Why Tahitians Do Not Go To Church

By A. C. Rowland

IN this age of professorship and specialisation the layman has been relegated to the obscure role of a wooden-headed pawn, to be moved hither and yon over the chess-board of modern erudition by the expert hand of the master.

There are occasions, however, when the layman, by the very circumstances of his lowly state, has access to knowledge un perceived by those who dwell in the golden halls of high Olympus. This is often particularly true in ecclesiastical matters.

Until the outbreak of war, the press of the United States country, both religious and secular, devoted much space to the probable reasons for diminishing church attendance. The reasons advanced—a growing materialism, the meddling of the pulpit in matters outside the realm of the church, the spectacular attractive ness of the tinsel trappings of the Temple of Science —may be valid for North America; but they do not account for the falling off of church attendance in the South Pacific.

To Polynesians—including those who rarely enter a chapel or a meeting-house —the Church holds place above all other mundane things. They have never for gotten that the Church has released their race from a religion of fear, full of the grisly terrors of menacing gods. They have consigned the pantheon of their ancient religion to an oblivion from which only research in the writings of the early missionaries can rescue the names and attributes of principal deities.

They have, however, remembered—to a greater or less degree—the paripari fenua: heroic poems of district or islands; full of metaphor, poetic allusion to mountain, plain and valley, to the sea bearing the canoes of warriors, to ancestral deeds of valor, transfigured by the mists of time into supernatural achievements; all epics of pride of race and love of their native land.

This writer has never been able to trace

the origins of the music to which the paripari fenua were chanted. He can bear witness to the charm and dignity of its rhythms, and to the beauty of its melodic structure. In this appraisal, musicians at whose feet this writer would sit humbly as a disciple, have concurred. It was a priceless fabric of native workmanship which, in the texture of its interwoven melodies, expressed the poetic genius of a happy people.

Horrified, no doubt, by dismal hymn tunes brought ashore by the early mis sionaries, the Polynesians offered their native music to their Church, and the early missionaries had the wisdom to accept it. Reverently the native com posers fitted their polyphonic measures to appropriate passages of Scripture.

And so the Himene, which was to glorify the Church in Polynesia for seventy-five jears, was instituted. Succeeding genera tions of missionaries fostered and ap plauded it. Until one day its beautiful harmonies fell on holy but unattuned ears, accustomed to believe that not the first fruits of the genius and joy of a people, but the bitter lees of the wine press. of mediocrity are suitable for an offering of praise to the Most High—and the singing of the Himene was inter dicted!

The reason given was that similar music was used in chanting the paripari there f° r e the Himene smacked of heathenism,” and must be abolished.

The edict is equivalent to an un imaginable interdiction by the Archbishop of Canterbury of “Mid-Summer Night?

Dream,” and the banning of Mendelssohn’s church music because that composer had written incidental music for Shakespeare’s charming fairy tale.

The edict extinguishing the Himene was the death-warrant of the little meeting-houses, scattered about each dis trict, where the young people gathered several times each week under the eyes of their elders, to practise their chorus singing. The presence of the local deacon on the rostrum ensured decorum.

These Fareputuputuraa, as they are named, were the veritable seeding-ground of the Church. The young people of these assemblies matured into devout members of the central chapel of the district.

Pride in an art of their own people, and a spirit of emulation to equal or excel other neighbourhood or island groups in the perfection of their singing at the Sunday services, or on festal davs, inspired faithful attendance and dis cipline.

To-day, the young people stay at home, or wander about at night with guitars, singing ribald songs.

This writer is not altogether ignorant of the native mind. Certainly, he has heard from responsible native sources some unexpurgated opinions. The pity is that the godly, earnest men who have done this thing know nothing of what is going on in the Polynesian mind. Natives shrink from cavilling with white men— especially reverend white men.

Once, long ago, we ventured to warn these gentlemen as to what was hap pening, and why. We learned then that we are only a layman—a humble pawn destined to be moved over the chess board of ecclesiastical policy by the hand of the master, Mr. W. J. Wigrnore, planter and Euro pean member of the Fruit Advisory Committee, has now returned to Raro tonga. A business trip of two months protracted itself to nearly six owing to lack of passenger accommodation.