This fact sheet looks at the Ports of Auckland and Maritime Union dispute and in particular the impact it has on families.

Download the fact sheet here: Fact Sheet – Families, Port Strike and Workers

To view all our fact sheets, click here.

To accompany the wrist band are some prayer resources produced by our friend Mark Pierson at World Vision have produced – and these can be accessed here: www.lentenreflections.org

Another great lenten initiative is “Fast for Life“. Aimed at Ash Wednesday you can find details and resources by clicking here.

In addition, you might want to get your hands on our latest Just booklet – Just Lignite. It’s a very well researched and presented account of lignite mining in the Southland region, and well worth a read.

You can get wristbands or booklets (as few or as many as you would like) from us directly, by emailing us or calling us. Give us your postal address and we’ll get them right out to you.

Of course, if you go on our mailing list you will automatically get them sent to you – while we wait for our website to get updated the easiest way is just send us your details and you will be added to our address list.

Download it here: Vulnerability Report

In 1962 Karl Barth visited America for his first and only time. He engaged in a q&a with emerging highly regarded “young theologians”. By some miracle William Stringfellow was on the panel as one of these (and by virtue of being a good friend of Markus Barth, and Barth senior learning of Stringfellow, and liking what he had to say). The result of Stringfellow’s involvement resulted in some excellent questions on the principalities and powers. But here you go – two recordings of all the questions and answers. Also, when Barth tells people to listen to this man, it’s to Stringfellow he points – staggering perhaps when you think that Hans Frei was also on the panel.

I’ve lowered the quality a bit to make the file size relatively small.

Finally, keep in mind that the publish transcript differs from the recording at some major points. The transcript was edited and some of the real conversation obscured, no doubt motivated by the politics of Princeton at the time.

Download the fact sheet here: Just Facts – Fracking

View other fact sheets available for download.

Nicky Hager thinks the reality is more complicated, and pretty much I think his analysis is accurate.

Here’s the bullet-point version, to begin:

• National won about the same number of votes it did three years ago (it got a higher percentage of the total vote owing to falling voter turnout)
• National has an almost unmanageably thin majority in Parliament; party insiders are not at all happy
• Winston Peters is back as a fly in the National Party’s ointment, in a large part because John Key and Steven Joyce mucked up over the Epsom tea party
• MMP is here to stay, meaning governments need to win a real majority and not just a high single party vote
• 50% of voters voted against National, despite its popular leader
• Many National votes were won because of its apparently easy-going and centrist leader, not because people necessarily support its policies
• Well over 50% of the public opposes key National Party policies such as privatisation (‘asset sales’)
• The ACT Party, National’s most important coalition partner, died on election night
• There are signs that National has passed the high point of its popularity and will now start to decline
• There are signs that National leader John Key has passed the high point of his popularity and will now start to decline.
• The coming three years will be the playing out of these things. It is going to be very different to National’s first three years in government.

That’s the summary. If you’d like the long version, read on and click this link.

These are not easy things to talk about, for sure. Yet until we are brave enough to say yes, we have done the violence, and yes, we have made mistakes, and yes we are violence free, are we in the church going to really be able to be good news, and be hope? It’s really unlikely. Our church is a breading ground for bullying and violence of all kinds. It needs to stop. We need this new publication from the WCC and action around it.

This new manual that’s worth having a look at. Not surprisingly it suggests that if men develop a sense of positive masculinity it might help counter the levels of violence against women. Certainly, changing male behavior and self-identity is an important part of this work.

Click on the image to visit their site and download the report for yourself.

The manual Created in God’s Image: From Hegemony to Partnership – a set of guidelines for discussion, theological reflection and bible study has been developed from work at the local level, encouraged by workshops and encounters in church halls and community centres.

Co-edited by Philip Vinod Peacock and Patricia Sheerattan-Bisnauth, who is responsible for the gender justice programme with the WCRC, the manual provides tools for workshops with men at the community level.

“A more positive image of masculinity is needed”, says Philip Vinod Peacock, a theologian and deacon with the Church of North India. “When we move away from a situation where men seek to dominate women and into situations where men and women are in partnership, we will be more faithful to God.”

“The idea is for men to recognize that patterns of male violence against women result from negative images of masculinity – images of men as warriors and gods,” Peacock says. “We want them to see that there are other images for men that see strength in partnership with women rather than dominance over them. We need to look to biblical teachings which present those alternate images of partnership between men and women,” says Peacock.

