This is an archive of past discussions about Religion in New Zealand. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
"If the Jedi response had been accepted as valid, this would have been the second largest religion in New Zealand." this seems illogical and a bit preposterous, given the much higher numbers of real religions above. It would seem to be something on the order of at best 5th or sixth...? Ingolfson (talk) 11:24, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
There have been a few small religious sects or cults that have a degree of notoriety that should get a passing mention in this article. One of these is the Stone Kingdom group (Stone Kingdom Trust). (The Press July 23, 2008) There is another one that was in the media last year (?) after an immigrant Indian claimed that he was held as a captive. They seem to have a set up somewhere on the West Coast that gives them a high degree of self-sufficiency. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 21:28, 17 August 2008 (UTC)
The opening of this article says "just over half of New Zealand's population" in reference to religious belief, yet the statistics it provides shows ~60% of people, which isn't "just over half", it is substantially over it and indeed closer to two thirds. Therefore would it not be better to change the terminology from "just over half" to "just under two thirds"? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.107.53.36 (talk) 15:45, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
Bahá'í Faith
Do we really need a whole section on this? It seems to barely be on the radar. I don't know a single person of this religion. It seems pretty absurd to have a section bigger than the Christianity one. Richard001 (talk) 23:39, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
As for it's significance, well there are a variety of references - 1st of 2nd fastest growing religion according to christian sources for the last 35 years, second most widespread religion on earth, a few notable figures even from New Zealand among them. I'm not limiting other religions. I did notice that other religions didn't have sections and in my travels through other religion in (country) articles most have sections on religions. If you check back to the main article you'll see this entry is a small part of that article. On balance I do suggest other religions have their sections added to give a better scale of the diversity of religions in New Zealand rather than seeming to be a monolithic.Smkolins (talk) 02:01, 3 October 2009 (UTC)
I have removed all text about the Bahá'í Faith and added an "Other" section with links out of the "see also" section. I have also tagged it with {{prose}}. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 03:42, 3 October 2009 (UTC)
In trying to contribute to this effort I've worked on a draft for this section - please review/comment. I'm still working on some fact checks and have possible refs I need to integrate towards the bottom but I'd entertain comments on if it works for folks - see User:Smkolins/Sandbox5Smkolins (talk) 15:36, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
I'm struggling to see what relevance Murray Smith has to Religion in New Zealand politics. His activities relating to Bahá'í were after he left politics in New Zealand, and mostly overseas. I suggest deletion of that whole section.Sbmackay (talk) 01:22, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
It's a moderately different approach to the question. Most of the time at least in general religion and politics is about making political decisions based on religious motivations. This entry has to do with Murray's continued interest in politics in the sense of governance, though he did so from a religious pov. It's not that he abandoned politics but instead tried to contribute to the understanding of the function of government. At least that's what I see - and he does bring up the situation of New Zealand in the discourse. Perhaps more of that could be brought out. Smkolins (talk) 01:37, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
Perhaps the reference to Murray Smith could be narrowed to focus on what the significance of his work has been for New Zealand Politics? His work outside of New Zealand, and even his work which is restricted to the Baha'i community, doesn't really belong in this section. Sbmackay (talk) 06:07, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
The ARDA data used on non-Christian religions under '2.2 Other Religions' seems of dubious quality. The same table cites a statistic of 72% for Christians. Unless someone gives a good reason for the massive anomaly between this data and the 2006 census data, it would seem best to substitute the 2006 census data, or simply delete it and refer people to the table below. Sbmackay—Preceding undated comment added 12:31, 27 May 2010 (UTC).
Reading the first paragraph of section 2.2, it's evident that the author used the less accurate data because he/she believed the Census data didn't break down the percentages of the smaller affiliations. This is not true, as the QuickStats data merely gives a summary, whereas the full data is available in spreadsheet form [Stats NZ 2006 Census data on religious affiliation].
