anglicantaonga

Telling the stories of the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, NZ and Polynesia

In search of a Kiwi rhetoric

Our ability to speak the truth in love and lace it with a little bit of laughter would do the church's public profile no end of good right now, says Taonga blogger John Bluck.

John Bluck  |  22 Jan 2015

Watching the anguish of the Charlie Hebdo saga – from original provocation to murderous response and even more provocative reply – underlined how far away this very French way of laughing at each other is from anything we’d attempt in New Zealand.

The French satirical tradition is merciless, compared to ours, especially when it comes to religious targets.

The obscenities heaped on Christian nuns in the post-massacre issue of the magazine were at least as offensive as the Muslim jokes. This take-no-prisoners style of humour falls outside anything Kiwi audiences would tolerate today.

It was different a century ago. In the 1920s NZ Punch regularly ran cartoons that found domestic violence hilarious, Chinese and Hindoo immigrants an insidious evil, and an even more favourite theme, Maori as a lazy and stupid people.

The Kiwi satirical tradition has cleaned up its act, though lone voices like Paul Henry and Bob Jones still think its funny to ridicule people on the basis of ethnicity and gender. And clergy are a class that Sir Bob loves to hate.

He can get away with it because ridiculing religion is a major spectator sport, especially if it’s the Pakeha Christian variety. Satirists post-Billy T. James tread more carefully with Maori material and the the feminist sensibility post-Tom Scott has constrained gender-based jokes.

Constrained is a good way of describing Kiwi rhetoric – the public forms of addressing and persuading each other in Aotearoa (though in Maoridom the talk is more robust). Maybe this constraint is shaped by the Kiwi tradition of giving people a fair go.

The huge rise in legal safeguards is an even more powerful inhibition. Laws governing libel, defamation, inciting speech, name suppression make satire a perilous pursuit. And the explosion of personal abuse posing as comedy via social media and the cowboy territory of cellphones means even more constraints are on the way.

Much of this control in the interests of respectful conversation is necessary. But for a church that has long tried to talk carefully, we risk excessive caution.

Happily we no longer slag off other denominations. We are slowly learning to honour the faith of other world religions (witness the inspirational gathering  of Muslims, Christians and Jews in Wellington following the Hebdo massacre). And hopefully homophobic rants by church “leaders” are reduced to the lunatic fringe.

That’s progress. What isn’t so encouraging is the increasing caution by church leaders not to comment publicly or laugh out loud about controversial topics for fear of offending, and to gloss over the difficult issues in the interests of public relations.

As someone well retired from any official role, I’d be grateful for a frank review of how well we’re doing as Anglicans on the bicultural journey we committed ourselves too back in 1992. And the more recent promises we made at the last General Synod, to work towards rites that would restore some credibility with the gay community, deserve frank and open reports and conversations on progress made.

Having recently returned from a challenging conference at Waikato University on spirituality and religion in a secular age, led by Australian Professor David Tacey, I’d love to hear some talk about how well our Anglican tradition is engaging with the burgeoning interest in meditation, mysticism, eco-spirituality and a hundred other expressions of faith that used to be dismissed as “alternative” and therefore suspect.

The rhetoric required for such conversations will need to be respectful but robust, and not fearful of offending. Disagreement in a church as diverse as ours reveals a healthy honesty.  

There is an ancient Christian tradition of the Holy Fool that got lost at the Reformation but is overdue for a return to Aotearoa Anglicanism.

Through a series of annual festivals and sanctioned rituals it helped the church not to take itself too seriously. So choirs were allowed to sing nonsense once in a while, and a child would be appointed bishop for a day.We tried that in the Waiapu diocese and it worked brilliantly.

Our ability to speak the truth in love and lace it with a little bit of laughter would do our public profile as a church no end of good right now. It would help those of us who feel we’re dressed up in clothes that no longer fit, trapped inside old stereotypes that demean the faith we treasure and enjoy.

And in a society increasingly disillusioned with church but fascinated with spirituality, it might well start some conversations with people who don’t believe Christians speak the same language or inhabit the same universe.

Bishop John Bluck lives at Pakiri, Wellsford.

Comments