A conservative NZ blog which frequently engages in US-style culture war politics claims that a Christian political activist campaigning against anti-Christian laws in the State of New York has been convicted in a case of “political law fare” in which it is alleged the Attorney General of that State essentially created a political persecution against the activists’ organisation. It is known that this activist is formally engaged with a conservative political party in the State which appears to be firmly engaged in the US-style culture wars beloved of many conservative Christian organisations in the US but which often appear extreme by the standards of countries outside the USA.
The US political environment and by extension to a certain level its church environment is massively polarised by any standards and the situation referred to is representative of the political and theopolitical arms race that has become an entrenched feature of the USA and which is fondly invoked by arch-conservatives in other countries. Constant escalations have become extreme due to the politics of the current US President and led to major political backlash and retribution elsewhere. Numerous examples at the present time can easily be found by reading a middle-of-the-road news outlet like CNN and will not be included in this blog for the state of the present discussion.
These issues are the product of the libertarianism enshrined in the system of US politics from the beginning of its historical inception and further tilted in succeeding decades by the substantial financial resources that political conservatism has at its disposal. This produces substantial lobbying power that has skewed the political balance of the US and also from there, worldwide. NZ is just one of many economies which in recent years has experienced third wave colonisation from mostly US based global giants which have been allowed to expand with no political insight or accountability and have become adept at formulating schemes to suck large amounts of money out of foreign economies. Whilst the chief benefit of globalisation as a whole has been the spreading of global wealth more evenly across the world to the diminution of countries that have formerly enjoyed massive economic dominance like the US, the ongoing rounds of third wave colonisation by US global giants appears more like the backlash being espoused by the MAGA movement in the US enshrined in the current Presidency.
We regret it is necessary to invoke such a large amount of politics in a post on this blog but we feel it is very necessary to highlight the politics that is inherent and entrenched within the greater part of the culture wars that some conservative Christian groups are attempting to import to NZ even if many of their invocations have largely been ignored. Christian nationalism is a key feature of many of these campaigns. Christian groups and their members are engaging with conservative political parties in NZ doubtless with the aid of campaign funds from the US or elsewhere and conservative lobby groups are attempting to skew the political landscape. It is a time when political balance in NZ is becoming difficult to find and shows ample grounds for concern about threats to our democratic system given the kinds of escalations that have become prevalent in the US.
How is this relevant to our Christian faith in New Zealand? Christian nationalism essentially attempts to entrench a government run on theological principles, which is only seen in the world at present in some Islamic countries. It is well known that there are various theological schisms within global Islam and that at times this has escalated into open warfare between the different factions. It is not peace on earth for Islam, and there wouldn’t be a great deal of difference if Christian theological government was set up in the US or elsewhere. Let us remember that the United States was essentially founded by people of Christian principle and belief who considered themselves to have been excommunicated from theological Christian governance in Europe in the main, which was in the time when many such states were under the dominance of the Roman Catholic Church and therefore controlled to a major extent by the Pope. What has happened since? The United States of America has evolved to regard itself as entitled to assume the right of global pre-eminence and domination, engaging in political and by extension theopolitical challenges to other well established political and economic spheres such as Europe. Segments of the US Church have eagerly embraced dispensationalist theology, long suppressed by the Roman Catholic Church, as their ticket to domination of the Church worldwide along the same lines as their government’s question for political supremacy. All of this, of course, has major parallels with the first fifteen centuries of Christian history in Europe. The problem then for the Roman Catholic Church was that people eventually demanded their rights to freely choose their faith and freely practice beliefs that were different from what their church-aligned government allowed. In New Zealand, we already see churches that seek not just to spread the Christian gospel through the nation, but to subdue it politically, with support from overseas. This is leading to increasing political polarisation of the type that is becoming entrenched in the US.
