College Gets

Pacific Theological

Going Officially

From a Suva correspondent Four gala days saw the open ing and dedication of the Pacific

Theological College in Suva

early in June.

ON June 9, Fiji’s Governor, Sir Derek Jakeway, and Lady Jake way, representatives of all the Churches and of the Government of Fiji, plus about 40 distinguished visitors from overseas, and many hundreds of Suva citizens, took part in a solemn act of dedication.

This was led by the Bishop in Polynesia, the Rt. Rev. John Vockler, chairman of the college council, but five other ministers, each in his own language, said a prayer of dedication for a section of the campus.

Mrs. B. Burgoyne Chapman, of Brisbane, named the married students’ quarters “Bulu House”—Bulu being the first Methodist missionary from Tonga to Fiji.

Dr. Charles G. Chakerian, pro fessor of Social Studies at McCormick Theological Seminary, Chicago, gave the address on the need for positive Christian action in a rapidly chang ing world. Thereafter the principal, Dr, George A. F. Knight, inducted to office his two colleagues, the Rev.

Lopeti Taufa, L.Th., STB, and the Rev. Eric W. Jones, MA.

Started At Easter

The opening celebrations finished with a great open-air service in Albert Park on Sunday night, June 12.

Lectures in the college began last Easter by permission of the Com manding Officer at RNZAF head quarters, Laucala Bay, for he has let the college have the use of barracks, a lecture room, and the facilities of the dining hall and sports rooms.

The college’s new buildings are not yet ready for the students to move into their newly-developed campus.

The college provides two levels of instruction. It is teaching for the Diploma in Theology, which will be the norm for a ministerial student.

The few who can face the more strenuous BD course will be en couraged to work for that degree.

Queensland University has already agreed to find some of the necessary

external examiners for the degree exam. It may be that when the University of the South Pacific comes into being the Pacific Theological College will enter into a close relationship with it. That is at least the hope of the Commission whose findings on the need for a university published in May.

The college is ecumenical, and is thus almost unique. Anglicans, Congregationahsts, Methodists and Presbytenans, with French Reformed mcluded, form its constituency, and other churches are welcome to become sustaining bodies and send their students to it It plans to keep students within the Pacific environment. Thus they will

study the great truths of the Christian faith that can be studied in any metropolitan country, within the at mosphere of the Pacific, and they will seek to apply the truths of the faith to the peculiar problems of the Pacific.

The Rev. Lopeti Taufa, a Tongan, is the specialist in Pacific studies.

But in all the studies special atten tion is being given to the understand ing of the faith within the categories of Pacific thought and life, The college opened with 20 students in its first year, drawn from the Marshall Islands, Samoa, Tonga Fiji, the Cooks, New Caledonia, the New Hebrides and the Gilbert and Ellice Islands.