Marx on Maori Anglican aspirations

I have been paying attention over the weekend to a series of Tweets recording progress at the annual synod of the Diocese of Aotearoa, also known as Te Runanganui o Te Pihopatanga o Aotearoa. For a solid reportage of two key items of business Taonga offers a guide to the substance of the meeting: this report and this report with this final report the one I refer to here.

I understand Marxist analysis of society in these terms: Follow the money. Understand society in terms of what happens to money and you understand a lot. Who earns the money, who spends the money, who doesn't have money and who gets to tell people what to do with their money are all grist to the Marxist analytical mill. For people outside our church and islands the final Taonga report may be incomprehensible. Do not worry, it will also be so for many Pakeha (i.e. European-derived immigrants to these islands) inside our church! However, with Karl Marx's help I will attempt to be your guide.

I suggest that the aspiration of the Maori diocesan synod (Te Runanganui o Te Pihipatanga o Aotearoa) for tino rangatiratanga (i.e. sovereign control) is worth exploring in strictly monetary terms.

For Pakeha Anglicans we exercise our tino rangatiratanga without thinking about it. First, note that we have access to a variety of funding sources, weekly offertories, parish trust funds, diocesan trust funds and (when pushed) fundraising among pakeha. Further, we have associated institutions such as schools which broadly speaking do not consume the financial attention of our dioceses (cf. difficulties with Maori Anglican schools referenced in the Taonga articles). This means that largely we are in control - tino rangatiratanga - of our destiny as Pakeha Anglicans (i.e. Tikanga Pakeha, the seven NZ Dioceses).

When we go to meetings which discuss applications for funds from the St John's College Trust Board (our $300m assets/$12m annual distribution taonga (treasure)), we are glad for the share which comes our way. But engaging in discussion does not affect our sense of control over our affairs because discussion about those funds is about a portion of our gigantic pot, not about nearly all of it.

Put another way: if we lost the St John's College funding, people like me - educators - would (likely) be sacked, but the stipended clergy in parishes would continue their work. (Albeit poorly trained ...!!). Our life as parishes and other mission units bound together as dioceses, and our control of that ecclesiastical life would continue, albeit diminished in significant ways.

By contrast, and to quote a friend and colleague immersed in the life of Tikanga Maori,

'The St John's Trust Board is our economy.'

Thus to go to meetings about the control of the growth of the assets and about the distribution of the earnings of the Trust Board is an exercise in partial control of Maori Anglican economy, a control which always involves discussion, even argument with Pakeha and Pasefika partners. However oriented those conversations are towards a favourable outcome for Maori, the fact is that Maori do not have control over the outcomes. Pakeha and Pasefika (Diocese of Polynesia) do not have control either, for all are equal partners at the table of discussion. But for Pakeha, the lack of control is more than mitigated by the immense control we exert over our overall 'economy' which is only partially funded by the Trust Board. (Life for Pasefika is different again and I won't attempt here to reflect on it).

Hence we might be able to understand this part of the Taonga article:

"In his paper to Te Runanganui, Professor Winiata outlined his thinking about why Tikanga Maori should exercise sovereignty over half the assets of the SJCTB:

“The current funding processes used by the church,” he wrote, “do not provide Maori with the opportunity to express tino rangatiratanga” (as guaranteed to Maori by the Treaty of Waitangi.)

1. “At the St John’s College Trust Board, where the decision is made about the size of distribution and allocations of the distributions, Tikanga Maori is required to negotiate with Tikanga Pakeha and with Tikanga Pasifika – the negotiation process denies tino rangatiratanga.
2. “The amount to be distributed then goes to Te Kotahitanga, another group where Tikanga Maori negotiates with the other to tikanga for the resources to undertake its planned activities – tino rangatiratanga is denied.
3. “The funds then find their way to Te Waka Matauranga, finally into Maori hands for management – however the need to account for spending and reporting practices including the requirement of returning unspent funds at the end of the year denies any real tino rangatiratanga is present.”"

