Something that has become a bit of a tradition for Mark Honeychurch and myself is attending the quarterly Prayers@Parliament event, where we join MPs and Christian leaders inside parliament to pray for our nation. We figured that last week's session would be an extra special one, as it would be the last one before the election and, having attended the Freedoms NZ roadshow, we were expecting some doozy prayer requests.
Imagine our surprise when the Parliamentary Host this time was Labour List MP Naisi Chen - quite a change from the usual line-up of National MPs.
Chen cut an interesting figure with her speech. Not only did she lean on her past as a pastor's kid, but noted that, given the new Oranga Tamariki scandal, the assembled religious leaders and other representatives had a responsibility to repent on behalf of their christian brothers and sisters who had harmed children; to which murmurs of agreement spread throughout the room. Still, Chen did misstep a couple of times. First, by trying to rehabilitate former MP Michael Wood by drawing on his Christian faith; second, by claiming that a Muslim MP was told by another MP or parliamentary staffer that they would not celebrate Eid or other Muslim holidays because they were anti-Pride; Finally, she discussed a recent presentation by the disinformation project about AI and disinformation in the upcoming election.
The latter anecdotes had an obvious trickle down effect as we broke off into smaller prayer groups. When Mark and I joined the devout in our breakout prayer circle, amongst the usual prayers for things such as asking God to make universities more moral, someone also prayed for the Muslim MP in parliament to find God and Jesus, and prayed against the wickedness of the internet. I had a bit of fun with my prayer offerings, and decided to thank our heavenly father for the gift of the internet - as well as praying that our brothers and sisters in Christ are open to the many viewpoints and lessons that others can teach them.
As for Naisi herself, I took the opportunity to google like my life depended on it during a post-prayer debrief beer at The Thistle Inn. Between writing about the Institute in Basic Life Principles and Trevor Loudon, I clearly can't shake the red scare this week, as I found out that Chen faced accusations of being a CCP stooge a few years ago due to her involvement in the Chinese Students and Scholars Association (CSSA). The existence of the CSSA is an interesting one, and I will be exploring it, and the legitimacy of the claims against Chen, in a future edition.
Before signing off, I can tell you that next week's issue will be a themed issue about music. We'd love to be able to publish submissions from readers about music and skepticism - just make sure you send it in to newsletter@skeptics.nz by Saturday, July 1st. Also be sure to follow us on our Facebook page, where I hope to be polling you all to see what your “favourite” cult tunes are! It should be a fun issue, and will include an article by longtime committee member, and actual musician, Brad MacClure.