The February 2009 issue of IHN ran an article by Iain Middleton which, under the title 'Humanism in New Zealand,' was in fact only an account of the Humanist Society’s activities from the late 1970s to the early 1990s. I outlined some of the problems with the article in a letter published in the May 2009 issue, and here would like to offer a broader account of Humanism in New Zealand.

New Zealand is one of the most Humanistic societies on earth, with the unfortunate by-product of it not being much concerned with Humanism. The nationwide census of 2006 revealed a post-Christian society in the making. In answering the question on religious affiliation, 1,297,104, or 31.5 percent of respondents, described themselves as having no religion and a further 295,059 people exercised their right to object to the question. And the vast majority of those who acknowledged some religious affiliation did so in a purely nominal way. At the end of the twentieth century regular churchgoers accounted for little more than about 15% of the population and those who attend monthly or more are fewer still.

Most mainline denominations are experiencing consistent decline in membership. Regular churchgoers are usually in the older age cohorts with those in their twenties being only half as likely to attend church as those over sixty. The Church of England, once the heavyweight of the New Zealand religious scene, has shrunk the most noticeably. In 1926 575,731, or 40 percent of the census respondents claimed adherence to the Church of England, but in 2001, despite a fourfold increase in the country’s population, Anglican numbers were just 584,793, or about 21 percent.

While 67 percent of New Zealanders believe in some sort of god, only 47 percent believed in a soul and 43 percent in life after death. Sin, hell and the devil all registered much lower levels of adherence. And of those who made some profession of belief in god, a significant proportion attended church never or very rarely. Religious expression, like most other commitments, is expressed in Humanistic terms of bettering life in the here-and-now.

The secular nature of New Zealand society is also apparent in the country’s politics. Few cabinet ministers swear their oath of allegiance on the Bible. At the time of writing, neither the current prime minister, nor the leader of any other party in parliament is demonstrably religious. The prime minister’s agnosticism, and that of his predecessor Helen Clark, is public knowledge and has not been a relevant issue for the vast majority of electors.

Since the late 1980s there has been an attempt to construct an American-style Religious Right in New Zealand politics, but it has failed to make any sort of breakthrough. In 1996 two right-wing Christian parties formed a coalition to exploit the new proportional representation system New Zealand had adopted, but failed to get the required five percent threshold to be represented in parliament. That coalition soon broke up acrimoniously into its respective parts. The Christian Heritage party was the more uncompromising of the two and rarely rose above two percent approval ratings. In 2005 Graham Capill, its leader from 1989 until 2003, was found guilty of the sexual exploitation of underage girls.

By contrast the United Future Party has been at pains to describe itself as a secular party of the political centre. On this platform it did well in the 2002 election, securing 6.9 percent of the vote and ensuring a place in parliament. But the party soon squandered its election night vote with a series of muddles and scandals, and its voter rating dropped down to levels experienced by the Christian Heritage Party. In July 2003 a still more radical fundamentalist party called Destiny New Zealand was formed. It seized attention with a march through Wellington in October 2004 in which its male marchers wore black shirts. In 2008 the party, having learned from American stealth techniques renamed itself the Family Party. It and another attempt, called the Kiwi Party, polled pitiably.

