Under The Steamroller

Islands Society "Crumbling

Of Western Industrialism"

By a staff writer

Dr. George Knight, the principal of the Pacific Theological College in Suva—which is the unique ecumenical Pacific train ing ground for clergymen —spoke up on behalf of Fiji in an im pressive television interview in Sydney in June. The Scots-bom clerical leader was forthright, lucid, sound and persuasive in putting a Pacific viewpoint.

DR. KNIGHT was being inter viewed in a 30-minute pro gramme on the Australian Broad casting Commission’s TV network.

He answered questions on his back ground, the aims of the college and his views on particular South Pacific problems.

The Pacific Theological College began in Suva in June last year. Dr.

Knight left a professional post in the United States to become its first principal. The college trains Anglicans, Congregationalists, Methodists and Presbyterians, with French Reforms included, for a diploma in theology (the norm for a ministerial student), or a Bachelor of Divinity (for the more advanced).

Tremendous revolution

There are external examiners from the NZ University of Queensland and the NZ University of Otago.

Dr. Knight, 58, holds doctorates from three universities, including Glasgow University. His first appoint ment was in 1935 in Budapest, as director of the Church of Scotland Schools and Mission to the Jews in Hungary. He is the author of 13 books.

Dr. Knight said that in planning the curriculum for the college he had tried to include the best of the heritages from the parts of the world where he had taught—Scotland, Eastern Europe, America and New Zealand—“always remembering that one has no business to bring a Euro pean or American heritage into the Pacific if it is irrelevant”.

He continued: “The Pacific is going through a tremendous revolution— as all the emerging countries are.

We’ve got fellows coming from re mote islands to study in Suva, which

is to them a pretty big city of 60,000 people with all the problems of a city like Sydney, but perhaps to a lesser degree.

“It is so important they should study in a city like that, because the industrial West is going to hit their islands before they are very much older. We have been slanting the studies towards the immediate needs of the Pacific, but first of all we want to keep them at world level.”

Dr. Knight said that very naturally there was a course in Pacific studies, because a man had to know his own background.

“We have a course in the history and church history of the Pacific, and beyond that we go on to an examination of the rapidly chang ing customs of the Pacific,” he said.

“Anybody who has read any anthro pology knows about the sex problem in the Islands, the question of marriage, the whole structure of society—which is simply crumbling.

Are we to leave people helpless?

“You get stupid people who say, ‘Look what Missions have done in the Pacific—destroying the people’s culture’. It is not missions but the steamroller of Western industrialism.

Racial problems

“The Church is trying to help people to step over into the new world, just as new migrants to Aus tralia always find the Church very much their home until they can integrate into Australian society.”

Dr. Knight said there was no racial trouble in the college. He agreed that in Fiji there had been trouble be tween Fijians and Indians, and added: “Fortunately it has not been acute, but it could be acute in the future, and I believe it is because Fiji is

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becoming over-populated. It’s already half a million.

“I shouldn’t just speak about Fiji, because the Pacific Theological College deals with the whole Pacific, with students from nine territories, but since the question is asked about Fiji I will answer that it is not going to be easy in the future to absorb the unemployed, unless Fiji in dustrialises quickly.

“People are coming in from the outer islands, becoming Western Man, becoming wage earners, and there are no jobs for them. Fiji hasn’t yet the economic capacity, unless it gets help from outside.

“It has asked for a loan from Australia and so far Australia has said no. I hope this is not a final answer. Australia, very rightly, feels its responsibility to South-East Asia and is focusing all the help it can upon that part of the world, but I would like Australia to realise that if you have a quarter of a million Indians in Fiji you have Asia in the small.

“I would like to think that Fiji could get a loan to get ahead with capital development, and stop un employment and therefore stop racial strife.”

College problems

Discussing the problems of the college, which he said was a new experiment. Dr. Knight said it was very difficult to find external examiners who had a sympathetic interest and could understand what the college was attempting to do.

The college had 30 students, which was its capacity. It would have three empty beds next year and already it had 18 applications for them.

Students worked and worshipped together as one. The churches paid to keep the men at college, and after the man was trained he was sent back to his church. The college had nothing to do with ordination.

