Christian politics in New Zealand

This article discusses Christian politics in New Zealand.

The monarch of New Zealand, who is New Zealand's head of state, is also the Supreme Governor of the Church of England. But the country itself, unlike the United Kingdom, has no official or established religion, and freedom of religion has been protected since the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi.^[1][2] As of the 2018 census, 37% of New Zealanders were affiliated with a Christian religion of some denomination, compared with 48% who had no religion, 9% who followed another religion, and 7% who objected to answering.^[3][4] There are a range of views on the extent to which Christianity affects New Zealand politics.

During the nineteenth century, many church-oriented bodies sponsored and fostered several of the original European settlement-ventures in the period 1840–1850, notably the settlements of Otago (1848, Free Church of Scotland) and Canterbury (1850, Church of England) – and many evangelicals, fundamentalists and conservative Catholics see Christianity as underlying New Zealand's entire political system.

On the other hand, a notable politician of the late 19th century, Sir Robert Stout, had a considerable reputation as a freethinker and many dismiss the effects of Christianity, saying that New Zealand society has always had a largely secular character.

Christianity has never had an explicit role in the major contemporary^[update] political parties, and the religious elements in these parties have taken varying forms, and cannot easily be classified as a single movement.

Māori Christianity, particularly the Rātana movement has often been of importance, with an historic alliance between it and the Labour Party signed in 1936, and many other parties now vying for their support,^[5] but this is generally regarded as a political rather than religious matter.

In the 1990s a series of Christian political parties such as Christian Heritage, the Christian Democrats, the Christian Coalition and Destiny New Zealand arose out of a Christian conservative strand in the 1970s and 1980s, mostly in reaction to a perceived decline of social standards; but none reached 5% of the vote in any election. To date, the same has been true of the New Conservative Party, New Zeal Party and Freedoms New Zealand, their contemporary successors in the 2020s.