A Churchless Landscape: The Rise of Secular Utopianism in New Zealand Suburban Design, and Churches’ Responses
Introduction
In addition to examining the reasons for this trend, this work also surveys what some of the responses have been from churches and Christian groups in the vicinity of these suburbs, using the Hobsonville Point development in Auckland as a case study.
Hobsonville Point: A Case Study of a Secular Suburb
During the first decade of this century, construction work began on a planned suburb at Hobsonville Point in West Auckland, on land that was part of a former airbase. Auckland Council, the Government, and private developers collaborated on a project to create “a model of medium-density living, built on public transport connections.”[1] By the time it is completed, this suburb will contain 4,500 mainly medium and high-density homes, accommodating up to 15,000 residents. Hobsonville Point is one of the first suburbs in the country on this scale constructed according to a master plan. This has given those involved the opportunity to help this development avoid some of the shortcomings that typified many of the so-called “group housing” suburbs of the 1960s and 1970s, where there was comparatively little emphasis on planning for the needs of the communities.[2] In contrast, Hobsonville point has a pronounced utopian ambition when it comes to the experience of its residents.[3] Those living there report they enjoy “a strong and vibrant community” and experience “strong feelings of wellbeing.”[4] The emphasis on creating a functioning community has been a central tenet in this development, with the expectation that a large portion of non-work life can be experienced within the confines of the suburb.
Among the attractions of Hobsonville Point that are designed to meet the demands of this community are facilities such as parks, playgrounds, schools, markets, cafes, restaurants, walking trails, and various recreational resources. However, noticeable by their absence are churches (the historic church on Scott Road is not considered part of the area encompassed by Hobsonville Point). If this development is any measure to go by, similar type suburbs created in twenty-first century New Zealand will also be church-free.
One of the ironies of the absence of churches in Hobsonville Point is that the suburb was planned in part to re-capture some of the sense of “community spirit”[5] that was believed to have existed in communities in earlier generations in New Zealand—before the growing isolation that emerged with the ascendance of the low-density commuter suburbs of the 1960s and 1970s. The earlier role of churches in encouraging a sense of community were evidently not considered by planners though.
Importantly, the notion of community has become commodified to some extent at Hobsonville Point.[6] In addition to selling houses, the developers have infused “meaning” and “significance” in living in the location.[7] As Opit and Kearns have observed in relation to those responsible for developing Hobsonville Point,
They have done more than construct just physical properties in … their developments; they also socially construct understandings and ideological statements that signify particular framings of urban environments.[8]
What is noticeable about this ideological approach is that churches appear not to have been regarded by planners as capable of providing “meaning” or “significance” to communities. This raises an important question as to why the presence of churches has been excluded, even as consideration, in this development.
Reasons for the absence of churches at Hobsonville Point
The absence of churches in Hobsonville Point is not something that has commanded much in the way of public attention—which itself is indicative of changing expectations more generally in society about what constitutes a community. One possible reason for this apparent lack of concern over the suburb being churchless is that within a seven-kilometre radius of Hobsonville Point, there are at least eight existing churches. To some extent, their presence masks the absence of churches in the new development. However, the fact that up to 15,000 people can move into an area with no church of its own raises important questions about the trend towards suburban secularisation.
There is a multiplicity of interrelated reasons why churches are absent from the from the built environment in new subdivisions such as Hobsonville Point, despite the considerable effort planners have gone to in order to foster a sense of community among residents. Some of these reasons are reviewed below, although in no particular order of priority:
1. Secular planning as a default option
Perhaps the most self-evident answer to the question of why there are no churches in Hobsonville Point is that no-one involved in the planning of the suburb thought to include one. This is reflective of a wider sentiment in local and national government where secularism is the default option for any sort of planning. While the state allows freedom of religion and religious assembly, the state is also required to deal with individuals regardless of their beliefs or absence of beliefs.[9] This separation of church and state is a long-standing constitutional convention,[10] and in the case of Hobsonville Point, puts the onus on a church to establish itself in a location—the state can show no religious preference, particularly in a project in which it is directly involved.
