KEY POINTS:
New Zealand may or may not be "God's own country" but it has always been more Christian than we thought, says a leading historian.
Dr John Stenhouse, an associate professor at Otago University, has told an evangelical Christian congress that "secular and left-liberal" historians, who have dominated New Zealand historical writing, have distorted the country's history to push contemporary agendas.
"For most of our history, Christianity has been more widespread and influential than many historians, especially in recent years, have acknowledged," he told the Vision Network of churches.
"Arguments to the contrary should probably be understood as, in large part, attempts to use history to marginalise or silence religious believers."
His critique will be music to the ears of Destiny Church leader Brian Tamaki, who led 1800 people on a march at Waitangi last year rejecting a draft statement on religious diversity which claimed that New Zealand had no "established religion".
Auckland University of Technology historian Paul Moon, who said last week there was no requirement in the Bible to celebrate Christmas or Easter, said Dr Stenhouse "hits the nail on the head".
"There has been a view of New Zealand history that has been promulgated, which seems to be a left-leaning view of history, and if you don't conform to that view you are excluded from the crowd.
"It has almost become a badge of honour that, for a lot of historians, you approach things by dismissing the role of the churches."
But Otago emeritus professor Erik Olssen, who appointed Dr Stenhouse to his job 20 years ago, said his attack on mainstream historians was "either unfair or disingenuous or both".
Dr Stenhouse's paper, headed "Secular New Zealand? Or God's Own Country?" said secular historians such as Dr Olssen and Keith Sinclair "have often dismissed or denigrated, and sometimes even demonised, Christianity's role and influence in New Zealand".
Sinclair's History of New Zealand (1959) characterised the prevailing religion as "a simple materialism" and claimed that "a labourer was almost never seen in church".
Olssen argued in the Oxford History of New Zealand (1992) that only 30 per cent of New Zealanders attended church regularly as early as 1881, and said the middle class "dominated all the churches", from which "working men had defected in droves".
Dr Stenhouse argues that Christianity was always much stronger than this mainstream view implied.
For example, the 1881 census which found that only 30 per cent of people attended church weekly also found that 95 per cent of settlers were adherents of Christian churches. Most went to church for baptisms, weddings and funerals and many attended at Christmas and Easter.
"Most New Zealand children attended Sunday school during the 19th century," Dr Stenhouse says. "High Sunday school attendance persisted in New Zealand until the 1960s ... As late as the 1990s, 70 per cent of New Zealanders attended church occasionally."
He says worshippers were not only middle-class.
His study of 15 south Dunedin churches between 1890 and 1940 found that "working-class people numerically dominated most congregations".
Although New Zealand has never followed the English model of a "state church" with the monarch as the head of the Anglican Church, Dr Stenhouse notes that the return of the body of an unknown warrior from World War I was celebrated in Wellington's Anglican cathedral in 2004, and the recent state funeral for Sir Edmund Hillary took place in an Anglican church in Parnell.
He notes that the term "God's own country" was coined by Liberal Premier Dick Seddon, a churchgoing Anglican, and that Labour Prime Minister Michael Joseph Savage described the welfare state as "applied Christianity".
"Those today who appeal to history to `prove' that New Zealand has always been a secular society are on shaky ground," he says.
But Dr Olssen said he had often discussed whether New Zealand was a "Christian country" with Dr Stenhouse, and agreed that the country's values were "profoundly shaped by our Christian inheritance".
"But if you were to say I actually believe in the creed, I don't, and I would think if you were to ask mainstream society, it would be quite interesting how many believe," Dr Olssen said.
"The idea that there is a whole bunch of conspirators distorting the past to advance contemporary agendas - I just find that bizarre."
