Protestantism among the Pacific Peoples in New Zealand: Mobility, cultural identifications and generational shifts

In 2006, Pacific Peoples were 266 000, making 6.9 per cent of the New Zealand population. Coming from Samoa, Tonga, Cook, Niue, Fiji, Tokelau and Tuvalu, they generally continue to attend Christian churches in a context of secularisation and religious diversification of the New Zealand society.<br /><br />This communication aims to analyse, in its first part, to what extent “historical” Polynesian Protestant churches have helped the migrants to find their own place in the New Zealand society by strengthening cultural identification – notably through liturgical language and the development of pre-schools in Polynesian languages – and maintaining transnational links with the “mothers-churches” in the Pacific Islands.<br /><br />In a second part, we will look at the trajectories of young New Zealand born Pacific Peoples converted to Evangelical Protestantism. Evangelicals tend to emphasise movement rather than territorial roots and the “new identity” brought by conversion rather than cultural heritages. But globalisation also fosters the construction of new Evangelical indigenous networks promoting a kind of cultural re-identification (Island Breeze). The emergence of churches combining Evangelical identity with the promotion a “horizontal” multiculturalism, not initiated by the dominant Western culture but by Pacific Peoples themselves, can also be observed (Hosanna Outreach Centre)