Florence Young
THE PACIFIC ISLANDS:
PREACHING IN “PARADISE”
The islands of the Pacific have often been depicted as a paradise on earth. Explorers and traders came away with dazzling accounts of breathtaking beauty, and writers, including Herman Melville, Robert Louis Stevenson, and James Michener, masterfully adorned their novels with the enchantment of the island world. “Writers have vied with each other in their glowing descriptions of the wondrous picturesqueness of the scenery, the rugged mountains, deep valleys, and tranquil lagoons; the glistening fringe of sandy beach, the stately trees, feathery palms, and luxuriant creepers; the profusion of bright blossoms, delicious fruits, and gorgeous birds.”1 It was into this setting that missionaries came, first Roman Catholic monks who accompanied explorers, and later Protestants commissioned by mission societies.
Oceania, the term generally used to designate the Pacific islands, consists of some fifteen hundred islands divided into three major groupings: Polynesia, the largest group, extends from Hawaii in the north to New Zealand in the south; Micronesia, the group of small islands located between Hawaii and the Philippines, includes the Marianas and the Caroline, Marshall, and Gilbert Islands; and Melanesia, the islands south of Micronesia and north of Australia, includes Fiji, Santa Cruz, New Guinea, the New Hebrides, New Caledonia, and the Solomon Islands. The size of the islands ranges from New Guinea, the second largest island in the world, to tiny dots in the ocean such as the Marshall Islands, whose total land area is less than one hundred square miles. In fact, all of Micronesia is smaller in land area than the state of Rhode Island; and the population of Micronesia, and all of Oceania, was correspondingly small—excluding New Zealand, probably fewer than two million.
Nevertheless, this was a land of exotic tribal people—people who had never heard the gospel—and mission societies were eager to expend resources to reach them despite the geographical barriers. The first European mission endeavor consisted of Franciscan friars accompanying Magellan and his party of explorers in 1521. For Magellan, this historic expedition would be his last. He was killed, along with some of his crew, after trying to force natives to pay homage to the king of Spain. Later, during the sixteenth century, Roman Catholic missionaries returned to the islands, but their mission was short-lived.
It was Captain Cook’s discoveries that captured the imagination of Protestants. The London Missionary Society was formed in 1795 by ministers and lay people for the purpose of sending missionaries to Tahiti “or some other of the islands of the South Sea.” Soon other mission societies followed, including those founded by the Wesleyans, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and Anglicans; and by the end of the nineteenth century, Oceania was considered a shining success story of Protestant missions.
The first Protestant missionaries were from Great Britain and later from Australia, America, and Germany. When Catholics came to stay toward the middle of the nineteenth century, bitter rivalry ensued, with angry accusations from both sides :“Popery rises its hideous head,” wrote Joseph Waterhouse (a Wesleyan missionary), “sanctioning the eating of human flesh, polygamy, adultery, and fornication!!”2 Perhaps the greatest source of tension between Protestants and Catholics, however, was nationality. The Catholics were French, and there was a genuine fear among Protestants that French political and military power might prevail on the islands.
The geographical uniqueness of the Pacific islands had from the very beginning obvious implications on mission strategy. Transportation became an all-encompassing issue. It was simply not enough to send missionaries out to the South Seas, drop them on isolated islands, and expect them to be satisfied for a year or more until the next passing ship arrived. The small size and population of most of the islands fostered a sense of claustrophobia, and the missionaries who had ventured so far from their native land were suddenly isolated and hemmed in by the vast Pacific Ocean. Mission-owned ships soon became the logical solution to the problem. The Morning Star in Micronesia, the John Williams in Polynesia, and the Southern Cross in Melanesia—each name taken by a succession of mission ships that almost took on personalities of their own—played a key role in the evangelization of the island world.
With the use of mission ships, many of the European missionaries became traveling field directors who coordinated the work of native evangelists and teachers. “The native missionaries were to prove the main strength of Christian missions in the South Seas,” according to Graeme Kent. “Lacking the prestige of the Europeans, they were ignored, bullied, and sometimes killed by islanders with whom they cast their lot, but almost to a man [they] persevered, and between 1839 and 1860 most faiths owed more than they cared to admit to these island missionaries who went where few Europeans dared to venture.”3
But life was also difficult for the Western missionary. Mission work was a life of hardship anywhere, but in the island world the hardships were exacerbated by the ever-present prospect of material gain and by the free lifestyle and sexual openness of the native people. The practice of “going native” was, according to Stephen Neill, “a much commoner happening than is generally reflected in the edifying accounts of these early missions.”4 Here in this island paradise missionaries faced temptations that had never confronted them in their sheltered backgrounds. Some overcame; others did not.