However, there are two notable deficiencies with this rationale. First, it is based on a subjective presumption that the social significance of Christianity is diminishing as a result of a more culturally diverse, modernised, and “rational” population, which therefore makes secularisation seem as the more “progressive” route to follow.[11] Secondly, churches have been included in urban planning for well over a century, during which time the separation between church and state has remained, albeit at differing degrees.[12] Clearly, increased secularism would account for churches not being prioritised for new suburbs, but there is no evidence at all that planners involved in Hobsonville Point gave any consideration to the religious make-up of potential residents, and to that extent, they pre-empted rather than reflected the religious preferences of those who would be living there. Significantly, there is also no evidence of planners having consulted with churches in the area when developing their list of public amenities for Hobsonville Point. To this extent, secularism has been more exclusionary than “neutral” in its application.
2. Lack of strategic initiatives among churches
The counterbalance to the inertia of planners when it came to consideration of churches for Hobsonville Point was the absence of any serious undertakings by various denominations in the surrounding suburbs to establish a church in the new suburb. There are several reasons for this, including resources (which is dealt within the next point), a lack of a strong ecumenical organisation in the area, the lack of consultation by planners involved in the Hobsonville Point development with surrounding churches, and possibly in many cases, a lack of expertise within church congregations on the intricacies of urban planning.
What is also evident is that churches in the surrounding suburbs seem to be focussed more on their own work, and possibly at the expense of what is happening outside their immediate parameters of activity. Of six neighbouring denominations questioned for this article, none had a strategy for expanding into a new, adjoining suburb,[13] and it is likely that the same would apply to the other denominations in the area as well. This stems from a historical failure of Protestant ecumenism, and although cooperation between the churches in surrounding suburbs could generally be classified now as “good but slight,” there is nowhere near the sort of shared effort required to plant churches in new suburbs. The substantial costs of buying land and constructing church buildings suggest that a pan-denominational approach to establishing new churches in suburbs such as Hobsonville Point might be the most effective or even the only means of achieving such a goal.[14]
3. The cost of building a new church
Even if there was a coordinated approach to planting a new church in Hobsonville Point, the cost of such an undertaking could prove to be a barrier for neighbouring churches. The cost of land alone (including parking as well as building space) would easily exceed three million dollars based on an average asking price per square metre for sections in the suburb, with at least another two million dollars spent on a church building, and associated architectural, legal, and consent costs. Such a financial commitment placed on local churches—many of which may already have strained budgets—would be too great. However, even if such sums were available, there was no land set aside for a church by planners in the first place. In order for this to have been done, a church or churches would have had to been involved during the planning process, almost from the outset. Again, a lack of expertise within churches meant that this opportunity was not taken up by any of the churches surrounding the Hobsonville Point development.
There is also the issue of opportunity costs to consider. For the option to buy land in build a new church in a planned suburb, the loss of opportunities for an existing church supporting this would be considerable, and possibly unsustainable. The question confronting some congregations would be along the lines of “if we did not spend several million dollars on a new church, how else could we use this amount?” And this assumes that the congregation would be able to raise millions of dollars in the first place. It is unlikely most churches in the vicinity of Hobsonville Point would be able to finance such amounts individually anyway, which rules out this option. It would be up to their parent organisations to organise funding, but this would most likely only occur at the request of the local churches, which in turn would require those local churches to have a church-planting strategy.
4. A belief that existing churches on the boundaries have the capacity to fill the gap
As church attendance has declined in New Zealand in recent decades,[15] a rational response from some of those churches has been to see the appearance of a new adjoining suburb as an opportunity to add to the number of their existing congregations. In one sense, this represents a false economy, because congregational growth does not occur from the existing community, but out of several thousand people arriving in an adjoining community. While any additional members of a church is generally regarded as a good thing, two questions arise from this capacity issue: to what extent is the growth of existing churches bordering a new suburb a result of evangelisation, as opposed to population growth; and is this growth proportionate to the population increase in the new suburb? In the case of the population of Hobsonville Point, if around seventeen per cent of the residents are regular church-goers (the national average),[16] then this would amount to roughly 2250 church-goers, which would represent an increase of an average of 283 attendees for each of the eight churches in the proximity of the suburb. Even at current population levels in Hobsonville Point, there would have been an average increase of around forty people in each of these churches. Yet, such numbers appear not to have been reached, which suggests that existing churches re not absorbing potential church-goers from the new suburb.
