April 2024
Student Christian Movement Aotearoa (SCMA)

Tēnā koutou Justice Committee:

Student Christian Movement Aotearoa is a progressive Christian group in tertiary institutions across the motu. We write with grave concerns about the Parole Amendment Bill and the effects it will have on those in prison. As Christians, we are called to seek out and show compassion to all people, especially those who sit on the margins of society, such as those in prison. While not denying the harm done by those who are incarcerated, we also acknowledge the social complexity and those factors that are inextricable from those stories, such as abuse, colonisation, and addiction.^[1]

We support the spirit of the amendment — that rehabilitation be a primary goal within the corrections system. But, we are deeply worried that the system as it stands now is not equipped or resourced enough to provide timely and accessible programmes. Parole Board chairman Sir Ron Young himself has written about his concerns over the lack of access to rehabilitation programmes,^[2] and it does not seem that any systemic change has taken place since then.^[3]

Access to rehabilitation programmes goes beyond personal motivation, and until these resourcing and systemic issues are addressed we urge the government to pause this bill.^[4]

Ngā manaakitanga,

Michael Toy
publictheologian@scm.org.nz
Public Theologian
Student Christian Movement Aotearoa

^[1] Hāpaitia te Oranga Tangata, Justice Deparment, https://www.justice.govt.nz/justice-sector-policy/key-initiatives/key-initiatives-archive/hapaitia-te-oranga-tangata/

^[2]  Charlotte Cook, “Parole Board says prisoners waiting years for rehab, psychological help” RNZ, https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/parole-board-says-prisoners-waiting-years-for-rehab-psychological-help/GJRGISQNAINT4HPGOYBZ64TPME/

^[3] Tara Shaskey, “Corrections ‘failing’ prisoners and public as lengthy delays for rehabilitation programmes continue,” NZ Herald, https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/crime/corrections-failing-prisoners-and-public-as-lengthy-delays-for-rehabilitation-programmes-continue/C2FC4XBWVNAGNOX65TFBNTYAXY/

^[4] Laura Johnstone, “Changes to NZ’s Parole Laws to Improve Rehabilitation Could Lead to Even Longer Prison Times,” The Conversation, https://theconversation.com/changes-to-nzs-parole-laws-to-improve-rehabilitation-could-lead-to-even-longer-prison-times-224846.

Submission to the Environment Committee on the Fast Track Approvals Bill
April 2024
Student Christian Movement Aotearoa (SCMA)

Tēnā koutou katoa Environment Committee:

Student Christian Movement Aotearoa is a progressive Christian group in tertiary institutions across the Motu. We believe that God desires all to flourish, and God’s desire for justice and flourishing informs the way we relate to whenua. Because of this — and guided by Māori theology which urges us to see that we relate to Atua, God, only through relating to whenua — we express our concerns with this bill as currently written.^[1]

While we agree with the principles behind this bill, namely, that there can be undue bureaucratic red-tape in gaining approval and consents for some infrastructure and development projects of national significance, we express deep worry that so much decision-making power lies with ministers rather than with other independent experts in matters of conservation and environmental protection.

As a student organisation comprised primarily of rangitahi, young people, we are deeply concerned about kaitiakitanga of our environment, particularly with the effects of climate change already upon us. We are in a climate crisis with Aotearoa seeing the effects of the extreme weather events in early 2023. We are a group that cares deeply about social justice, particularly for those already marginalised, and we have seen from personal experience (supported by academic scholarship) how climate change disproportionately affects persons with disabilities^[2], indigenous peoples^[3], our Pacifica neighbours^[4], and our Rainbow whānau^[5].

With no guarantee that the ministers of any government would put the interests of people and God’s creation above corporate profits, we urge the committee to reconsider rendering such power to ministers of the government.

Ngā manaakitanga,

Michael Toy
publictheologian@scm.org.nz
Public Theologian
Student Christian Movement Aotearoa

^[1] Henare Tate, He Puna Iti i te Ao Mārama: A Little Spring in the World of Light (Auckland, NZ: Oratia Books, 2012).

^[2] Molly M. King and Maria A. Gregg, “Disability and climate change: A critical realist model of climate justice,” Sociology Compass 16, no. 1 (2022): e12954.