An update is needed therefore of the first paragraph, and the percentages recorded next to each religion.Sbmackay (talk) 05:10, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
Hi - this article is mostly about the Australian publication but there are refs mentioning a New Zealand version. Might be worth mention and or referencing. Smkolins (talk) 17:30, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
I've made quite a few additions to the politics section. There was a serious lack of balance, and a lack of awareness of history (there still is). Religion has played a much bigger part in politics that you would guess from reading the newspapers over the last few years - and I suspect that is partly to do with the breakdown of Christian party politics over the last 5 years. Still more needs to be added about mainstream Christian political activism throughout NZ's history, particularly in the 90's under Labour and then Nationals economic reforms.Sbmackay (talk) 00:39, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
Christian anthem?
The article currently says: The country's national anthem, God Defend New Zealand, is strongly Christian in both name and lyrics.
This doesn't seem right. Obviously the context in which it was written was a Christian context, but actually there is no hint of this in either the name or the lyrics. Just a lot of lines about a "God" who watches over countries and has a plan of some kind. In fact, it seems that the opposite is true: it is surprisingly pluralist. "Men of every creed and race". Although maybe this line was intended to simply refer to different Christian denominations.
Under Religion in politics, the 2nd paragraph states "United Future has been more successful, which although not a Christian party has had significant Christian backing". Due to the debacle over a GCSB paper leak which resulted in Winston Peters blaming the leader of United Future, Peter Dunne, for the leak which resulted in Mr. Dunne's resignation as a cabinet minister, I'm thinking that the above statement could be changed in light of that recent event. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 114.134.4.87 (talk) 21:40, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
As always, Wikipedia requires proof in the form of reliable citations. A news reference that shows significant religious figures stating withdrawal of support for UF would do. FanN | talk | 23:45, 25 January 2014 (UTC)
I have a few comments on the way the 2013 Census statistics are presented:
The scaling down of religious percentages to account for multiple responses does not seem statistically valid. Someone who specified two religions should not be counted twice when estimating the fraction of the population of different religious faiths.
I'm surprised this isn't one of the Census tables that is only for population 15 years or over. The inclusion of children seems like a dubious methodological choice. At least below a certain level of intellectual development children can't reasonably be said to have any clear view on religion.
Grouping Mãori Christians separately from Christians seems pretty arbitrary. Is Rãtana further away from mainstream Christianity than, say, Mormonism? I know Statistics New Zealand have grouped them differently but it seems to be more of a coding distinction than a genuine distinction in character.
There are three main Christian groups in New Zealand: Catholics, Anglicans and Presbyterians. The pie chart groups Anglicans and Presbyterians together as Protestants so misses this significant detail.
I don't have the time to go through the table at the bottom of the article but I'll have a go at addressing the issues with the pie chart.
Religious affiliations of New Zealanders in the last five censuses.Scaling of multiple responses is done to show a realistic count of persons. The fact that StatsNZ allows multiple responses means that it is very easy to overrepresent religious adherence, which would give us unrealistic figures. While it may be in the interests of some to overstate theism (or to understate non-theism) it is clearly not good science to be counting 103% of the population and loading one sector with the extra 3%. If some census returns show persons ticking a maximum of four boxes that should not count as four people.
Māori Christianity is indeed a coding issue here, although StatsNZ also produces Māori-only stats for every category as well (the 2001-census-national-summary-all-tables.xls file has Religious Affiliation at Table 16, and Māori Religious Affiliation at Table 16a). The 20000-29999 code series is for non-Māori Christian denominations, and the 60000 series is Māori Christianity. Bizzarely, Māori Christianity is encoded after Hindu, Islam and Judaïsm. If any event, Māori Christianity is first separately tallied then added into the greater sum of Christianity.
Breakdown of Religious Affiliation by Age, Sex, and Location is to be released in two days, on Tuesday 4 Feb.
I've just finished working on an updated line chart for 1991-2013 (not yet uploaded), and about to work on the pie chart again - I'll split the major prodestant denominations as you suggest. FanN | talk | 05:55, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
Awesome! I agree with everything you say, it's just a little statistically dodgy to scale the figures down, maybe a bar graph would be better for comparing religious groups, with raw numbers instead of percentages. It's certainly valid to do a pie chart of religious vs non-religious populations because we can determine those from the data.