Despite the personal failures of the missionaries, the story of missions in this area of the world is a success story—at least compared to other areas. In many instances there were “people movements” that brought large families and sometimes whole tribes to Christianity. These mass movements have been meticulously documented by Alan R. Tippett in People Movements in Southern Polynesia and Solomon Island Christianity. He points out that in many instances there was no appreciable church growth until the missionaries realized the vital significance of the family and tribal unit. This realization helped bring about the unparalleled church growth that continued into the twentieth century.
Henry Nott and the Duff Missionaries
Unlike early Protestant missionary ventures elsewhere in the world, where missionaries trickled in one by one or in small groups, the entry into the Pacific islands began with a big splash. On a foggy London morning in August of 1796, thirty missionaries, along with six wives and three children, all sponsored by the London Missionary Society (LMS), boarded the mission ship Duff and began their seven-month ocean voyage to Tahiti. Such an extensive Protestant missionary endeavor had never before been launched, and it was a day to remember. There was an enthusiastic send-off as crowds of earnest supporters came down to the riverbank, “singing the praises of God,” with high expectations of what their Christian ambassadors would accomplish in this most “uncivilized” area of the world.
After a less-than-tranquil voyage, the missionaries landed safely on Tahiti on Saturday, March 4, 1797, and on the following day they conducted a European-style church service, viewed with more than passing interest by the islanders. With the Sabbath behind them, the missionaries wasted no time getting settled, and within a matter of weeks Captain Wilson, himself a Christian, felt they were secure enough to be left on their own. He then proceeded to Tonga to establish ten missionaries on that island. The atmosphere at Tonga was less inviting than that of Tahiti, and Wilson left the missionaries with mixed emotions. But his job as a missionary chauffeur was still not finished; he had two remaining missionaries, William Crook and John Harris, to deposit on the Marquesas.
It was on the islands of the Marquesas that the LMS encountered its first of many setbacks in the Pacific islands. The missionaries confronted, not the terrifying reception of spears and clubs, the dreaded and all-too-real vision of their nightmares, but a too friendly welcome—one their missionary orientation had not prepared them for. Hardly had the ship anchored when two beautiful unclad native women swam out into the surf and around the ship shouting “Waheine! Waheine!” (We are women). Although Wilson refused to let them board the ship and tried to discount their behavior, as a seasoned sailor he could not have been oblivious to what was ahead for his two rookie missionaries. Nevertheless, Crook and Harris had a job to do, and they dutifully loaded their belongings into a small boat and paddled ashore.
The following morning before lifting anchor, Wilson sent crewmen ashore to check on them. There on the beach they found Harris with his belongings, discouraged and very anxious to leave. After being separated from Crook, he was left to spend the night in the company of the chief ’s wife. Having encountered white men before, she no doubt believed such behavior would be well-received, but Harris rebuffed her. Leaving him alone, she went back to the village and, according to Graeme Kent, returned “accompanied by other women” and “swooped on the sleeping man and conducted a practical examination” to see if he was actually a man.5 So distraught was Harris by the ordeal that he refused to remain on the island. Crook was left alone to establish the work on the Marquesas. But before the year had ended he left also, and the LMS was left with two outposts in the South Pacific, Tahiti and Tonga.
On Tonga, the missionaries faced entirely different problems. It did not take them long to discover that they were not the only Europeans on the island. Three sailors who had deserted their ships had made the islands their home. From the very beginning they were a “thorn in the flesh” to the missionaries. They viewed the missionaries as a threat to their easygoing lifestyle, and they sought to incite the natives against them. But physical danger was not their only ploy. They taunted the missionaries with their free and easy access to sexual pleasures and mocked their straitlaced celibate existence. The missionaries held firm in their convictions—except one, George Veeson, a bricklayer, who left his colleagues to join the beachcombers. The chief gave him land and servants, and he took for himself a harem of “wives.”
The disgrace caused by Veeson was a deep humiliation for the LMS, but there were even greater problems facing the missionaries on Tonga. Civil war had erupted on the island. Three missionaries, caught in the middle of the warring factions, lost their lives, and the surviving six hid in caves until they were rescued by a passing ship. Only the renegade missionary Veeson remained, and even his days on the island were numbered. His conscience, though temporarily seared, prevented him from enjoying his promiscuous lifestyle, and he returned to England a repentant man and publicly confessed his sin, assuring his supporters that his experience was an isolated incident. “Considering all the obstacles,” writes Kent, “it must be a great satisfaction to the promoters of the South Sea Mission … that no other of the missionaries … acted unbecoming their sacred character”6 (an assumption that, unfortunately, was untrue). Though abandoned for a time, Tonga was again visited by missionaries in the 1820s—this time by Wesleyan Methodists. The most noted of their number was John Thomas, a blacksmith, who witnessed success during his twenty-five-year tenure on that island.