5. Relevance of churches to the community
At a more fundamental level, the absence of churches in Hobsonville Point raises the issue of how the planners of such suburbs see the relevance of churches for these communities. While they prioritised proximity of transport facilities and public amenities, and strove to make these within easy walking distance for residents, the nearest church (Westgate Baptist) is around five kilometres away, making it necessary for most people living in Hobsonville Point to reach it by car rather than on foot. This is not necessarily a barrier, but it does defy the emphasis on easy access by foot to amenities that the suburb has been based on.
In a way, churchless suburbs such as Hobsonville Point, anticipate greater secularism, rather than reflect it. That is, they are based on a presumption that in the future, the demand for churches will be so slight that there will be no basis for having a church as a part of the development. After all, how many incoming residents were deterred from living in the suburb by the absence of a local church? This becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, with no churches in the development appearing to prove the point of this lack of demand. And while the demand for a church can be met by Hobsonville Point residents travelling to neighbouring areas, the social and community functions of a church will not be a feature of the suburb.[17]
In addition, by excluding churches when planning a suburb such as Hobsonville Point, the role of secularism shifts from merely being the description of a consequence of a loss of belief to representing an alternative way of life that is self-satisfying and self-justifying.[18] It could even be argued that the facilities that are a part of the suburb serve as substitutes for some of the functions of a church—particularly in the area of community cohesion—and to that extent, militate against the presence of a church there.[19] The other consideration connected to this is that over time, the absence of a church in a suburb becomes normalised. It reduces expectations of churches being built as parts of other new developments and contributes to what is already a growing popular unawareness of what churches are and what happens within their walls,[20] and consequently marginalises or “others” them.
6. The culture of church-planting
Connected to the issue of new suburbs such as Hobsonville Point being church-free is the culture of church-planting in New Zealand more generally. Most of the churches in the vicinity of Hobsonville Point were formed decades ago, and since then, some have expanded or replaced their buildings. However, the actual number of churches built in the surrounding suburbs has not increased in line with the population growth in the area over the last decade. The case could therefore be made that there has been a de facto cessation of church planting within surrounding suburbs that has preceded the failure to establish a new church in Hobsonville Point.
Part of the reason for this trend away from church-planting, according to Hibbert, is a shift particularly in some Protestant churches since the Second World War to more emphasis being placed on evangelisation efforts aimed primarily at encouraging people to join existing congregations.[21] By the same token, though, since the 1980s, there has been a proliferation of church-planting models that have been developed,[22] which suggests that at least some opportunity existed for a new church to have been established in Hobsonville Point.
7. Utopianism
There is no question that Hobsonville Point has utopian objectives woven into its development. These are surprisingly overt and focus on an aspiration to approximate an ideal community. There is a pedigree for such thinking in the country, as Sargent has identified.
From its founding in the middle of the nineteenth century to the present, New Zealand has been the site of a series of Utopian projects designed to create either a national utopia or small-scale utopias … within the nation. These projects are reflected in Utopian literature, intentional communities or communal experiments (including… government-sponsored program[s] …).[23]
With its emphases on aesthetic excellence, cleanliness, environmental protection, a broad range of facilities and amenities, and a largely self-contained community—all the result of careful planning by government agencies—Hobsonville Point certainly fits in with Sargent’s notion of a state-sponsored utopian project.
What is evident, though, from this philosophical approach to the Hobsonville Point development is that the brand of quasi-utopianism adopted by planners excluded any religious component. This effectively elevates the ensuing secular nature of the community to a utopian ideal, and makes the exclusion of any consideration of churches from the suburb an implicitly ideological position, rather than an act of omission.[24] It is important to note that the counterpoint to a secular community is not a religious one, but one where options for religious expression are available. The absence of a church at Hobsonville Point obvious precludes several options for conventional religious expression—of the sort that occurs in churches—but there have been responses from churches in neighbouring areas and Christian groups within the suburb in an effort to compensate for this.