^[3] V. Reyes-García, García-del-Amo, D., Álvarez-Fernández, S. et al. Indigenous Peoples and local communities report ongoing and widespread climate change impacts on local social-ecological systems. Commun Earth Environ 5, 29 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-023-01164-y;

Danielle Emma Johnson, Karen Fisher, and Meg Parsons, “Diversifying Indigenous vulnerability and adaptation: An intersectional reading of Māori women’s experiences of health, wellbeing, and climate change,” Sustainability 14, no. 9 (2022): 5452.

^[4] Christina Newport, Jemaima Tiatia-Siau, K Dee Aimiti Ma’ia’i, Yvonne Underhill-Sem, and Alistair Woodward, “Anchored in pacific protocols–climate change, mental health and wellbeing,” Climate and Development (2023): 1-11.

^[5] Samuel Mann, Tara McKay, Gilbert Gonzales,Climate Change-Related Disasters & the Health of LGBTQ+ Populations, The Journal of Climate Change and Health, 2024, 100304,

One of the most popular news accounts on social media among young people is called Shit You Should Care About. Run by three twenty-something New Zealanders, the account has 3.4 million followers and hundreds of thousands of views on each post. I have to be honest and I have not tracked with the account for several years, but there was a time around 2020 when I followed quite closely. What I liked about the account was that this was a conscious effort by social media influencers to direct their followers’ attention towards things that matter, i.e. stuff we should care about. At some point in the last couple of years, I remember chatting with a friend during a run and bemoaning the fact that the original curatorial content of stuff that capital-M-Matters was not showing up on my feed as much. Whether that was due to the algorithm prioritizing mundane or pop culture content or a change in the priorities of the account, I’m not sure. 

Nevertheless, there are two really interesting aspects about the original premise that I want to muse on here. The first is that there is a moral and ethical duty to give a shit. The second is that in this globalised, networked world, there are specific things we should care about, and perhaps other things that should take a backseat in our individual and public consciousness.

The first aspect of a moral duty to give a shit about what goes on in the world seems intuitive. To love your neighbour means one should know what’s going on with your neighbour. Swiss reformed theologian Karl Barth was quoted in a 1963 Time magazine article saying, “Take your Bible and take your newspaper, and read both. But interpret newspapers from your Bible.” It certainly seems that Barth is advocating for a Christian life that is aware of what is happening in the world around us. How else can one know how to love one’s neighbours if one does not know what is happening with them or to them? To further complicate things, Barth refuses to give priority of loving the near neighbour over the one that is far. He writes in Church Dogmatics IV/3 (page 301):

As he [sic] holds his near neighbours with the one hand, he reaches out to the distant with the other. And so the concept of his own people is extended and opened out in this respect too. It is true that he belongs wholly and utterly to his own people. But it is equally true that the horizon by which his people is surrounded and within which it exists as his people is humanity. It is equally true that he himself belongs wholly and utterly to humanity.

What does this refusal to give priority of the near neighbour mean for the ways that one directs their attention, concern, and empathy? This gets us deeper into that second aspect of the premises behind Shit We Should Care About. 

Recently, religious journalism went nuts with an address from Pope Francis where he denounced the exploitation of women in surrogacy arrangements. What almost every one of those journalist pieces were missing was the rest of the address. In this address, he walks around the globe and denounces the conflicts that are happening from Gaza to Myanmar to Ukraine and then to those conflicts that—whilst deadly and horrific—do not make the Western headlines. He prays for Tigray, Sudan, Venezuela, Guyana, and Nicaragua. He prays for those places struck by natural disaster around the globe. Are these not things Christians ought to care about? Are these not things that Christians ought to do something about? 

One conflict that Pope Francis did not touch on is one in our backyard here in Oceania, that of the ongoing slow genocide of the indigenous peoples of West Papua by Indonesia. While the Pacific Council of Churches has repeatedly affirmed support for the liberation movement in West Papua, even calling for a boycott on Indonesian goods, that call has gone largely unheeded. 

What makes a conflict or situation worthy of our attention? What makes a neighbour worthy of making it above the line of shit we should care about?

Barth continued his Time Magazine interview by saying that he prays deeply for journalists. “Journalists form public opinion. They hold terribly important positions. Nevertheless, a theologian should never be formed by the world around him—either East or West. He should make it his vocation to show both East and West that they can live without a clash. Where the peace of God is proclaimed, there peace on earth is implicit. Have we forgotten the Christmas message?”

