No State Religion - Fact or Fiction?

Well I’m confused. Joris de Bres just made a very strange statement regarding the National Statement on Religious Diversity;

“It's not a government statement, it's not a new law, it's not forcing anyone to do anything so there's nothing to derail.”

Come again? “It’s not a government statement”???!!! Why the heck is it called a “National Statement on Religious Diversity” then? I don’t know Mr de Bres’s ethnic background, but this really seems a little Double-Dutch to me!

OK, so it has been produced by the Human Rights Commission, not the government. But they are asking the government to ratify it. They want Helen Clark herself to sign the statement, and she seems keen as mustard. Now I know Helen Clark’s signature doesn’t always mean ownership, but really, a National Statement on Religious Diversity is a whole lot more significant than some obscure piece of artwork.

If this statement is approved it will be the first time in the history of New Zealand our government has renounced its Christian identity. In my mind this matters. The relationship of a government to the true and living God, and the authority carried by his Son Jesus Christ, is surely of great significance to the wellbeing of that country. Should New Zealand choose to reject its Christian identity with a renunciation this strong, it would surely grieve God and his children in the same way any single person’s rejection of the Creator grieves us.

"Whoever acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge him before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before men, I will disown him before my Father in heaven.” – Jesus Christ, Matthew 10:32,33


I remember when the Prostitution Reform Act was passed; the sense of grief that overcame me as a result. It was stronger than anything I’d ever felt before, as if somebody really close to me had just died. I had the same feeling when the Civil Union Act was passed into law the next year. The grief that fills the heart in trying to imagine the condition of a soul without God is unfathomable. A nation without God seems absurd.

We were settled under a monarchy committed to Anglican theology and practice. We wrote a national anthem devoted to a recognisably Christian God. Many of our national holidays are based on the Christian calendar, particularly Christmas and Easter. Our Parliament to this day has opened and closed in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and The Bible remains the most sworn upon document for those ministers representing our country in Parliament. Our military and other services are typically conducted by Anglican ministers, and the Wellington Cathedral is right next-door to parliament buildings. Take a walk down your street and tell me how many buildings you see devoted to the Christian religion, and how many are devoted to any other belief systems.

51% of New Zealanders profess a Christian faith. 5-10% may be yet to hear and/or be open to a coherent exposition of the Christian faith. The remaining 40% are likely people who reject philosophical and theological reflection, with a minor smattering of academics and/or intellectuals who enjoy the ego-trip of promoting heresies and ideas that appeal to the more sinful side of human nature.

“New Zealand has no state religion” is not a statement of fact. Christianity, and particularly Anglicanism, has a relationship with our government that is much tighter than any other religion. The Christian God remains the source of moral and legal authority for a massive number of people throughout this country.

If Mr. de Bres is interested in facts we could try the following:

There is no other source of moral authority that can match the weight that the Christian God, namely Jesus Christ, carries in this land.

This is a fact that was accepted 1828 years ago by British King Lucius, 1695 years ago by Roman Emperor Constantine, 1511 years ago by French King Clovis, 1410 years ago by English King St. Ethelbert, and 1095 years ago by Norman Duke Rollo.

The proposed National statement on Religious Diversity contains an explicit rejection of the religious identity of our people that we have held for a millennium, or even two millennia. The proposed statement is quite literally groundbreaking in the history of Christendom, and of The West.


Finally, two lines from Paul Morris’s speech at the presentation of the Statement in Hamilton yesterday reveals the biggest hole in this process;

“Finally, after reading the submissions it is important to note that this is not a theological document debating the relative or absolute merits of one religion over another although some of the respondents took this view. The document is pragmatically concerned with improving how we as different communities can and do live together peacefully.”

The Human Rights Commission, and our current government, are intending to produce a National Statement on Religion Diversity without even engaging in a critical analysis of the theological, philosophical and moral merits of religious diversity. Yet understanding religion is surely the most pressing need of every human being. It affects the basic foundations of our lives, and the deepest questions we could ever ask. Religion offers to guide us through life with the big picture, and give us a context within which to make sense of our lives. It offers to explain to us our nature as human beings, and provide us with solutions.

When we deal with matters of religion it is important we treat the subject with the same level of analysis and critique we would afford to any other subject. In fact, given the importance of the topic, one would hope that the level of discussion would be as transparent, honest and truthful as is humanly possible. My concern is that this hasn’t been the case for the National Statement on Religious Diversity. It has been driven by a minority view – that of the Victoria University Religious Studies department, and of the National Interfaith Network. Meanwhile the rest of us know that the validity of religion stands on its philosophical, moral and historical merits alone, not merely on its existence and classification as a religion.