JUDY GILL: THE REAL RELIGIOUS SCHOOLS AREN’T CHRISTIAN

Let’s drop the pretence: New Zealand’s state schools are no longer secular. They are religious — not in name, but in content, tone, and daily practice.

The belief system being promoted is Te Ao spirituality — grounded in concepts like wairua (spirit), atua (gods), mauri (life force), tapu (sacredness), and daily rituals such as karakia (prayer). These are not limited to cultural appreciation. They are taught as reality — and are now embedded across every subject in the curriculum: science, ecology, maths, English, digital technology, and even PE.

We are told this is a “worldview.” And that’s exactly the point. A worldview encompasses everything — beliefs about the origin of life, morality, authority, time, purpose, identity, and death. It is a religious framework, whether the state admits it or not.

And here’s the deeper irony: That’s exactly what Christianity used to be.

THE CHRISTIAN WORLDVIEW BUILT THIS COUNTRY

When New Zealand was founded, Christianity was our public worldview. It shaped the justice system, public morality, civic equality, the concept of charity, and the idea that:

- All people are created in the image of God

- Men and women are morally equal

- Every ethnicity is equal before the law

- The state is accountable to a higher standard

Christianity wasn’t just a religion confined to Sunday. It shaped the democratic, egalitarian society that made this country free and prosperous.

Today, that worldview has been discarded — not replaced by neutrality, but by a new spiritual-political framework rooted in the Te Ao worldview. And only that worldview is allowed to be expressed, embedded, and normalised across the state school system.

“SPIRITUALITY” VS. STATE RELIGION — AND THE GASLIGHTING IN BETWEEN

We’re told it’s “just spirituality.” We’re told it’s “just culture.” We’re told — repeatedly — that it’s not religious at all.

That’s blatant gaslighting.

Spirituality, in its true form, is personal. It lives in the heart, the soul, and the mind of the believer — the seeker of higher truths, the one searching for meaning beyond the material world. It is an individual journey — a quiet, inner relationship with the divine or the supernatural.

Religion, by contrast, is what happens when that private search is captured by institutions. It becomes organised, codified, and imposed. Religion is the point where spiritual belief turns into state power.

And that is exactly what has happened with the Te Ao worldview.

What began as a tribal spiritual framework has now been elevated into a state religion — one enforced in schools, embedded across every subject, and shielded from criticism.

THE FANTASY FULFILLED — AND WHO’S REALLY DRIVING IT

The most fervent promoters of the Te Ao worldview today are not Polynesian kaumatua — but white and one-drop brown, post-Christian, middle-class women. These are women raised in spiritual vacuums, whose families abandoned Christianity, but who now seek meaning through ritual and symbolic power. For them, Te Ao offers sacred language, mana, identity, ecological virtue, and a ready-made moral framework.

They are not just participants — they are the high priests of this new belief system. They are embedding it into early childhood education, public media, local councils, and school curriculum policy — often under the radar, and without parental consent.

FROM THE ORGANIC CAFE TO THE CLASSROOM — THE SPIRITUAL AESTHETIC THAT’S TAKEN OVER

I pass by the local organic vegan café. Outside, a Buddha statue rests beneath a string of Tibetan prayer flags. Lotus flowers bloom in ceramic pots, perfectly placed. Inside, I’m greeted by a painting of a young Polynesian wahine in traditional cultural dress — stylised, reverent, otherworldly. On the counter: crystals, a small brass Buddha, and the quiet scent of incense rising beside the till.

It’s peaceful. It’s curated. And it’s unmistakably spiritual.

But here’s the problem: this is the exact same atmosphere now being imported into our schools.

The early childhood centre, the primary classroom, the staffroom altar of karakia and mauri stones — it’s all part of the same aesthetic and ideological package. A fusion of:

• Eastern mysticism

• Green spirituality

• Feminised ritual

• And the reconstructed Te Ao worldview

This spiritual language — once confined to cafés, yoga studios, and backyard shrines — now shapes policy, curriculum, and school culture.

OUR NATIONAL ANTHEM STILL SAYS ‘GOD OF NATIONS’ — BUT SCHOOLS NOW TEACH THE GODS OF NATURE

New Zealand’s official national anthem, “God Defend New Zealand,” begins with the words “God of Nations at Thy Feet.” It was adopted as the national anthem in 1977, sharing official status with “God Save the King.” For decades, it has been sung across the country on solemn and unifying occasions — Waitangi Day, ANZAC Day, public ceremonies, school assemblies, and national commemorations. The opening line is a prayer for divine protection and justice — a call to a singular, sovereign God.

But in our state schools today, that monotheistic tradition is being replaced. Across the curriculum, students are now taught about atua — the multiple spiritual entities said to reside in rivers, mountains, forests, and weather systems. These gods of nature are presented not just as cultural metaphors, but as living spiritual forces. The reverence once directed toward a Creator God is now redirected to a pantheon of earth-bound spirits.

In this new paradigm, “God of Nations at Thy Feet” might as well read “Gods of Nature at Our Feet.” The shift isn’t just theological — it’s political. It represents the replacement of Christianity with a new eco-pantheist state ideology, masked as culture but practiced as religion.