I'm scratching my head about the "object to state" and other non-answers in the Census, because it occurs to me that there's another group of people missing from the total: those not counted by the Census. Interpolating from the quarterly population estimates it looks like about 4.9% of the usually resident population did not get counted in the Census because they were temporarily overseas or otherwise missed. This means that the percentage of the usually resident population who said they were religious in the Census was about 47%. I think it likely that people who travel more and/or don't fill in census forms are more likely that the general population to be non-religious, but we can't know the exact numbers.
So to my mind it makes sense either to go one of two ways. One is to exclude non-responses from the pie chart, pointing out the sampling issues in footnotes. The other is to have have two categories of non-response in the chart: not declared and missed from Census (estimate). My preference is for the second approach because it's less misleading, but we would need a population estimate for the time of the Census. I've asked Statistics New Zealand if they have this figure.
Anyway it sounds like while I've been mulling this over you've been doing all the good work so I can just sit back and watch!
I share many of Ben's concerns. The December Census release is a pretty raw, uncut response count, without any interpretation or discussion. The 2006 Quickstats release uses more sensible groupings and gives much more context - e.g. it notes that children aged 0-14 are more likely to be recorded as having no religion. I'm waiting for Stats NZ to release a similar treatment of the 2013 Census data (due out on 15 April 2014)[1] before I do anything much with the figures.
People who are missed by the Census are accounted for using a post-enumeration survey, with results due out on 26 March 2014.[2] This doesn't collect information on religion, though (only age, sex, ethnicity and place of residence). I do think that people who "object to state" their religion are of substantive interest here, and should be included in the graphs, whereas general Census non-response/undercoverage/etc is less directly relevant and only needs to be covered in a methodological footnote somewhere. --Avenue (talk) 00:30, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
Minor stats on religious affiliations of New Zealanders in the last five censuses.I agree that the non-responders should not be counted with objectors - my mistake in trying to get a consistent 100% tally over all censuses. But as for ignoring them ... Not Stated has a larger percentage than either Other Religions or Object to Answering, and represents a significant (and growing) sector that views the question "What is your Religion?" as irrelevant - my preference is to include them, separately.
I am not convinced there's any case for excluding 0-14 year groups - any more than we could make a case for excluding pensioners. I'm sure the maxim of "give me the boy to seven and I will give you the man" still holds true. In any case, census data suggests a strong correlation between a child's affiliation and that of its parents (age group 25 years older). In comparing 2001 and 2006 data against birth year (as opposed to age group) only one group (those born 1996-2000) showed an increase in christian affiliation.
I do agree that the numbers require some working, and the currently released data isn't good enough to produce a finished product, but as we're about to see more data I wanted both a discussion and a dataset that could be easily reworked. I've greatly simplified the SVG files so that they're fairly easy to hand edit, so once we have census consensus updating them should not present a problem. FanN | talk | 08:45, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
Census 2013 updates
I've recently done a bit of work in the "Sikhism" section, rewriting illogical sentence construction, bad tenses and grammar and bringing the Sikh population up to date in light of the 2013 Census. I noticed that the (unsourced) claim was made that Sikhs were the first minority to establish a place of worship. That was clearly wrong as Jews established a synagogue at Wellington in 1870 and the first Sikh gurdwara wasn't established 'till 1964 or 1977 depending on sources. I've changed the claim to "second minority", adding that this was long after the Jews. I've taken at face value the original claim of historical precedence over Hindus, Muslims, and Buddhists and have done no research to establish whether the claim is correct in its present form. That needs investigation but I'm not motivated enough to do it. Akld guy (talk) 03:56, 17 September 2014 (UTC)
