MAORI CHURCHES

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 412, 22 December 1932, Page 2

MAORI CHURCHES

old-time fanes and their history. "A peculiar interest attaches to some of the old-fashioned churches dating back to the first Bishop Selwyn's time that one sees liere and there in the Waikato and elsewhere," states the writer of an article in the New Zealand Railways Magazine. "They were built with funds subscribed chiefly by the Maoris and largely by Maori labour, and until the wars , and the confiscation of native land their congregations were Maori. Now, never a Maori is seen within their doors, for the pakeha, after the conquest, took church as well as the land; and now they are the local parish churches. "One of these is the pretty Church of England in Te Awamutu; another is Rangiaowhia Church, three miles away. Yet another is the celebrated Volkner Church, in the middle of Opotiki town, once the worshipping place of the Whakatohea tribe. The only church I know all changing times since the 'fifties of last century is the massive native-built church at Otaki, described in a recent number ■ of the Railways Magazine. 'T'he most venerable of all our New Zealand churches is the little English church in famous Kororareka, the modern township of Russell. It is very little short of a century in age; it was there before New Zealand came under the British flag. But it has been renovated, and in one way 01* another it does not possess the antique charm that the two old solidlytimbered Waikato churches mentioned hold for the eye."