'Goes without Saying': Themes for Trans-Tasman Religious Research.

Social Inclusion, 2016

About a century ago New Zealand was a predominantly white Anglo-Saxon Christian nation, flavoured only by diversities of Christianity. A declining indigenous population (Maori) for the most part had been successfully converted as a result of 19th century missionary endeavour. In 2007, in response to increased presence of diverse religions, a national Statement on Religious Diversity was launched. During the last quarter of the 20th century the rise of immigrant communities, with their various cultures and religions, had contributed significantly to the changing demographic profile of religious affiliation. By early in the 21st century this diversity, together with issues of inter-communal and interreligious relations, all in the context of New Zealand being a secular society, needed to be addressed in some authoritative way. Being a secular country, the government keeps well clear of religion and expects religions to keep well clear of politics. This paper will outline relevant hist...

Review Highlights: “In The Spirit of the Past Troughton and Morrison masterfully brought together high-quality essays that cover a wide range of important topics that speak directly to the importance of religion in New Zealand’s history…. Although each volume [New Zealand Jesus and The Spirit of the Past] has a different goal, they both reflect the high-caliber of writing and research currently underway in New Zealand and should be read by all historians of modern Christianity. These works are vital for not only better understanding the national religious history of New Zealand, but also for confirming that the history of modern Christianity is transnational in scope.” Church History 83, no. 1 (2014): 248-251. “The essays, all embodying new historical research, offer rich narratives of religion in our history, especially in the diversity of theologies and religious forms…. Have the editors achieved their stated aim of showing the value of research on religion for understanding our national history? Yes. What this volume so powerfully conveys is the ways in which the manifold religious frameworks shape, and have shaped, our consciousness and self-understanding and that of our communities. Our internal space, as it were, was, and still is, in part theologically structured and makes little sense without reference to this context..… The highly readable essays in The Spirit of the Past successfully put religion back into our history in all its complex and nuanced forms, and strongly call on us to challenge the still dominant "secular nationalist" version of our history. New Zealand Books (Summer 2012): 20. “Despite the diversity of the subject matter covered, the various chapters illustrate how the historiography of Christianity has a major contribution to make to the way in which New Zealanders make sense of their past – be they devout believers, devout unbelievers, or those who hesitate somewhere between those poles. This is because most of the writers have set themselves the task of thinking about why the activities of New Zealand Christians might have had a significance that extends beyond the immediate concerns of pew and presbytery.” Colloquium 44, no. 1 (2012): 131-134.

New Zealand Geographer, 2016

While globalization inevitably exerts particular influences on vernacular cultures, it does not ineluctably replace the entirety of those cultures with a homogenized monoculture of foreign origin. Such total-dislocation scenario oversimplifies the complexity of globalization, understates the power of cultural resilience and people as creative agencies. The contention will be demonstrated through the religious dimension viewed under a functional approach that Goodenough (2002) used in his study of pre-Christian religious tradition in Chuuk, while the possible connection between religion and globalization is suggested by a correlational study by Skinner (2003) that found nations with greater percentages of Christians, non-religious, and atheists have greater Globalization Index. I will deal mainly with Christianity as the historically predominant religion in Oceania, and its intermingling with the indigenous beliefs that have existed long before European contacts and missionization. I further demonstrate that under a functional approach, the intermingling of Christianity and the indigenous religion can produce a localized Christianity that is characterized by both oppositions and accommodations. In some cases, the concerns people showed are indicative of the inconspicuous willingness from the indigenous to partake in modernity preconditioned, among others, by post-colonial remnant of cultural denigration in the Pacific. This evidence will also reveal how religion serves a function in the midst of postcolonial situation and the anxieties produced. The choice of religion as the focus of analysis, besides its paramount and universal position in human culture, is expected to be able to provide us with some insights into the functioning of religions in our less than perfect society that, in the presence of globalization, is not so much different with the areas in Oceania.

Australia is a country rich in religious diversity. While constitutionally-speaking Australia is a secular society, waves of immigration over its short history have had a large impact on its religious and cultural make-up. The Encyclopedia of Religion in Australia is the first major work of reference to describe the beliefs, practices and organisation of religion in Australia. It examines religion in several different ways: historical development, belief systems and controversies, as well as the social role each faith plays in modern Australian society. This comprehensive volume includes entries on indigenous spirituality, Scientology, hillsong, and atheism, and features all of the major religions. Richly illustrated, it includes a section dedicated to current debates and issues in modern-day Australia, such as the place of religion in politics, fundamentalism, religious education and social cohesion.

Contemporary Australian expressions of religion and spirituality demonstrate a diversity and flexibility that is largely the result of the changes wrought by the dual processes of secularisation and multiculturalism, which have increasingly characterised Australian culture since the 1960s (Bouma 1999, 18-24). Prior to the mid-twentieth century, Australia’s spiritual and religious climate was dominated by the convict origins of the white settlers, interdenominational conflict between Catholic and Protestant Christians, and the systematic suppression of the indigenous Australian Aboriginal culture, including Aboriginal religion (Thompson 2002, passim). “Spirituality,” a looser construct than “religion” (Brown, 1997, 116), has gained in popularity as organized religion, chiefly Christianity, has declined. Data from the five-yearly Australian Bureau of Statistics censuses demonstrates a strong trend towards personal choice in matters of religion and spirituality (particularly in the 1991, 1996 and 2001 censuses), and also changes in the religious profile of Australians that are the result of immigration (“A natural choice”, 2003). However, since the election of the conservative Howard federal government in 1996 Christianity has occupied a prominent place in public affairs, due to the government’s espousal of “family values” and outsourcing of job placement agencies to churches, among other things (Maddox, 2005). This paper is divided into four sections: the first details the colonisation of Australia and the religious context of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; the second examines the effects of secularisation and the growth of diversity; the third gives details of a broad range of contemporary spiritualities with distinctively Australian manifestations; and the brief fourth section chronicles the rise of a public, right-wing Christianity over the past decade, culminating in the electoral success of Family First in the 2004 Federal election.

BYU L. Rev., 2006

Strengthening the Church in New Zealand. New Vision New Zealand, vol. 5, edited by Mark Nichols., 2024

This short chapter draws upon two main sources, the New Zealand Census and the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study (NZAVS), together with other recent studies to highlight some key contemporary trends in New Zealand Christianity. Themes include religious identification, ethnicity, attendance, conversion, and trust.

Journal of the association for the study of Australian literature, 2013

The paper discusses the dichotomy between the 'metaphysical ascendancy' and postcolonial critical approaches, considering their implications for Aboriginal claims to sacred sites and referring to Mudrooroo's Doctor Wooreddy's Prescription for Enduring the Ending of the World and Master of the Ghost Dreaming .

We begin by briefly considering contemporary debates and migration and religion, looking at literature in migration studies, religious studies and theology. We then provide an overview of migrants and migration to New Zealand, noting changes across time and recent Census data. In this section we also note the various responses to migrants in New Zealand, particularly those that see migrants as a threat to a ‘New Zealand way of life. From there, we turn to the debate about migrants and the “decline” of Christianity in New Zealand and consider whether the debate has merit. Again, we draw on recent Census data to provide a statistical overview of migrants to New Zealand and their religious affiliations, while also noting that these data only give a partial reading at best of religious affiliation and expression. In this section we also consider the role that churches have played and continue to play in assisting toward the settlement of migrants in New Zealand. The next section of this paper turns our attention toward migration in Scripture. Having considered the reality of the ethnic diversification of New Zealand society, how might Christians respond in light of Scripture?