FREE PRESS: New Zealand’s New Religion

FREE PRESS is the ACT Party's regular newsletter.

We have heard reports from someone who sat last week with the good and the great at Revved, a conference which promotes itself as “New Zealand’s leadership ecosystem where state, business and community converge.”

Obviously a politically incorrect publication like Free Press would never be invited to share such mighty company, but what we heard fascinated us.

Videos were played with children on beaches, stirring music, and a narrator telling us that the Māori God Papatūānuku would bring us all together to save the planet, starting with Aotearoa.

This seemed odd because Revved people don’t really seem like church goers. More like people who wouldn’t go to church unless someone died. Perhaps, though, they were spiritual. They just replaced traditional organised religion with a new teaching.

The story made us think of Michael Crichton. He was an Anthropologist, a doctor and, most famously, the author of Jurassic Park. He wrote the book before genetics were widely understood, in fact he helped popularise genetic science. A smart guy ahead of his time.

He once got asked why he thought environmentalism was a religion, the four minute video is well worth a watch.

The key part is:

…from the standpoint of an anthropological view, a religion is a collective set of beliefs. There is a leader or leaders who promote the beliefs among the followers. Followers make some kind of contribution or change in their lifestyle based on the religious belief. The religious belief gives them a total view of the world… what's right, what's wrong, what's good action, what's bad action. That all fits perfectly onto environmentalism.

He goes on to say:

…[environmentalism] rather precisely maps a lot of Judeo-Christian beliefs about the origin of the world and so on. So that in environmental thinking, there is a view that there used to be a sort of Eden, and then people came and ruined that Eden, and that we are therefore sort of original sinners because we're destroying this planet. And what we can do, however, is get salvation through sustainability. And if you're a good person, you will seek salvation, and if you're a bad person, you'll drive SUVs. That is a kind of a religious belief.

Before we go any further, we should acknowledge religion can and has done a lot of good. It can replace haunting questions with comfort and faith. It can give people a reason to do the right thing because someone (God) is always watching. The Christian idea that each person is made in God’s image was a critical argument to ending slavery, among other things.

Now even the Green Party seems to have moved on from environmentalism, which they hardly ever talk about. The story about Papatuanuku offering salvation got us thinking, though. Is there another religion-like belief system that’s become popular in New Zealand in the last couple of decades?

Something with an original sin that we all have to be sorry for. Something that requires new rituals, like at the start of every meeting. Something that encourages wearing adornments around your neck to show you believe. Something that helps the followers tell the difference between good and bad people, who they cast out with various epithets?

We realised the last couple of decades in New Zealand have seen a new religion. Before white people, noble savages lived in a kind of Eden (most religions skip a detail here and there). Colonisation is an original sin, but if you wear a Pounamu, say a Karakia, and declare non-believers to be racist heretics, you can seek salvation.

You’ll find acceptance with fellow believers. Together you’ll seek (with some success) to make your belief system the law of the land. You’ll feel that you are one of the initiated, who can breathe easy knowing they have atoned for the original sin, your existence here will be meaningful and justified.

Like Environmentalism in Crichton’s telling, Treatyism fits the anthropologists’ view of a religion. It also has many of the elements of the Judeo-Christian story. What’s wrong with that?

In the second part of the video Crichton says:

And so when I look at how we treat the environment, I think we have to be flexible. I think we have to try things and see how they turn out. We have to be ready to change course. We have to be able to adapt. We have to say we're wrong and let's do it right. We have to do research. This is all stuff that fundamentalist religions can't do. And if environmentalism is a kind of fundamentalist religion, then that's not a good way to manage the environment.

Most people in the modern world separate their religion from the rest of their lives. If you are a Christian engineer you still rely on maths and physics instead of praying to design bridges. This Enlightenment was essential to making progress, spirituality over here, everyday problem solving over there.

Treatyism has never been seen as a religion though. It finds its way into Government, the workplace, the school curriculum, resource consenting, even healthcare. Rational debates about everything from healthcare funding to the future of the country are drowned out by charges of racism made with irrational anger.

Maybe it’s time to call Treatyism what it is, and separate Church and state again.