2002
October

The Bali bombings prompted the Australian and Indonesian governments to organise a dialogue involving faith community leaders and political representatives to reduce the risk of anything similar happening again.

2004 December

The 1st Asia Pacific Regional Interfaith Dialogue in Yogykarta, Indonesia. 15 countries attended with delegations of 10 people each, including a representative of the government and leader(s) of the major faith communities. Three members of the NZ delegation (Race Relations Commissioner Joris de Bres, Dean of Auckland's Anglican Cathedral Richard Randerson, and Head of Religious Studies at Victoria University Paul Morris) began discussing the idea of national interfaith statement, intended to be an aspirational document.

2006 March

The 2nd Asia Pacific Regional Interfaith Dialogue in Cebu, Philippines.

2006 August

A draft document titled National Religious Diversity Statement was presented to a national interfaith meeting in Wellington.

2006 October

A working group met to discuss the draft document, including the three people who originated the idea, one leader from the main minority faith groups, and two or three Christian leaders. Glyn Carpenter from visionnetwork was a member of the working group and attended the two meetings which took place.

2006
Oct-Dec

Submissions received and processed.

2007
Jan

The 2nd meeting of the working group took place to analyse the submissions, which showed a lot of concern about the draft document. Concern was also expressed in the working group over stories circulating that this was being pushed to meet a political agenda, with the 3rd APRID scheduled to take place in Waitangi in May 2007. The WG was assured that this was not the case, and the meeting ended with the general understanding that such a deadline would be virtually impossible.

2007 February

A modified draft of the document was discussed at the National Interfaith Forum in Hamilton. Major concerns were raised from the audience by people from various faith groups.

Towards the end of the discussion, Glyn Carpenter speaking from the platform repeated a point which he had made in visionnetwork's submission and directly in the working group, that the main problem with the statement was that the significance of the Christian faith to New Zealand was not fairly reflected in the document.

The phrase “NZ is a secular state; NZ has no official established religion” is repeated continually, he said. But a Senior Lecturer in Law at Otago University has said that while this is a true statement, it is also true to say that Christianity is the de facto or unofficial religion of NZ.

This point was received without objection by the mixed audience even though there had been continual objections about the draft statement itself.

Joris de Bres closed the discussion by saying that if the document was modified to take into account the major concerns raised, could the document be endorsed as a basis for discussion. The audience gave their support to this motion.

2007
April

The document was finally published on the Human Rights Commission website and in booklet form in time for the Waitangi meeting in May. Visionnetwork's main point was still not adequately addressed. In addition, three further concerns surfaced:
(a) the statement appeared under the title National Statement on Religious Diversity giving it a sense of authority it did not have (this was changed immediately);
(b) the basis for the statement's endorsement (i.e. “as a basis for discussion”) has not always been prominent;
(c) the way visionnetwork's name is shown as a member of the working group could indicate a level of endorsement that was not accurate (this point has not been raised as we are waiting for the review scheduled to take place in 2009).

2007 August

A national interfaith meeting at the Auckland Cathedral focused on the topic of Religion in Education.

2008
July

A document of Draft Guidelines on Religion in Education was handed out at a national interfaith meeting in Auckland. Submissions were received up to September. Visionnetwork's submission pointed out that the significance of Christian faith was not fairly reflected.

2009
April

A final draft of the Guidelines was published and final submissions invited up to the end of June 2009. The latest draft has a minimal reference to Christianity. This comes after the “secular state – no official religion” phrase, and also after reference to the increase of other religions, including approximately 1/3 called “no religion”. When Christianity is finally mentioned, it is in the context of an “overall decline ...”. This is despite there being at least four times more active practitioners of the Christian faith than all other groups added together, 15-20 times more active worshippers than any other religious group, (40 times more according to the last national census).