Chapter 7
Revival & Enraged Engagement

In KiwiKulture we aim to fill life with meaning by getting everyone a good education, building a sound economy and providing full employment. This will liberate us to be a nation of devout hedonists in which we live our lives for our own leisures and pleasures.                                                        Paul Windsor on Kiwikulture (1994)

Advancing from an initial story of revival in New Zealand and a theory of revival dynamics, this chapter reflects on the progressions to the fourth phase of cultural engagement in the New Zealand revival. This is the first action-reflection research cycle (p 7), employed to ground the theory of transformative revival. In this chapter, I will reflect on the build up to engagement, then in Chapter 10, I will reflect on engagement in multiple city sectors by the Vision for Auckland city leadership.

Beginning with identification of progressions in these movements and analysis of rage as catalyst to action, in this chapter I ask of the period prior to the research in 1970-1996, “What pushed New Zealand Pentecostals and charismatics into social engagement?”

Revival, Theology and Social Engagement

The entrance stories in the first chapter, plus the historical experiences of revival in Chapter 6 give biblical and historical reasons for expecting engagement to result from revival. But it does not always happen. In one of his last public lectures, Edwin Orr discussed with us his conclusion, over the years, that revival “may or may not” lead to significant socio-economic-political change (1955:95-113, 125). His response confused me, because despite his years of research there was a lack of conciseness as to cause and effect, almost a classic (for Evangelicals of those days) unwillingness to examine the social implications of the gospel. It seemed to me, reading book after book about revivals, that the social outworkings depend on the leadership given and theology taught, either before or during their progress.

This conclusion that engagement is determined by preceding theology, was reinforced by a two-year period in the American charismatic Vineyard movement of John Wimber. He carried one of my books about the poor with him for few months and was much influenced by a friend, Jackie Pullinger, who works among the poor in Hong Kong, both of us teaching that the fruit of renewal was to preach the gospel to the poor. He sought to focus his movement towards the poor, but without great success. It was too difficult to turn the movement, when the underlying principles had not been built in from its foundations. I concluded that theological factors preceding (or during) revivals are crucial to their outcomes. Thus a theology of transformative revival becomes an essential.

Manifestations of the Passion, Zeal and Anger of the Holy Spirit

The natural progression from revival to engagement also does not explain the passion and the speed with which such processes have occurred among NZ charismatics.

Wallace (1956) describes some precipitating mechanisms that switch religious movements from upholding the social order towards social change. Mechanisms may include class reaction to oppression, frustration of interest, loss of social control. They may be the result of social disorganisation and anomie or some form of deprivation. [1] Sociologist of religion, Gerlach (1974:671-676), rejected the view that early American Pentecostalism (and we can apply his analysis to many renewal structures) was primarily an expression of frustration and resignation, but was a movement that created ingenious mechanisms for extending its influence by its diffused leadership, flexible resilient structures and semi-autonomous cells.

Such ideology encourages individual and group persistence, risk taking, sacrifice for the cause, identifies an unjust opposition, strong enough to challenge but eventually overcome and bridge-burning acts that set the participant apart from the established order and often from past associations (681).

So which of these have been factors in the transition? My observation is that the precipitating factors have been a quiet anger at perceived governmental leadership into national cultural and moral disintegration and failure to listen to the voice of the people! This is akin to Wallace’s “class reaction to oppression; frustration of interest.” But the anger has found fertile ground in these renewed people with a sense of destiny.[2]

Theology of Rage

Anger, or more poetically, rage, is an interesting phenomenon in the building of movements. Here, I will examine it theologically, as a response of the grief of the Spirit. There is an interesting interplay between grief and anger in the Godhead, expressed in the prophets. Jewish activist Alinsky (1969), as the founder of community organisation theory, James Cone (1972a; 1972b; 1975) and others, at the extreme left of African-American liberation theology, along with Frantz Fanon (1967; 1986) and other leftist activists of various hue, have defined such grief-anger as the essential propellant for movements of change.

