Destiny Church isn't the only problem; what about the white megachurches?
Tuesday, 5 October 2021
OPINION: Over the weekend in New Zealand there was a large anti-lockdown protest – and as you can see from the headlines above, the focus was all on Brian Tamaki of Destiny Church.
You get the idea. And this isn’t the first time Destiny Church has been taking up headline inches.
To be clear – it’s really fun to write about Destiny Church. I certainly have. Self-appointed Bishop Brian Tamaki is an easy target; he blames earthquakes on homosexuality, dresses like a member of the Village People, and has either tattooed or had microblading to his eyebrows.
Brian Tamaki is masterful at getting media attention – whether he’s flouting lockdown laws, launching various failed political parties, or just generally acting like a cult leader with a penchant for pig hunting.
**READ MORE:
* Covid-19: Mark of the beast or manna from heaven? Christianity's vaccine issue
* Beware false prophets peddling Covid nonsense
* Covid-19: Fears of virus spread after Brian Tamaki's anti-lockdown protest in Auckland
**
But there’s another thing that sets Destiny Church apart, and I’d argue it’s the fundamental reason it’s constantly appearing negatively in the press: the congregation isn’t white.
A large proportion of those making up Tamaki’s church are Māori and Pasifika. They’re brown – and it fits the very tidy, ongoing narrative in New Zealand that they’re the bad ones.
The media focus on him has allowed other, much more powerful New Zealand churches to quietly get on with their bulls… – generally out of the general public’s eye.
Enter Peter Mortlock and City Impact Church
I’ve written about Mortlock before – in Worshipping at the Church of Anti-Vax and The Church of Anti-Vax doth speak unto me – but I’m writing about him again.
Because while the New Zealand press was collectively losing it over Tamaki leading the 1000-odd person anti-lockdown protest over the weekend – other forces had also been at work. Namely, a giant New Zealand megachurch full of white people. A church that dwarfs Tamaki’s in terms of size and influence.
And City Impact isn’t exactly subtle about it. The day before the protest, senior pastor Peter Mortlock did a sermon telling people about Brian Tamaki’s lockdown event.
His words perfectly captured the way he operates. He’s smart with his language, always couching things in “it’s your choice” and “I’ve taken a back seat”.
“On Saturday, this Saturday, there is a gathering – and it’s about freedom – and it’s in the park in town, and a lot of people are going over to it – and it’s your choice if you go or not – I know there will be all sorts of controversy over it – but it’s under the Freedom and Rights Coalition – you can find it on the website […] I was asked to be involved in it way back and I’ve taken a back seat in it, but enough to say if you want to go I just want to let you know about it. I think sooner or later we are going to have to make a stand – a stand for our rights, the way our freedoms are being stripped away.”
More on that word “freedom” soon.
Salesman turned salesman
Who is Peter Mortlock and what is City Impact Church? Well, he’s a cookie cutter of most megachurch leaders in New Zealand, Australia and America.
Like Hillsong’s Brian Houston, Mortlock is happily married and makes sure you know about it (family values), loves having nice cafes inside his churches, and is big on church bands playing uplifting music.
Mortlock subscribes to a breed of Christianity called Pentecostalism.
Pentecostalism is big on speaking in tongues, divine healing and getting baptised. As Joshua Drummond wrote in this Webworm essay, it’s not very far removed from Evangelical Christianity – which explains why the likes of Brian Houston and Peter Mortlock idolise bonkers Evangelical churches in the United States.
Mortlock founded City Impact in 1982, the year I was born. Its main campus in Auckland seats 2000 people, but it has other churches in Auckland as well as in Tauranga, Invercargill and Queenstown. Following Hillsong’s lead, it has attempted to go international – opening churches in Canada, India, Mexico and the Philippines (it’s unclear how big these are – some of the addresses listed just point to generic office spaces).
Before he was a Man of God, Peter Mortlock was a real estate agent. That made him very good at selling.
Because he teaches prosperity gospel, all his riches are seen as a hugely good thing to his flock. His congregation is urged to tithe 10 per cent of their monthly income (Eftpos machines are available during service) and they do so, happily.
They aren’t annoyed their leader is massively rich. He is aspirational to them. His congregation thinks that if they give to God (ie: City Impact Church) then God will give back to them (spoiler alert: God won’t).
As a church, City Impact qualifies as a charitable organisation, meaning it is exempt from paying tax on its income. That didn’t stop it getting paid out over a million dollars in Covid-19 subsidy payouts from the Government:
I am never going to understand how entities like City Impact are tax-free, their leaders living in multimillion-dollar homes. Like many things in life – my brain is too small to grasp things so fundamentally out of sync with how I feel the world should operate. But the world sucks, it’s on fire, I get that.
