During the 1870s there was a significant emigration from Scandinavia to the North Island of New Zealand. Some three thousand Danes, Norwegians and Swedes settled on land allocated by the government in Wairarapa and southern Hawkes Bay. To minister to them, the first Danish Lutheran pastor arrived in 1878. Mads Christensen was sent to New Zealand in 1886 by the Inner Mission, an association within the Church of Denmark. He was pastor of the Danish Lutheran congregation in Palmerston North, the region’s largest town, from 1894 to 1927.

David Hilliard is a former associate professor of History at Flinders University. He is an expert on Australian religious history of the Anglican church since 1945 and secularization of modern life, and previously served as associate editor of the Journal of Religious History, advisory editor of Anglican & Episcopal History, and as a member of the international advisory board for the Journal of Ecclesiastical History.