Understanding New Zealand: Demographics of Christians
The Abrahamist tradition of Christianity has come to New Zealand in several waves, each one contributing to the replacement of traditional Maori spiritual practice, most of which has now been forgotten. But just who are the numerous followers of this Middle Eastern cult in New Zealand?
The statistic that will surprise many people is that there is no significant correlation between being of European descent and being Christian in New Zealand – this was -0.07. There are several reasons for this.
The most obvious is that, when people in New Zealand think ‘Christian’, they usually, without realising it, think ‘Anglican’ or, especially on the South Island, ‘Presbytarian’. The correlation between being Anglican and being of European descent is a strong 0.60, and that between being Presbytarian and being of European descent is 0.40.
Christians are much more likely to be Pacific Islanders than they are either Maoris or Asians. The correlation between being a Christian and being a Pacific Islander is 0.46, compared to -0.37 for being Maori and 0.03 for being Asian. Predictably, given all of these statistics, there is a significant negative correlation between being born in New Zealand and being Christian (-0.24).
Old New Zealand and New New Zealand divide sharply in attitudes towards Catholicism. There is a correlation of -0.27 between being of European descent and being a Catholic, and a correlation of -0.28 with being Maori and being Catholic. This contrasts with the correlation of 0.40 between being a Pacific Islander and being Catholic and the correlation of 0.42 with being Asian and being Catholic.
The obvious explanation for this is the strong negative correlation between being Catholic and having been born in New Zealand, which was -0.41.
Attitudes towards Mormonism, on the other hand, divide European New Zealanders from the others. Kiwis of European descent are highly unlikely to be Mormons: the correlation between the two is -0.71. Asians are mostly indifferent, with a correlation of 0.07, but Mormons are very likely to be Maori (the correlation between the two is 0.54) and even more likely to be Pacific Islanders (the correlation there is 0.68).
The reason for this is Mormons are generally quite hard done by. The correlation between being Mormon and median personal income is -0.46. Likewise, being a Mormon is negatively correlated with having any of the four university degrees. This reflects a deliberate strategy on the part of the Mormon church to target vulnerable people with their propaganda, knowing that the more desperate someone is the more likely they are to fall prey to a religion.
It could be predicted from the above that Anglicans and Presbytarians are signficantly more likely to be old. And they are – the correlation between median age and being Anglican is 0.56, and between median age and being Presbytarian it is 0.43.
Being Christian had a significant negative correlation with having a university degree, and looking closer at this shows a few distinctions. Being Catholic was positively correlated with having a Bachelor’s degree (0.37), with having an Honours degree (0.31) and with having a Master’s degree (0.37), which went against the general trend.
It was the mystery category of ‘Christian not further defined’ that caused the overall correlations between being Christian and having a university degree to be negative. Being ‘Christian not further defined’ had a correlation of -0.24 with having a Bachelor’s degree, -0.37 with having an Honours degree, -0.26 with having a Master’s degree and -0.39 with having a doctorate.
For both Maoris and Pacific Islanders, the correlation between being in this category was greater than it was for people of European descent or Asians. So this category may contain the various Christians that have not been raised in a particular subreligion (such as Anglicanism), i.e. adult converts, who as a rule have it worse than adults who follow the religion they were raised into.
Working in no industry had a positive correlation with being Christian, but many had negative correlations. The strongest was between being Christian and working in the arts and recreation services. This was a very strong -0.63. Perhaps the reason for this is that people who work in arts are iconoclastic by their very nature, as most creative people are, and therefore reject religious tradition.
There was also a strong negative correlation between being Christian and working in administrative and support services (-0.52), accommodation (-0.49), education and training (-0.48) and information media and telecommunications (-0.40). The most likely explanation for at least some of these is that Christians tend to be much older than the average worker in these industries.
There is also a significant negative correlation between being a Christian and being a professional (-0.42), reflecting the generally poor academic achievements of Christians.
Perhaps reflecting a general middle-of-the-road conservatism, being Christian had a negative correlation with being in all of the income bands below $15K and all of the bands above $50K. This was not the case for Catholics, who had a correlation of 0.30 with being in the $100-150K income band and a correlation of 0.24 with being in the $150K+ band.
