Inside the rage of Destiny Church

Warning: This story contains Islamophobic and transphobic quotes.

Destiny Church’s anti-trans protest in Ōtautahi Christchurch was met with counter protest from supporters of LGBT rights

“Stop abusing young people!”, a young man yells into the face of a woman carrying a small child on her shoulders. Another points his finger accusingly at the colourful crowd. “No more puberty blockers!”

It’s Monday 6 May and Destiny Church members dressed mostly in black occupy the footpath outside Te Tahi Youth, a centre that provides counselling, healthcare and support to young people in Christchurch. Staff look on from behind locked gates as self-styled Apostle Brian Tamaki delivers a live-streamed speech accusing them of child abuse.

Further down the street another crowd has gathered. Upbeat music plays and people hold placards expressing their support for trans youth and trans healthcare. Pride and Transgender flags wave in the light autumn breeze.

The Destiny group finishes up and moves off down the street. The counter-protesters in their way turn their backs. A few Destiny members attempt to shoulder them bodily aside before being pushed back by police and going around instead. A few linger to heckle and shout. Media photographers snap pictures of the conflict.

Destiny’s call to protest came less than 24 hours before it happened, at the end of a two-and-a-half-hour Sunday church service live streamed to their followers around the country. What was it Tamaki said to fire his congregation up with so much aggression? I resolved to find out.

Islamophobia and the Great Replacement

We’re an hour into the service by the time Brian Tamaki takes the stage. The congregation has been warmed up by rock band ‘Sound of Destiny’. Rachel has reminded us to give 10% of our income and follow Brian on Twitter (she actually said ‘X’, but I refuse to call it that). ‘Nana Hannah’ has showed off her Israeli flag cufflinks and told us not to have sex before marriage.

A piano plays softly over his words as Tamaki begins his 90-minute set. Without a hint of irony, he deplores a world “high on rage” with “so much violence”.

“I want to read you one of the latest sermons from our opposition,” Tamaki announces. He reads:

"The plan of Muslims is to exploit democracy in western countries and get into positions of power. Once they seize enough power, we will implement Sharia law. This is the grand plan for the Islamic takeover of the west. We will preach and say this openly everywhere.”

He doesn’t reference the source for this ‘latest sermon’ quote, but it was delivered by Sheikh Ahmad Badran in June 2019, purportedly in Israel, and documented by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) – an American pro-Israeli think tank which claims to be “helping the U.S. and West in fight against terrorism”. Their video clip was also shared in an Islamophobic article by British far-right nationalist party Britain First on their website. It should go without saying that the Sheikh’s views are not representative of Islam.

Tamaki goes on to talk about birth rates, castigating his flock for being more concerned about money than having larger numbers of children. “They go like rabbits,” he says of Muslims. “They want to get millions of them so they can take over.”

This claim is a key tenet of the Great Replacement conspiracy theory, most recently popularised by French white nationalist writer Renaud Camus in 2011. The debunked theory holds that western countries are having their white, Christian populations demographically and culturally ‘replaced’ by Muslim foreigners with the backing of ‘elites’ and aided by low white European birth rates. Great Replacement theory influenced the terrorist Brenton Tarrant to murder 51 Muslims at two mosques in Christchurch in 2019.

Later in his sermon, Tamaki claims that England and Europe are being taken over. Referencing the recent elections in the UK, he says “There are about twelve, thirteen-odd cities that are now fully in Sharia law.”

No doubt this assertion would come as a surprise to the residents of those cities, whose laws remain as stolidly British as queuing and scones. It did however have the intended effect on Tamaki’s audience. He tells them that while other churches are scared of this alleged impending takeover heading our way and wasting their time with “fruitless prayers”, Destiny’s congregation can stand up to it without fearing death. His words are met with cheering and applause.

A modern crusade against rainbow communities

Destiny Church has a long history of animosity towards LGBTQI+ communities. In 2004 Tamaki led a march of around 5000 people to Parliament for his ‘Enough is Enough’ protest against the Civil Unions bill, where he was not warmly received by Aotearoa’s first openly transgender MP, Georgina Beyer.

In March 2023 Destiny held a protest against transgender rights in Auckland’s Aotea Square, a short distance away from Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull’s ‘Let Women Speak’ event being held in Albert Park at the same time and for the same cause. Patched Destiny members were captured on video hitting Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson with a motorcycle and later pushing and shoving transgender and non-binary rights supporters on Queen Street.

In his sermon, Tamaki uses a questionable interpretation of the Old Testament Bible story of Rachel and Abraham to create a link between Islam and ‘sexual perversion’ and to justify his beliefs about the nature and goals of Islam, as well as the supposed supremacy of his own religion.

Tamaki considers both Islam and the rainbow community to be ‘perversions’, personified by demons who communicate with each other. He convinces his audience that these demons are colluding – the alleged ‘gender ideology’ demon is laying the groundwork to turn everyone away from Christianity and, once they have, it’ll give the word to the alleged ‘Islam’ demon to swoop in and take us over.

"They took up this whole thing now, there had to be the rise of the gay movement and transgenderism, that's the perversion. The whole world's covered with it. New Zealand is totally rainbow-washed.”

"So the spirits of perversion communicated with the spirits of perversion somewhere else ... so these perversions started to speak to another strong powerful perversion in the Arab world.”

"These demons are saying to these demons, it's the right time for you to come in and take over."

The hatred in the eyes of the Destiny protesters outside Te Tahi Youth suddenly makes sense. Those of us holding flags and signs, dancing in the face of denial, asserting our rights, or the rights of those we love – to exist, to have their health needs met, to be included and welcomed and happy – Tamaki doesn’t see us as human. To those who heard Tamaki speak and believed him, we are demons who personally want to wreck everything they hold dear. And so, in his eyes, are Muslims.

