First New Zealand Anglicans While heading the parliamentary campaign against the British slave trade for twenty years until the passage of the
Slave Trade Act 1807,
William Wilberforce championed the foundation of the
Church Missionary Society (CMS) in 1799, with other members of the
Clapham Sect including
John Venn, determined to improve the treatment of indigenous people by the British. The CMS mission to New Zealand was begun by
Samuel Marsden, the Anglican
chaplain in
New South Wales. He had met the Ngāpuhi chiefs
Te Pahi and
Ruatara when they travelled outside New Zealand, and they invited him to visit their country. Ruatara provided protection for the first mission station, at Rangihoua in the
Bay of Islands. chiefs
Waikato (left) and
Hongi Hika, and Anglican missionary
Thomas Kendall For the first years of the mission, intertribal
Musket Wars hampered the missionaries' movements and Māori interest in their message. Personal disputes between the early missionaries, and their involvement in trading muskets, also compromised their efforts. The
Māori language did not then have an indigenous writing system. Missionaries learned to speak Māori, and introduced the Latin alphabet. The CMS, including
Thomas Kendall; Māori, including
Tītore and
Hongi Hika; and
Cambridge University's
Samuel Lee, developed the written language between 1817 and 1830. In 1833, while living in the
Paihia mission house of
Anglican priest and the now head of the New Zealand CMS mission (later to become the
New Zealand Church Missionary Society) Rev
Henry Williams, missioner
William Colenso published the Māori translations of books of the Bible, the first books printed in New Zealand. His 1837 Māori New Testament was the first indigenous language translation of the Bible published in the southern hemisphere. Demand for the Māori New Testament, and the Prayer Book that followed, grew exponentially, as did Christian Māori leadership and public Christian services, with 33,000 Māori soon attending regularly. Literacy and understanding the Bible increased and social and economic benefits, decreased slavery and intertribal violence, and increased peace and respect for all people in Māori society, including women. In England the church and state were interlinked and the Church of England had a
special status guaranteed in law.
Evangelicals, as loyal Anglicans, accepted this status and encouraged Māori to look to the
British Crown for protection and recognition. As a result CMS missionaries, especially Henry Williams, played a leading part in encouraging Māori to sign the
Treaty of Waitangi in 1840. Assuming that a treaty in English could not be understood, debated or agreed to by Māori, Hobson asked CMS head missioner Henry Williams, and his son
Edward Marsh Williams, who was a scholar in Māori language and custom, to translate the document overnight on 4 February. Henry Williams was concerned with the actions of the
New Zealand Company in Wellington and felt he had to agree with Hobson's request to ensure the treaty would be as favourable as possible to Māori. Williams avoided using any English words that had no expression in Māori "thereby preserving entire the spirit and tenor" of the treaty. He added a note to the copy Hobson sent to Gibbs stating, "I certify that the above is as literal a translation of the Treaty of Waitangi as the idiom of the language will allow." In later years this missionary support for the treaty led to increasing disillusionment among Māori as the treaty was ignored by the colonial and settler governments.
Settler church in 1867 After missionary work amongst Māori, the second major influence shaping Anglicanism in New Zealand came from the large number of Anglican settlers who arrived in the mid-19th century. Most were from England, with some from Ireland and Australia. The early CMS missionary beginnings and the large number of Anglican settlers resulted in Anglicanism becoming the largest religious denomination in New Zealand. In 1858, more than half of the colony's population was Anglican.
George Augustus Selwyn became Bishop of New Zealand (the only Anglican bishop to have this title) in 1841. He headed both the Māori and settler Anglican parts of the church. Evangelical missionaries were suspicious of his control over them and his emphasis on the authority of the church, while settlers were hostile towards his pro-Māori stance. He increasingly found himself caught between Māori and
Pākehā issues of land and sovereignty. building, photographed in the 1880s The first
Anglican parish in the then capital of Auckland was
St Paul's, which was founded in 1841 within a year of the foundation of the city and is known as the 'Mother Church' of the city. The first St Paul's building was in Emily Place, just off Princes Street, where a plaque still marks the site of the beginning of the
Christian church in Auckland. St Paul's was the
seat of the Bishop of New Zealand, for Selwyn's entire 28 year tenure and served as Auckland's Cathedral for over 40 years. Bishop Selwyn opened St Paul's Church over four services on 7 May 1843. He later wrote, "The services began with a native congregation at nine; some of whom having only heard of the opening on Saturday evening, paddled a distance of twelve miles by sea during the night, in order to be present. The greater number were in full European clothing, and took part in the Church service, in a manner which contrasts most strikingly with that of the silent and unkneeling congregations of the English settlers." St Paul's then held four Sunday services weekly, serving both Māori and European congregations, with two services conducted in
te reo Māori and two in English. Bishop Selwyn had learned
te reo Māori himself. Selwyn generally advocated for Māori rights and was often a critic of the unjust and reckless land acquisition practices that led to the
New Zealand Wars. However, his support of the
Invasion of the Waikato as chaplain, damaged his and the church's relationship with Māori, which is still felt today. St Paul's was considered a garrison church, but when the first regimental colours unfurled in New Zealand were donated to the church after the New Zealand Wars, its second vicar, Rev John Frederick Lloyd (who was also a chaplain in the wars) turned them down so "no jealousies of race or feelings of hostility should ever be permitted to enter, but where men should remember only that they are one in Christ". After decades of lobbying from parishioners, and fears that more Māori would leave the church to join the
Rātana movement, the first
Pīhopa o Aotearoa (Bishop of Aotearoa),
Frederick Bennett, was consecrated in 1928. The
2018 census recorded 314,913 Anglicans in the New Zealand part of the church. Anglicanism was the country's second largest religious denomination after Catholicism. In
parishes that no longer had enough church members to financially support a
stipended priest, schemes for local people or self-supporting priests to take responsibility for the tasks of ministry were developed.
A New Zealand Prayer Book, He Karakia Mihinare o Aotearoa, was published in 1989, after a period of revision that started in 1964. The
General Synod of the church adopted a revised constitution in 1992, introducing the
tikanga system. This structure has been criticised by some, with one Anglican priest comparing the
tikanga to
apartheid or
ghettoization, arguing that the system has resulted in churches which are divided along racial lines. ==Leadership==