Abstract
This thesis seeks to understand the extent and nature of the Māori Conversion that occurred during the first half of the nineteenth century in Aotearoa New Zealand. In the absence of an agreed scholarly definition of conversion, this thesis formulates an original definition to serve as an important interpretative tool:
Conversion is a profoundly religious experience of reorientation in which an individual or group embraces a gradual, though at times appearing sudden, process of change in patterns of belief, identity and practice, resulting in a stable and viable way of communal life that has recognisable continuity with the past, yet is distinctly new.
This definition is then used as a model to analyse the conversion of four early converts: Ruatara, Māui, Te Rangi, and Taiwhanga.
The extent of the Māori Conversion is estimated using the statistical information reported to the Church Missionary Society by their missionaries and is shown to be more extensive than previously acknowledged by historians, with some 90 percent of Māori having converted to Christianity by 1852. The nature of the Māori Conversion is assessed by considering the lives of the four early converts. The thesis draws on a number of previously underutilised archival sources, including autobiographical material written by Māui in 1816, a series of transcripts of conversations held with Waitangi Māori by Henry Williams from 1823–1825, and four letters written by Taiwhanga before his baptism in 1830. This bottom-up approach has the advantage of highlighting the active agency of these Māori converts in the conversion process and provides an important indigenous perspective on the Māori Conversion. By identifying common themes and connecting narratives, these four converts are also shown to be far from exceptional or isolated cases, but typical of the wider movement of which they were a part.
The thesis concludes that the Māori Conversion was indeed a profoundly religious movement that can be understood and conceptualised around three interwoven strands of belief, identity and practice. Māori converts were attracted to Christian ideas because they provided them with a satisfying and alternative way of living in the changing world opening up to them through Western contact. Christianity enabled Māori converts to form new allegiances and identities based on the Bible as a source of spiritual authority, allowing them to dispense with the divisions and animosities of the past and to pursue new forms of peace. The practice of Sabbath
iv observance, Christian prayer, and baptism (among others) reinforced for Māori converts their new Christian beliefs and identities, leading to the transformation of traditional Māori society and the emergence of a distinctly Māori expression of Christianity.