Pass the gravy; its secret recipe included ‘Jesus stuff’. It was as though Cardy was apologetic about Jesus. He didn’t want to frighten the horses with talk about The Chosen One; he would only mention the Son of God in polite terms. He talked about ‘language issues’. He said, ‘For a long time I was comfortable using words that I thought everybody was interpreting metaphorically, like “Father”. But they weren’t thinking that! A lot of people were thinking about a guy upstairs in the clouds – you know, full male gear, the beard, all that.
‘So I just don’t use that word now in relation to God, because I don’t believe God is more up there than down here. I want to use language that says God is in and among and between us. I’ve got to find language that will do that.’
Somehow I doubt this is the dilemma of many Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, or Satanists.
This time last year, Cardy’s Christmas message saw him pondering the thesis of a US theologian, who interpreted that Mary had been either been seduced or raped. He said, ‘I think there’s a very good possibility of it. The main thing about the whole virgin thing is, “Virgin? Yeah, right.”
‘And that was the same when the story was written. It was saying there was something sexually irregular about Jesus’s birth. You can put that down to a miracle – you know, sperm out of the sky – or you can say she had sex with Joseph, or she was raped or violated, or had sex with somebody else. Who actually knows? But the way the story is written points to some irregularity. The bottom line is that it doesn’t affect my faith, and how I act towards other people.’
The Christmas nativity, too, had to be deconstructed. ‘There’s very little factual history in the nativity accounts.’ The story was about giving a great man a great birth. ‘Was there literally an angel called Gabriel who appeared? Were there literally wise men on camels coming from the east? Was there literally a star over Bethlehem? The answer is no. Those things are part of the story-creating talent of people trying to bring alive the real meaning of the man, and his real meaning is found in his adult life.’
And so on. No doubt Cardy could go through the Old and New Testaments, gently removing myth, shaking his head at various bigotries and nonsenses, forever reminding his listener about its stories of love. His surname was entirely apposite. He was cosy, informal, unthreatening. He said, ‘I don’t think spirituality is owned by Christianity, and I don’t think the Christian church owns God.’ And: ‘I’d love to give Jesus a land, a place and a city where gay people, where people who are different, who don’t fit norms, people of different races and creeds, are welcomed and loved. That international peace and justice stuff.’ Also: ‘I don’t do bland.’
He was raised an Anglican, sort of. ‘Mum was intermittent. There were some Quakers in the mix, and some good heathens.’ As a teenager, he ran with a mildly evangelical crowd, attending youth camps, singing folk songs, now and then dating. Did he experience religious ecstasy? ‘I wouldn’t describe it as ecstasy. But it was certainly emotional stuff.’ He trained for the ministry at St John’s College. Had he ever lost his faith? ‘Not really.’ Was his faith substantial? ‘I think so. I’d say so. It’s hard to tell, really.’
He is married with two girls and two boys. I suspect he is a great – surely his children are allowed to call him this – father. As a minister, he must attend to all sorts of chores. ‘In a sense, you’re running your own business,’ he said. ‘It’s like an independent business unit.’ He has a staff of six. Where’s the money come from? ‘Our sources of income are … there’s parishioner giving, there’s income from the car park next door, we have a factory we lease out.’ A factory? ‘It makes hemp products! Curtains, high-quality fabrics.’ He said the annual operating budget was about $600,000.
He tends to a congregation of just eighty souls. I cringed when he said, ‘Most of our congregation are online.’ God is reduced to broadband. ‘We podcast all our sermons,’ said Cardy. ‘A typical downloader might be a commuter in New York, downloading it all on his iPod.’ He estimated about five hundred people from around the world regularly access the St Matthew website.
I asked him if he knew how many people belonged to Brian Tamaki’s Destiny Church. ‘Probably in the thousands!’ What did that tell him? ‘That he’s got an appeal to a particular market. What we’re producing here is what you might call a niche market. It doesn’t worry me, those sorts of numbers. Well, if the number we had here was thirty, it might worry me. And more than eighty would be great. But we have an eclectic congregation: we have university lecturers, truck drivers. And people travel long distances to come here. Someone comes from Whangaparaoa. Waihi Beach, there’s a parishioner. Matamata, there’s a parishioner.’
I asked if there would always be a church. He said, ‘Ummmm.’ While he was thinking of what to say, I asked whether St Matthew would become more and more niche, until the church was where we sat now – stuck down below in a bare, airless crypt.
He chose to answer the first question. He said, ‘I believe the church isn’t just for the actively
