For the first time, a majority of New Zealanders describe themselves as non-religious. Photo / Brett Phibbs
Belief in God, once deeply rooted in Aotearoa, is now in sharp decline. Matt Burrows peeks behind the latest Census data to find out why.
It took Lydia Cole a decade to admit to herself she was no longer a Christian.
“Through my 20s, I just started taking steps towards being more authentic. I didn’t even realise I was becoming not Christian anymore. I just looked back one day and thought ‘I’m agnostic’. It was very gradual.”
Raised on Auckland’s North Shore, the singer-songwriter had been brought up attending church every Sunday, surrounded by family who had embraced the faith.
“I grew up swimming in Christianity. It was my reality … Bible stories, to me, were just history.”
As she entered her teens, Lydia’s mental health began to deteriorate, and as it did, her church community built a “scaffolding of logic” that could provide neat explanations for the pain and uncertainty she was experiencing.
But Lydia became increasingly frustrated by theologically thin characterisations of her depression, which ultimately delayed her seeking a diagnosis and the professional help she needed.
“[I’d wonder] ‘why do I feel like garbage all the time?’ Some of the answers from the church were, ‘the devil’s trying to attack you’ or ‘God’s testing you to make you stronger’... now I don’t consider those to be healthy answers.”
While grateful to individuals in her church who provided “genuine love, care and connection” in her youth, more questions about her faith emerged as she entered adulthood.
“When one person is really unwell and someone else says ‘God told me they’ll survive this’, and then they don’t, it makes sense to question what else people might be saying or doing in God’s name that isn’t necessarily true.”
By her late 20s, after she returned to New Zealand following a years-long stint pursuing a career in music overseas, Lydia realised the Christian belief system she’d held to her whole life was gone.
“Proximity is a massive thing … overseas I had gotten out of the habit of going to church every Sunday, so when I eventually moved back, the thing I was most excited about was ‘I’ll get my community back!’ But I went back and I was just like, this doesn’t feel right anymore.”
Lydia is no longer sure what she believes – but for now, she’s done trying to work it out.
“The [church’s] need to have certainty about things that can’t be certain, it doesn’t make sense to me,” she says.
“I’m not saying we need evidence for everything we might think or believe, but to go around trying to convince others of something we can’t know? I don’t think that’s a very healthy way of existing.”
If Census figures released earlier this month are anything to go by, there are tens of thousands of people just like Lydia who have left the faith over the past few years.
Stats show an extra 300,000 Kiwis describing themselves as non-religious compared to just five years prior, meaning more than 2.5 million Kiwis now don’t have a faith.
For the first time in recorded history, a greater proportion of New Zealanders identify as non-religious (51.6%) than religious – a significant shift for a nation that until the late 19th Century was more than 90% Christian.
This trend – driven largely by the decline of Christianity, which accounts for three in every four religious people in New Zealand – masks the fact many minority faiths are on the rise.
Fuelled by immigration from Asia, Hinduism makes up 2.9% of the population and is comfortably our second-largest religion, while Sikhism (1%) and Islam (1.5%) continue to experience strong growth.
But the overall influence of religion in Aotearoa is shrinking as Christianity falls away.
Those who identify as Christian now comprise just a third of the total population (32.3%) – down from 59% in 2001 – as another 120,000 people have disaffiliated from the faith in the five years since 2018.
Dr Geoff Troughton, an associate professor at Victoria University who researches contemporary religious change, says this is “entirely consistent and predictable” given religious affiliation patterns over the past 60 years.
He notes identification with Christianity over this period has been declining at about 1% per annum, while identification with no religion has been building at roughly the same rate.
But Dr Mike Crudge, communications director for the Baptist Churches of New Zealand and a researcher of church and society, says there’s a fundamental misunderstanding of what’s happening when people select “no religion” in the Census.
He argues more people are simply feeling free to be honest about what they believe – no longer ticking “Anglican” because their grandmother used to take them to the odd Easter service, or “Sikh” because they feel pressure to hold to the religious cultural ties of the generations before them.
It’s a pattern reflected in New Zealand’s religious history, Crudge says. He notes that in the 1890s, when regular church attendance peaked at about 30%, a massive 90% of the population identified as Christian on the Census – about three times as many as were actually in the pews each week.
The disparity between these two figures reflects the subtle but significant difference between actively practising and simply affiliating with a religion, he says.
Current estimates of regular church attendance now sit somewhere between 10-15%, says Dr Crudge, so a correction in the data is expected over many Censuses as the historical influence of religion in New Zealand wanes.
Census data is of limited value to researchers trying to interpret religious change, largely because there’s a vast array of reasons people might have for selecting “no religion”.
It’s a category that captures everyone from strident atheists, to seeking agnostics, to those who are deeply committed to regular spiritual practices which are disconnected from traditional religion.
“Many people will say they’re non-religious, but it doesn’t mean they don’t have metaphysical beliefs,” Troughton explains.
“Some data suggests 25% of New Zealanders believe in the power of star signs, believe in reincarnation, believe in a range of things that would often be regarded as if not religious, then pretty close to it. But many of these people won’t say they’re religious on a Census… so it doesn’t really help us understand them.”
