Biculturalism remains very important in contemporary New Zealand.
No state church took root in New Zealand. The country prided itself on its reputation as an egalitarian, religiously tolerant, and socially progressive democracy. Ethnoreligious minorities—Irish Roman Catholics, Maori prophets, and the Chinese—sometimes suffered discrimination and injustice at the hands of a state that they saw as all too faithfully reflecting the attitudes of the British Protestant majority.
Major Religion
Christianity
DATE OF ORIGIN 1769 C.E.
NUMBER OF FOLLOWERS 2.3 million
History
The French explorer Jean de Surville's Dominican chaplain celebrated the first Roman Catholic mass in Doubtless Bay in 1769. Anglican missionary Reverend Samuel Marsden held the first Protestant service in 1814. During the bloody intertribal Musket Wars of the 1820s, many Maori began to question traditional beliefs. The new way of peace, literacy, and Christianity preached by the missionaries attracted thousands of Maori to Anglican, Methodist, and, from 1838, Roman Catholic mission stations. Most of the country's 100,000 Maori inhabitants embraced Christianity during the 1830s and 1840s. Following the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840, British settlers arrived in growing numbers.
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