Reports of Native Church Board Meetings
In New Zealand, during the 1860s, Māori were conflicted between their faith in Christianity and their adherence to the Anglican Church, which many of them viewed as working on behalf of the Crown.
The New Zealand Wars resulted in many Māori losing confidence in the Church and distrusting its leaders. The extensive land confiscations in the Waikato received little comment or protest from Pākehā Anglicans. (‘The Anglican Church and Māori, 1842-1928’ Earle Howe in ‘Living Legacy : A History of the Diocese of Auckland’ ed. Alan Davidson, p. 157).
Seeking to continue the earlier missionary work undertaken by the Church Missionary Society, an amendment to the Church Constitution was passed at the 1868 General Synod to establish the Native Church Boards. This resulted in an increase in Māori Anglican clergy for the Church, aided by strong support from the Bishop of the Diocese of Auckland, William Garden Cowie. The Native Church Boards existed from 1870 to 1925 and published a series of reports on its proceedings during this time.
In Penny Griffith and Phil Parkinson’s annotated bibliography ‘Books in Māori 1815-1900 : Ngā Tānga Reo Māori’ some of these reports were listed as ‘no copy known’. However, a few of these were later discovered at the Kinder Library by our cataloguer, Helen Greenwood, in a bound volume of church publications (the title on the binding states ‘Diocesan Synod’) that once belonged to Diocese of Waikato, and before that, Bishop Cowie.
This find filled in some of the gaps of this important record of the Māori Church and is now available, along with the other reports we hold, on Pūmotomoto.
