The Tamaki's

Brian and Hannah TamakiGood Morning and Welcome to this week’s Gospel and Culture update, by Alan Vink
The Tamaki’s and Latest Poll
Tuesday 26th September 2023

Brian and Hannah Tamaki

POV. Brian and Hannah Tamaki are good people. They have accomplished much that is good. As Pastors they have demonstrated over many years that they really care about the spiritual well being of all people and Maori in particular. I doubt that many Christians would disagree. I regard them both as a brother and sister in Christ.

That said, I do have a major point of difference with them on the subject of politics. The Tamaki’s have conflated the world of political reform and spiritual transformation. What the Tamaki’s confuse in my opinion is that in their minds God wants our country to return to righteousness and the way to achieve that is through legislation and a so called ‘Godly Government’.

What I find fascinating is that Jesus did neither teach this or model it. In fact at no time did Jesus seek to bring change in the political realm. Jesus did not join with the Zealots, who were Israelites seeking to bring better government to the Jews. He did not even speak out against the oppressive Roman government. He did not attempt to lead a movement to restore Israel as a nation for God.

Secondly, the Tamaki’s track record in the public square is problematic for many Christians, perhaps for most Christians given the very small support they have received from Christians at the ballot box since 2005. Here is a short overview if you need a reminder:-

In 2004, Brian claimed Destiny Church would "rule New Zealand" by 2008. In the 2005 election, the Destiny New Zealand party convinced just 14,000 people to vote for it, with its most successful electorate candidate getting 1100 votes. In the 2020 election another iteration, Vision NZ led by Hannah Tamaki, found support had fallen further, gaining just 4236 party votes or 0.1%. And now Brian has a new thing going. The Freedom and Rights Coalition (TFRC) was founded by Destiny Church’s Brian Tamaki in 2021 in opposition to the Government’s Covid-19 vaccine mandates. It was heavily involved in the occupation at Parliament last year and in August 2022 held a "people's court" on Parliament's steps for "crimes against Kiwis".

To conclude. To be ‘salt and light’ in the political process is to be commended but to insist that Christians must reform and ‘Christianise’ the nation is unhelpful if not harmful to our Christian witness.

The Latest Poll Results

National would need NZ First and ACT in the latest political poll.

In the Newshub-Reid Research Poll yesterday, National (with 49 seats) and ACT (with 11) together would have 60 seats – 61 is needed to form a government. Therefore National would need NZ First and ACT to form a Government. National and ACT would need NZ First’s six seats to get to power.

• National: 39.1% (down 1.8 percentage points since the previous Newshub poll)
• Labour: 26.5% (down 0.3)
• Green Party: 14.2% (up 1.9)
• ACT: 8.8% (down 1.3)
• NZ First: 5.2% (up 0.6)
• Te Pāti Māori: 2.2% (down 0.9)