Baptist leader urges members to vote against Labour

A Baptist Church leader has come under fire in his own ranks for writing a letter urging Baptists to vote against the Labour Government.

Baptist national leader Brian Winslade yesterday backed the letter sent by the church's national consultant for church health and growth, Lindsay Jones.

But a Baptist minister in Dunedin, Steve O'Connor, has set up a "Forum of the Christian Left" backed by clergy in the Anglican, Catholic and Presbyterian churches, as well as the Baptists, to oppose the churches' anti-Labour line.

The dispute comes amid unprecedented church involvement in this election, highlighted by the anti-Labour and anti-Green leaflets distributed this week by members of the Exclusive Brethren.

The City Impact Church in Browns Bay on Auckland's North Shore has written to between 1000 and 1500 churches around the country urging a party vote for Destiny New Zealand.

At the other pole, in an editorial for the magazine Anglican Taonga to be published on Monday, Anglican Social Justice Commissioner Anthony Dancer will urge Christians to think more about how party policies "will or will not benefit the most vulnerable and marginalised in society, and less about what benefits to middle-income New Zealand there will be".

Mr Jones' open letter to Baptist churches says: "I personally hold the opinion that our present Labour Government should not be returned for a third term.

"The social policy track they have driven us down has many aspects that clash with Kingdom values. Were they to gain another term of office, it would be almost impossible after that to pull back from the changes that would inevitably come into law in this next term."

He said he deliberately did not tell Baptists who to vote for, but his letter added: "It is not that National's policies and values are any more Christian; but they would halt some of the social policy direction."

Mr Winslade said "the vast majority of Baptist Christians in New Zealand" would agree with Mr Jones' letter.

He said the outcry against the Exclusive Brethren leaflets was "a media beat-up".

"I would certainly be forming the opinion that most of our journalists in New Zealand, if they were any more left-leaning they'd be lying down," he said.

City Impact was urging votes for Destiny even though that party might fail to reach the 5 per cent required for seats in Parliament.

"A vote for Godly and moral principles is not a wasted vote from our point of view," City Impact Church executive pastor Dean Payn said.

But Mr O'Connor, the minister of Dunedin's North-East Valley Baptist Church, said Destiny, Radio Rhema and the right-wing Maxim Institute did not represent the views of many rank-and-file Christians.

"Our perspective is much broader than what people do in the bedroom," he said. "The policies of Jesus were about compassion and social justice and human rights."

The director of the Salvation Army's social policy and parliamentary unit, Major Campbell Roberts, said there had been too much focus in the election on what people would get personally and not enough on the needs of others.