Reflecting a combination of age, seniority and political dominance, there was a significant correlation between being Anglican and being a manager – this was 0.44.
The point about political dominance and disenfranchisement is underlined by the significant positive correlations between turnout rate in 2014 and being Anglican (0.41) and between turnout rate in 2014 and being Presbytarian (0.32). Contrast this with the very strong -0.68 between turnout rate in 2014 and being Mormon.
Presbytarians are very strong on the South Island, refecting the strong Scottish influence there. The correlation between being a Presbytarian and being a South Islander is 0.56.
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This article is an excerpt from Understanding New Zealand, by Dan McGlashan, published by VJM Publishing in the winter of 2017.
South Africa in New Zealand 2017 Limited Overs Series Preview
The theme of revenge for South Africa’s 2015 Cricket World Cup semifinal loss to the Black Caps has been well established. The Proteas came to Auckland with every reason to think they had what it took to seize a place in the World Cup final, but were denied at the last moment.
The Limited Overs leg of this year’s tour begins tomorrow and involves six matches. For South Africa there might be something of the 2015 World Cup about it, as the final match is, once again, at Eden Park.
The leg begins with a T20, also at Eden Park. Much of the interest in the T20 revolves about the late call-up of prodigious Auckland talent Glenn Phillips, who is replacing the injured Martin Guptill.
The 20-year old Phillips is already being talked about as a talent on the order of Kane Williamson and Tom Latham. In last year’s Super Smash he scored 369 runs at an average of 46 and a strike rate of 143, including one century scored at a strike rate of 200.
That is the sort of hitting the Black Caps will need at the top if they are to find an adequate replacement for Guptill. In limited overs matches the Black Caps know that if Guptill goes big, they win, because his striking ability is unmatched.
New Zealand sit comfortably on top of the current world T20I rankings, with South Africa at fourth. It’s almost exactly the other way around in the ODIs, with South Africa ranked at the top and the Black Caps third.
Despite that, the Black Caps are currently paying $2.34 on BetFair to win the T20, so there appears to be some value there.
The South African batting features four of the top ranked seven batsmen in the world at the moment, in AB de Villiers, Faf du Plessis, Hashim Amla and Quentin de Kock. With any four of those players capable of a matchwinning innings, that makes the Proteas top order arguably the strongest ODI top order that has ever come to these shores.
The Black Caps, for their part, have a diverse and highly skilled array of artillery to break through this. But barring Trent Boult, who is currently ranked the No. 2 ODI bowler, none of them can rightly be said to be at the same skill level as the South African batting lineup.
Although there is much to choose from out of Matt Henry, Tim Southee, Lockie Ferguson, Mitchell McClenaghan and Adam Milne (the latter two returning from injury), none of those names pose the known and established threat that Boult does.
Probably the Black Caps will pick Trent Boult, one of the two speedsters (likely to be Ferguson who is in the squad ahead of Milne) and the other spot will be decided by who is best for the conditions out of Henry and Southee.
Ish Sodhi will also be back in case the Black Caps decide to try and strangle the South Africans with the spin of Sodhi, Mitchell Santner and perhaps even Williamson. If the seamers end up getting dominated by the superb Proteas batsmen, expect a wholesale shift to Plan B: strangle by spin.
The South African bowling unit would generally back itself to defend the large totals their batsmen would expect to put up. They have the No. 1 ranked ODI bowler in Imran Tahir, and the ever-more impressive Kagiso Rabada, who is ranked equal with Matt Henry at 7.
Rabada ought to find New Zealand pitches to his liking, with his Courtney Walsh-style action a test of any batsman’s technique. Chris Morris might be hard to get away but Wayne Parnell, JP Duminy and Andile Phehlukwayo will not be names the Black Caps batsmen are afraid of.
Dean Brownlie scored an excellent 63 in the Black Caps’ Hadlee-Chappell winning effort in their last ODI against Australia, and he has been selected to open in place of Guptill for the first two ODIs (Guptill is expected to be fit for the third).
