The Mazengarb Report
This Week in New Zealand History, a Ministerial Inquiry finds Christianity to be a key factor in fighting immorality.
On the 20th of September 1954, the Report of the Special Committee on Moral Delinquency in Children and Adolescents (better known as the 'Mazengarb Report' after the name of the Chairman) was presented to Parliament after a series of high-profile incidents involving teenagers engaging in sexual immorality and other criminal acts including murder sparked a Ministerial Inquiry.
The report, which took only a month to prepare and spans 70 pages, briefly covers a variety of topics including the state of New Zealand’s societal attitudes towards sexual immorality, homosexuality, the role of media and educational institutions in promoting or discouraging immorality, religion and made several recommendations to the Government of the day.
The Committee urged the Government to take a proactive approach to immoral publications produced and/or imported into New Zealand. The report recommended that the Government immediately consider the banning of indecent publications similar to what had been legislated in Victoria earlier in the year. The promotion of sexually provocative advertising was of particular interest to the Committee.
The climax of the report was centred around the need for the state to put greater emphasis on faith and traditional values from a legal standpoint. The Committee affirmed that the deterioration of moral standards in New Zealand was correlated to the decline of the Christian faith, that “our system of morals has been based on the standards of Christianity” and that the “Christian position cannot fail to promote good conduct in all fields”. Therefore, the “moral drift [from Christianity] had become moral chaos.”
Marriage was also mentioned, with the Committee detesting the idea of entertaining “the nebulous idea that it is somehow not wrong to have pre-marital relations or to live together as man and wife without marriage.” Divorce was referred to, but this was largely in the context of the effect on the child.
Ultimately, the report reached 27 main conclusions. Of them, the report concluded that:
The present state of morals in the community has indicated the value of a religious faith, and of family religion. Encouragement should be given to the work of the New Zealand Council of Christian Education.
There has been a decline in certain aspects of family life because of a failure to appreciate the worth of religious and moral sanctions.
Upon the report being presented to the House, a select committee was formed shortly after that presented its own 29-page report (‘Report of Juvenile Delinquency Committee’) in early 1955. Although the report accepted several recommendations such as regarding censorship of indecent publications, it did not directly address questions regarding religious morality. Further reports and inquiries would take place in the following decades, but no substantive legislative actions were taken by successive governments to fight immorality.
Copies of the Mazengarb Report’s summary would be distributed to households across the country, urging parents to be more active in caring for their childrens’ wellbeing and promote Christian values.
If you wish to read the report yourself, you can read the Mazengarb Report here:
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/14760/pg14760-images.html
The follow-up select committee report into Juvenile Delinquency can be read here:
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/26912/pg26912-images.html
