New survey reveals which religions New Zealanders trust most – and least – after Christchurch shootings
The data show no evidence of local anti-Semitism or Islamophobia – but this does not mean that hate towards minority
religious groups does not exist in New Zealand.
AAP/Mick Tsikas, CC BY-ND
In a survey of 1000 New Zealanders, taken a month after the Christchurch mosque shootings of 15 March 2019, we asked respondents how much they trusted people from different religious groups living in New
Zealand.
We posed the question with reference to Catholics, Protestants, Evangelical Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists,
atheists or agnostics, and Jews. We emphasised “living in New Zealand” as we were not interested in identifying New
Zealanders’ trust in, for example, worldwide Catholicism or Islam.
We are not aware of any previous consideration of trust in different religious groups within New Zealand.
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Buddhists most trusted, Evangelicals least
We used a five-point scale for responses – complete trust, lots of trust, some trust, little trust and no trust at all.
We converted ordinal data (e.g. first, second, etc) into cardinal data (one, two, etc) by assuming equal intervals
between categories to give a mean trust score.
We found that the most trusted religious group in New Zealand is a small non-Christian group: Buddhists. In the most
recent 2013 Census 58,000 Buddhists are recorded, out of about 3.9 million people who replied to the religious question. More people feel
positively about Buddhists than not - 35% of New Zealanders have complete or lots of trust in Buddhists, while 15% have
little or no trust.
The least trusted religious group in New Zealand is a minority Christian group: Evangelicals (15,000 people in the 2013
Census). Fewer people trust Evangelicals than do not - 21% have complete or lots of trust, while 38% have little or no
trust.
In terms of the mean trust score, the difference in trust between the most and least trusted religious groups is of a
size that statisticians describe as “medium”.
Between these top and bottom groups lie all other religious groups, meaningfully and statistically indistinguishable
from one another.
Protestants make up the largest religious category in New Zealand, including about 900,000 Anglicans, Presbyterians,
Methodists and other Protestants in the most recent census. Our survey shows that 29% of New Zealanders have complete or
lots of trust in Protestants, while 24% have little or no trust.
This compares to 27% and 23% respectively for Muslims (46,0000 people), 29% and 20% for Hindus (89,000 pople), and 30%
and 17% for Jews (7000 people).
There is no evidence in the trust data of local anti-Semitism or Islamophobia in the form of a trust deficit displayed
towards Jews or Muslims compared to mainstream Christian denominations. But there is some evidence of moderate
disproportional social prejudice towards non-mainstream Evangelical Christians, with nearly four in ten of the
population distrusting them.
In- and out-group trust
For smaller religious groups in New Zealand, such as Hindus, Jews, Evangelicals and Muslims, our measure is a very good
proxy for “out-group trust” (the level of trust in a particular group among people outside of that group). It is a good
proxy because there are relatively few in the minority group and therefore likely also very few in our sample. We did
not ask people to identify their religion, as in New Zealand it is considered to be a sensitive question, often in the
private domain, and we did not want to suppress response rates.
For the larger groups, such as Protestants and Catholics (the latter 500,000 people in the 2013 Census), our measure
will not detect out-group trust as accurately, as the survey is likely to contain a substantial number of people who
fall into these larger religious groups. Hence a significant amount of measured trust in larger religious groups is
actually “in-group trust” (trust by people who are members of that religious group in their own religious group).
It seems plausible that in-group religious trust exceeds out-group trust. That is to say that people have higher trust
in those who are more similar to them religiously than those who aren’t. If this positive in-group bias is important, a
true measure of out-group religious trust will reduce trust in larger Christian groups relative to trust in the smaller
minority groups.
What we can’t tell from the survey
The survey is intended to provide a representative picture of the New Zealand population aged 18 and over. Quotas were
applied at the sampling and selection stage for this online survey. Results were also weighted to be representative of
New Zealand by age, gender, ethnicity and region. While the survey is by no means a classical random survey, we believe
that the results provide a good picture of relative trust of the population.
The findings suggest that New Zealanders’ patterns of trust in minority non-Christian religious groups are generally
similar to mainstream Christian denominations. But this conclusion does not demonstrate that hate towards minority
religious groups does not exist in New Zealand.
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It is possible those who report distrust in non-Christian religious minorities harbour more extreme views than those
reporting distrust towards larger mainstream religious groups or towards Evangelicals. These more extreme views may, in
turn, result in more instances of prejudiced behaviours towards these religious minorities. Or it may be than some
religious minorities are more readily socially identifiable as such, via ethnic origin or clothing, than others. While
there is a roughly equal amount of “out-group” religious prejudice in society, the visible are more exposed to it than
other, less identifiable, minorities.
It is also feasible that the outpouring of public support for the Muslim community following the Christchurch shootings
and a national discussion about religious hate have prompted some respondents who might have harboured less trust for
Muslims to either change their views or become more reluctant to report those feelings.
We cannot test this group of possibilities, in part because we did not ask the same question in our regular surveys
prior to the shootings. At that point, religious trust was not considered salient.
Simon Chapple, Director, Institute for Governance and Policy Studies, Victoria University of Wellington
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.