Thousands of years? Get a grip. The US and New Zealand were only colonized by Europeans within the last few hundred years, and all three countries have generally similar cultural/religious backgrounds.

There's one very important difference, though.

Religions and culture indeed date back thousands of years.

And while the US and NZ we both colonized by Europe (primarily Britain), the latter has a much stronger dose of native and non-European heritage...to an extent such that Maori is actually an official language.