Is one branch of New Zealand fundamentalism succumbing to what I could mischievously label "Footballers Wives" Christianity? All right, yes, it does sound like an oxymoron. Fundamentalist Christians tend to be loudmouthed ignorant social conservatives with no professional expertise when it comes to issues like bioethics, social policy or family policy. Footballers Wives is an awful UK ITV series that consists of loudmouthed, stupid chavs and chavas who can't stay monogamous, serially murder football managers and/or team captains, and end up playing very little soccer. What is the connection? One resembles the other. Put simply, it is a political 'style.' Thanks to the wonders of the Internet, it has become woefully easy to produce secondhand blogs like that of the dreadful Garnet Milne, ex-CHP candidate, ex-Reformed Church minister and now member of a virtual network of "Reformed Presbyterians" without a material church in New Zealand. Usually, Garnet parrots or reprints propaganda from similarly benighted North American outlets, but occassionally, he does pontificate about New Zealand. His current bete noire is the forthright Maori Party MP Hone Harawira, who called erstwhile Australian PM John Howard a "racist bastard." Blunt, but I think one would have to agree with his assessment, given that Howard hasn't shown all that much regard for the Aboriginal community in the past, slashing meagre federal government programmes for indigenous Australians throughout his decade of administration. However, that does let Howard's context for his actions fade to the sidelines. Howard wouldn't be able to do that if Australia as a whole weren't so wretchedly backward when it came to recognition of indigenous rights to land ownership, culture and spirituality. Garnet has thrown a temper tantrum at this. As the pakeha Christian Right is known for its previous outbursts about Maori spirituality, and previously associated quite closely with the League of Rights over indigenous rights issues on both sides of the Tasman, his outburst is not a solitary one. Let's analyse Garnet's outburst, anyway. First, it belongs to a "politics" of declaration. One names what one is targeting, without providing any supplementary information. Next, it is a politics of the spectacle, consisting of large headlines, or garish enlarged CGIs, or photographs taken out of social and historical context. Finally, it is a "politics" of denunciation, targeting specific individuals as perpetrators of 'thought crimes' against social conservatism. Why does he do this? Put simply, Garnet does it because as a Reformed Presbyterian, he doesn't even have a church to materially attend anymore, and it fits his probable delusions of Old Testament prophetic status. Sadly, one strand of Christian Right "discourse" appears to have become a mere shouting match, in which an individual character dwells on the boundaries of society, screeching opprobrium at groups that he or she cannot exclude from mainstream social participation. Fortunatelty, volume control, lapsed bandwidth or eventual human morbidity and mortality disconnects them from the rest of us sooner or later. Loud, shrill, exhibitionist and utterly meaningless. Remind you of something? For example, a late, unlamented, now cancelled ITV series vaguely about soccer players and spouses? Not Recommended: http://www.reformationtestimony.org.nz Craig Young - 12th July 2007