Responses
Not having a dedicated building for worship resonates with the situation of the earliest Christians,[25] and so has the response in some ways to the absence of a church in Hobsonville Point. It is beyond the scope of this article to speculate over whether such responses are suited to all new planned suburbs such as Hobsonville Point. However, it is useful to consider how Christianity is making an imprint on an ostensibly secular suburb, and in the process, is becoming part of the utopian ambition of the suburb, rather than apart from or incidental to it. Two of the main responses to the churchlessness of Hobsonville Point are summarised here.
Hobsonville Point Church Family
This group describes itself as “a community of Christian believers and those open to exploring their faith who live in the Hobsonville Point and surrounding area.” Significantly, as the Hobsonville Point Church Family outlines its activities, there is no sense in which the absence of a dedicated church building in the suburb is a significant barrier. The group focuses on
uniting in fellowship, ongoing discipleship, exploring faith with those who express interest/openness, and being a blessing our local community by standing with and for them and helping community needs be met.
Its activities include a combination of
worship, scripture, prayer, hospitality, supporting one another, discipleship, fellowship, growing together, and practically serving our local Hobsonville Point community and surrounding area.[26]
The Hobsonville Point Church Family has regular Sunday gatherings, which include shared meals, devotion, worship, and child-focussed activities. Its leaders note that
These gatherings rotate usually weekly and often are based from different homes within our church family but we adapt our rhythm to ensure we do not conflict with other community gatherings and can join with them instead.[27]
The success of this model can be measured in various ways, but what is the primary focus on the context of this article is how the absence of a church as part of the built landscape of Hobsonville Point does not prevent the existence of a Christian community in the suburb, although it does impose some restrictions on scale (with people’s homes being the determining factor in the size of a typical gathering), while also fostering more intimate forms of worship, with less formal or fixed leadership structures.[28]
C3
While the Hobsonville Point Church Family exists as an alternative to a church housed in its own building, the C3 church (which has its West Auckland branch based in Henderson) offers a hybridised solution to the absence of a church building in Hobsonville Point. In October 2019, it held its inaugural service at Sunderland Lounge[29]—a former Airforce cinema, built in the 1940s, and now administered by the Hobsonville Community Trust. Sunderland Lounge has a maximum capacity of 374 people,[30] and while not specifically designed as a church, it nonetheless serves that purpose for the C3 congregation. And although C3 does not have a presence in the built environment of Hobsonville Point as a church, the fact that it uses a facility that is also used at other community groups at various times during the week is indicative of how a church can integrate itself into what is ostensibly a secular utopian community project.
Conclusion
While church buildings have been excluded from Hobsonville Point, Christianity has not. Instead, in the absence of a dedicated church building, Christian groups have responded by adapting to the circumstances of the suburb. Part of this adaptation has involved a tacit acknowledgement that Hobsonville Point has been developed with specific philosophical objectives in mind—objectives oriented towards an ideal, almost utopian community. Hence, the emphasis placed by these Christian groups on grafting their activities onto those already in place in the suburb. As the Hobsonville Point Church Family notes,
Our church calendar will usually make space for our church family to be involved in community events of interest to them so that we are an authentic part of and connected to our community. HCTs community initiatives, focuses and activities are not focussed on drawing people to church, proselytysing or similar.
Furthermore, it “does not discriminate on any grounds, including belief/faith/religion.”[31] Such statements are arguably more consistent with secular community groups than those of mainstream Christian denominations, and reveal the extent to which the efforts at evangelisation in churchless suburbs result in a process of navigating through ideological and sociological structures that have been put in place by the planners responsible for those suburbs.
Paul Moon is Professor of History at Auckland University of Technology. He has recently completed a biography of James Busby
[1] Todd Niall, “Unexpected Boom has Hobsonville Point Residents Worried,” Radio New Zealand, 20 February 2018. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/350812/unexpected-boom-has-hobsonville-point-residents-worried.
[2] Ann Winstanley, David C. Thorns, and Harvey C. Perkins. "Nostalgia, Community and New Housing Developments: A Critique of New Urbanism Incorporating a New Zealand Perspective," Urban Policy and Research 21.2 (2003): 175–89; S. Opit, Consuming community: Land Development Projects and the Rhetoric of Building Community in Hobsonville, Auckland. MA thesis (Auckland: University of Auckland, 2012), 1–10.