Massey University emeritus professor Peter Lineham, one of the country’s leading religious historians, says those who select “no religion” in the Census – often referred to as “nones” – roughly fall into two broad categories.
“First, there’s a group that professes no particular religious beliefs and wants nothing to do with religion, though [they] may hold lots of ideas on the subject; and another group which, while it holds no adherence to religion, is highly interested in it and will often use the term ‘spiritual but not religious’.”
The split of these two groups of “nones” is about 60:40, according to the 2023 Faith and Belief Study, an independent survey of more than 1000 New Zealanders commissioned by Christian philanthropist organisation the Wilberforce Foundation.
Lineham says those who fall into the “spiritual but not religious” category – an estimated fifth of New Zealand’s total population – are more likely to be young and have had some exposure to religion, but are eager to explore belief for themselves.
“They are constantly open.They find churches – which are their major connection to religion – very boring and very one-eyed, and they’ve got an eclectic range of beliefs and values and approaches.”
The Faith and Belief Study shows while religion is on the decline, Kiwis have a keen interest in spirituality.
More than four in five (81%) resonate with some form of spiritual belief, the study found. The most common beliefs were that of an ultimate purpose and meaning in life (37%), the existence of a god (35%), and the existence of a spiritual realm (27%).
Interestingly, while Baby Boomers are the generation most likely to affiliate with religion, it’s Gen Zs – those born between 1997 and 2012 – who are most likely to hold to a spiritual belief, whatever form that takes.
Gen Zs are also most likely to believe in life after death (52%) and to have witnessed situations leading them to believe there is something beyond the material world (47%).
“What’s intriguing is that there’s an extraordinary diversity of ideas [among nones], from scientific notions to a remarkable revival of what you might call traditional hocus-pocus – such as the very vague belief in an afterlife or in astrology,” Lineham said of the study’s findings.
“There’s really a very interesting indication that in a world where the single faith loses its state- and society-sanctioned authority, what comes in its place is not a consistent worldview, but a whole variety of extraordinary views arranged together like a soup in people’s minds.”
Crudge says this should offer some encouragement to churches seeking to connect with secular society, but he believes there’s work to do to shift negative perceptions.
His 2013 PhD thesis The Disconnected Church, which was in part an exploration of what wider New Zealand society thought of the church, found many don’t consider church a spiritual place, which presents challenges when it comes to attracting spiritual seekers.
“The Faith and Belief Study found the biggest thing that causes people to start investigating spirituality is a death in the family,” he said.
“When a death occurs, these people should be thinking ‘there are three churches in my neighbourhood, they’re all about spirituality, I’m going to investigate them’. But at the moment, that’s not where they look because they don’t think the church is a spiritual place.”
Troughton says one of the challenges for the church in a post-colonial and increasingly secular New Zealand, is that their expressions of faith feel increasingly out of step with the cultural flow.
“I think people are very conscious of that and looking for ways in which their religious lives might feel more authentic and integral to the rest of the life they live.”
There are numerous explanations for why people are increasingly leaving religion, and it can vary widely from person to person. For some, like Lydia, part of the motivation for leaving faith stems from the cognitive dissonance of affiliating with a belief system that no longer fits with their experience of the world.
For others, it’s moral critiques of Christian culture – discomfort with attitudes to gender, sex and purity culture, the LGBTQI+ community, and the environment.
For many, including Lydia’s partner Tim Armstrong, intellectual doubt plays a major role. Tim had a run-of-the-mill Christian upbringing which soured in adulthood the more he questioned his beliefs.
“I slowly became more and more disillusioned with this idea of there being a God, let alone the Christian God,” he said.
“I started investigating more and watching debates between atheists and [Christian] apologists … and I haven’t been able to find or hear or be convinced by any single piece of evidence that would prove to me that a God made all of this.”
Ecstatic experiences he had during worship services in his teens – experiences he once considered encounters with the Holy Spirit – he now sees in a different light.
“That was a real feeling. But since then, I’ve had the same feeling at rock concerts with secular bands who I just love the music of. I’ve had the same feeling swimming. The same sensations that someone might describe as a spiritual encounter, I’d describe as something else – something a neuroscientist could explain.”
Tim no longer believes in God, and says if he does exist, it’s up to him to prove his existence.
“It shouldn’t be up to me. I’m just a measly old human, you know? Him being the creator of everything, it should be a snap of the fingers, a piece of cake to convince me he’s real.
“Maybe he’ll do that later in life, I don’t know. But so far it hasn’t happened.”
For others, particularly Māori and Pacific people, colonisation lies at the heart of the exodus from faith.
The percentage of Māori identifying as non-religious increased from 36.5% to 53.5% between 2006 and 2018, Census data shows, and adherence to Christianity dropped substantially over the same period at rates above the national average.
A recent research project exploring what’s driving these higher levels of unbelief among Māori found many of the same factors at play as for non-Māori, but Christianity’s colonial history was a key additional factor.
Dr Masoumeh (Sara) Rahmani, the Victoria University lecturer who led the study alongside colleagues Prof Peter Adds and Troughton, says shifting attitudes on racism, social justice and imperialism have laid the groundwork for Māori movement away from religion.
