1925: Ratana Church Goes Public

May 31, 2023

By AHNZ

Today in history (31 May 1925) Wiremu Ratana publicly proclaimed his church: Ratana Church. The Anglican Church that Ratana had broken away from responded by excommunicating him and his followers.

On this day Ratana Church went public but had been up and running since William’s (Wiremu’s) delirious stage in his influenza fever of 1918. Ref. 1918: Ratana Fever, AHNZ

The announcement was probably politically designed with the 1925 General Election in mind. Ratana used the same tricks that the Labour Party used on white people. Soon, the two linked up with Ratana being an unofficial faction of Labour that delivered it “the brown mandate” to rule.

Also of interest, Ratana was simply carrying on with the tradition of Maori cults that had come before. Like Te Kooti before him, Ratana’s religious vision and mission came to him in a mentally compromised state while inflicted with deadly disease. Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stranger?

“Had the Ratana name been accepted, it would have also entailed that Ardern’s (the child’s) marriage partner would be Ratana’s to select; Ref. “Such was the Maori custom; that naming gave the right to guardianship in marriage of the child, and…”; p125, Firth (1929)” – 1918: Ratana Fever, AHNZ

“The Ratana Church started running in New Zealand General Elections in 1928. Since 1931 they have been a political faction of the Labour Party, ploughing under and replacing other Maori politicians with their own radical Christian brand just as Labour 1.0 were doing for Pakeha with their “applied Christianity.”” – A Church of Politics, AHNZ

“The two warring factions in the Rātana Church appear to have reached a stalemate…” – Morehu hit an impasse over Rātana Church after court action, Te Ao Maori News (2022)

“There had been a wonderful increase of spiritual fervor among the natives, who had come under Ratana’s sway, and many of the men had given up/drinking and gambling.” – RATANA’S INFLUENCE FOR GOOD MAORIS LEAD BETTER LIVES, Taranaki Daily News (1921,) Papers Past

“It’s quite a…unusual slightly weird situation to see very obvious pakeha Auckland architects…almost 3 years now…it’s been really hard for my whano here to accept. They’ve had offers from others who’ve come in who said ‘hey we’ll help you’…and they’ve listened and they’ve said ‘no.’…First of all they’ve been told off a couple of times. They understand.” – c15mins, RNZ internview (2019)

The image above is of a derelict Ratana church in Raetihi which was officially opened on 13 September 1926¹ as such. Those responsible for its “desperate need of some repair work” were well aware of this in 2017 when White Savior Auckland Architects Christina Van Bohemen and Rick Pearson stopped by for some Radio New Zealand publicity. Evidently nothing practical came of this as the latest photo (above) shows more damage than RNZ encountered in 2019.Ref. Restoration plans underway for Raetihi Temepara, RNZ (2019)

From the RNZ interview it sounds like the ‘family’ of the drowning building have been very picky about the manner in which they are rescued. They confess that others have offered to help in the past but have then turned away. The hint is that even the ‘slightly weird’ ‘pakeha Auckland architects’ have had to put up with being “told off.” Probably in matters of protocol or of the plumb-accented bourgeois JAFFAs not playing proper reverence to the Manawatu/Wanganui rustics? We can guess that someone bit the hand that feeds with one too many ‘telling offs’ so that the architect posse flicked their neck scarves over their shoulders and retreated back beyond the Bombay Hills again.

Part of the reason for this church falling down seems to relate to an internal civil war for control over Ratana Church. You’d like to think a church would be a high-standing moral example of how to resolve conflicts and solve problems to everyone but they can’t even get their own house in order. That’s a shame since 2018, Ratana’s centenary year, was prophesised to be the start of a great revival. Ref. Te Ao Maori News (2022)

So almost nothing is being done as of the writing of this post except for a cancelled gambling promotion by the Raetihi Cossie Club. All the same, there’s something a little bit funny about using gambling promotional packages to save this derelict old Maori church! You have to wonder what Jesus Christ or William Ratana would have said about all of these problems of jealousy, in-fighting, and gambling. Meanwhile, plaster from the facade keeps on surrendering to gravity while tourists cheerfully take photos of the decay as they pass by on their Sunday drives.

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1 Ref. teparihaoraetihi.nz/history

Image ref. Te Whare Whakamoemiti at Raetihi, Life on The Road, Facebook (May 2023)

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