KEY POINTS:
Many eyebrows must be raised at a strange discussion of religion taking place at the Government's behest. A "national interfaith forum" has been held in Hamilton this week to discuss a draft national statement on religious diversity and it has ended in agreement that New Zealand has "no state religion". Well, we knew that.
Nobody except the Destiny Church has claimed the country does have a state religion, and even the Destiny pastor was talking about the country's heritage rather than the usual meaning of a state religion, an officially favoured church.
New Zealand, as the national statement observed, has been a non-sectarian state since the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi when Governor Hobson affirmed in response to a question from the Catholic Bishop Pompallier that, "the several faiths of England, of the Wesleyans, of Rome, and also Maori custom shall alike be protected".
Nothing has changed in that regard in the 167 years since and nothing is likely to change. Why, then, is the Government fomenting this discussion? When the exercise was announced, the Prime Minister presented it as an antidote to the potential for religious extremism among second- and third-generation immigrant minorities. We welcomed an effort in that direction. This country must do what it can to avoid the avoid the kind of tensions seen in Britain, and in Australia last summer when Sydney beaches were the scene of riots in reaction to real or perceived offences by young Muslim Lebanese.
But the debate this week is about how much the country needs to deny its Christian heritage in order that other traditions may be assured they have equal rights and recognition here. Those who have no regard for religion at all would be happy to deny that a Christian heritage has any role in the country's modern life, but they are wrong. Most of the attitudes and values that underpin our laws, education and codes of behaviour grew from the teachings of Christianity.
The very spirit of tolerance that inspires the draft statement on religious diversity is a direct outgrowth of New Testament edicts to "turn the other cheek" and "love your enemy". These unnatural injunctions are not emphasised in the monotheistic religions closely related to Christianity. It is illegal in many Islamic countries to proselytise, or for Muslims to adopt another faith. The notion of separating church and state is foreign to Islam, which has little concept of secular life.
Ironically for both sides in the debate this week, a national statement on religious diversity is an essentially Christian statement. Secularists seemed not to realise that the more a national statement downplayed the country's Christian heritage, the more true to that heritage it would be. Destiny Church, the Exclusive Brethren and other evangelicals who want Christianity to receive some form of official recognition appear unaware they would deprive their religion of one of its prime distinctions.
If the object of the exercise is to reassure Muslim and other immigrant groups of their religious acceptance, the first task is to ensure they understand the place of religion in Western liberal societies such as this one. That understanding is not advanced by arguments that Christianity is in any sense a state religion. The distinction between moral and legal authority is not easy for others to grasp, but it has to be realised if adherents to different spiritual and moral guides are to observe the same laws.
Christians can be content that their religion remains the mainspring of our Western civilisation. No national statement can alter that.
