Religion: A Religious Mix

A distinctive religious profile marked southern Dunedin as unique from the rest of the city. There were fewer Presbyterians - less than 30% in the Caversham, St Kilda and South Dunedin boroughs in the 1891 census, compared to 35% in Dunedin while Baptists made up 12.2 % of Caversham's population, five times more than their national average of just 2.4%. Methodists were under-represented in South Dunedin in 1891 but within a decade had grown to over 15%, considerably higher than their national average. These and other evangelical Protestant churches accounted for nearly half of 'the Flat's' population. Dunedin's Catholics were heavily concentrated in South Dunedin borough. There they made up over 20% of the population, double their proportion in Caversham. Most Catholics on the Flat belonged to the ranks of the 'unskilled'. But Catholic men were an exception to the pattern of male absence from church. Their religious identity was closely tied to an Irish ethnic one. The Irish Catholics developed a parallel structure of social, sporting and educational organisations, which helped them define their place within and alongside the wider society of 'the Flat'. Church-going was an important means of sustaining this sense of identity.

On a typical Sunday in 1900 one third of the adults in southern Dunedin would go to church and three quarters of the children would attend Sunday School or Bible Class - like the children in this photograph at the Kensington Presbyterian Sunday School. Youngsters were often made to go to Sunday School, even when neither parent went to church. Sunday Schools reinforced the commonly held Christian values of the time adding to the social cohesion of the South Dunedin community. (St. Andrews Presbyterian Church Jubilee Souvenir, 1913, Otago Settlers Museum Collection)

The different church congregations added to a sense of community to the neighbourhoods of the Flat. Their social functions and fund-raising were as important as their weekly services, spreading the influence of the churches beyond their active members as this 1924 photograph of South Dunedin Bible Class rugby players illustrates. (Hocken Library - Uare Taoka O Hakena, University of Otago).

The churches themselves were a major feature of the public architecture of southern Dunedin. (Caversham Project Archives)

Caversham Baptist Church	Caversham Presbyterian Church	Caversham Methodist Church	South Dunedin Presbyterian Church

St Patrick's Roman Catholic Church	St Michael's Orthodox Church	St Peters Anglican Church	Kew Primitive Methodist

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