page_title: Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia
section_title: Settler church
hierarchical_section_title: Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia / History / Settler church
caption_attribution_description: English: Selwyn, George Augustus (1809–1878), first Anglican Bishop of New Zealand, by Mason &amp; Co.
context_page_description: The Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia is a province of the Anglican Communion serving New Zealand, Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, and the Cook Islands. Since 1992 the church has consisted of three tikanga or cultural streams: Aotearoa, New Zealand, and Polynesia. The church's constitution says that, among other things, it is required to "maintain the right of every person to choose any particular cultural expression of the faith". As a result, the church's General Synod has agreed upon the development of the three-person primacy based on this three tikanga system. It has three primates, each representing a tikanga, who share authority.
  The Anglican Church is an apostolic church, tracing its bishops back to the apostles via holy orders. A New Zealand Prayer Book, He Karakia Mihinare o Aotearoa, containing traditional liturgies, rites and blessings, is central to the church's worship. Since the 1960s and 1970s, the New Zealand Anglican Church has pursued a decidedly more liberal course; it has approved the marriage by a priest in a church of someone whose earlier marriage was dissolved, and has approved blessings for same-sex couples.
context_section_description: After missionary work among Māori, the second major influence shaping the Anglican Church came from rapidly growing numbers of Anglican migrants. The early CMS missionary beginnings and the large number of settlers who came from England resulted in Anglicans becoming the largest of the religious denominations in New Zealand. In 1858 more than half the population was Anglican.
  George Augustus Selwyn became Bishop of New Zealand (the only Anglican bishop to have this title) in 1841. He headed both the Māori and settler Anglican parts of the church. Evangelical missionaries were suspicious of his control over them and his emphasis on the authority of the church, while settlers were hostile towards his pro-Māori stance. He increasingly found himself caught between Māori and Pākehā issues of land and sovereignty.
  In 1865, Selwyn, who had served as a chaplain during the New Zealand Wars, wrote of the Anglican Church's relationship with Māori, "oh! how things have changed! how much of the buoyancy of hope has been sobered down by experience! when, instead of a nation of believers welcoming me as their father, I find here and there a few scattered sheep, the remnant of a flock which has forsaken the shepherd".
caption: Bishop Selwyn
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