First “all-embracing” history

Books

First “all-embracing” history of the church in the Pacific

To Live Among the Stars Christian Origins in Oceania.

By John Garrett. Published jointly by the Institute of Pacific Studies, University of the South Pacific, Suva, and the World Council of Churches, Geneva.

ISBN 2 8245 0692 9. Price: Pacific Islands (subsidised): SFS paperback, $8 Hardback; Aust ralia: SAI2 paperback, $17.50 hardback; New Zealand: SNZIO paperback, $l5 hardback.

There would be few better equipped to write a comprehen sive account of the origin and development of the church in the Pacific than John Garrett. Before the formation of the Uniting Church in Australia in 1977 he was a Congregational minister with a very broad pastoral, ad ministrative, academic and ecu menical experience in the church. He was the rector of Camden College in Sydney, the theological training centre of the Congregational Church, and then became general secretary of the Australian Council of Churches.

He came to the Pacific to teach at the ecumenical Pacific Theolog ical College after outstanding work with the World Council of Churches in Geneva as com munications director. He and his wife Roberta, to whom the book is dedicated, have made their home in the Pacific, settling per manently in Suva.

While at the Pacific Theolog ical College John Garrett de veloped a deep interest in the cultures of Pacific peoples. He got very close to the students and in teaching his special subject of history gathered a mass of infor mation on the beginning of the Christian mission from the arriv al of Catholic missionaries in 1521 to the coming of the Protes tants after the great European voyages of discovery made the people, their customs and their needs known to the Western world. Jan. 20.

The story is carried through the 18th and 19th centuries

“Islanders live on small pieces of earth surrounded by the wealth and menace of the sea. Travel and arrival, life and death,. . . and the prospect of life among the stars have distinctive meanings for Church and people.”

John Garrett in a foreword to his book.

showing the gradual growth from mission to church in the 20th century.

The title of the book is taken from the words of Joeli Bulu, a great Tongan Christian and mis sionary to Fiji. Shaken after his experience in the charismatic re vival in Vavau in 1834 he looked into the heavens one night and said: “I will lotu that I may live among the stars.” (“Lotu” is a word used widely in the Pacific to mean both worship and church.) It is true to say that this is the

first all-embracing history of the church in the Pacific. Much of course of inestimable value was written by the missionaries them selves and today these writings not only make up some of the world’s great rare books they are the original sources in many cases of the history of particular areas. They leave us to marvel at the way many of these people, men and women, living under difficult, tropical, primitive con ditions, with almost complete absence of amenities, could re cord with accuracy and sensitive

insight aspects of the peoples’ culture, language and way of life that anthropologists and students of Pacific history study with great interest today.

Much has been written in our own day on aspects of what the church did or should have done over the past 200 years. The Institute of Pacific Studies of the Australian National University in Canberra has given a fine lead in encouraging the analysis of men and motives in the history of the Pacific churches. So has the Un iversity of the South Pacific in Suva, Fiji, the University of Papua New Guinea in Port Moresby, and indeed the Pacific Theological College itself in Su va. It is dangerous to single out centres like these, for the work has been shared widely. For ex ample, great personalities like Baker and Moulton of Tonga have been brought to life in the theses of Rutherford and Cummins.

The political movements and machinations, both indigenous and on the part of colonial pow ers seeking power and commer cial rights, all this has been ex amined with much research and by many writers. But John Gar rett’s bqok seems to me to be the first full and authentically re searched history of the Christian mission to the peoples of the Pacific from the 16th to the 20th century, and over the wide geog raphical ellipse from the Philip pines to Hawaii in the north, to Tahiti and French Polynesia, Central Polynesia, Tonga, Samoa and the Cook Islands, and then westwards to Melanesia, Fi ji, Vanuatu, the Solomons and Papua New Guinea.

The book is too full and de tailed (412 pages) to review in a fairly limited space. It will be best to select aspects and princi ples which give the key to the

Cover design from John Gar rett’s To Live Among the Stars- Christian Origins in Oceania.

amazing spread of Christian teaching over so wide an area in so short a time. Latourette, perhaps the most outstanding his torian of Christian missions, in his work of seven volumes A History of the Expansion of Christianity claims that the 19th century saw the most explosive and rapid coming of people into Christianity that had happened since the first century. John Gar rett gives some definite clues as to how this happened in Oceania.