The evangelical mindset in New Zealand included a perception of disempowerment, a sense of shock at the rapid breakdown of social structure, a quiet rage at their sense of the loss of legitimacy and morality of the established church, then anger at the “benign” governments of New Zealand.

However, this loss of respect for governing authorities “appointed by God,” violates a serious Pentecostal theme, one reflecting the intrusive American value on submission to directive authority, a theme of largely unquestioning respect/obedience to authority within the church and in government. Governments must be benign, for they are God-appointed and Governments themselves say they are benign! The centuries of non-conformist English roots have been largely forgotten.[3]

A Theological Evaluation of Progressions to Rage Activism

The Ten Commandments (nine of them generally understood as universals) are a reasonable starting place for theological evaluation of these social phenomena. I will present an evangelical perspective of societal disintegration in New Zealand over the past decades, as Evangelical Christians evaluated the changes in the culture (particularly family breakdown and loss of morality in political leadership), against the Ten Commandments. Rather than a balanced evaluation of the culture, this is a judgement made against a high ideal.

If these movements indeed involve people of the Spirit, the apparent judgemental nature of Evangelicals should not be surprising. Indeed, it would be evidence of the work of the Spirit. Jesus’ indicates primary roles of the Spirit in convicting of sin and judgement (John 16:8-10).

Generational Change in a Modernist Nation

To develop a base line, we can return to the 1950’s. New Zealand had come of age economically and began to see itself as a base of international heroes – Sir Edmund Hillary; or ‘the boot’, Don Clark, in rugby. It began to distance itself from its colonial master in terms of identity and economically. With sufficient economic security people began to experiment and choose preferred careers. It was a good time, when people felt good about their own progress and about their good nation. This was also the heyday of full churches, which rode on this season of new cultural identity and integration.

The seeds of collapse were inherent in the cultural integration and economic success. This was most apparent to Evangelicals in progressive family breakdown. Along with the technology of the condom in 1964, rock and roll created, perhaps for the first time, a new youth culture. The songs of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones. and others about free love, created a cultural rejection of abstinence and authority. Thus a confluence of economics, technological abrogation of temperance in morality and popular cultural rejection of societal controls, began the unravelling of the secure family – for which New Zealanders had aspired for 100 years. By the 1970’s, along with the drunken immorality of the Saturday night party, came the cohabitation of students in mixed flats, then the increasing incidence of de facto marital relationships, finally resulting in a generation of broken families with single mothers raising the children. At least in the area of sexual mores, the morality of the church was no longer acknowledged.

Evans tracks these progressions through specific issues as they moved into the deletion of Christian principles as the basis for law (1992). The removal of fault as a divorce criterion in 1980, replaced Christian principles with more secular grounds for divorce. There was increasing recognition of de facto marriage (in contrast to laws against “living in sin”). In 1986, in relationship to the Family Proceedings Act (7a), marriage was defined to include “a relationship in which the parties are or have been living as husband and wife although not legally married to each other.”

Judged against the seventh and tenth commandment, “You shall not commit adultery,” and “You shall not covet your neighbour’s wife,” Evangelicals perceived a loss of values. Given this logical basis, we would expect a grieving of the Spirit.

Imposition of Moral Vision

A generation later, by the late 1980’s, the demanding drive for economic and social security of early New Zealand pioneers and nation-builders had generally been met across the nation. New visions beyond economic security and stable families were needed as people now had time to be and do what they desired. My analysis is that the nation faltered as it moved into this phase of “freedom to be”. While it defined its economic goals, it failed to define its ideals in terms of moral vision that reflected the Kingdom of God. The good life became the life of ease, as Paul Windsor aptly states, “The children of the good life are emerging as hedonists whose primary pursuit is leisure and pleasure” (1994). In this vacuum, with the appointment of Helen Clark as prime minister, began what is commonly called a period of social engineering, the imposition of other moral visions, leftist agendas built on solid economic gains by the capitalist economy, and including strong feminist/lesbian/homosexual agendas (Paterson, 2005). This “moral vision” was at odds with evangelical beliefs.