However, I think Professor Winiata's words are in danger of misleading all readers of Taonga. What is at stake - in my view - is not whether Maori have an 'expression' of tino rangatiratanga as though if Pakeha and Pasefika partners remained silent when discussing Maori applications for funds all would be well.

Rather, what is at stake is the state of their own ecclesiastical economy. Control of that economy, tino rangatiratanga, is important but more important is the monetary wherewithal to achieve all mission and ministry aspirations. 

The fact is that it is not at all clear that changing the control of the St John's College Trust Board in the way being sought would improve the state of Maori Anglican ecclesiastical economy. My reason for saying this is that the funds of the Board are tightly focused by trust deed and civil law - there is a SJC Trust Board act of parliament - on the provision of education, and that is not education in general terms but in specific terms which include instruction in Christian principles. The accounting for spending which Professor Winiata appears to want to void (section 3 above) is an accounting according to the prescriptions surrounding the funds. 

As the Taonga report makes clear, Maori Anglican economy desperately needs improving so that (e.g.) its ministers are stipended. But can that improvement be achieved by gaining control of the St John's College Trust Board funds in the way being pursued here. Those funds have limited applicability to the payment of general clergy stipends (let alone for, say, repairs to church roofs). Tino rangatiratanga over the SJC Trust Board funds would certainly be a step forward for Maori aspirations but I wonder if it would fulfil the deepest aspiration running through the Taonga reports, the aspiration for overall improvement in the economy of Maori Anglican life and mission.

Pakeha reading here should be clear, in my and Karl Marx's view, that what is at stake here is what we largely take for granted, money to do things in Christ's name. What is at stake is not simply another way of doing things to gain the same (or slightly more) amount of funding. What is at stake, I suggest, are the material circumstances in which the mission and ministry of our Maori Anglican brothers and sisters are conducted.

None of us should be sanguine about this weekend's Runanganui resolution. The unity of our church is a fragile bloom. It is largely held together by our discussions over money. True tino rangatiratanga over half the trust board money would - in my view - mean a cessation of those discussions. The separation of Maori Anglican church life from Pakeha and Pasefika life would be more or less final. But if readers here do not like that outcome we need to attend to the monetary situation of the Diocese of Aotearoa and not to theological considerations, whether they are about unity or about the exercise of tino rangatiratanga. 

(Yet, let the reader understand, when the Taonga report tells us of speakers stressing the importance of 'unity', of kotahitanga, we are being given a glimpse of an intense debate within Tikanga Maori concerning relationships with the other tikanga, with Pakeha and Pasefika. In my understanding all Maori Anglicans are concerned to improve the circumstances of Aotearoa's mission and ministry but there is difference over the extent to which this should be conducted in partnership or in a separated but focused independent Maori church.)

Karl Marx tells us that the surest way to avert revolution is to engage in sharing the material goods of society. In our NZ Anglican case, do Pakeha need to rethink our approach to supporting Maori mission and ministry? 

Are there ways we have not yet thought of in which we could improve an uneven playing field? Aware of previous thinking about 'resource sharing' which has largely failed, what if we took a different tack such as Pakeha parishes tithing income and sending that tithe to the local Maori bishop? In Pakeha terms, tino rangatiratanga would mean the gift would be sent with 'no strings attached.' 

There would be consequences to undertaking such a gifting programme. As Pakeha we would want to 'discuss it' (discussion is often our way of exercising tino rangatiratanga over situations!). But the question remains, again as Marx would have it, has the time for talk begun to end and the hour for action arrived?

Incidentally, for anxious readers perturbed by Karl's presence here, I suggest Karl and St Paul are united on the matter (2 Corinthians 8:13-14)

Declaration: I am Chair of Te Kotahitanga Scholarships Committee, a three tikanga body responsible for a small portion of the distribution of St John's College Trust Board funds, and part of the chain of review and recommendation about that distribution (for which the highest authority is the Trust Board itself).