Religion in New Zealand
Religion in New Zealand encompasses a wide range of groups and beliefs. New Zealand has no state religion or established church and freedom of religion has been protected since the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi. Almost half (48.6 per cent) of New Zealanders stated they had no religion in the 2018 census and 6.7 per cent made no declaration. Christianity remains the most popular religion; 37.3 per cent of the population at the 2018 census identified as Christian, with Anglicanism being the largest religious affiliation, just ahead of "Christian not further defined" and Roman Catholic. Overview Before European colonisation the religion of the indigenous Māori population was polytheistic and animistic. Efforts of Christian missionaries and their churches resulted in most Māori converting to Christianity. Māori transformed their moral, religious and political lives, making Christianity their own. In the 1840s, it's likely that a larger proportion of Māori regularly attended church services than people did in the United Kingdom. The majority of 19th-century European immigrants came from the British Isles, establishing the three dominant British Christian denominations in New Zealand: Anglicanism, Catholicism and Presbyterianism. The tendency for Scottish immigrants to settle in Otago and Southland saw Presbyterianism predominate in these