Turning Point Events

As those types of Christianity linked to the state declined in influence, Evangelicals and Pentecostals were emerging as a potential force numerically to fill the gap. However, up until the 1980’s, Evangelicals had retrenched into non-involvement in public issues. The shocks of some events in the 1980’s and beyond reversed that trend. At issue in this study, is the extent of that reversal and the future of it. Ahdar’s (2000: 9-23) significant analysis, parallels from a legal perspective, the theological analysis of this chapter. He describes three phases of disestablishment of religion to the point of marginalisation in the 1960’s. He calls the response, ‘awakening from slumber’.

Ryan (1986), in a significant study, indicates the increasing consternation in the 1980’s of conservative Christians at the process of secularisation, the lost role of the churches as major social legitimizers and the “moral crisis.” But this does not explain why, in New Zealand, many Evangelicals changed from what H. Richard Niebuhr (1951/1956) describes as a Christ-against-culture insulation to active involvement in Christ-transformer-of-culture activism over the last two decades.

Several confrontative events, “stands for righteousness,” in New Zealand seem significant in building a momentum for changes in theological stance: Patricia Bartlett’s 41,000 signature petition against pornography, nudity and homosexuality sparked by the show Oh Calcutta! in 1970 (rejected); the Jesus Marches of 1972 (Shaw, 1972); and a petition of 835,000 signatures in opposition to the Homosexual Law Reform of 1985 (rejected). The cycle has repeated again with the Destiny Marches against further Homosexual Law Reform (pilloried) in 2005. John Evans (1992), links the early events to an early phase of emergence of socially active conservative churches as they sought to deal with the issues of a sexually permissive society.^[4] These actions were seen by Evangelicals not primarily as political responses but as public statements of repentance, attempts to avert the judgement of a grief-stricken God.

Alternatives to Individualism and Consumerism

To the children of the revival, the first commandment, “to have no other gods before me,” and the tenth commandment “to not covet” became abrogated in a culture of advertising, with affluence as the purpose of life. The logic again would lead us to expect the grief of the Holy Spirit. This grief was outworked by many new evangelical children of the revival by seeking to opt out of society. Numbers sought to build alternative communities, live lives of simplicity and struggled with creating alternative economic structures.[5]

In the 1970’s, as charismatic renewal swept the country, many families formed communities to try to demonstrate alternative models of ownership and use of possessions. Some of these later became churches. Perhaps this reflected Kiwi culture; New Zealand has, according to Sargisson and Sargent (2004: cover), more intentional communities per capita than any country in the world. For many, such as the Paengaroa community, with which Milton Smith became associated and out of which Comvita Healthfoods developed as a multinational, it was an extension of their conversion from a hippy lifestyle.[6] But by the 1990’s, most Christian communities had collapsed particularly those built around possession of land.[7]

On the other hand, not many sought alternative economic approaches – there was little integrated economic theology to draw from, as Catholic and WCC theologies had been rejected – we were just producing the early papers on simplicity, redistribution, cooperative economics ((Grigg, 1981; 1984/2004:87-95; 1985; 1985/2004; McInnes, 1980) and communications from Tear Fund).

Yet looking forward to the 1990’s, despite the imported American Pentecostal prosperity gospel taught in the larger descendent churches of the AOG,[8] which affirmed success measured in financial terms, these early themes on simplicity have resurfaced (Benge, 2003; Hathaway, 1990; Hofmans-Sheard, 2003). Thus internal unity on the use of wealth within Evangelicalism is not assured, though the prosperity gospel has become a dominant theme.[9] After thirty years and initial motivation to experiment with economic alternatives, the commandment to not covet has ceased to be a major source of rage. The dulling of holy anger by consumerism was predicted by Jesus 2000 years ago in Matt 6:24.

