Co-winner of the W.H. Oliver Prize for Best Book, NZHA 2021.
Winner of the Erik Olssen Prize for Best First Book, NZHA 2021.
Co-winner of the 2021 Ernest Scott Prize
Shortlisted for the General Non-fiction Award at the 2021 Ockham NZ Book Awards
'Hirini Kaa's fascinating and insightful study of the Māori Anglican Church, Te Hāhi Mihinare, deeply analyzes the interactions and dynamics that shaped the church over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.' – Sheryl A. Kujawa-Holbrook, Anglican and Episcopal History
'In Māori theological writings there are four distinguished publications. The first three are written by Rua Rakena, Māori Marsden and Pa Henare Tate. The fourth is Te Hāhi Mihinare by Hirini Kaa, which is a classic of its generation.' – Wayne Te Kaawa, NZJH
'Hirini Kaa presents an informative and perceptive study of Te Hāhi Mihinare ‘the Māori Anglican Church’ from its inception early in colonial Aotearoa New Zealand up until 1992 ... Kaa is able to guide readers through the complexities and challenges of iwi tikanga ‘tribal cultures’ and Anglican religious ideas, practices and internal politics.' – Michael Reilly, The Journal of the Polynesian Society
'This book should be compulsory reading for all studying for ministry in Aotearoa regardless of Hāhi or iwi, ethnicity or gender. It has much to teach those who read with an open mind and listening heart.' – Tui H L Cadigan, Te Karaka
'The conflict between marae and Anglican headquarters back "home" began early on and continued until years within recent memory over issues such as compiling a new Māori prayer book. This superficially unpromising topic turns out to be riveting in its twists and turns before the book finally appears in 1989.' – Paul Little, North & South
'Kaa, the consummate historian, fleshes out history’s dry bones to create something vital and deeply relevant. Central to this is a quality he describes as “the notion of cultural change and cultural persistence coexisting”. It should be read by any New Zealander interested in this country’s past, present and future and the continuing interaction between Treaty partners.' – Chris Moore, NZ Listener
'Engagingly and dramatically written, Hirini Kaa carries the reader with him as he traces the complexities of Māori history as well as the intricacies of Anglican structure and liturgy. Hirini Kaa’s book demands that the agency of colonised peoples is recognised as central to the emergence of new ways to understand faith.' – Judges' comments, Ernest Scott Prize (Shortlist)
'Rather than being a vehicle for colonisation, the church has been a space for Māori resistance... “It’s been a place where we have found a safe space where we could talk amongst ourselves as Māori, amongst our iwi, formulate our thoughts, express them in various ways as creative and there was a strong political outcome from that all through our history, the past two centuries."' – Waatea News
'Religion is often sidelined in the New Zealand story, which ironically paints Godzone as a largely secular land of enlightened progress, or a social laboratory free of superstition. That’s generally a Pākehā story too... Hirini Kaa comes at the story from a different direction. He is both a historian and an Anglican minister, who has expanded his PhD thesis into a new book, Te Hāhi Mihinare – The Māori Anglican Church.' – Philip Matthews, Stuff
'Rev Dr Hirini Kaa has published a groundbreaking history of Te Hāhi Mihinare that centres on the dynamic relationship between Māori forms of knowledge and Christianity amongst the women and men who nurtured the Māori Anglican Church as an indigenous church.' – Anglican Taonga
'Historian, Anglican minister, TV presenter and social commentator Dr Hirini Kaa (Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Kahungunu and Rongowhakaata) has long been interested in the engagement and the interaction between Christianity (and in particular the Anglican Church) and iwi in Aotearoa-New Zealand... This complex and sometimes tense relationship – with claims of religious power, followed by assertions of imperial authority, and degrees of Māori adaptation and transformation – dates back to the time the first English missionaries arrived on these shores back in the early 1800s. – Radio New Zealand
'In his new book, Anglican minister and historian Dr Hirini Kaa tells the 200-year story of iwi engaging with the church.' – The Spinoff
'Hirini Kaa says Te Hāhi Mihinare is about the way Māori adapted the Church of England for their own purposes...It chronicles the arrival of missionaries in the north in 1814, the translation of the prayer book into te reo, the struggle to appoint the first Māori bishop, Frederick Bennett, in 1928, and the development of a Māori Anglican ministry.' – Waatea News
'History that is founded on our Indigenous worldview alongside their own heritage will unlock [the] door, enabling and empowering and equipping them for the future. Our church just has to find the courage to follow.' – Hirini Kaa, Anglican Journal
Listen to 'Interview: Rev Dr Hirini Kaa' with John Cowan on NewstalkZB
Listen to 'The Māori Anglican Church' on Radio Rhema