New Zealand is a secular country with an open and free democracy. We have a good human rights record and protection of individual freedoms through laws inherited from our colonialist past as a former Dominion of the British Commonwealth. Countries which have been historically aligned to this Commonwealth have in the greater part been more politically balanced than those which have been aligned to the US. The result has been a more equal country and one which has allowed Christians to freely choose and practice their beliefs and campaign for a fair and just society. However this openness means that like in the US where libertarianism allowed the organisations with the most financial resources to become dominant, the same type of political skew is developing here. The view of this blog is that the theopolitical dominance championed by large Christian nationalist organisations in the US is inherently wrong because it essentially dictates that the population at large are compelled to accept Christian beliefs when everything in the Bible points to the assumption that people have freedom of choice in deciding the direction of their lives. Christian nationalism not only denies that free choice but creates divisions within Christian belief itself. This is most evident in the US where there is not universal support even amongst evangelicals for that particular theopolitical cause. The polarisation that would result from creating a Christian nationalist form of government is inherent in the key assumption that free and fair elections and non Christian political opposition would be outlawed. Conservatives in NZ continue to champion the endless tide of third wave colonisation largely from the US that is enabling mass surveillance technologies to become entrenched, a key aspect of how a future Christian nationalist one-party theocratic state could enforce its dominance. All this is essentially based on key beliefs of top US dispensationalists, that it is their divine calling to usher in the Second Coming of Jesus through bringing about the conditions in the world that they say are needed to create the “end times” events, not just in the US but worldwide.
If we look at how dispensationalists have conveyed their message in recent decades, particularly through the works of Barry R Smith and others from New Zealand and elsewhere, the suggestion is that the “end times” predicted by dispensationalists will come about because of the rise of an antichrist from within Europe. What appears to be changing in the theological landscape is that the nexus of eschatological impetus has shifted to the USA where wealthy megachurches and associated ministries are doing everything they can to advance the “end times”, a key example being their unqualified support for the present day State of Israel and its further advancement to dominate the Middle East. This feeds directly into the political polarisation in the US as a whole, where Christian rule of the US is essentially the precursor to the nations ruling with Christ 1000 years as interpreted from Revelation 20:4, which is being interpreted as essentially a reward to the most righteous nation which will rule the Church, a stature that US Christians essentially believe is their divine pre-emption as long as they can bring about Christian one-party governance in their nation. The rest of the classical “end times” message that Smith and others preached in times past seems to have been muted, although little of it was actually inspired by the Bible, and it represents a different branch of dispensationalist thought than what appears to be predominant today. The current US Presidency unlike any predecessor is generally viewed by Christian nationalists as bringing them closer to their objectives than any previous administration, but will in fact wreak incalculable harm on the US and have parallel ripple effects into the world as a whole. Predominant in the massive polarisation becoming established in US politics is the assumption that conservatives are born to rule, a viewpoint espoused worldwide, and therefore any tactics they use have a divine imperator. Hence, the greater part of the US conservative political establishment has kowtowed to the US President’s agenda without concern. The extension of this to Christian theology is that Christians have a divinely greater right to exist and dominate compared to non-Christians in society, and that extermination of the latter is a righteous cause. Whilst the latter is not openly stated, it is clearly implied by the very narrow set of policies that Christian conservatives generally uphold as essential to the sanctity of life, namely opposition to abortion and euthanasia, which is more motivated by antagonism to Government intervention than actual protection of humanity. A person can freely starve to death under these beliefs or freely be murdered by someone else just as long as the government did not provide them with a means to achieve this.
That’s a lot for one post. It’s a whole lot of stuff condensed into one article essentially questioning why some NZ Christians have so much desire for the kinds of political extremism seen in the US to become established here, i.e. the type of culture wars that we see in North American society. It must be assumed that those conservative Christians engaged in this type of political activism here are seeking many things, not the least of which is to curry financial and moral support from large US conservative Christian groups, and so seek the kind of theological favours that the US groups believe they will achieve in the light of Relevation 20:4. It has been seen that in this blog some articles have been republished from conservative Christian groups in the US which are not aligned to political causes there and do not campaign on political grounds. Likewise there are many such ministries in NZ in which it is not by any means possible to be assured of their political affiliations. The length of this article reflects that it is many months since such a discourse has taken place on this site, due to other priorities during this year. It is not certain whether there will be time for more such posts during the rest of 2025 but it can be assured that this means of disseminating theological thought, that is by originally authored posts on this site, is being resumed as of now.