Abortion

Typical of the evangelical perceptions of the decline in morality through these decades was concern about the increase in abortions.[10] Since the 1960’s, the increase in extramarital relationships and children born out of wedlock had escalated. This increased pressure to legalise abortion, not merely in the case of medical necessity, but essentially on demand, became a social force.

The Evangelical and Catholic Christian response was dramatic, incensed and sustained until the early 1990’s. There have been multiple attempts to publicise and highlight “the murder of the unborn child.” Despite the level of protest, the government first pushed through acts legislating for abortion effectively on demand, following the 1977 Royal Commission on Contraception, Sterilisation and Abortion. Evangelicals contend that the law has consistently violated the sixth commandment, “You shall not murder.”

The Sensual Environment

Evangelicals are also a significant presence in family counselling sectors of society, an indicator of the importance placed on family. “Traditional family values,” generally defines the family as a two parent intergenerational family that remains fundamental to civil society.[11]

To many Evangelicals, the loss of marriage as the foundational institution in society appears more like a rout than a gradual decline. 20% of the population are formally in extramarital relationships, or divorced or separated (Statistics New Zealand, 2002:148-9). 41% of births are outside of marriage (Doyle, 2001).^[12] But yearly, the figures increase. Figures released by Statistics New Zealand in November 2004, show that of women in their early 20s the proportion cohabiting rose from 19 percent in 1981 to 71 percent by 2001. In the same period the number of married women in this age group fell from 58,000 to 10,000.

A courageous journalist, Ian Wishart, described an avowed agenda of Helen Clark, as Labour prime minister, to advance the goals of the gay and lesbian community (2003: 32-41).[13] Evangelicals and Pentecostals take as normative the apostle Paul’s identification of homosexual activity as the last step in his description of the moral breakdown in Romans 1:18-32.^[14] Decriminalisation of homosexual activity and the active promulgation of homosexual lifestyles felt to my evangelical friends like national rape. Mick Duncan describes the Destiny March in response to the 2005 steps in this progression as a “public display of outrage” (2005:13,14).

Polarising National Leadership

I witnessed a spontaneous burst of applause by a group of Christian leaders from across the denominational and political spectrum, when a brother declared that he planned to stand against her in the next elections. The emotion and unity in that outburst were caused by deep anger and frustration at Helen Clark’s previous day’s “engineering” of the legalisation of prostitution. Particularly as a good number of Christians across the nation are involved in rescuing people from abuse within prostitution and homosexual lifestyles. Many are also involved in caring for AIDS victims.

This stance on purity has been sustained in an environment where increasingly overarching themes on television include both permissive sensuality outside of marriage and overt homosexual acts. The appointment of practicing homosexuals to the leadership of TVNZ and pressure directly by the prime minister, Helen Clark, to screen homosexual shows in earlier time slots (Wishart, 2003: 39), is seen as highly intrusive governmental aggression against godly child-raising. The censorship laws from the 1980’s had no intention of excluding anything except the worst kinds of immorality or violence and certainly were not directed towards positively affirming committed marital relationships. Few use them, recognizing that they will not bring about any censorship appropriate for children. The government censor is clear that sexual scenes between consenting adults are acceptable within his frame of reference.^[15]

Failed Censorship Laws

A letter sent to TV3 after they showed public nudity to my 12 year old son at 7 p.m. on Campbell Live on May 4, 2005, went through their complaints review process. My complaint was rejected as “this was not unacceptable to a significant number of viewers.” They consider it would “not have caused distress or offence”. “naked breasts …are not of themselves obscene, indecent, or upsetting to children”. They needed to uphold “freedom of speech.”

Alternative Media, Alternative Education

The anger has produced alternative evangelical radio stations and ShineTV as a channel within SkyTV. The increasing intrusion of television into the living room and computer into the bedroom raised the spectre of a generation of children not raised by parents with Christian values but by values beamed by a largely uncensored media into homes. Christians of all hues, who were serious in their commitment to purity, understood that the extension of the commandment against adultery by Jesus, to not even look lustfully on a woman, had become an impossibility in most homes, including Christian ones.

