The survey, released Monday by the Pew Research Center, revealed a gaping "God gap" between relatively rich and poor countries.

In Kenya, for example, the country with the lowest gross domestic product per capita in the survey, 95% of people said belief in God is necessary for a person to be moral.

In Sweden, the richest country, just 9% of people connected God with good morals. (The survey did not break down respondents by religion.)

Even within countries, the rich and poor don't agree on God and morality, the survey said.

In the United States, to take one example, there is a gap of 24 percentage points between high and low income Americans. The poor were much more likely to say belief in God is necessary to be good.

"People in the emerging economies included in this survey tend to be more religious and more likely to consider religion to be important in their lives," wrote the authors of the study.

Pew's study seems to lend weight to the secularization thesis: the idea that nations become less religious as their people get richer and more educated.

For decades, the United States defied this theory by being both rich and religious. But even that is changing, according to a number of other studies.

In 2002, 58% of Americans said belief in God is necessary to be good. In 2019, that number slipped to 44%.

Religion remains a powerful force in the life of people around the world, including the United States. A majority of people in 23 of the 34 countries survey said religion is "very" or "somewhat" important to them. In the United States nearly half — 47% — called it "very important." Continue reading

The latest Global Wealth Report puts New Zealand fifth in the world - partly thanks to our house prices.

The Credit Suisse Research Institute released its report on Tuesday, showing global wealth has risen by NZ$14.2 trillion. That's a 2.6 per cent increase on last year. Continue reading

Barker is responding to a NZ Herald report based on 2013 Census data and the New Zealand Deprivation Index.

"As society gets better off, churches need to change their message to target the rich to remain relevant," he said.

Barker, stopped attending the Catholic Church because its message was no longer germane, says the prosperity gospel preaches that financial blessing is the will of God for Christians, and faith, positive speech and donations to Christian ministries will increase a believer's material wealth.

He is of the view churches could be turned into places where the rich could network too, rather than just be institutions that provided support for the poor.

Poor church - deprived neighbourhoods

The NZ Herald report shows a strong link between wealth and religion, where the most deprived suburbs are the most religious neighbourhoods.

Poorer areas registered more than 90% of people with at least one religion whereas in richer suburbs more than half the residents are not affiliated to any faith.

Massey University religion expert Peter Lineham said the poor had most to benefit from being members of a church or organised religion.

"Religion offers a lot of benefits for poor people, in a sharing community, comfort and support in difficult times, and with significant financial benefits to share," said Professor Lineham.

Religion helps deal with the isolation of migration and is a way to reinforce the values of an ethnicity, he said.

Lineham also said an increasing number of New Zealanders no longer found religion appealing.

"Individualism is a powerful feature of modern middle-class society and the idea of a religion and its values to conform to doesn't appeal."

The report also shows

• Christians decreased to 1,906,398 (48.9 percent of people with religious affiliation) from 2,082,942 (55.6 percent) in 2006
• Catholics are now the largest Christian denomination with nearly .5m adherents
• Catholics, for the first time have overtaken Anglicans
• 1/8th of Catholics are Asian
• 1/10th of Catholics belonged a Pacific ethnic group
• The level of immigration means Auckland is the most religious area in the country.

Sources

• NZ Herald (including interactive map comparing suburb, wealth and religious affiliation)

But recently I have felt a stirring within me to bring my faith into the public forum in a visible way.

There is a growing brittleness in our world. Russia's bullying of Ukraine, atrocities in the Middle East, intolerances almost everywhere.

New Zealand isn't free of tensions

The gap between the rich and poor in New Zealand is the greatest since records have been kept.

This isn't by chance.

Government economic policy and the collapse of a sense of governance (in reference to higher principles like the common good or equality of opportunity etc) favour the already wealthy becoming even more wealthy.

When I was at Uni the counter to this was the 'trickle down theory'.

Excess wealth was supposed to trickle down to the low paid.

Yeah, right.

As Pope Francis has put it: "this theory expresses a crude and naive trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and meanwhile the excluded are still waiting" (Evangelii Gaudium, 54).

And now the government's new housing policy sees a reduction in government housing and an increase in rent subsidies, which go where? Into the pockets of landlords.

Ideological policies rather than principled policies are placing more and more pressure on the least well off in our country; a further recent example is the approval and introduction of demeaning zero-hour contracts.

