While modern narratives suggest we are secular, our beginnings whether at the signing of Te Tiriti, or in the first sitting of Parliament in 1854, tell a different story. To be ‘secular’ back then actually meant to be of ‘no particular Christian denomination’. The idea that we would be a ‘Christian’ nation, shaped by the Christian values of justice, equality and fairness was never in question – despite some truly cataclysmic failures along the way!