In an age coloured by an obsession over authenticity and identity, there is an ever-growing desire to be seen as knowing the right thing and saying the right thing, and if one succeeds in those two endeavours, one becomes morally good. But perhaps, there is no singular bounded set of things that are the right things to care about. Perhaps, as Bonhoeffer wrote in his essay “Christ, Reality and Good” within Ethics:

“Whoever wishes to take up the problem of a Christian ethic must be confronted at once with a demand which is quite without parallel. He [sic] must from the outset discard as irrelevant the two questions which alone impel him to concern himself with the problem of ethics, ‘How can I be good?’ and ‘How can I do good?,’ and instead of these he must ask the utterly and totally different question ‘What is the will of God?’”

This complicates things for us. There is no “right” thing to give a shit about. What would God have us — Christians in a specific place in a specific time — give a shit about? In a hyper-connected age, whom do we trust to direct our attention? To whom do we trust to tell us what shit we should care about? 

I’m not completely sure. But I do think that listening to God in this starts with listening to our neighbours. Those both near and far. And attuning our attention to all those suffering—whether or not they make the instagram stories, headlines, or 6pm news. 

Visibility matters. What’s on the outside matters. As a queer theologian, this seems like a given. But in the cartesian duality that permeates our social consciousness and conscience, it sometimes needs to be stated again. 

This week in religious news, the big headline is something like: The Pope Allows Same-sex blessings. The best reporting on this that I have come across is at the National Catholic Reporter. The historical context (at least the recent context) is that in 2021, the Vatican issued a statement regarding same-sex blessings. There, the Holy See office stated that God and thus the church “does not and cannot bless sin…the Church does not have, and cannot have, the power to bless unions of persons of the same sex in the sense intended above.” 

The new statement, however, offers a slight change in tone to this question, though the underlying theology remains the same. The Roman Catholic Church stands by its position that marriage can only be an “exclusive, stable, and indissoluble union between a man and a woman, naturally open to the generation of children.” However, priests may, at their discretion, bless couples who are in same-sex unions. 

This blessing, however, cannot look in any shape or form like a marriage. It cannot be a liturgical act. It cannot even be a semi-liturgical act. Whatever that means. It is worth noting the prohibited aesthetics that are not to accompany such a blessing:

In any case, precisely to avoid any form of confusion or scandal, when the prayer of blessing is requested by a couple in an irregular situation, even though it is expressed outside the rites prescribed by the liturgical books, this blessing should never be imparted in concurrence with the ceremonies of a civil union, and not even in connection with them. Nor can it be performed with any clothing, gestures, or words that are proper to a wedding. 

(Dichiarazione “Fiducia supplicans” sul senso pastorale delle benedizioni del Dicastero per la Dottrina della Fede, 18.12.2023, 39)

In other words, the blessing cannot look like a wedding. It cannot use material that has been drafted by a conference of bishops (such as in Germany and Belgium). There can be no wedding dress or exchanging of wedding rings or handfasting (where the couples’ hands are bound together with a ribbon, cord, or stole). 

This stands in stark contrast to the situation in the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand, and Polynesia. In 2018, after years of debate, the church passed a motion allowing for the blessing of same-sex marriages. (Notably, the Church of England has just authorised a similar blessing of same-sex unions, though I have not caught up on the intricacies of this new position.) The New Zealand Anglicans, like the Roman Catholics, maintain in their doctrines that marriage is still only between one man and one woman. But unlike the Roman Catholic Church, there are no aesthetic or liturgical prescriptions nor proscriptions. Earlier this year, two such blessings took place in the parish of Te Aro, Wellington. The Anglican blessings could look like a wedding, with rings, vestments, wedding dresses, the whole nine yards. In fact, according to the passed motion, the service must be in a form authorised by a bishop. 

Whilst it has made substantially clear within the Anglican Church that these blessings are not marriages, there is a formal and aesthetic familiarity allowed within these ceremonies. Visibility matters. What’s on the outside matters. 

On the one hand, I rejoice for the seeming softening towards queer folk by the church universal, the church catholic and Catholic. But on the other hand, we need to recognise that this is still scraps from the table. As we stumble together, whether forward or backward, I rest assured we stumble into the arms of a loving God.