Religion in New Zealand

While the number and proportion who identify as Christians has fallen in recent years, Sikhism (+31%), Islam (+22%) and Hinduism (+17%) were the fastest growing religions over the 2018-2023 period, fuelled by immigration to New Zealand from Asia.

In the 1840s, it is probable that a larger proportion of Māori regularly attended church services than people did in the United Kingdom.

[4] With the vast majority of 19th-century European immigrants coming from the British Isles, three Christian denominations predominated post-colonial New Zealand: Anglicanism, Catholicism and Presbyterianism.

[citation needed] Immigration since 1991 has led to slight yet steady growth in the number of adherents of south and south-east Asian religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism and Sikhism, particularly in Auckland.

Statistics New Zealand (the state agency that collects statistics on religion and other demographics) state that: Religious affiliation is a variable of strong interest to religious organisations, social scientists, and can be used as an explanatory variable in studies on topics such as marriage formation and dissolution, fertility and income.

The related infographic showed that, of the 33% who identified with Christianity, 16% were church-goers (attending at least monthly) and 9% were "Active Practisers" (described as "extremely involved").

[30] The first Christian service conducted in New Zealand waters was probably to have been Catholic liturgies celebrated by Father Paul-Antoine Léonard de Villefeix, the Dominican chaplain of the ship Saint Jean Baptiste commanded by the French navigator and explorer Jean-François-Marie de Surville.

Villefeix was the first Christian clergyman to set foot in New Zealand, and probably said Mass on board the ship near Whatuwhiwhi in Doubtless Bay on Christmas Day 1769.

[32][3] The CMS sent missionaries to settle in New Zealand, and founded its first mission at Rangihoua Bay in the 1814 and over the next decade established farms and schools in the area.

In June 1823 Wesleydale, the first Wesleyan Methodist mission in New Zealand, was established at Kaeo, near Whangaroa Harbour.

[34] Church Missionary Society printer/missionary, William Colenso's 1837 Māori New Testament was the first indigenous-language translation of the Bible published in the southern hemisphere.

As a result, by the time of the 1921 census, no uniform distribution existed amongst non-Māori Christians, with Presbyterians as the dominant group in Otago and Southland; Anglicans in the Far North, the East Cape and various other areas including Banks Peninsula; while Methodists flourished mainly in Taranaki and the Manawatū; and Catholicism was the dominant religion on the West Coast with its many mining concerns, and in Central Otago.

[13] The Catholic Church, while not particularly dominant in terms of proportional numbers, became more prominent throughout the country in the early and middle 20th century through establishing many schools in that period.

[6] To this day, however, Christian prayer (karakia) is the expected way to begin and end Māori public gatherings of many types.

[48] Early in the 1990s many migrants were admitted under New Zealand's refugee quota, from war zones in Somalia, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Kosovo and Iraq.

[49][50] In the 2018 census, 61,455 people, identified themselves as Muslim constituting 1.32% of the total population making it the third largest religion in the country.

The first recorded communal Jewish service in New Zealand was held on 7 January 1843 in Wellington, although individual Jews were amongst earlier explorers and settlers.

[citation needed] The majority of New Zealand Jews reside in Auckland and Wellington,[56] although there is also a significant Jewish community in Dunedin which is believed to have the world's southernmost permanent synagogue.

[60] About 1913 there were two converts—Robert Felkin who had met 'Abdu'l-Bahá in London in 1911 and moved to New Zealand in 1912 and is considered a Baháʼí by 1914[61] and Margaret Stevenson who first heard of the religion in 1911 and by her own testimony was a Bahá'í in 1913.

Major Christian events, such as Christmas and Easter, are official public holidays and are celebrated by religious and non-religious alike, as in many countries around the world.

There has been occasional controversy over the degree of separation of church and state, for example the practice of prayer and religious instruction at school assemblies.

[2][76] However, the following anomalies exist: At the discussions leading to the Treaty of Waitangi Governor Hobson made a statement (albeit one which had no particular legal or constitutional significance) in defence of freedom of religion—sometimes called the 'fourth' article.

[80][81] In 2007, the government issued a National Statement on Religious Diversity containing in its first clause, "New Zealand has no official or established religion.

"[82] The statement caused controversy in some quarters, opponents citing that New Zealand's head of state, then Queen Elizabeth II, is required to be the supreme governor of the Church of England.

In July 2001 MP Rodney Hide alerted parliament to a state funded hikitapu (tapu-lifting) ceremony at the opening of the foreign embassy in Bangkok.

It was revealed that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade had a standard policy of employing Māori ritual experts for the opening of official offices around the world.

[85] In 2002 local Māori expressed concerns that the development of the Auckland-Waikato expressway would disturb the taniwha, or guardian spirit, of the Waikato River, leading to delays and alterations to the project.

[93][94] The Exclusive Brethren gained public notoriety during the 2005 election for distributing anti-Labour pamphlets, which former National Party leader Don Brash later admitted to knowledge of.

A number of New Zealand prime ministers have been professing Christians, including Michael Joseph Savage, Walter Nash, Keith Holyoake, Jack Marshall, Bill Rowling, Robert Muldoon, David Lange, Geoffrey Palmer, Jim Bolger and Jenny Shipley.

Former Prime Minister Bill English (PM December 2016 to October 2017) is Catholic and has argued that religious groups should contribute to political discourse.