Christian Politics in New Zealand - Liberal Protestant Activism: 1981-2001

Liberal Protestant Activism: 1981-2001

Mainline Protestant churches became involved with ending sporting contacts with South Africa during the apartheid era (c. 1948-1994), culminating when many liberal Protestants and Catholics participated in mass protests against the New Zealand Rugby Football Union's 1981 Springbok Tour of New Zealand. Shortly afterward, many of the same liberal Christians participated in the peace movement of the 1980s, which resulted in New Zealand becoming a declared nuclear free zone in 1987. During the New Zealand National Party governments of the 1990s, these liberal Christians became involved in organising against New Right cutbacks to social-welfare benefits (cutbacks supported by the New Zealand Business Roundtable, ACT New Zealand and similar organisations).

Read more about this topic:  Christian Politics In New Zealand

Famous quotes containing the words liberal and/or protestant:

    Sculpture and painting are very justly called liberal arts; a lively and strong imagination, together with a just observation, being absolutely necessary to excel in either; which, in my opinion, is by no means the case of music, though called a liberal art, and now in Italy placed even above the other two—a proof of the decline of that country.
    Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)

    So the old flute was doomed and its fate was pathetic,
    ‘Twas fastened and burned at the stake as heretic,
    While the flames roared around it they heard a strange
    noise—
    ‘Twas the old flute still whistling ‘The Protestant Boys’.
    —Unknown. The Old Orange Flute (l. 37–40)