Critic's: "The lighter side of stoning"

Destiny Church not fundamentalist enough for you? Would you like to stone homosexuals to death and keep women in the kitchen? Then try Density Church, which claims to follow every single commandment in the Bible.


Yeah, it’s a joke. But although Density Church (www.densitychurch.org) is actually a satire designed to take the piss out of Destiny Church, it is serious in that everything Density says is directly commanded by the Bible.

It is also deadly serious in the fact that the man who created Density Church wouldn’t agree to reveal his name or even meet us in person, because he fears the fine and Christian people at Destiny Church might take revenge for his poking fun.

Scary huh?

In the first part of this article, Critic interviewed the imaginary leader of Density Church, ‘Brian Tamariki’, the fanatic alter-ego of the real-life Density Church creator. In the second part, below, we interviewed the real person behind the imaginary character of Brian Tamariki, and asked why he created such an elaborate (and some would say offensive) joke.

Brian Tamariki

Critic: Brian, you are the founder of Density Church, not Destiny church, right?

Brian Tamariki: ‘Destiny Church’?! [splutter] The charlatans at Destiny Church are worldly compromisers, who have unsuccessfully tried to imitate us. But only Density Church follows everything written in the Bible – down to the last literal letter. For example, while Destiny Church merely wants homosexuals to be made ‘illegal’ and to have them put in prison, Density Church insists that sodomites be stoned to death in accordance with Leviticus 20:13. After all, prison would be like a holiday camp to homosexuals.

Slavery. It’s okay with God, right?

Amen! Only the Bible provides us with an unchanging guide for what is good and what is bad. And the Bible has nothing bad to say about slavery at all. According to the Bible, slaves are only property, and should not be given the rights that free men have.

For instance, Exodus 21.20–21 states that a slave-owner may beat his slave so severely that even if he dies after a couple of days, the owner is not able to be punished – because the slave is merely his ‘property’.

The Bible only condemns the immediate and outright killing of a slave with a small fine – that’s the moral standard of care that the Bible sets out, in its infinite wisdom! So good Christians should be able to own other Christians, and those Christian slaves should “slave for them all the harder because they are Christians” (1 Timothy 6:2; c.f. 1 Peter 2.18–19).

We all know a woman’s place is in the kitchen. But are women allowed to cook for men when they are menstruating?

Certainly not! And this is yet another Biblical command that Destiny Church chooses to ignore, but Density Church follows.

Leviticus 15.19–20 clearly requires that a woman should be in seclusion for a whole seven days during “the filthy impurity of her monthly period”. The Bible explains that anything she touches will catch the filthy contamination of her menstruation, and will also be impure.

Let me make myself clear: I have no time for those liberal, basket-weaving, hairy legged, feminist lesbians, who say that this treatment is “unjust” to women.


What other interesting things does Density Church believe in?

We believe everything that the Bible says. And that is why we fervently believe that the Earth is flat. As the Bible clearly teaches, we live in a three-tiered universe. Above us is a solid dome, with its foundations at the ends of the earth. The sun, moon, and stars all travel along this dome. And below us is Hell. In-between, as the Bible clearly states, lies the flat earth. Why do our schools only teach the lies of Round-Earthism, but not the science of Flat-Earthism? It comes down to a question of faith. Who do you want to believe: those atheist NASA scientists who staged the ‘moon-walk’ in the Arizona Desert, or God?

Where do you see New Zealand in ten years time?

In ten years time, I see that our affiliated political party, Density NZ, will sweep into power, and restore the nation to sound, moral, biblical values – that is, keeping women in seclusion for a quarter of their fertile lives, only allowing men property rights, reintroducing slavery, outlawing homosexuals and single mothers, teaching our children nothing of atheistic science and only sound Biblical Flat-Earthism, and breaking up any mixed-race marriages.

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But who is the real person behind the Density Church? Critic interviewed the founder of the church on condition of total anonymity.

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Critic: Why did you set up Density Church?

Density Church founder: Back in 2000, a few of us wanted to have a bit of fun with Christian fundamentalism in a New Zealand context. As Destiny Church is fairly much the nadir of New Zealand fundamentalism, they were the obvious immediate butt of the joke. Given the warped and fairly tendentious mindset of Christian fundamentalists, making serious arguments against them is generally fairly fruitless – we come from such ‘fundamentally’ different mindsets that there is no common ground. So I think humour is a better approach – holding up a mirror to fundamentalism and letting it view its own absurdity.

Have you had any reaction from Destiny Church? Threats?

We have received a number of demands from Destiny Church to close the website over the years, as well as some rather humourless responses from some Destiny Church members. A few Destiny members, bless ’em, were able to see the joke, although they are a distinct minority. In March we received an email from Ian Toimata from Destiny Church, who wrote, “I have started pursuing legal advice on your use of design and branding that is registered to Destiny Church International. So you will be hearing from me very soon. Let’s see how well your satire holds up to the cold harsh reality of ‘reality’. WELCOME TO THE BREAKYOU GENERATION! Turn up the heat and let’s do some cooking.”

No legal action ensued, although we were amused by an email from his wife earlier this month which said, “I bet your mission bay neighboours [sic] think exactly the same as we do… homosexuality is dysfunctional & severley [sic] perverse - ABNORMAL. I can only guess that you are a homo.”

So I guess Destiny Church have shown something less than ‘Christian charity’?

Some would claim you are perverting the Word of God and are going to hell.

I tend to point out that we are actually applying the Word of God quite literally – more literally even than fundamentalists. Obviously, in doing so, there is a satirical message: i.e., that the fundamentalist literalistic mode of interpretation leads to quite absurd results – if taken to its logical extreme.

Are you a Christian, Atheist, Agnostic, Muslim, Hindu?


I am a theist. I am not very dogmatic about my beliefs. The evidence of the past 200 or so years has discredited the particularities of individual religions so as to make them widely unbelievable in the secular West. The religious institutions are social constructions, and it pays to always keep this in mind. Fundamentalists, by and large, forget this.

Jamie McEwan

Volunteer Writer