I've deleted the claim that the establishment of a Sikh gurdwara preceded the establishment of any Hindu, Muslim, or Buddhist temple on the grounds that a Muslim community centre was opened in Auckland in 1959, the claim was unsourced, and not least it came across as one-upmanship. Akld guy (talk) 07:42, 17 September 2014 (UTC)
Census table
A recent edit by User:Lcmortensen has resulted in the reversing of the order in which the 2013, 2006, and 2001 census columns appear. That is, the 2013 columns now appear at far right. To my thinking, the most recent and therefore most significant data should appear at left, as in the table's former state. Also, I'm not sure that his re-ordering into alphabetical listing of the religions is appropriate. The reader is probably more interested in seeing where his/her religion of interest appears in a comparison of the number of adherents, rather than searching for his/her particular religion of interest to see how many adherents it has. The table is not so large that he/she couldn't easily have done that in the former format. It seems to me therefore, that the alphabetical listing is a retrograde step. On the face of it, Lcmortensen seems to have done a commendable job in bringing the data up to date. Disclaimer: I have never edited the table and was never involved at any time with its former format. Akld guy (talk) 23:00, 18 July 2015 (UTC)
Ordering of the column and rows in the new table is verbatim from the Statistics New Zealand source data (CC BY 3.0 NZ) - I have not reordered anything from that data yet. Potentially religions could be re-sorted according in descending order of number of adherents, but I didn't get around to that until I received further comment. As for the year order, it seems odd to have newer years on the left since timelines usually go left-older to right-newer. Lcmortensen (mailbox) 00:51, 19 July 2015 (UTC)
The reason that the 2013 columns (most recent data) originally appeared at the left was that the denominations were listed in descending order of size for each religion group based on that census. Now that you seem to be in the process of changing back from alphabetical order to that descending-size order, the placing of the 2013 columns at right obscures the fact that it is so listed.
If you are indeed going back to that order, you will have to reverse the order of the columns. It might have been better if you had sought consensus first, because your changing of some of the data to reflect census results means that nobody but yourself can now fix the situation. If we revert to the version before you started, all your new figures will be lost. Akld guy (talk) 04:40, 19 July 2015 (UTC)
Switching the data around so 2013 is to the left is no big deal and not that hard - it's a five-minute job (okay, more like 15 minutes) using copy and paste. Lcmortensen (mailbox) 22:55, 19 July 2015 (UTC)
What I meant was that nobody else can easily fix the situation by reverting, since that would mean your updates would be lost. The point was that nobody but yourself should be obliged to spend their 15 minutes fixing it. Akld guy (talk) 07:33, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
Misleading percentages
Referring to the large table in the 'Religious affiliation' section. The percentages shown in the 'Change 2001-13' column shows the change in percentage rather than the change in the number of adherents. This leads to a negative result in some cases when the number of adherents actually rose. For example, the number who stated Judaism/Jewish was 6867 (2013) and 6636 (2001) but the percentage change shown is -0.02 based on a falling percentage in the total population. Clearly, the column misleads. I think there is no way to remove the ambiguity, and if there are no objections in the next few days I will remove the column. Akld guy (talk) 20:04, 9 November 2015 (UTC)
The reason the column used the change in percentage rather than change in adherents is because percentage totals don't change like the New Zealand population. However, we still need some way to show the trends in each religion though. Lcmortensen (mailbox) 04:51, 22 November 2015 (UTC)
Since I deleted the column, you have added a new column labelled "Trend" which uses coloured up/down arrows to indicate an increase/decrease, or hyphens to presumably indicate no change. Is this information based on the 2001-2013 or 2006-2013 census results? Is it based on the number of adherents, or the percentage change in the total population? Why does this Trend column show hyphen (no change?) for Catholic when the figures for Catholic are 492,105 (12.61%), 508,437 (13.58%), 485,637 (14.00%). Either there was a fall from 508 thousand to 492 thousand, or there was a rise from 485 thousand to 492 thousand. Which is it and why show a hyphen? Akld guy (talk) 05:22, 23 November 2015 (UTC)
