Prayer in Parliament in 1854

The very first debate in the very first meeting of the House of Representatives in 1854 was about prayer in Parliament. Some members were concerned that this would suggest an established state church. The compromise was that the speaker of the house, not a clergyman, stated the prayer. The House’s first resolution was to “… assert the privilege of a perfect political equality of all religious denominations.” (quotation from the original records – I got it from Davidson and Lineham, 1995, “Transplanted Christianity” published by Massey University)

As if to drive home the point the parliament immediately turned down a request to pay the salary of the Anglican Bishop of New Zealand.

NOTE: Some have tried to re-write NZ history to suggest this, and the Education Act of 1877 with a clause allowing "secular" schools means that these old blokes thought NZ "religiously neutral" or "secular." Far from it, they just didn't want to see the secatrian divides of Europe brought into the NZ political system.