GLOBALISTS LOVE REINVENTED RELIGION — AND HERE’S WHY

It’s no accident that the United Nations, the World Economic Forum, and other globalist institutions have embraced romanticised tribal worldviews like the Te Ao worldview. These belief systems — especially those without written doctrine or verifiable historical continuity — are perfect ideological tools. Without a fixed sacred text, they can be reshaped and reinvented at will to fit whatever political agenda the state or global elite requires.

Much of what is today taught as ancient sacred knowledge has been retrospectively constructed — a modern mythos assembled to dignify what was, in reality, a subsistence-level, violent tribal existence.

And honestly — who wouldn’t do the same? If your ancestors lived in hardship, isolation, and perpetual warfare, wouldn’t you want to leave your grandchildren a nobler story? The legends of gods, mana, and heroic navigators serve to dignify their abject state of survival, not describe historical fact.

Globalists embrace these invented narratives not because they are true, but because they are useful:

- They elevate nature above man

- They displace monotheistic religions with moral absolutes

- They promote pantheism — where anything can be made sacred at will

- They empower bureaucracies to define spiritual truth through policy

Monotheistic religion begins with the command:

“You shall have no other gods before Me.

”Eco-pantheism begins with the opposite:

“Everything is a god — except God.”

This is not cultural revival.It is strategic spiritual confusion — a modern political theology adopted by the global elite, using the Te Ao worldview as a mask.

INSPIRATION: FROM BRITAIN TO TAMAKI — WITH A NOTE ON KENNEDY

This article was first inspired by the rising calls for a return to cultural Christianity in the United Kingdom, where I spent four months in 2024. Those calls emerged in response not only to social fragmentation, secularism, and ideological confusion, but also to the growing influence of the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic extremism in public life. These movements are reshaping public spaces, infiltrating state-funded institutions, and repurposing Christian churches — all under the guise of religious tolerance.

But here’s the irony: the same movements are banned or tightly controlled across most Muslim-majority Middle Eastern countries, where they are recognised as politically subversive and dangerous. In the West, however, they are allowed to thrive — precisely because of our Christian foundations of liberty, democracy, and freedom of speech. The very values that protect religious and political freedom are being exploited by ideologies that openly seek to dismantle them. In many Western mosques, it is preached without hesitation that liberal democracy must be replaced with totalitarian Islam. The strategy is to use Christian freedoms to destroy the Christian foundations that created them.

When I returned to New Zealand and enrolled my son in kindergarten, I was shocked to discover that early childhood education was no longer secular. What I had expected to be a neutral learning environment had become something closer to Sunday school for atua. My child sat on the mat at hui, surrounded by spiritual imagery — atua on the walls, pou in the playground, and ancestral faces watching from murals. He was encouraged to perform deeds to please the atua. This was not cultural enrichment — it was religious instruction dressed as biculturalism.

That moment marked the beginning of my search for anyone — anyone at all — in New Zealand society who was willing to stand up and speak out against the religious fundamentalism now overtaking our kindergartens, schools, and curricula. Not Islamic fundamentalism — but Te Ao fundamentalism. A state-sanctioned belief system, enforced under the cover of culture, and now embedded in every level of education.

I later came across Scott Kennedy’s article from April 2025, “We Are Persecuted and Underfunded — But Still Winning.” While I have no connection to Christian schools, I appreciated his willingness to speak up in defence of Christian educational institutions. His article is cited here only as a reference, someone willing to speak out.

This piece is not about Christian schools. It is about state schools — and the fact that they are no longer secular. What is now being imposed under the guise of “cultural learning” is, in truth, a syncretic spiritual ideology that replaces both  Christianity and secularism with politicised spirituality and a pan-theocracy.

NOTE ON BRIAN TAMAKI

Brian Tamaki, anointed within his own church as a bishop, is one of the few public figures to unapologetically declare that New Zealand was founded on Christianity. In his June 21, 2025, street parade and haka, he publicly stated that “New Zealand is a Christian country.” This assertion — though provocative to some — simply echoes the historical truth that early New Zealand society was built on Christian missionary foundations. Tamaki’s stance is controversial not because it is inaccurate, but because he is not the “right kind of Māori” in the eyes of the left. His political and religious activism challenges the state’s syncretic spiritual direction and exposes the hostility toward Christianity in both public life and education.

REFERENCES

1. Scott Kennedy, Why Christian Schools Are Being Targeted, Breaking Views, April 23, 2025.   https://breakingviewsnz.blogspot.com/2025/04/scott-kennedy-why-christian-schools-are.html

2. Brian Tamaki, Street March and Haka, Auckland, June 21, 2025.   [Video: Destiny Church NZ Facebook / YouTube channels]

3. Sean Plunkett interview with Brian Tamaki, The Platform, late June 2025.   https://www.theplatform.kiwi/ (search archives)

4. Matua Kahurangi, Commentary article referencing Brian Tamaki and Christianity, Breaking Views, post-June 21, 2025.   https://breakingviewsnz.blogspot.com

Judy Gill is a parent, former teacher, and a staunch advocate for secular education. She has a BA and a Diploma in Teaching