The Church and the Maori

Manawatu Times, Volume 59, Issue 272, 20 November 1934, Page 8

The Church and the Maori

(To the Editor.) Sir,—That the Maori needs, and is worthv of, all the assistance the Church and State can give him in his struggle to adjust himself to modern New Zealand, social and economic conditions, and to free himself from the fetters of superstition, is now being recognised by the loaders of all schools of thought throughout the Dominion. Bishop West-Watson, addressing the Canterbury Synod, is reported to have said that “ilia care of the Maori people was a responsibility of the whole Church of New Zealand, and a responsibility that must taka precedence to all other missionary responsibilities. ” Every person who is well informed on the question will agree with the bishop, but they may not entirely support. his policy, which would probably lead to almost complete religious segregation in the greater part of the North Island.

While it is true from many standpoints, it is iniquitous to hurry the progress of geographically and poll tie ally segregated native races from Stone Age culture to modern . standards, or to interfere with their segregation; we must remember that our New Zealand racial problem is altogether exceptional and it has no parallel with that of a segregated race. The Maori, whose environment has been changed so rapidly, and who is resident with Europeans as neighbours and co-citizens, must move with the times or be lost. Many of us deplore this fact, but W 3 cannot alter it, and we must shape our State and Church policy accordingly. The Church of the future will roundly condemn any leader who in these most difficult transition days uses his influence to sidetrack the hand-in-hand progress of Maori and pakcha. All our efforts should be in the direction of seeking fuller co-operation. A nation within a nation is one of the heaviest handicaps a country can have as witness America.

Seeing that there is no inherent racial phy sical antagonism . between European and Maori, they will inevitably, though slowly, merge. No movement that has any tendency to further develop racial consciousness or to divide Maori and pakeha into separate .■amps should be tolerated within tlu> Church by those who desire the best for the Maori people as a whole. It is handicap enough to have such movements in Maori reactionary circles without the Church herself creating new organisation with similar tendencies. . Maori, and pakeha live side by side, their children attend the same schools, their young men and women belong to the same clubs and societies, their students'attend the same lectures, and their destiny is one. The Maori lias for the last 20 years lr'en passing through a race-conscious phase consequent upon his discovery lit at his is not a dying race, and he has been in grave danger of forgetting that his is a merging race and that nothing can now prevent, though it may delay, the complete union of the' present so-called Maori race a mixed-blood people already in almost ~H districts —with their European fellow citizens. Certainly Bishop Bennett. in himself an example of these facts, should have the fullest possible status, but the Church should not permit herself to be stampeded, by the seeming needs of a passing phase, into adopting a form of organisation that would only mean leading the Maori up a blind alley and along which‘the inevitable return would be fraught with grave dangers—l am, etc., A MAORI.