By Keith Newman
This is a compelling account of mission and church interaction with Māori in New Zealand’s foundational years. Contrary to anti-Christian prejudice evident in many popular narratives, Bible and Treaty gives a thoroughly researched account of the men and women who sacrificed home comforts for hardship in a dangerous land. The impact of their Bible-led lives, message and ministry of peace, life, and light in Christ, seeded widespread conversion to Christ. It stimulated spontaneous evangelism by Māori, a dramatic dissemination of literacy among Māori, and expectations of a beneficent future for Māori through the Treaty. What was promised, however, as Bible and Treaty also recounts, was thwarted by an institutional Church collaborating with a Colonial government avaricious for land.
– Michael Drake