Back in the sermon, Tamaki informs us that society’s rejection of Christian values and acceptance of gay and transgender people will lead directly to the takeover of our country by Muslims and the swift implementation of Sharia law. At least some of the congregation is buying it. The room fills with the sound of booing.

He says:

“White families have abandoned him wholesale. White families who brought Christ to the Indigenous people have abandoned Jesus and they're drinking, letting their kids have free sex, driving fast cars, and they don't care about God anymore, in fact they're quite anti-Christ."

The overt reference to white people turning away from the church feels jarring, especially delivered to a room full of non-white faces. Perhaps I should have expected it in a sermon already full of perspectives rooted in white supremacy. He later tacks on that Māori and Pasifika are abandoning the church as well.

Destiny Church has not been unfriendly to white supremacists in the past. During the Covid pandemic Destiny’s Christchurch pastor Derek Tait was photographed meeting with a former member of neo-Nazi group National Front, and frequently appeared with other far-right white nationalists at anti-vaccination rallies organised by the Freedom and Rights Coalition (an offshoot of Destiny). In 2023 both Derek Tait and Brian Tamaki marched arm in arm with anti-Māori activist Julian Batchelor in Christchurch and Auckland demonstrations against co-governance.

Fighting talk

"You might have to do some things", Tamaki says on the subject of peace. A church-appropriate subject, I’d thought with short-lived relief, but he’s interpreting it as peace within oneself while acting in violence. "You might have to face conflict, you might have to face enemies, there might even be arrests.”

He calls especially on young people to fight, saying “you must rise now” as “glowing examples”:

"There is young people [sic], college students and university students and school students all over the world who have been seized by the enemy, converted to Islam wholesale, converted to antisemitism and anti-Christ ideologies. Where are the youth? Where's the young men and young women who should be fighting this fight now?”

He implores young, abstinent people to get married, but continues, “you can’t just do that so that you’re a nice person.”

“You go home and you take your wedding dress off, and you take your suit off, boy, and you put your flak jacket on, you put your helmet on and you give a semi-automatic to your wife and you take a triple-barrelled shotgun, and you say ‘honey, let’s go to war’.”

It should be noted that it’s not unusual for evangelists to voice violent metaphors for spiritual wars without meaning them literally. In Aotearoa, however, where a terrorist holding similar beliefs about Islam and carrying similar firearms murdered 51 members of the Christchurch Muslim community in 2019, such statements are as unwise as they are unfeeling. 

The coronial inquest into the attack was to resume only a couple of weeks after this sermon. A later phase of the inquest will hear evidence about the terrorist’s radicalisation online. Hearing Tamaki’s livestreamed words, I can’t help but wonder what they might trigger in other ears. 

Heads on a platter

"We've had communications and intel from God that this is what we're to do,” Tamaki says. “So now we're laying out the plans.”

Tamaki celebrates his ‘win’ in having Rainbow Storytime cancelled.

He talks about Christchurch and announces the protest for the following day, at what he calls “the mother of all perversions”. He’s given Te Tahi Youth this moniker because they prescribe puberty blockers as part of their healthcare services for trans youth, a medication he misrepresents as being “pushed” on children “like a cartel”. He claims without evidence that puberty blockers are irreversible, make people sterile and “destroy” their lives. Repeating those claims outside the clinic the following day he attributes them to the Cass report. Although the final report from the Cass review has come in for some well-deserved criticism, it doesn’t list any of the effects Tamaki claims in its assessment of puberty blockers.

As well as protesting, Tamaki intends to pursue his attack in the courts. Having raised $50,000 from members of Destiny and telling (not asking) them that they will donate even more, Tamaki says he will go after Wellington City Council in a challenge over the legality of rainbow crossings, to be followed by similar action against Waka Kotahi / NZ Transport Agency. He describes his anticipated wins against these two organisations as putting “heads on a platter” and using them to threaten other councils to fall in line with his wishes.

"So, we put two heads on that platter. … What we say is we have here a council head and we have here a government department head. Now my runners will start to put it to all the councils in the country and say there's the head of the main Wellington City Council, now we want you to clean up everything in there that you're spending your money wrongly, on perverting and sexualising our kids – ratepayers money – we want you to wash all those rainbow washes off, or your head will be next to those other two."

A little over a week later, an advertisement posted on social media for an event in New Plymouth raised public concern. It depicted a boy holding a severed head with the tagline ‘A time to kill’.

Tamaki is likely to spend time in the dock himself. Haus of Flash Ltd, who run the popular Rainbow Storytime events Tamaki celebrates having got cancelled, have raised over $30,000 to hold him legally accountable.

Ford O’Connor, the husband of Tamaki’s grand-daughter, was convicted in April for vandalising a rainbow crossing on Auckland’s Karangahape Road. A similar hate crime in Gisborne was earlier committed on Tamaki’s orders.

Speaking at an anti-transgender conference on 18 May, Tamaki proposed gathering 170,000 people at three large rallies to pressure the government into legislating trans and non-binary people out of existence.

An anti-transgender rally organised by Destiny in Christchurch a week later gathered around a dozen participants. 

Byron here again, as you may be aware, Writing about New Zealand's far-right has exposed me to a torrent of abuse and harassment.

I am currently going through civil court to obtain a restraining order against one of this country's most notorious white supremacists.

The goal is to cover the fees of the lawyer I have hired for a hearing, anything raised over and above what I need will be donated to the Manaaki Collective, who provide funding for home security and other help for people targeted by the far-right. You can donate to the legal help fund via kofi