The affirmation of premarital sex in public school sex education and refusal to modify this stance to include abstinence, led to the search for alternative Christian schools — even at great financial cost to evangelical parents.[16] Middleton Grange School, the first of a new breed of Christian schools was started by a group of concerned Evangelicals and people with a Reformed tradition in Christchurch in 1964. In 1976, Rob Wheeler, a leader of the New Life stream of Pentecostal churches had observed Accelerated Christian Education schools in USA and saw the opportunity to re-establish Christian schooling in NZ and protect their children from rampant humanism in state schools. In the late 1970’s about 20 schools using ACE were set up by local churches around NZ. There are nearly 90 schools in NZ with an Evangelical or Pentecostal distinctive with over 12,000 students. Added to this, an estimated 4000 children are being home schooled for Christian reasons (New Zealand Association of Christian Schools, 2005a).

The 1990s also saw the opportunity to establish Christian teacher education establishments. Two began in 1993, namely MASTERS Institute which is now based in Mt Roskill in Auckland and Bethlehem Institute in Tauranga.

Thus, Evangelical/Pentecostal reactions have created attempts to both engage society in anger and to withdraw into new alternative structures. Perceptions of the violated ten commandments — loss of respect for father and mother, murder of children, free adultery, a culture of covetousness — underlie an evangelical perception of disintegrating core moral values. If the revival was a genuine work of the Spirit, I would have expected the grief of the Spirit to manifest itself in increased public judgement and angry rage by Evangelicals.

Opiate to the Rage

Looking at other social developments, new cultural integrations were developing that (in Marxist terminology), acted as an opiate to the anger, blunting the drive towards activism. and encouraging many Pentecostal churches, particularly those with strong numbers of business people, to affirm the status quo. Sustained economic growth in the 1990’s and increased consumerism; greater freedom for women who desired to be in the workforce; increased opportunity for entrepreneurial development; expansion of international trade; the development of multiculturalism; greater ecological awareness; the opening of the tertiary education system to greater experimentation; the Waitangi Tribunal and reconciliation processes between Pakeha and Maori – these could all be seen as good and godly progressions towards a more just society.

Even if at times, Evangelicals did not have the theological frameworks to understand God and productive economics, expansion of creativity, or redressing of injustices, they were buoyed by these apparent advances in society to remain in the society and its economic structures.

Reaction + Vacuum + Cultural Dependency = Confrontation

These tensions generated reactions at some turning points fermenting what some have defined as the rise of the New Christian Right. There was a determination to move from symbolic public repentance and enter the realm of public policy, once it became apparent that elected public officials would not respond on moral issues to the voices of those who cared about Christian morality.[17] But there was no heritage to draw from concerning societal transformation and little social analysis. Rejection of the National Council of Churches for its perceived denial of the full authority of the Scriptures meant traditional theological views on involvement in public affairs were unacceptable.

The barriers caused by the disestablishment of traditional Christian religion were not well analysed. One was privatisation of religion (confining it to the private realm).

The privatisation of religion is now being experienced with full vigour. A cultural Christian establishment had shielded Christians from the full effects of privatisation. In this sense the thorough privatisation of religion was never achieved for the de jure disestablishment was offset by a continued de facto establishment of a cultural Christianity. This cultural hegemony has now gone, leaving many Conservative Christians feeling bewildered and vulnerable. Their religion really is privatized now, in law and in fact (Ahdar, 2000:112).

It took some years for a number of evangelical leaders to conclude that Christian agendas in the public domain were best phrased in the secular language if they were to be considered valid – this is a language of rationality, not of subjectivism, emotion or anything that could be labelled religious, superstitious or sectarian. This became a significant principle in the development of the United Futures party,[18] along with an understanding that politics involves the art of compromise. However failure in their coalition arrangements to confront Labour lesbian/gay agendas effectively, largely lost them the confidence of the Evangelicals.