[3] S. Opit and R. Kearns, “A New Housing Development at Hobsonville: Promoting and Buying into a ‘Natural Community,’” (Auckland: School of Environment, The University of Auckland, 2013), 11.
[4] Errol Haarhoff, Natalie Allen, Patricia Austin, Lee Beattie, and Paola Boarin, “Living at Density in Hobsonville Point, Auckland: Resident Perceptions,” Building Better Homes, Towns and Cities National Science Challenge Working Paper 19–01 (Auckland: 2019), 4.
[5] Haarhoff, et al., 63.
[6] S. Opit and R. Kearns, “Selling a natural community: Exploring the Role of Representations in Promoting a New Urban Development,” New Zealand Geographer 70.2 (2014): 92.
[7] J. Eyles, “Housing Advertisements Assigns: Locality Creation and Meaning-System,” Geografiska Annaler 69, no. 2 (1987): 102; H. C. Perkins, “The Country in the Town: the Role of Real Estate Developers in the Construction of the Meaning of Place,” Journal of Rural Studies 5, no. 1 (1989): 72.
[8] Opit and Kearns, “Selling a Natural Community,” 92.
[9] M. Galanter, “Secularism, East and West,” in Comparative Studies in Society and History 7, no. 2 (1965): 133.
[10] Noel Cox, "Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction in the Church of the Province of Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia." Deakin L. Rev. 6 (2001): 262.
[11] N. R. Keddie, “Secularism and the State: Towards Clarity and Global Comparison,” New Left Review 1, no. 226 (1997): 21; M. Hill, “Religion,” in New Zealand Society: A Sociological Introduction, ed. P. Spoonley, D. Pearson, I. Shirley (Palmerston North: Dunmore Press, 1994), 295.
[12] Peter J. Lineham, “Christian Reaction to Freethought and Rationalism in New Zealand,” Journal of Religious History 15, no. 2 (1988): 236–50.
[13] These churches were contacted by the author in November 2019.
[14] As an example, see Lindsay Jacobs, “The New Zealand Story: The Stone-Campbell Movement in New Zealand,” Leaven 17.3 (2009): 1–4.
[15] “Census 2018: New Zealand is More Secular than Ever Before,” in New Zealand Herald, 25 September 2019.
[16] McCrindle Research, Faith and Belief in New Zealand: A National Research Study Exploring Attitudes Towards Religion, Spirituality and Christianity in New Zealand (Baulkham Hills: Wilberforce Foundation, 2018), 5–6.
[17] As an example of this role, see W. H. Swatos Jr, “The Relevance of Religion: Iceland and Secularization Theory,” in Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 23, no. 1 (1984): 35.
[18] B. Ledewitz, Church, State, and the Crisis in American Secularism (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2011), xviii.
[19] E. Gibbs, and R. K. Bolger. Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures (Michigan, IL: Baker Academic, 2005), 235.
[20] G. Davie, “Believing Without Belonging: is This the Future of Religion in Britain?” Social Compass 37, no. 4 (1990): 455–69.
[21] R. Y. Hibbert, “The Place of Church Planting in Mission: Towards a Theological Framework,” Evangelical Review of Theology 33, no. 4 (2009): 320–321.
[22] T. A. Steffen, “Selecting a Church Planting Model That Works,” Missiology 22, no. 3 (1994): 362.
[23] L. T. Sargent, “Utopianism and the Creation of New Zealand National Identity,” Utopian Studies 12, no. 1 (2001): 1.
[24] M. J. Lewis, City of Refuge: Separatists and Utopian Town Planning (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), 14.
[25] F. V. Filson, “The Significance of the Early House Churches,” Journal of Biblical Literature 58, no. 2 (1939): 106.
[26] “Hobsonville Point Church Family (HPCF),” Hobsonville Community Trust, https://hobsonville.org.nz/hpcf-2.
[27] https://hobsonville.org.nz/hpcf-2.
[28] J. D. Payne, Missional House Churches: Reaching our Communities with the Gospel (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2008), 5–6.
[29] “Belong: Hobsonville,” https://www.c3belong.church/hobsonville.
[30] “Hobsonville Point Community Facilities,” Hobsonville Community Trust, https://hobsonville.org.nz/community-facilities.