“When you listen to the stories and the reasoning and justification that Māori give about why they left religion, it is tied to the effect of colonialism on Māori people and their culture, the loss of language resulting from it, the social injustice, all sorts of negative implications of that legacy,” she explains.
“Even when people don’t directly talk about colonialism … they will still talk about the overall experience of racism they’re encountering, or give statistics on Māori health, incarceration rate, poverty rate – all sorts of disadvantages resulting from colonisation.”
The phenomenon of greater disaffiliation from religion among indigenous people isn’t unique to Aotearoa, it’s also being witnessed in other settler colonial states like Australia, Canada and Brazil, Rahmani says.
For Tāmaki Makaurau-raised Calvin Davidson (Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Hine, Ngāti Kahungunu), the decision to leave Christianity wasn’t informed by attitudes to colonisation so much as intellectual factors.
“The more I learned about the world, the more narrow I realised my view was. The more questions I had, the more dissatisfied I became with the inability or unwillingness of the church and religious teachings to answer them.”
Looking back, though, Calvin reflects there were times when the journey of connecting with Māori culture and disaffiliating from Christianity seemed to go hand in hand.
“Leaving the church opened up all sorts of avenues for self-discovery which included embracing my Māori heritage,” he says.
“Getting tā moko done comes to mind. I had the idea that tattoos were deviant drilled into me for so long and carried a bit of shame around being Māori – getting tā moko was a proud moment of embracing my heritage, despite whatever other social pressures I may face.”
As religion falls out of fashion for Māori and Pākehā, other forms of secular spirituality are cropping up.
Mindfulness, a practice grounded in Zen Buddhism but adhered to largely by religious “nones”, has boomed in the past decade, becoming a multibillion-dollar industry and spawning countless apps, products and courses.
Rahmani, who has researched the phenomenon, says much of the appeal of meditation movements like mindfulness lies in their ability to be tailored to meet one’s individual expression and desired level of commitment.
“We have a cultural shift away from ‘here’s the obligations you have, here’s the ideas you should follow’ – a traditional approach – to more individualistic, expressive, pragmatic, experiential practices,” she explains.
She says only time will tell what the impacts of increasing adherence to individualised forms of spirituality will be.
“This could just be part of our cultural evolution. This shift towards individualism isn’t something that just happened overnight, it’s part of a bigger enterprise of capitalism and neoliberalism – so religion shouldn’t take it personally.”
As Christianity continues to contract and non-religion grows over the coming decades, the church will undergo significant change. Lineham says as this happens, immigration will play an increasingly significant role.
“Gradually, the traditional Pākehā Christian groups are handing over their activities and their properties to new groups that are more enthusiastic to use them,” he said.
“Increasing numbers of Methodist and Presbyterian churches are now Tongan or Samoan. These churches are literally being handed over.
“We’re beginning to see that priests in the Catholic Church are now almost all coming from the Philippines or India or other locations – and a good number of ministers from other large denominations are coming from all around the world.”
Lineham says an ongoing decline in Christianity is easy to predict because church-goers skew so much older than the general population.
The 2023 Church Life Survey, a research project involving more than 500 churches and 20,000 church attendees, showed the median age of Anglican, Presbyterian and Methodist church-goers was 70+. Across the New Zealand church at large, 38% of survey respondents were 65 or older, and just 9% were under 30.
The authors of the survey report described this result as “grim news” and “a serious challenge for the future”.
Lineham says it demonstrates a failure of the church to pass Christian heritage onto the next generation.
“Any religious denomination that doesn’t have its own way to create new adherents will inevitably be unable to sustain the level of activity it’s previously been at,” he said.
“For example, it’s very clear in Anglican churches up and down the country that they’re going to have to reduce the number of churches, because they simply cannot afford to maintain the superstructures that they’ve had up to now.
“We’ve seen quite a number of church closures and I think we’re going to see a lot more.”
Crudge says it’s clear attitudes and approaches within the church need to change if it’s to stay relevant in society, but the strong thread of spirituality that remains in New Zealand provides hope in a future for traditional religion - if its leaders can learn to move with the times.
“Spirituality has a whole new life, and we need to be able to articulate what Christian spirituality is. There’s so much mystery in being Christian that we buy into and believe, so we need to start expressing that in ways that make sense, that don’t make us sound like nutters,” he says.
“Our current model of evangelism is, ‘You’re a sinner and you’re going to hell. You don’t wanna go to hell? Here’s the insurance package that’s going to help’ – and that’s often where it ends.
“It’s such an unhelpful model that doesn’t sit well in the evolving secular context we’re in.”
He says things like Jesus being removed from the parliamentary prayer will continue to happen as New Zealand shifts away from traditional religion, and Christians need to learn to let it go as they adapt to being a minority voice in our nation.
“We Christians need to hold that stuff loosely because these are actually not the things that draw people into spiritual discovery.
“We need to not hold loosely to our language and how we have learnt to be Christian, and be more welcoming of a ‘discovering’ way of engaging with spirituality – while also not being closeted or without expression of our own faith.”
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