KEY POINTS:
During the height of the gay rights movement in Britain, back in the sixties, a grumpy English writer declared in his newspaper column, "I do wish the love that dare not speak its name would stop shrieking quite so loudly around me".
I feel much the same way about hysterical Christians. It's marvellous that they feel God loves them - but why don't they push off to a prayer room somewhere and rejoice in that love and leave the rest of us alone. The virulent protests at the Asia Pacific Inter-Dialogue meeting at Waitangi this week and the outrage over Helen Clark declaring New Zealand to be neutral on religion is a compelling reason to avoid some Christians and all they stand for. Nothing new in it all, of course. Back in the 1900s the Bible in Schools movement was desperate to have the state recognise the importance of teaching religion to impressionable young minds in the classroom; the Governments of both Australia and New Zealand were equally determined to have a secular education system. And just like today, the Governments back then were accused of all sorts of godlessness. Countries don't have a faith; people do. And like their sexuality, a person's faith should be an intensely personal and private thing. It should be between you and your god. I am going to be careful what I say about Brian Tamaki, because I was forced by our radio lawyers to apologise to the man once and it's not an experience I care to repeat. I felt like I was coughing up a furball. But I will say that when lots of good Christian people find Destiny and its leaders hard to take, maybe it's time to rethink the selling of the message. Muscular Christianity went out with the Crusades.
