MAORI CHURCHES

Waikato Independent, Volume XXXIII, Issue 2952, 17 January 1933, Page 2

MAORI CHURCHES

HISTORICAL ASSOCIATIONS. BUILT AND PAID FOR BY NATIVES ‘ * A peculiar interest attaciies to some of the old-lasinoned churcnes dating facie to Bisnop Selwyn s time that one sees here and tiiere in the Waikato and elsewnere, ” states the writer of an article in the New Zealand Rail-

ways Magazine. * • They were built with - funds subscribed chiefly by the Maoris and largely with Maori labour, and until the wars ' ami the coniiscation of native land the congregations were Maori. Now, never a Maori is seen within the doors, for the pakeha after the conquest, took church as well as the land; and now they are the local parish churches. ’ ’

“One of these is the pretty Church of England in Te Awamutu; another is the Rangiaowhia Church, three miles away. Yet another is the celebrated Volkner Church, in the middle of the Opotiki town, once the worshippingplace of the Whakatohea tribe. The only church I know that has withstood

ail changing times since the ’fifties of last century is the massive native-built church at Otaki, described in a recent number of the Railways Magazine.

“The most venerable of ail our New Zealand churches is the little English church in famous Koraorareka, the mouern township of Russell. It is very little short of a century in age; and it was there before New Zealand came under the British flag. But it has been renovated, and in one way or another it does not possess the antique charm that the two solidly-timbered Waikato churches mentioned hold for the eye.”