One failed attempt at analysis was the use of “secular humanism” to define the enemy. in the 1980’s.[19] It was not the label secular Kiwis used of themselves, so Christians found themselves shadow boxing.

Given this particular analysis of the final death-throes of privileged Christendom, there were, insuperable barriers to anything beyond ineffectual and conflictual prophetic engagement. Ahdar, when discussing the prevailing “Wellington Worldview”, the philosophy underlying the New Zealand legal system, “the taken for granted way of perceiving reality”, speaks of several characteristics: [1] neutrality concerning the conception of the good society, [2] privatisation of religion, [3] rationality (vs. religion which involves subjectivism, emotion and superstition) and [4] a doctrine of progress (some improvement in moral and political understanding and behaviour) (2000:75-85). Obtaining prominence in the public domain by using a confrontational approach did not produce a breakthrough in any of these four characteristics. It was a difficult task and Evangelicals came up like boxers, battered and reeling, unable to grasp what had happened to them. Wrong cultural analysis and inadequate strategy as to the level at which change should be attempted lead to frustration.

Lineham adds to Ahdar’s themes the changes in governmental style from one based on principle to one driven by expert consultant advice (2004:147-151), while identifying modifications to this approach with MMP[20] and changes of government. This demonstrates the necessity of Evangelicals to bring together consultations of experts in major sectors of society, training them in critical theological frameworks (Chapter 15) and seeking to define middle axioms so that they can then work out specific expert responses as issues surface. This necessitates think tanks, forums, institutes and eventually universities. These steps were neither strategised nor executed, as the focus of energy was on Christians creating political parties.

External Sources of Evangelical Social Theology

The progression into social and political involvement in New Zealand, however, has to be evaluated in terms of both internal and external stimuli. What is interesting is that the same progressions into active political involvement has been occurring among Pentecostals in Latin America during the same period (Petersen, 1996:115).[21] Is this a natural progression or is it being accelerated by global connections between national leaderships from these countries through the seminary systems and global networks like Lausanne?

Mainstream Evangelicalism had been expanding slowly in its social theology aided by other sources than revival. At a theological level, the 1974 Lausanne Covenant, filtered down to leading New Zealand Evangelicals. Another source was the global Tertiary Students’ Christian Fellowship (TSCF), the major evangelical student movement up until the 1980’s. It was enthused with Francis Schaeffer’s theological critiques of Western culture (1968a; 1968b; 1981: including his Christian response to secular humanism) and this heritage has continued on into many people’s lives and roles in societal leadership. My perception is that no movement dynamic eventually has come from it, perhaps because of historical decisions as to the non-hierarchical nature of leadership in TSCF.

I would evaluate it as having produced “sleepers” who are now successful in their professions and in significant societal roles, with a background of thinking about societal issues, but waiting to be activated by an apostolic and networking dynamic. These are salt and light people who were left without national leadership structures and synergistic relationships by TSCF, which in other countries, such as India, developed graduate networks of significance.

John Skeates: Manager of Corporate Culture Change

Typical is John Skeates, formerly marketing manager of a New Zealand multinational pharmaceutical corporation who in student years had studied Francis Schaeffer. He found increasing disparity between the Sunday morning worship and focus on building the local church and his desire to bring freedom into oppressive working relationships. This led to experimentation with his own consulting company to bring principles of the Kingdom into envisioning and team building processes of companies. Eventually he moved back into management believing he could better accomplish his purpose from within a corporate role. The avenues to express this were not found in the local churches. The synergistic relationships with like-minded CEO’s has been difficult to find.

