Religiously tolerant New Zealanders elected two freethinkers as premier of the country before 1890, and in 1893 New Zealand became the first country in the world to give women the right to vote.
Weekly churchgoing, which peaked in the late nineteenth century at around 30 percent of the population, slowly declined during the twentieth century and more rapidly from the mid-1960s. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, approximately 8 to 10 percent of the population regularly attended church services. By that time secular New Zealanders professing no religion or objecting to state a religious preference made up more than one-third of the population. Asian immigration burgeoned in the late twentieth century, introducing small but growing numbers of Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Confucians, Buddhists, and Asian Christians into the country.
Religious Tolerance
The British crown and Maori Christian chiefs signed the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840. In return for ceding sovereignty, the treaty guaranteed Maori authority over their lands, forests, fisheries, and other treasured possessions. Maori were given all the rights and privileges of British subjects. The treaty also guaranteed religious liberty. Although the crown subsequently breached the treaty, it has remained the basis for the compensation processes occurring sporadically since the 1880s and more systematically since 1975 and for affirming partnership between Pakeha (that is, non-Maori) and Maori today.
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