A spiritual bypass?
Found this really interesting article in the current Listener. David Young, the writer, talks about the rise in Maori Spirituality/Ritual in contemporary society (with things like dam blessings, karakia at opening of new buildings and relocation of animals or birds by DOC), while at the same time Pakeha spirituality/ritual has become something not "of our culture".

He says: "In a book to be published later this year* I suggest that many Pakeha have had a spiritual bypass. As more and more have found the church's message less pertinent and voted with their feet, we have met Maori religion ñ which owes much to 19th-century missionary work ñ coming to meet us through the foliage overgrowing the back path to the church. But with what do we greet them?"

and: "But what Pakeha cannot offer and Maori still can is ritual, rooted in tradition that belongs entirely to this land. I suspect that most Pakeha are not comfortable with ritual and have been relieved to be able to shuck off the worst of the formalisms of the societies that our forebears left behind. Yet there are times when rituals that are grounded in this landscape and are of this time are needed. For the most part, however, only Maori seem to be able to fill this gap."

I'm going to be interested in what the book says when it comes out, and in the churches response to it. I wonder if, in the emergent church, some of the answers are already growing in an organic way?