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

Résumé En

Pacific Peoples communities, formed by the Polynesian migrations to New Zealand that began after World War II, made up 6.9% of the population of this country in 2006. Due to the importance of Christian faith and religious practice among them, churches have been a key place for the elaboration of their distinctive identity, at the intersection of their inclusion in New Zealand and enduring transnational links with the Islands. In the urban areas where most of them live, historical Protestant churches thus contributed to the perpetuation of a collective memory, both religious and cultural, while adapting the patterns of parish life to the urban context. In the last years, these churches have faced internal tensions and competition with Evangelical Protestantism. For example, Island Breeze (a branch of the international network Youth With a Mission) encourage young New Zealand born Pacific People to define personal and multiple identities in the frame of local, regional and global circles of belonging, by disentangling Christian faith, culture and traditional structures of authority. This illustrates how the complex relationships between a common religious memory inherited from Polynesian Protestantism and the New Zealand multicultural context can give rise to various self-identifications.