The Place of Religion

Te Ao Hou, June 1965, Page 9

The Place of Religion Fear is an early and important ingredient in the life of the individual and the race. Man's life, bracketed between the two oblivions, is haunted by fear—of enemies, of nature, of sickness, poverty, ostracism and most of all of death. In the early Maori situation, everything that could not be explained was attributed to some deity or other. Anything which needed protection, either from the elements or from man, was dedicated to a deity, and the law of Tapu functioned with unusual effectiveness. The Maori deities were not only providers of good but also dispensers of evil, so that the codes regulating behaviour possessed a heavy religious content, based on a system of rewards and punishment. Generally, this meant that the reward was a reprieve from death, and the punishment was the withdrawal of such a reprieve. Elements of this type of religious concept lingered through the years, and even though pagan religion was replaced by Christianity so long ago, today we are apt to find quite a number of Maoris reverting to this old pattern to explain some deep and disturbing phenomenon which might befall either himself or some near kin. This is particularly evident in the field of mental health and the Maori patient. When Christianity replaced his old religion, the Maori was still in his pre-dispersal days. The Christian churches evolved a very effective pattern for religious practice, so that the Maori found it a comparatively simple process to apply these new religious values in a particularly meaningful way.