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Mormonism And The Maori: A Look At Beginnings

Mormon Pacific Historical Society

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints launched a sustained mission to the New Zealand Maori beginning in the 1880s. Within a few short years thousands had been baptized. By the turn of the century, the church counted nearly a tenth of the total Maori population as members, with a significantly higher percentage in certain pas (settlements) along the east coast of the North Island from the southern Wairarapa to Poverty Bay and beyond.1 The reason Mormonism was so well accepted among a significant minority of Maori in the final decades of the nineteenth century and why it continues …