Within Protestantism there was no difference in theology but lots in practice and in such things as church government. These additions were given by the churches after the students had left, but the basic theological training was identical for all the churches.

“When I see the students sitting in front of me in a lecture, it doesn’t enter my mind that this one is a Methodist, or that an Anglican,” said Dr. Knight.

Dr. Knight said that what was

being aimed at in the college was unique, and must be done all over the world. In the Pacific Islands there were no words in the languages for many of the key terms of the Christian faith. There was no word for grace and in some islands there was no word for love and no word for God. Yet the men from the college had to return to their own islands and express the Christian gospel in their own languages.

This problem was being overcome by learning to express the great

theological ideas of the Bible in pictorial concept—by expressing ther in such a way that a student coul get them in ordinary story language Jesus didn’t talk in abstraction If somebody asked him aboi brotherhood, he wouldn‘t talk aboi brotherhood—he would tell a pictui story about the Good Samaritai He would give a concrete instance c brotherhood.

“I believe that every single concei of the Christian faith can b portrayed that way,” Dr. Knight sai( “and if we can work it out it ca be used anywhere. That is why believe we in Suva have som relevance even to the old churches,

The men who negotiated the Nauru phosphate agreement in Canberra in June. At the table, from left, Mr. J. C. Morgan, acting British High Commissioner in Australia; Head Chief Hammer DeRoburt; Mr. G. Warwick Smith, secretary of the Australian Depart ment of Territories, who was chairman of the earlier discussions; and Mr. G. K. Ansell, acting High Commissioner for NZ Stand ing from left are James Bop, of the Nauru delegation; Ken Walker, an economic adviser to the Nauruans; T. Doig, Australian Department of External Affairs; B. Detudamo, Nauru delegation; C. Duggan and D. Wyatt, of the UK High Commission, Prof. J.

W. Davidson, constitutional adviser to the Nauruans. Below, Nauru from the air, showing a cantilever and some of the BPC assets which will be bought by the Nauruans for something like $2O million.

LEFT, Pte. Bobby Gimana, of P-NG's Pacific Islands Regiment, with Iru Abonckan and his family at Boram, near Wewak. Pte.

Gimana, 22, has been awarded the Queen's Commendation for Bravery for having rescued Iru from a shark last September.

Iru was injured in the attack, and Pte. Gimana dived in, beat off the shark and brought the injured fisherman to the beach.

They breed dashing young Rugby players at an early age in Fiji. The six to seven-year-olds above, pupils of the Vuda District School, Viseisei, are putting everything they have into a game on a Rugby ground cut from the canefialds. RIGHT, New Hebrides schoolteacher Douglas Kalsaria takes time off to act as enumerator at the first full census of the New Hebrides, now almost completed.

Married in Port Moresby (left), Mr. Colin Mancey and Miss Shirley Chin, with their young attendants Adrian Chin and Denise Beran, and bridesmaids Caren Chow and Lily Chin. Mr. Mancey comes from [?] asmania; the bride is daughter of P-NG identities Mr and Mrs. Chin Hoi Meen, now of Port Moresby.

BELOW, recently married in Apia, Philip Muller, [?] bserver-in-charge of the Apia Observatory, and Miss Marie Churchward, daughter of the deputy Director of West Samoan Public Works, Mr. John Churchward, and Mrs. Churchward.—Photos: Chin H.

Meen and Forsgrens Studio.

Private Rovagipo, of the Eastern Highlands of New Guinea, displays the muscles which won him the shot put event (with a put of 32 ft. 2 in.) at an Army athletics meet ing in Port Moresby in June. LEFT, that's more of the Army, in different roles as it were. Mrs. Jennifer Hearn, Sgt. Graham Lindsay and Mr. Lionel Spencer check the script during the Port Moresby Arts Council production of the comedy, "The Matchmaker". Mrs. Hearn, who with Sgt.

Lindsay had a leading part, is wife of the CO of Ist Bn., Pacific Islands Regiment.

Mr. Spencer, who works in the registry at Murray Barracks, produced the play.