@Lcmortensen: Or, if your Trend column shows change in percentage, why does it show hyphen when the percentage fell both times for Catholic? Akld guy (talk) 05:37, 23 November 2015 (UTC) Edited to ping Lcm and for clarity. Akld guy (talk) 01:15, 24 November 2015 (UTC)
@Lcmortensen: I have tried to retain the 'Trend' column and have accordingly changed its appearance a little. Some of the coloured Trend indicators appear to be wrong. For example, Catholic should show a red Down arrow because the percentage fell from Census 2001 to Census 2013. Other indicators show no change when there is one, albeit very small. In other words, it's inconsistent. If I've misinterpreted what the Trend column is meant to indicate, please correct it, otherwise I will come along in a couple of days and correct the coloured data on the basis that my interpretation was correct. Akld guy (talk) 08:15, 26 November 2015 (UTC)
The trend is based on a combination of number of adherents and the percentage change between 2001 and 2013. An increase means an increase in both adherents and percentage, a steady indicates an increase in adherents but a decrease in percentage, and a decrease is a decrease in both adherents and percentage. Lcmortensen (mailbox) 09:01, 26 November 2015 (UTC)
No, you don't get to mix and mingle statistics by way of a methodology that is not made clear in the article and known only to yourself. That amounts to WP:OR. The lack of stated methodology would make it impossible for a future editor to update the indicators when the next census comes out in 2018. Please make it clearer in the article how the coloured indicators have been arrived at. If you cannot or will not do so, I will revert to the last version edited by me (based on the percentage change alone) and will change the indicators to conform to percentage where appropriate. Akld guy (talk) 20:02, 26 November 2015 (UTC)
Can you please stop acting like you own the article. I didn't receive any indication until you started reverting without consensus (consensus require words, not time).
And it's easy to work out the trend (and remember trend is long-term, not just between two consecutive censuses) - if Ac > Ah and Pc > Ph then it is an increase, if Ac > Ah and Pc < Ph it is steady, and when Ac < Ah it is a decrease (where Ac is adherents currently, Ah is adherants in the past, Pc is the percentage currently, and Ph is the percentage past). Lcmortensen (mailbox) 08:39, 2 December 2015 (UTC)
@Lcmortensen: I'm still not happy with what the coloured indicators purport to show. Your Ac/Ah/Pc/Ph mathematical derivations are not apparent from reading the article. You may know what you mean but I don't and I bet a lot of other readers don't either. The big problem is that according to what you've just said, the trend indicators are based on neither the percentage change nor the number of adherents, and in some cases, those go in opposite directions. It would be better (I think) to base the indicators solely on the percentage columns (percentages of those who responded to the censuses). Basing them on the number of adherents is meaningless, since the population rose between 2001 and 2013. I hope you can see this point. I don't think I've exhibited OWNERSHIP behaviour; I've made a point of trying to retain your trend column, which I think is worthwhile, though it's been problematic. Let's hope we can improve it. Akld guy (talk) 09:13, 2 December 2015 (UTC)
Regional trends chart
@Lcmortensen: Would you kindly tell us on this page what are your intentions with the Regional trends chart that you have introduced? Across the page, you have headings Christian, Maori Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Islam/Muslim, Total Religious, No Religion, and Object to answering. It seems that because you have run out of space across the page, you have lumped entire religions into the 'No Religion' column. If I were a member of a minority religion, I would be highly offended. So again, what are your intentions? Akld guy (talk) 22:59, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
@Lcmortensen: Thank you for replying. Note that I did not get the ping because you typed upper case 'G' in my nickname. Whenever you intend to make large changes to content, and especially to statistics in charts, it might be a good idea to let editors know in advance what you're intending to do, otherwise the edits can look very much like vandalism and good faith tends to fly out the window. In the remaining chart, I think you might like to declare in a footnote what 'nfd' means. I'm presuming it means 'not further defined' but readers might have no knowledge of Statistics NZ's terminology. Akld guy (talk) 06:29, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
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| talk | 23:45, 25 January 2014 (UTC)
