Two Maori founded churches remain substantial, and both arose out of dispossession rather than out of mission.
Ringatu was established by Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Turuki, who was deported without trial to the Chatham Islands in 1866, experienced visions during that imprisonment, escaped with his fellow prisoners on a seized schooner in 1868 and fought a long campaign in the North Island before being pardoned. The faith he founded takes its name, the upraised hand, from the gesture used in place of the sign of the cross. It has no ordained priesthood in the mission sense, its services are largely unwritten and committed to memory, and it draws heavily on the Old Testament, reading the situation of Maori through the exile and return of Israel. Its principal observances fall on the twelfth of the month.
Ratana was founded by Tahupotiki Wiremu Ratana, a farmer at Whanganui who in 1918 received a vision instructing him to turn Maori to God and away from tohunga practice. His reputation as a healer drew very large numbers to his settlement, Ratana Pa, which became a town. The church is Christian and unitarian in emphasis, addressing God through the Holy Spirit, and it explicitly opposed the older ritual practices, which distinguishes it sharply from Ringatu.
Ratana then entered politics. The movement contested and won the four Maori parliamentary seats and formed an alliance with the Labour Party that held for most of the twentieth century and shaped Maori political representation. The annual gathering at Ratana Pa each January remains a fixed event in the New Zealand political calendar, attended by party leaders.
Sources Redemption Songs: A Life of Te Kooti Arikirangi Te TurukiJudith Binney with Ratana: The Man, the Church, the Political MovementJ. McLeod Henderson