Religious Identity Construction among New Zealand Maori Mormons

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints launched a sustained mission to the New Zealand Maori beginning in the 1880s. By the turn of the century, the church counted nearly a tenth of the total Maori population as members. Part of the reason Mormonism was so well accepted among a significant minority of Maori in the final decades of the nineteenth century and why it persists among them in the twenty-first century is that it provided an unusually rich, culturally compatible resource for identity construction. The heart of that resource was the Book of Mormon, a Latter-day Saint volume of scripture that certain Maori read to broaden and deepen the connection they were consciously cultivating between themselves and biblical Israel. Moreover, indigenous Maori “prophecies” were understood to anticipate the arrival of Mormonism and thereby sanction its acceptance.

As is implicit in the 2013 conference theme, human identity is not a static essence that moves unchanged across time and space. It is constantly, if subtly and perhaps not altogether consciously, being shaped and reshaped in response to the changing circumstances, places, and new ideological resources encountered by humans living out their lives. The history of the Mormon-Maori interaction in nineteenth-century New Zealand offers a significant case study in how cultural conjunctures can be made to yield an authentic hybrid, one that fosters multiple, compatible identities. All of which problematizes the definition of Mormonism and turns historians’ gaze away from the usual focus on Mormons of European ancestry residing in the American West.