Seperation of Church and NZ

"Big" news on Monday as the majority of New Zealanders say 'no' to NZ being a Chrisitan nation.

(I could comment on how a "majority of New Zealanders" were derived from 501 responses, but I'll let people with better statistical knowledge than me tackle that.)

Obviously this clearly shows that people are sensible! And no, I'm not bashing Christianity here. Official religions are not a good idea, and for why just look at America's struggle of seperation of Church and State (which some think is ficticious at the moment).

Presume for the moment that Christianity is the "official" religion. Now roll forwards twenty years. Looking at the results of the last Census, it is quite likely that Christianity won't even be the majority religion. In fact, as dangerous as it might sound, atheism might actually be up there.

And yet, Christianity would be the "official religion", but no longer reflective of the religion (as such) of the people. (I'm ignoring the impact that Christianity being "official" would have. No doubt some, but also likely to be purely beauracratic, too.) And then who knows what'll happen as several laws concerning the official religion would be in place, so most people would be breaking them, and then... well, the laws could be changed, but this leads to a discussion of morality vs law, and beyond my scope.

There was also discussion in that first article about schools teaching about all religions. Sounds like a good idea to me, but I'm not sure about the wording of the questions (available in the press release*). "Should schools be forced..." Forcing schools to teach certain information if they teach a topic is one thing, but forcing schools to teach that topic in the first place? Not so sure. But religious education, as opposed to religious indoctrination, is always prefered.

(* The link doesn't appear to be working, but it's the one from their site. I have a copy available.)