Partners in the initiative include the World YWCA, Lutheran World Federation (LWF), World Student Christian Federation (WSCF), and the World Alliance of YMCAs.

“Concepts of masculinity and gender are explored with the aim of enabling men to become more conscious of gender as it affects their own lives as well as those of women,” Sheerattan-Bisnauth.

“The manual aims to strengthen men’s role in ending gender violence. It provides an inclusive approach for men to participate in transforming gender relations which produces male violence,” the Guyanese theologian declares.

This article is not an attempt to promote the social welfare system through the back door. In fact, I think we would all be better off without it. But more on that a little later. It’s worth noting that even a party as devoted as it is to neo-liberal/neo-classical economics would say it was committed to social welfare. It’s just that it understands what that means in a very particular way. It would mean the welfare of the ‘whole of society’ which is defined and understood in terms of wealth – the wealthier a society, the more its welfare is understood to be secured.


Now of course for many people, and particularly Christians, this should seem a little odd. Wealth in our modern societies is defined through the neo-liberal/neo-classical lense in primarily monetary terms. But money is not wealth itself. Money is really nothing more than a proxy for deferred purposes or needs – it is something we get which we can then put to work for us so our own needs are met. Money is therefore simply a sign or symbol of deferred purposes or needs, and as such can so easily become an idol.


Welfare defined in this way not only misses the point, but tends towards obscuring the simple truth which has received so much coverage in the news of late – wealth distribution in this country is incredibly uneven, with the top 1% earning so much of the wealth. Of course, they don’t earn it.


In economics there is something called technological residue, which is quite simply the residual knowledge and experience of a society which is passed between generations that makes future economies possible. This residue accounts for around 80-90% of the wealth in a society. The idea that individuals create wealth is therefore just a myth. Most wealth is created by and passed on by this ‘residue’ – which is a very social thing.


The Bible tells of a system of exploitation that Jesus opposed. Wealthy landowners would lend peasant and family farmers loans so they could plant or harvest, and when these smaller land owning farmers defaulted (either due to super high interest which we would call ‘loan sharking today’ or due to failed crops with no government bail-out offered) the wealthy landowners would seize their land and make these people slave farmers, in bondage to them. That system of oppression continues even today. Its propped up by the economic system which pervades.


The interests of the National Party are the interests primarily of the top 1%. Their interests continue to be to put the needs of that 1% before the needs of the rest of us. In these days of ‘freedom to choose’ and ‘individuals’ obedience and duty are concepts that are as out of flavour inside the church as they are outside of it.


But here’s the thing, through baptism it’s not about what we call ourselves but about what God calls us  and God calls us by name to be obedient to Christ. Obedience and duty are not popular words. Yet being Christian, unlike being prime minister, isn’t a popularity contest; it’s about doing what is right. For Jesus, what is right is not what is politically right wing. For Jesus, it’s about deliberately locating ourselves with the 99%. Wealthiness for Jesus comes through this kind of work, and as Christians we identify ourselves as followers of Christ.


Sure, this might all be too much to stomach.You don’t have to listen to me, but please don’t try and convince me that it’s okay to vote National, support economics that suck the life out of people in our communities, and identify as a Christian at the same time. If you do that, it tells me our priests and churches have really failed. It tells me we have lost sight of what being Christian is. 


Christians can’t afford to vote national because if they do they will align themselves with the wealthy landowners of which the Bible speaks, and in doing so will alienate themselves from Christ’s love and presence. They will become the oppressor, and as the Prayer Book puts it, ‘there is no health in is’.

Christians need to support parties that support the development of new economies in these islands – economies that value ‘wealth’ in more than monetary terms, and therefore view ‘social welfare’ in truly social terms of over-all wellbeing, starting with the bottom 1% and working up.


Finally, I think we have gotten really hung up on the ‘ideal’ of a social welfare system. We shouldn’t need it. There should be social wel being for all. Sadly, we are a long way off from that. Increasingly we seem to have turned commitment to the social welfare system as a kind of idol. 

However, what would happen if we were brave enough to imagine this – it’s 2050, and the welfare of everyone in Aotearoa, New Zealand is flourishing. What did we do to get here?And that’s the question we need to be asking, and helping our politicians to answer.