Church leaders' letter on the Treaty Principles Bill - sign on

Update 9 September: We have now published this open letter and sent it to all Members of Parliament. We still welcome additional signatures, which we will add to the list every few days.

Text of the open letter can be viewed here

Please read the letter and, if you are a church leader, add your name via the form to the list of names. Note that we have already published the letter and sent it to MPs, but will continue to add signatures to the list on our website.

About this open letter.

Common Grace Aotearoa has been made aware that the proposed Treaty Principles Bill is likely to go to Cabinet for approval soon.

Before then, we think there's a window of opportunity to show the concern of a wide range of Christian leaders at the proposed Bill via an open letter to all MPs. We think this might be a useful offering for feeding into the public discourse at this time, to show Christian support for Te Tiriti alongside other civil society voices. We have had over 440 Christian leaders sign the letter so far.

We welcome signatures from anyone who is ordained, or leading a church or holding a leadership role in a Christian organisation.

The aims of the open letter are to:
  • Influence Cabinet ministers to potentially vote against introducing the bill for first reading.
  • Begin to influence MPs to potentially vote against sending it to Select Committee
  • Seek media coverage, to put on the public record that many Christian leaders are opposed
    to the content of the bill, at a time when the public are grappling with what this means for Aotearoa New Zealand.
To achieve these goals we need to publish the letter to media before the Cabinet decision.


The letter has been drafted by members of Common Grace Aotearoa's Tiriti justice volunteer team, in close consultation with the Rev Dr Rangi Nicholson, a researcher and clergy person in the Māori Anglican Church, who is one of our board members. A Te Reo Māori version of the letter has been produced by esteemed linguist Piripi Walker.