Religion
Religious Beliefs. Sixteen religious sects are represented—with the Anglican Church (18.4 percent) the largest, followed by Catholic (13.8 percent) and Presbyterian (13.4 percent). Twenty-six percent of the people have no religious affiliation. The Pentecostal, Buddhist, and Muslim religions have had the greatest degree of increase.
Religious Practitioners. Archbishops, bishops, priests, presbyters, rabbis, imams, mullahs, elders, and pastors are office holders in New Zealand branches of worldwide churches. There is one Maori church (Ratana), and Maoridom makes wide use of the sacred-secular healing and counseling powers of the tohunga , a specialist in medicine and spirit belief.
Rituals and Holy Places. Rites of the Christian calendar are observed. Cathedrals are present in every major city, and many rural areas maintain small wooden parish churches. Cemeteries are controlled by local bodies, except for Maori burial grounds. Statues of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Pakeha public figures and war memorials are universal. Their disfigurement has become a sign of Maori protest. Waitangi has become a national memorial, as has One Tree Hill in Auckland, both marking significant events in the evolution of early Maori–European relations. Birthdays, anniversaries, and deaths may be privately or publicly commemorated.
Death and the Afterlife. If embalming is not to take place, burial occurs within a day or two of death. Otherwise, funeral parlors embalm and show the body. Funeral services may be held in churches or funeral parlors. A Maori funeral ( tangi ) takes place in the marae and is a mixture of festivity and grief. Christians believe in a heaven for the afterlife (and a hell if Fundamentalist). Maori ancestors dwell after death in the ancestral lands and are