Mission Rivalries

Comment By Notable Lutheran Leader

T>ERTINENT comment on the mission -*■ situation in the Pacific is contained in a book, Under the Cross, just published by Rev. J. Flierl, D.D., senior of the Lutheran Mission in New Guinea.

“Must I enlarge,” says Dr. Flierl, “on the fairy tale about the happy primitive native, whose happiness missionaries should not be allowed to destroy by the introduction of Christianity? True, the native appears happy and jovial before the white man whose acquaintance he has made. He delights in bedecking his body with flowers, feathers, and paint; he will sing and dance at nights on end, he will chant sad songs of despair, or in prefer ence sing songs of victory. All this easily misleads the European who knows not the thin veil that cloaks the misery in which he lives and the restlessness and the fear which haunt him through life.

“Only he who has spent long years among the tribes of New Guinea, who has evinced a loving interest in acquir ing a knowledge of their language, is able to penetrate the depth of the soul of these poor people. It is necessary to appre ciate their heathen customs, to know of their ghost-lore, and fear of ghosts, their witchcraft, ascribing every death to some sorcerer, resulting in everlasting blood

feuds. The never-ending murders—one village ever against the neighbouring vil lage—are evidence thereof. We were obliged to study all these conditions until we gained the confidence of the natives.

Then they told us of their troubles and their fears, they embraced our message of peace, and accepted the Gospel of Christianity.”

There is a frank reference to the situa tion created by rival creeds. Dr. Flierl says he gladly would have come to some satisfactory arrangement with their Ro man Catholic neighbours, but they would suffer no compromise with the Protestants and thus came a mischievous race for supremacy. Priests were hurried inland, grass huts erected to represent mission stations, and unsuitable native boys placed in charge. So bitter became the rivalry that the Government was obliged to take a hand, and it closed the area which was “uncontrolled” against “native helpers” except under the immediate charge of a white missionary. The “equally aggressive and intolerant”

American Seventh Day Adventists, who “know no missionary comity,” are also indicted.

“The order given by a Governor in Ger man East Africa,” says the Doctor, “would be worthy of emulation in New Guinea.

He directed that different religious bodies were allowed only to erect stations at least 10 to 12 miles distant from the other, to enable the individual Church to work undisturbed.”

EDITORIAL NOTE.—Dr. Flierl need not have gone all the way to German East Africa for a worthy system of controlling mission enterprise and rivalry—he could have found one next door, in Papua. Unfortunately, as explained in our last issue, the Papuan system is not being staunchly maintained.