New Zealand has no Established Church, and among the intellectually oriented of the mostly English and Scottish immigrants who created the modern state in the nineteenth century, the three most influential thinkers were Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer, each of whom was a staunch agnostic. The influence of these thinkers, and the ascendancy at the time of agnosticism and secularism were well timed to have a formative influence on the developing New Zealand psyche, which can reasonably be said to be Humanistic. Some of the most eminent of the early prime ministers of New Zealand were freethinkers of one kind or another. Perhaps the earliest premier whose views were unorthodox was Alfred Domett (1811-1877), who had a formative role in developing the secular education system at provincial level and which was later used as a model for the creation of a national secular education system in 1877. Domett served as premier between 1862 and 1863. Later in the century were John Ballance (1839-1893) and Sir Robert Stout (1844-1930). Ballance was influential, even after his death, in the long-lived Liberal government of 1890 to 1912, which did a lot to shape the growing sense of New Zealand identity. Another prominent Liberal prime minister of the time, Richard Seddon (1845-1906) actually described himself as a Humanist in 1906, by which he probably meant a generalised reformist humanitarianism. Into the twentieth century, two of the country’s most significant prime ministers, Michael Joseph Savage and Peter Fraser were rationalists. Savage (1872-1940) led the Labour Party to a landslide victory in 1935 and enacted a series of sweeping economic and social reforms which helped drag the country out of the Depression and build a comprehensive welfare state. Savage was followed by Peter Fraser (1884-1950), another rationalist, who solidified Savage’s reforms and led the country through the Second World War. Fraser also helped found the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.

The longest-lasting issue that divides religious from secular-minded New Zealanders is the role of religion in schools. The notion of free, secular and compulsory education is as old as government in New Zealand. The formula was introduced into the province of Nelson in the 1840s and developed by Alfred Domett into a model the rest of the country used when it developed a national education policy in 1877, after the demise of the provincial form of government. The 1877 Education Act was passed by a coalition of viewpoints. As well as the small groups of agnostics and Jews there were a large number of nominally religious people who were anxious to create conditions whereby no one religion would exercise unchallenged control in the nation’s schools. The safest solution, they reasoned, was that no religions should enter the schools.

Church groups have remained unreconciled to this legislation ever since it was enacted. In 1897 they managed to insert a half-hour slot of religious instruction, during which time the school was deemed to be closed. The questionable legality of this stratagem was in dispute until it was finally legitimised in the 1964 Education Act. Religious instruction has to avoid any form of indoctrination and disparagement of other religions. But in practice both of these go on. Bible in Schools, as this programme is commonly known, only happens in primary schools, which teach children up to ten years of age, and only at schools that want it – it is not compulsory for all New Zealand schools. Parents have the opportunity to withdraw their children from the programme, and many do. Other issues which Humanists have played a part in include the debate over voluntary euthanasia, capital punishment, blasphemy laws and religious pluralism.

The secular nature of New Zealand has posed a tricky set of problems for the country’s Humanist movement. In a society as Humanistically-inclined as New Zealand, very few people feel the need to belong to an organisation which caters for them as non-religious people. Most people are as unmoved by sharp distinctions between secular and religious as they are by sectarian divisions. The movement has responded in various ways. The five principal freethought organisations are divided by their respective attitudes toward religion, in particular the degree to which it should be subjected to criticism.

The Skeptics organisation is based in Christchurch and focuses on pseudoscience in medicine, the media and politics. It generally says little about religion. The Skeptics have the best media presence of all the freethought groups in the country. Criticism of religion, promoting the Humanist alternative, and defending the secular state has become the main preserve of the Auckland-based NZ Association of Rationalists and Humanists. This is the oldest and most active of the secular Humanist organisations. A smaller Humanist Society, restricted to the Wellington region, deals with similar issues. The main organisation catering for religious Humanism is the Sea of Faith. This movement was founded by the heterodox English churchman Don Cupitt in 1984 on the strength of a book by that title. It was transplanted into New Zealand shortly afterwards by Lloyd Geering (1918 -), the country’s best known theologian, a radical religious Humanist. There are also small Unitarian communities which cater to a similar constituency. There is a significant cross-over of members between these organisations but, as yet, little real co-operation.

Bill Cooke has written widely on the meaning and history of Humanism. He was Senior Lecturer at Manukau Institute of Technology in Auckland, New Zealand until 2008. He is author of the Dictionary of Atheism, Skepticism and Humanism and three histories of Humanism or Humanists. His latest book, A Wealth of Insights: Humanist Thought Since the Enlightenment is due out in December 2009.