Lack of Government transparency

What I wish to draw our attention to today is the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA). A large range of commentators and leaders are warning us against this agreement.

What I find most distasteful is that it is being negotiated in secret.

This undermines democracy and heightens the concern that the agreement places the interests and power of the largest multinational companies above the interests of individuals, ordinary families, authentic national interests, and the Treaty of Waitangi.

Citizens have a right and duty to protect our egalitarian principles, our kiwi culture, and our expectations of fairness in health, educational and business spheres.

Absolute freedom to market anything, anyhow, is not in our interests and most certainly is not a "right" that can trump the democratic duty of a government to regulate and govern a national economy broadly in accord with the wishes of a nation's citizens.

I shall be joining the protest on Saturday 7th March calling for the Government to be transparent about the full implications of what it is committing New Zealand to. You may wish to join me.

• Hastings: 1pm, Civic Square
• New Plymouth: 1pm, Puke Ariki Landing
• Palmerston North: 1pm The Square (opp library)
• Whanganui: 11am, Stainless Steel Sphere, Boadwalk.

- Bishop Charles Drennan

But while the first cases in the U.S. and Spain have stirred fears over the past week, we don't need to fear an unstoppable epidemic in developed countries. As World Bank President Jim Yong Kim aptly put it in a piece for the Huffington Post:

"The knowledge and infrastructure to treat the sick and contain the virus exists in high- and middle-income counties. However, over many years, we have failed to make these things accessible to low-income people in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. So now thousands of people in these countries are dying because, in the lottery of birth, they were born in the wrong place."

Dr. Kim makes the crucial point here — the current Ebola outbreak is much more than a public health crisis — it is an inequality crisis.

People dying of Ebola in West Africa did not choose to be born in West Africa, any more than I chose to be born in the United States or my wife chose to be born in England.

The Scriptures remind us time and again of our obligation to care for the widow, the orphan, and the sick.

Accordingly, it is clearly our duty as Christians to do everything we can for the people suffering from this epidemic.

Combatting the current outbreak is important beyond saving lives in the short term; the World Bank estimates that the economic cost in terms of lost growth that Ebola could cause in West Africa could rise into the tens of billions of dollars.

Such a scenario would make inequality between this region and the developed world even worse — making it that much more difficult for nations like Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone to experience the economic development that will be needed to reduce the likelihood and severity of future epidemics.

So fighting Ebola means much more than simply sending funding, medicine, and personnel to West Africa to contain the outbreak. Continue reading

- Jim Wallis is a christian leader for social change.

Image: Sojo Net

The change in 2009 has led to a surge in seriously rich people gaining New Zealand residency and most don't need any business experience or English language expertise.

More than 100 people have been approved under the "investment plus" category, open exclusively to those investing $10 million in New Zealand, and dozens more are applying every year. Read More

Both publications illustrate the immense power and wealth that is concentrated amongst a miniscule group of businesspeople. According to the NBR, 'The rich continue to get richer'. Editor Nevil Gibson says 'This year's Rich List is bigger and richer than ever before, with the total minimum net worth of members now at $47.8 billion, an increase of $3.5 billion on last year's list. Add the small group of New Zealand-based international billionaires and the figure climbs to $60.4 billion, an all-time record' - see: How to be a millionaire - NBR Rich List.

This enrichment is because, Gibson says, 'The past year has been a good one financially', with record profitability: 'The surge in wealth is mainly due to the substantial gains of most investment classes; the New Zealand equity market returned 25.9% last year'.

Most of the 2013 NBR Rich List information is behind the NBR paywall online, but you can still see the summary Rich List at a Glance (Wealth order), as well as the individual entries for various rich-listers such as Graeme Hart, Richard Chandler, the Todd family, Owen Glenn, and Alan Gibbs. And of course there's some very political people on the list too - for example, both the National Party's leader and president - see: John Key and Peter Goodfellow's family. A good summary of the report can also be read in Steve Deane's Hart returns to top of wealthier NBR rich list.

Further evidence of growing wealth and profitability in New Zealand was also seen earlier this week via Hamish McNicol's Luxury car sales leave rest behind and Christopher Adams' Banks' profit jumps 12.9pc, nears $1b. Continue reading

Sources

• Bryce Edwards in The New Zealand Herald
• Image: IZ Quotes

Dr Bryce Edwards is a politics lecturer at University of Otago.