These are: (1) the results of the evangelical movements in the churches of Europe and America; (2) the outstanding personalities that seemed to be called and ready to undertake the leadership of the Pacific churches; and (3), perhaps the most salient reason of all for the wide sweep of mission across the Pacific, the willingness and quality of Pacific Islanders themselves to be mis sionaries to their own Polynesian and Melanesian kinsmen and wo men over the whole area.

The missionary societies in England sprang up in the main out of the Evangelical revival that swept over the English churches in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Within practical ly a decade the London Missio nary Society, the Church Missio nary Society, Wesleyan and Bap tist societies were formed. The conviction of sin and evil in the heart of man was deep and wide.

Men and women’s own experi ence of Salvation and Christ made them sure of a gospel that could raise mankind the world over from the deepest depth. So Charles Wesley’s hymns echoed his brother John’s evangelical preaching and global certainty.

Thy undistinguishing regard Was cast on Adam’s fallen race, For all Thou hast in Christ prepared Sufficient sovereign saving grace.

The journals of Cook and other explorers of the Pacific told of the primitive nature of whole communities of men and women and the churches through the mission societies of the time felt the need to go out, as Niel Gunson wrote, as “Messengers of Grace”. Throughout the book we see this as the underlying motive of the expansion.

From America too came the men with the same evangelical zeal to Hawaii whose revival in the mission of 1837 was ascribed to “fervent preaching by rugged new missionaries whose own flagging faith had been fired be fore they came to Hawaii in the searing frontier evangelism of America’s north-eastern ‘burned over district’ centred in upper New York State”.

There were of course many other motives at work in the Pacific: besides the fight for men and women’s souls there was the fight for colonial expan sion and the struggle for denomi national precedence. In these days of ecumenical understand ing it is strange to read of the bitter relationship of Protestants and Roman Catholics in the Pacific area over a century of time. It is stranger still to read of the conflicts of Protestants; Methodists and LMS in Samoa, and even between leaders of the same church, Baker and Moulton in Tonga, Lawry and Leigh in New Zealand. Situations which make some of us ashamed today John Garrett has recorded with sensitivity and understanding.

The second important thread running through the book is the towering nature of some of the players in the whole scene, both Roman Catholic and Protestant.

Marsden, the enigmatic figure of

John Garrett: Minister of relig ion, writer and a former com munications director for the World Council of Churches. He lives in Fiji.

Australia’s early history, was not only the outstanding church figure in early Sydney but played a large part in the origins of the church in New Zealand. He preached the first Protestant sermon in New Zealand, encouraged the Wesleyans to go there, became the agent of the LMS and CMS there, and “made the mission to the Maori people one of the guiding passions of his life.”

Then there was Bishop Pompallier of the Bay of Islands, a man of great competence, who became the ruler for the Roman Catholics of a vast area of John Thomas, only a blacksmith, was ordained in London for the Wesleyans and sent to the Friendly Islands. He stayed for 30 years, not a great leader, but one who came to know his way about with the great King George Tupou I of Tonga. John Thomas is still the best remembered missionary name in Tonga Misa Tomasi.

In Fiji there was John Hunt, Fison, Langham and Waterhouse. John Hunt was a saintly man and the book brings out his qualities. He lived close to the people “he understood listened to them, loved them Hunt died at the age of 36 at Viwa.

Looking down the index there is a long list of outstanding men, Bingham in Hawaii, Murray in Samoa, George Brown in New Britain, Lawes in Papua far too many to mention here. They

made history in a way, because they had to act and explain later, Mission boards were too far away and they did not have time to confer and consult as hap pened in days of more modem communication. Their names live on in the areas where they worked. They make an impres sive group from every branch of the Christian church, There were of course great personalities among the Pacific peoples themselves. They made a very big contribution to the spread of the Christian gospel: many high chiefs from over the whole area could be quoted, Kaahameha the Queen Mother in Hawaii, Taufa’ahau in Tonga, Varani and Cakobau in Fiji. In fact the conversion of whole peo pies to Christianity often came about by the people following the step taken by their chief or king “when I turn they all turn”, Taufa’ahau is reported to have said. Their Christian faith was nonetheless real because of these mass movements into the church.