I also suggest that lack of synergistic structures is partially caused by the minimal New Zealand evangelical connections to the global evangelical centres of transformational theology in the Lausanne Movement, the Gospel and Cultures Network and urban transformation movements. While some leaders bridged to these movements, they were not significant in terms of setting the directions of activism. A sign of this was the return of Dr Harold Turner[22] to New Zealand, a companion of Lesslie Newbigin in the global Gospel and Cultures Network. He was hailed with great acclaim. A cluster of leaders around him developed the DeepSight Trust: A New Zealand Initiative for Religion and Cultures (2005). The return of Bruce and Kathleen Nichols from forty years in India, as leaders of the World Evangelical Theological Commission, was less acclaimed but has led to the significant expansion of Vision Network task forces in theology, science and faith and the environment.

Relational connections to the fundamentalist and Pentecostal heartland of the Southern USA opened the door for an influx of right-wing fundamentalist approaches to combat something labelled “secular humanism”.[23] “It served as a convenient shorthand label for the enemy and as a seemingly compelling socio-philosophical explanation of why permissiveness was increasing” (Ahdar, 2000: 61). The Coalition of Concerned Citizens and from its demise, the significantly fundamentalist and Dutch Reformed Christian Heritage Party and then the Christian Coalition all expressed the groping of a soul, subject to the whims of each right-wing guru imported by some enthusiastic Pentecostal or fundamentalist.

These approaches may have been expressive of that Southern US heartland but not the New Zealand soul. The American Religious Right is known for state enforcement of personal morality, its conservative tenor of thought, its nationalistic fervour and its free market capitalism (Ansley, 1988; Neuhaus, 1984). The common people of New Zealand rejected them en mass.

This was the lasting dilemma for many conservative Christians. The situation was perceived to be serious. The solution was clear and uncompromising: the state enactment of biblical principles. However the only way this could be achieved was by winning political office and that now does not seem likely. The electorate seems to have rejected the cure; it perhaps has even rejected the diagnosis (Evans, 1992:320).

My observation is that this kind of response will keep recurring as fundamentalism (influenced from the Southern US) consistently reappears. The latest expression (in 2004) has been the expansion of the fundamentalist Pentecostal Destiny Church into becoming a political party with its own polarising public marches.

I suggest that these movements also manifest certain characteristics of the absolutist and entrepreneurial business nature of fundamentalist and Pentecostal Christianity:

·         They want change now.

·         Social analysis is not part of their heritage, so largely uncritical importation of US models is acceptable.

·         Theological astuteness is not recognised as significant among leaders of these movements, so little political theological reflection occur. Since Tom Marshall, no theologically literate yet pneumatologically anointed national figure has arisen.

·         An absolutism in theology. Unity with other Christians was not seen as a priority, so Calvinists such as lead the Christian Heritage Party, made absolutist claims to represent the Christian views of New Zealand ignoring other Christian perspectives.

·         Power is an important theme for Pentecostal leadership, so placing Christians in points of governmental power seemed the logical objective.

·         The dispersed authority and financial structures of these movements meant that short bursts of activity around issues could be sustained, but rarely long-term resourcing.

Faced with a nation without apparent moral leadership and without, in their opinion, effective voices from the traditional churches, charismatics and Pentecostals began to flip-flop between expressing social outrage and retreating into hopes of a sudden revival. However, a search began in the hearts of many leaders, as to whether there could be a more effective integrative theology and strategy that would enable effective action. At a political level, apart from a dozen committed Christians scattered through Labour, New Zealand First and the National Party,[24] the influence of Kingdom theology enabled several to become members of government through the United Futures Party in 2001, with a clearer understanding of the complexity of political processes based on the Kingdom of God.

But the theology of the Kingdom, while known in name, was not widely understood. Training of experts in the implications of theology and particularly the Kingdom of God for their particular field was minimal. And given the centrality of the work of the Spirit to these movements, such a theology would need to be derived from pneumatology, but that thinking had not been done. Revival slowed. Lack of effective cultural analysis and lack of a theological core, were major factors in it failing to engage the issues of the day.

To fill this gap, the next chapter develops a theory of transformative revival, based on the release of spiritual gifts in revival. Part 3 examines the theology of the Kingdom.        

  

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