Religion
Christianity is the predominant religion in New Zealand at just over half of the population at the 2006 New Zealand Census, although regular church attendance is probably closer to 15 percent. In the 2006 Census, 55.6 percent of the population identified themselves as Christians, while another 34.7 percent indicated that they had no religion (up from 29.6 percent in 2001) and around 4 percent affiliated with other religions. Immigrants make up 80 percent of most of the non-Christian religions, with the traditional Māori religion, Judaism (24 percent immigrant) and Bahá'í (20 percent immigrant) being the exceptions.
The traditional religion of the indigenous Māori population was animistic, but with the arrival of missionaries from the early 19th century most of the Māori population converting to Christianity. In 2006, 2,412 Māori still identify themselves as adhering to traditional Māori beliefs. The main Christian denominations are Anglicanism, Roman Catholicism, Presbyterianism and Methodism. There are also significant numbers of Christians who identify themselves with Pentecostal, Baptist, and Latter-day Saint churches and the New Zealand-based Ratana church has adherents among Māori. According to census figures, other significant minority religions include Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam. New Zealand has no state religion and freedom of religion has been protected since the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi.
Read more about this topic: Demographics Of New Zealand
Famous quotes containing the word religion:
“Our religion vulgarly stands on numbers of believers. Whenever the appeal is made—no matter how indirectly—to numbers, proclamation is then and there made, that religion is not. He that finds God a sweet, enveloping presence, who shall dare to come in?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“In the latter part of the seventeenth century, according to the historian of Dunstable, “Towns were directed to erect ‘a cage’ near the meeting-house, and in this all offenders against the sanctity of the Sabbath were confined.” Society has relaxed a little from its strictness, one would say, but I presume that there is not less religion than formerly. If the ligature is found to be loosened in one part, it is only drawn the tighter in another.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It is visible then that it was not any Heathen Religion or other Idolatrous Superstition, that first put Man upon crossing his Appetites and subduing his dearest Inclinations, but the skilful Management of wary Politicians; and the nearer we search into human Nature, the more we shall be convinced, that the Moral Virtues are the Political Offspring which Flattery begot upon Pride.”
—Bernard De Mandeville (1670–1733)