The rest of the Black Caps top order looks very strong, with Latham, Williamson and Ross Taylor making up the remainder. With Luke Ronchi back in the ODI squad there is plenty of middle order hitting power as well.
Expect a high-scoring series in stark contrast to the recent Hadlee-Chappell, as both South Africa and the Black Caps have considerably stronger batting lineups than they do bowling attacks. It is, however, likely to be close, with a 3-2 win to the Proteas probably the slight favourite over a 3-2 to the Black Caps.
Is this the Age of the Pleb?
There are many systems of thought that describe various times, epochs or ages that humanity appears to pass through on its collective historical journey through the Great Fractal. Plato’s Republic described it alchemically, the Hindu cosmology describes it in a similar fashion and many other traditions have a time of increasing disorder leading to a climactic revolution.
In Republic, Plato laid out how culture disintegrates over time. Society begins in a Golden Age, according to Socrates in Book VIII, and gradually deteriorates.
It begins with rulers who put virtue above all, and who accordingly cannot own property. Because of the errors that these good people inevitably make as a consequence of being fallible, they are replaced by an inferior and greedier set of rulers.
Eventually the greed of the society leads to money being lent out at high rates of interest, which inevitably concentrates wealth in the hands of a very few. Society degenerates further into the rule of the mob, when doing whatever one wishes to do is the only value.
Here there is little of the higher order that an alchemist would associate with gold, silver or iron. Indeed, the men of gold have vanished by the time it comes to democracy. The man of clay takes charge by convincing the man of iron that the man of silver wishes to enslave him, and by convincing the man of silver that the man of iron wishes to kill him, and so ensures that those two mutually destroy each other.
The Hindu timeline tells a fantastic – and weirdly similar – story. Each Great Year, or Age of Man, or Maha Yuga, itself consists of four smaller Yugas.
The first of these, the Satya Yuga, is also known as the Age of Truth, and it corresponds very closely to what an alchemist would call a Golden Age and what Plato would have called rule by aristocracy. Here it is the gods that are, rightly, in charge of their creation, and everyone knows their correct place.
In the next age, the Treta Yuga, righteousness gradually diminishes. An alchemist would call this an Age of Silver – spirituality begins to give way to materialism, and kings and rulers must use cunning to get their will through, no longer able to rely on the confidence that the ruled have in them.
The final stage is the Kali Yuga, which is known in Hinduism as a Dark Age.
Both of these systems of thought, like the Norse Ragnarok and the Abrahamist Armageddon, suggest that the human experience starts good and gradually gets worse until it has to be restarted in violent revolution. Before we get to this point, however, things have to become genuinely terrible.
An alchemist might point to the immense population surge of the last 150 years and declare that this must be the time of the man of clay, because it appears that no longer does anything other than sex matter. People breed mindlessly, with no thought to the long-term benefit of their actions or whether more offspring are desirable, and so the human population has exploded.
A consequence of this is a resurgence of lowest common denominator culture. American popular culture seems to have sunk to an almost childish level, with the people happy to accept any display of gross incompetence or unfitness for leadership from their ruling class.
In New Zealand it can be seen with the increasing media attention given to soccer, which is the McDonalds of world sports, at the expense of excellent sports such as rugby and cricket, and with the degeneration of the nation’s most popular media portals into click-baiting drivel.
Perhaps all of these systems of thought are all correct and we are currently living in the Age of the Pleb, ruled by the worst among us, and by the worst instincts within ourselves.
The good news is that, in all systems of thought that warn us of such a thing, the Age of the Pleb is always replaced by a new Golden Age.
To some extent, how this develops is inevitable. The man of gold, born into the age of the man of clay, finds himself impelled to take action. The degree of degeneration strikes him as obscene, and out of righteous anger he takes action.
This action usually has the effect of bringing fire into the world to burn away the rot and filth of the Age of the Pleb. Sometimes this means war – and with a massive and still-growing human population creating ever more pressure on ever depleting natural resources, this seems very possible.
The other way we might exit the Age of the Pleb is by a fiery revolution of thought, in which the mental cobwebs of long-decayed religions are burned away by righteous fire and the brutal monkey instincts at the bottom of our brains are tamed and sublimated into something valuable.