It put the stamp of custom upon the new faith, took it out of the Western mould, and shaped it in a sense according to an indigen ous pattern and form. This hap pened all over the Pacific and the point is made strongly and well throughout the book.

Finally it is probably true to say that no previous writer on Pacific church history has shown as clearly as Garrett the very large part that Pacific Islanders themselves played in the

evangelisation of Oceania. The largest entry by far in the index is under the heading “Pacific Is land Missionaries’’

Hawaiians, Tahitians, Cook Is landers, Tongans, Samoans, Fi jians. From the first days of the church in the Pacific they went out, Roman Catholics and Pro testants, to share their new faith, often arriving in Island groups before the white man. In the past we have not done justice to the work of these people. John Gar rett has. The chapel at the Pacific Theological College Suva has an honor roll with over 1000 names.

In the Centenary Church at Nukualofa there are plaques to the pioneer missionary Lawry and to Roger Page. There should be recognition there somewhere to the Tahitians Borabora, Taute and Zorobabela, who were in Vavau from the beginning, and Hape and Tafeta, who had a congregation in Nukualofa be fore the white men preached there. Perhaps somewhere in the book recognition should have been given to Fijians and Ton gans who have worked among the Aborigines of Arnhem Land in Australia with the Methodist

Church over the past 60 years.

The publisher’s note is right: “The work of several thousand Islander missionaries ... is a central theme in the unfolding story of the free adoption of

Christianity by the peoples of

Oceania.” ‘To Live Among the Stars’ will be a “must” for all libraries, for students of church history and the Pacific, and for the general reader who wants to know more of some of the world’s most

fascinating cultures.

The book is so full and de tailed a story that it would have helped this reader if a brief precis could have been made at the conclusion of each chapter.

The bibliography, glossary,

notes and index are so complete that they will be a help to readers and students and the thirty-seven sketch maps clarify very easily places and areas for the reader.

Cecil Gribble.* ♦The Rev. C. F. Gribble, of Dee Why, New South Wales, was general secretary of Methodist Overseas Missions, Australia, from 1949 to 1972.

Books Received Sepik Diary. By Frank Hodgkinson. Pub lished 1982 by Richard Griffin, Mel bourne and distributed by the author, PO Box 8, Kenthurst, NSW 2154. Price $55.00.

Yield Not to the Wind. By Margaret Clarence. Published 1982 by Management Development Publishers Pty Ltd, Sydney.

Distributed by the author, 3/18 Ramsay Street, CoUaroy, NSW 2097. Price $9.50.

Recent Prehistory in Southeast Papua.

By Brian Egloff. Published 1981 by the Research School of Pacific Studies, Aust ralian National University, Canberra, ACT 2600. Price $7.00.

The Hiri in History: Further aspects of long-distance Motu trade in Central Papua. By Tom Dutton. Published 1982 by Australian National University Press, Canberra, ACT 2600. Pacific Research Monograph No 8. Price $12.00.

Ancestors for the Pigs. By Colin Groves.

Published 1982 by the Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National Un iversity, Canberra, ACT 2600. Price

$B.Bo.

New Guinea Stone Age Trade. By lan Hughes. Published 1981 by Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian Na tional University, Canberra, ACT 2600.

Price $7.00.

Law and Social Change in Papua New Guinea. Edited by David Weisbrot, Abdul Paliwala and Akilagpa Sawyer. Published 1982 by Butterworths Pty Ltd, PO Box 345, North Ryde, NSW 2113. ISBN 0 409 30918 4. Price $32.50.

An ill-fated experiment de scribed in Garrett’s book: The

Clydesdale Seminary was es

tablished more than a century ago in the countryside west of

Sydney. It was designed to give

an Australian training to Islan ders who were candidates for the priesthood, but the Islan ders were “uprooted and bewildered”.