KEY POINTS:
Isn't it great to live in a country where the sight of clerics of assorted faiths arguing the place of religion in our society comes across as rather quaint and unworldly.
This week's national interfaith forum in Hamilton was rather akin to a rally of monarchists, futilely trying
to assert their relevance on a community that is quietly drifting out of their thrall into a more rational, 21st century existence.
Indeed you'd have thought they might have had more pressing business out in the fields trying to find their lost flocks.
After all, in the five years to last year's Census, those claiming to be Christian dropped from 60.8 per cent of the population to 51.2 per cent, while those professing no religion continued to rise, from 29.6 per cent to 32.2 per cent. Other religions, combined, came to just 5.1 per cent.
When you factor in the low turn-outs at most churches each week, and the advanced age of most attendees, I suspect the Christian total is so soft-centred it wouldn't stand much scrutiny.
After all, even one of the leaders at the Hamilton forum, the Anglican Dean of Auckland's Holy Trinity Cathedral, Bishop Richard Randerson, does not believe Adam and Eve were real or that there's any proof of the Virgin Birth.
Nor does the bishop believe in the Old Testament God of bushy beard and white gown who watches our every sinful movement and whose likeness gazed down from Sunday School walls of my generation.
But if Prime Minister Helen Clark wants a national statement on religious diversity which she can present to an up-coming Asia-Pacific interfaith conference, it does seem a pity that the second-biggest group of believers - the non-believers - were not represented on the drafting panel.
If zealots like self-anointed Bishop Brian Tamaki or underhand political activists like the Exclusive Brethren can have their say, then the nay-sayers were surely entitled to be represented as well.
A heathen or two might have resisted, for instance, the watering down of clause six of the statement, which in its original draft, read: "Schools shall teach an understanding of the diversity of religious and spiritual traditions in an impartial manner."
Nobody of a rational bent could surely have argued against that, especially if there was a requirement that the lessons also went into the misery and mayhem that religious extremism and rivalry has caused.
But the extremists obviously objected and, in the search for inclusiveness, the well-meaning drafters have come up with a meaningless substitute: "Schools should teach an understanding of the diversity of religious and spiritual traditions in a manner that reflects the community of which the school is a part."
This leaves it wide open for a clique of religionists to take over a school board and impose whatever religious tradition they deem reflects their community.
I can't argue with the opening statement that "the state seeks to treat all faith communities and those who profess no religion equally before the law. New Zealand has no state religion."
Unfortunately, if the Prime Minister presents this statement as an article of faith at the May Asia-Pacific meeting at Waitangi, she will be leaving herself wide open to questions about such acts of mono-cultural religiosity as the Christian prayer that opens the day in Parliament, or the prayers that open many local council meetings, or the swearing of oaths on the Bible in courts.
Even Bishop Randerson admits to discomfort at leading prayers in public at events such as Anzac Day services which end with a Christian flourish. He rightly acknowledges they leave the rest of us feeling excluded.
While this habit of employing Christian prayers and oaths on state and civic occasions continues, it will be hard for Helen Clark to convince visitors from overseas, that New Zealand has no state religion, and that everyone, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Heffalumpians and non-believers alike, is treated equally.