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1882
Volume 12, Issue 1
  • ISSN: 1792-2593
  • E-ISSN: 2507-0371

Abstract

Abstract

This essay argues that creation-evolution debates have been more common and contentious in New Zealand’s past than many of its historians, following a progressive nationalist paradigm, have recognized. I begin by exploring how Maori incorporated Christianity into tribal whakapapa (genealogies) that explained the creation of the world by the atua (gods, divine powers). Between the 1830s and 1860s, British Anglican creationists forged an alliance with Christian chiefs to defend Maori land and political rights. Settler-critics attacked this alliance as an obstacle to progress, using as weapons evolutionary materialism and determinist claims that the natives were doomed to extinction. After 1859, many read Darwin’s similarly, to rationalize the wars of the 1860s, the triumph of the “fitter” British, and to consign Maori -and their creationist defenders- to oblivion. Lively debates over the social, ethical, and political implications of evolution regularly divided settler society after the land wars, especially when freethinking politicians invested evolution with secularist values that many church people disliked. Governments introduced evolution into primary school curricula from the 1920s, while taking care not to identify it with the metaphysical naturalism or materialism likely to alienate religious voters. The state mostly preserved a position of liberal neutrality toward citizens’ diverse worldviews as secularization accelerated from the 1970s. New American-originated varieties of creationism and intelligent design found footholds in a society that remained respectful, within limits, of Maori, Pasifika, and new Asian spiritualities.

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2025-12-06

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