Yes – they qualify for being exempt from paying tax. And like all megachurches, their annual returns show expenditure often meeting or exceeding their income:
Which isn’t all that surprising when you look at something like their most recent return, with that $13,419,399 in outgoing costs.
Read the report, and you can see that over $8m of that ($8,069,266) goes to “employee costs”. A cool $2,020,901 is listed as “Other”. And they have over $22m tied up in “non-current assets” like property.
It pays to be a church. Or more specifically, a church leader.
“For Sparta, for freedom, to the death!”
Regardless of what work City Impact does, in my view their main purpose seems to be paying their pastors money to say completely idiotic s….
Because on Monday, Mortlock released a new sermon to his faithful – Special Meeting Part II: Freedom. With naming convention like a Fast and Furious film, this was the sequel to his first Special Meeting, which I documented here.
Spoiler alert: Part I was riddled with disinformation:
“All those needles going into the arm, it’s like they’re trying to wear me down!”
“Others would say, not obviously all, would call this vaccine experimental…”
“We do know it has not been fully approved by the FDA…”
I’ve watched the 1-hour-and-20-minute Special Meeting Part II: Freedom so you don’t have to. Like most sequels it was more rambly than the first.
He mispronounced words. He rambled.
“The media tells us what they want us to hear!”
“Civilised countries are built on the 10 Commandments!”
His main message appeared to be rallying against unvaccinated people being penalised in any way. He appeared horrified they may not be allowed to fly or eat at restaurants. I kid you not: that was the entirety of his near-90-minute monologue.
“Science is changing all the time!” he cried, in an attempt to undermine the medical response to the pandemic. He continued to use talking points of the anti-vax movement. At around 52 minutes in, he was on the, “When there is a Covid death, they don’t often say if it’s an elderly person or whatever” train. Toot toot, all aboard to anti-vax town.
Oh, and conspiracy theory town is definitely the destination. This, at about an hour into Special Meeting II:
“I don’t believe in the government right now, I don’t believe the media right now, and I’m sorry but I don’t trust Big Pharma either! Why is that? Well, if I mention the name Bill Gates or George Soros or Anthony Fauci – and it’s not about conspiracy, it’s just about plain facts, right?!”
Oof.
He ends his sermon – and I’m not kidding – with a prayer, and a clip from Fox News.
City Impact is very politically involved
So while the media continues to point the finger at the relatively obscure cult of Destiny Church (it appears bigger than it is thanks to excess media coverage of its every move) – City Impact – and churches of its ilk – continue to go on, unchecked.
In a large part because its leader is white, and it’s less weird when white people are surrounded with wealth and property. His members are largely middle-class white people. They are harder to portray in the media as being taken advantage of. They don’t fit the stereotype of “idiotic religious person”.
And City Impact’s impact reaches far beyond lockdown protests and anti-vax rhetoric.
One thing churches like City Impact are very good at doing is turning their flock towards political causes. Their congregations generally have good jobs and good lives. They have the leisure time available to them to fill in forms and sign petitions.
So in 2014 Peter Mortlock was turning his flock towards blocking “gay marriage”:
“Peter Mortlock, head of Auckland’s City Impact Church, has emailed his flock asking them to rig a New Zealand poll on marriage equality by casting multiple votes.”
And earlier this year, Mortlock actively encouraged his congregation to vote against New Zealand changing its law in regards to so-called “gay conversion therapy”.
He personally appeared before the Parliamentary Select Committee, making an oral submission. He began with chastising barbaric practices (while at the same time calling these barbaric doctors “sincere”):
“We know in past history there have been many injustices done to many people. For example, medical experiments. Even though I am sure that many of the Doctors were sincere in their endeavours of practising medicine…”
From there, he said that was all okay anyway, because it doesn’t happen any more:
“However I will say that these practices are not being practised today anywhere in New Zealand…”
He closed by hinting he’s (un-barbarically) converted plenty of sexual deviants who are now “happily married”:
“As a pastor I have had countless number of people, from all walks of life come to me for guidance.
“We have seen a number of people and many of whom are in my church today that are living a completely different lifestyle today to that of their past; now happily married, with children.”
I don’t want to get into it here – but I had Christian leaders actively try and tell me to bottle up and change my sexuality and it really messed with me. But Peter Mortlock sees no issue with it, proudly posting his submission on his Facebook – but limiting the feedback pretty darn quickly.
The sad thing is that while churches like City Impact remain free from the burden of paying tax, they’re not going anywhere. Sometimes these leaders fall, and the schadenfreude is healing. Hillsong’s Brian Houston is in trouble yet again for covering up his father’s sex offences.
As for Mortlock – I wish the media would drill into him and his white masses like they drill into Tamaki and his congregation. I really do.
David Farrier is a New Zealand journalist and actor currently based in LA, where he’s been working on a monthly podcast, Armchaired and Dangerous. This column is republished with permission from his blog Webworm with David Farrier.