Venu Menon
Wellington, December 30,2023
Maori are losing faith in Christianity with religious beliefs among indigenous people in Aotearoa shifting significantly over the past two decades, a study has found.
Fifty percent of Maori identified as having “no religion” in the 2018 census, up from 36.5% in 2006.
Researchers Masoumeh Sara Rahmani, a lecturer in Religious Studies, and Peter Adds, a professor of Maori Studies, both from Victoria University of Wellington, found Maori identification with Christianity had dropped from 46.2% to 29.9%.
Atheism and colonisation
The study, published last month, examined the “apparent rise of Maori atheism” and found that “the colonial history of religion was a driving force for Maori who identified as atheist or having no religion.”
The study quoted Maori atheists as experiencing discrimination for their lack of religion and their “Maoriness was questioned within their community or [at] work.”
As part of the research, 16 Maori aged between 30 and 65 years were interviewed, “who did not believe in god (s).”
Most of the participants were raised in religious households.
Those who cited no religion in the census covered a wide range of standpoints. There were people who said they were spiritual but not religious. Others were agnostics who doubted the existence of a “higher power,” while some were atheists who did not believe in the existence of god (s).
Intellectual doubt was a pivotal factor. Said a participant: “If I’m being intellectually honest and consistent, I should put all my beliefs on the table and I should examine all of them. I shouldn’t keep some safe from scrutiny just because they’re mine, they’re Maori.”
Others left Christianity on moral grounds. The study found those grounds included “a perceived hypocrisy among churchgoers, immorality of religious leaders, and the role of religion in spreading harmful views about women and LGBTQ people.”
But most participants saw Christianity as the religion of the coloniser. They rejected Christianity as “an expression of resistance against the colonial systems of belief.”
The study found participants’ ideas of religion were primarily shaped by their experience of various Christian denominations and their knowledge of the Christian missionary history in New Zealand.
Most of the people the researchers spoke to “viewed religion as a colonial tool for the oppression of Maori people and culture.”
Maori cultural identity
Another participant noted: “I’ve only become very angry against religion over the last five years after I found out what they’ve done to my culture…. We’ve lost a lot of culture from the Anglican missionary societies… Removing one’s culture and then assimilating them into religion is …… like a double-edged sword of colonisation.”
Some interviewees said Christianity had been “used as a way to exert cultural superiority, labelling indigenous beliefs and practices as ‘evil’.”
The study quoted others who argued that “the God of the Bible is not indigenous to Aotearoa, but rather a creation myth from the Middle East and, therefore, inherently irrelevant to Maori people.”
The researchers noted, based on the interviews, that Maori rejection of Christianity “seems to be largely aligned with anti-colonial movements, Maori protest movements, and the decolonial feminist movement.”
Participants were divided on indigenous “wairua” [spirit, soul] beliefs and non-belief in all supernatural phenomena.
The study observed that “the emergence of ‘non-religious’ as a growing sector of the Maori community poses both challenges and opportunities” to Maori self-definition as a community.
But Maori identity and its link to religious or spiritual beliefs were hotly debated within the community. Some felt such beliefs were endemic to Maori identity, while others wanted a clear differentiation between culture and religion.
Maori-Crown relations
The research showed the plurality of views within the Maori community impinged on perceptions around Maori-Crown relations.
While the Crown was clearly identified in Treaty negotiations, the Treaty partner was harder to identify in precise terms.
The study raised the question: Was being spiritual or religious a prerequisite to being a Maori?
Clearly, the answer to that was still in process.
Venu Menon is an Indian Newslink reporter based in Wellington
