing otherwise. Jesus wore nothing but a white robe, the fat cat wears black leathers and bling diving around on a Harley and in a Tesla.
People get very confused that his followers are going to the promised land, no, they will just be followers such is Tamakis want.
There may be no evidence that Tamaki’s position is extremist. There was enough evidence in interactions and observations for Chris Trotter at the time for him to conclude that Lance in the story could be called ‘far-right.’
It may be an ‘extreme slur,’ it may not be. Maybe out was a label Lance was pleased to have. Maybe he would have been unhappy about that. Then again I’m sure there have been those who have stolen and stolen and stolen yet seen it as a slur when they were called a “thieving bastard.”
sunny – bodily autonomy – what are his views on contraception and abortion. of homosexuality? effing hypocrite in everything he does. How can you equate biblical nonsense with science and facts and call it fear-mongering. the fear is real – get used to it.
” runs a Christian like cult” It’s not a cult. He doesn’t make you hand over control of your finances, or tell you not to see other family members, or penalize you for leaving. That’s just more name calling without evidence..
I’m not Christian or a church goer so it’s not my cup of tea. But it’s patronising to tell Maori who they can and cannot worship with. And actually a working class Maori man starting his own church and being successful well good on him.
And it’s irrelevant. The issue is, are the mandates and lockdowns justified. Tamaki thinks no. Freedom & Rights then becomes a much broader church because there are a whole bunch who think no – in fact they think Hell no. It’s a major and unprecedented breach of our democratic rights. Instead of having that debate they attack him personally and his religious organisation. I’m not joining Destiny Church. But in this instance Tamaki is right and he is one of the very few saying it – so good on him . It takes bravery. And it’s not far right. It’s liberal.
It’s my democratic right not to be stopped by Tamakis group in the middle of an Auckland motorway.
Democratic rights still come with laws.
There’s something sort of funny about Tamaki being out the front of a horde ranting about the cost of living, the cost of fuel, etc. and how people can’t afford to live. And they give him money when they can’t afford cars and gas so he can have cars and bikes and gas. And then the mob clogs up the middle of towns and motorways so people who can hardly afford gas use a lot more.
Politics is a performance art. The man in the big black hat is the narcissist. The big black hat gets snatched by the best performance. Actors worry about Artificial Intelligences taking their jobs. So they should. I don’t know anything about Destiny Church except they get people off the streets and onto bikes but hey, we need performance art and shows of righteous rhetoric by humans to counteract the coldness of the machine.
You & many religions seem obsessed with sexual sins, the scripture is plain enough that all are sinners & that God wants to save us from all sin, he will not force salvation on anyone & true salvation is not a multi-choice option where you get to choose what you want changed. Scripture is also clear that the end times involve a choice between true & false worship & Tamaki along with most religions are likely to be on the wrong side. The quickest way to tell is when religion combines with the state to force worship (remember the dark ages) you can be sure they are wrong as God is love so only with free choice is it possible to worship God.
Yup, something I noticed when I arrived here in 1967. First at the school and later as I got into the workforce. It didn’t expire in 1973, it continued through my working life up to the present. It is a very strange construct peculiar to NZ.
In the 2006 Census 98% Of Maori identified as Christian
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Late_Great_Planet_Earth
Barking. A bit like the Rowan Atkinson skit, “will this wind be so mighty as to lay low the mountains of the earth.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hJQ18S6aag
These dodgy actors like Hal Lindsey, Jerry Falwell, and their fellow stooges in our country are paid very well for it. I’m no expert on Christianity, but actual Christians I’ve spoken to have informed me that Israel even gave Jerry Falwell a Learjet for spreading his anti-Christian heresies.
“Polynesian peoples whose traditional religions were more or less destroyed through their contact with Christian missionaries in the 19th Century”
Polytheism and Animism are no match for Monotheism, even a tripartite version.
“Māori, like so many of the Polynesian peoples whose traditional religions were more or less destroyed through their contact with Christian missionaries in the 19th Century…” tells only part of the story.
Traditional religions were also destroyed by the power and wonder of imported Pakeha technology. Maori quickly began to believe their gods were impotent compared to the God the settlers had brought with them.
I spent some time in the late 80s trying to knock Pat Heretaunga Baker’s MS for his novel The Strongest God into publishable form. Pat was quite clear that the traditional Maori gods had failed to deliver and the new God was obviously much more powerful and deserving of worship.
Thanks Chris for the interesting article. It has given me another viewpoint on this unfolding landscape we face in our society.
p.s Thanks too for the readers comments.
Well I’m seeing less and less navel gazing subjugating nonsense at every tangi I attend – it’s refreshing to see rangatahi moving Maori spirituality back to the land the moon and the sun – where it belongs.
I recall another side to Destiny, something good.
I, like most people, have a low opinion of Brian T. And you might recall the march on Parliament some years ago by his Promise Keepers, a bulky group of guys. (Were they dressed in black?) I think they got bad press because they were very much that the man is the head of the household.
Anyway, on to my story. A few years ago the water pipes in my street were being renewed. It was a big job over several weeks. One day I sat outside my house eating a lunch sandwich. One of the workmen walked by, and then joined me with his lunch. Turned out he was a member of the Promise Keepers. He said how they support each other. For example, if you’re a PK living on your own and feeling down, you can phone another PK and talk to them. A support group sounds pretty darn good to me. Maybe our Brian isn’t all bad.
A while later that workman brought me some paua