In Bsip Queues Await Marriages
p. 85 · Read in the full issue
And Baptisms
From A. J. Sheat.
A reluctance on the part of BSI authority to ordain Melanesians as ministers of religion, so that they may perform baptisms and marriages among their own people, is making Solomon Islands travel “tough” for ordained European missionaries in some areas.
A Methodist clergyman who spent long years in Polynesia, and who recently was in the Solomons, was surprised to find that “marriages and baptisms are awaiting the
missionary wherever he goes in the Solomons, so that the large number of ceremonies crowd out the occasion, and give the clergyman little chance to emphasise the meaning and significance of the ceremonies”.
Native ministers and pastors, in most Territories, readily obtain authority to baptise, marry and bury those of their own people who require such services; and it seems an appropriate arrangement.