Meanwhile, the LMS work on Tahiti had been slowly moving ahead despite numerous setbacks. Three of the missionaries, like Veeson, had “gone native,” and others had left, discouraged and ill. But for the perseverance of a stubborn, uneducated bricklayer, Henry Nott (who worked for sixteen years without any visible signs of success), the work there would no doubt have been abandoned. Nott was born in Broomsgrove, England, in 1774, and at the age of twenty-two sailed aboard the Duff as a single missionary. At first he was only one of many missionaries struggling to make even the slightest impact on the hearts and minds of the people. But as dangers and problems multiplied, other missionaries gave up (eleven departing at one time). Nott found himself left with only three others, and even they spoke of going home. Times were hard for the missionaries. In 1808 their house and printing press were destroyed and most of their belongings were stolen. To make matters worse, the Duff was captured by the French during the Napoleonic wars, and more than four years elapsed without news or supplies from home. With their food supply depleted, they were forced to for-age in the mountains for wild berries and fruits. Nevertheless, Nott shunned any talk of retreat.
From the very beginning, the Tahitian missionaries had to contend with the hedonistic and authoritarian king, Pomare, who had a reputation for brutality, having offered some two thousand human sacrifices. Yet the missionaries needed him as an ally, and they sought to win his friendship. At times he responded favorably, but at other times he treated them as enemies. When he died in 1804, his son, Pomare II, came to power. He made peace with the missionaries, viewing them as a source for European goods, particularly muskets and ammunition. His profession of faith came while he was pleading for weapons to put down rebel forces. With increased rebel threats on their own lives, the missionaries agreed to supply Pomare and his professing Christian followers with guns and ammunition. It was a pragmatic move on which their very survival depended. According to a native observer, the rebels would have won “had not the native missionaries been taught to shoot as they have been taught to pray, and been given guns along with Bibles.”7
During the rebellion the missionaries all fled Tahiti except for Nott, who bravely held his post, refusing to leave the island. He weakened only once, when he journeyed briefly to Australia to claim a special delivery from the LMS—one of four “godly young women” who had been sent out as wives for the lay missionaries. Nott, as did a number of other single missionaries, had taken a native wife, but bowing to the objections of his fellow missionaries, the union was “annulled by common consent, and no doubt conveniently forgotten when the four ‘godly young women’ arrived by special shipment.”8
Nott may have been far happier and more compatible with his native wife than with the “godly woman” that was sent to him. Though described physically as having a “perfect curvature,” she received less favorable reviews in regard to her temperament. A fellow missionary wrote: “Her Tong is daily employed in abusing her Husband in the most cruel manner and to slander others with the lest [sic] just cause…. Her Feet of late are never directed to the place where prayer is wont to be made but daily she joins with those who are studious in their design to perplex and thwart us.”9 She was generally regarded as a disgrace to the mission. Dr. Ross, an LMS missionary, lamented her drinking problem and claimed that “when intoxicated she is absolutely mad and cares not what she does or says.” It was his opinion, when she died some months later, that she “drank herself to death.”10
After the rebellion was over, Nott continued his forthright evangelism, ever pleading with Pomare to forsake his sinful ways. Pomare was not only a drunkard and a polygamist but also a promiscuous homosexual, and he seemingly had little intention of letting his professed Christianity interfere with such activities. Nevertheless, his final victory over the rebels in 1815 did signal a breakthrough for Christianity on the island. Pomare publicly renounced the pagan idols and altars. To demonstrate his sincerity, he gathered up his twelve personal idols and presented them to the missionaries (no doubt in response to their prompting) to be shipped to London and delivered to the LMS directors as evidence of what was taking place on Tahiti. The idols made a great sensation in England, where special prayer meetings had been conducted for the conversion of Pomare. They were just the curios the LMS needed to reestablish its reputation in the South Seas. Contributions poured in.
For Pomare, though, the renunciation of idols was not enough. He desired full status as a professing Christian, including baptism. But the missionaries were reluctant. Though hundreds, perhaps thousands, might as a result turn to Christianity, it would be a mockery in view of his continued lapses into immorality. After prolonged discussion and prayer, they agreed that he could be baptized—though they delayed it for seven years. When it finally occurred in 1819, it was a momentous occasion, with some five thousand people looking on, and it paved the way for many others to make their faith public. Soon after, a visiting Russian nobleman was amazed by the absence of infanticide, cannibalism, and war—which he credited to the European missionaries.
Elsewhere in the South Pacific the progress of missions during the early decades of the nineteenth century was laboriously slow. Other islands besides Tahiti were being evangelized, but for every apparent victory there seemed to be a comparable setback. Only in Hawaii, far to the north, was there marked evidence that Christianity was taking hold.
Hiram Bingham and Hawaiian Missions
The story of Christian missions in Hawaii (or the Sandwich Islands, as they were then called) is an unusual account of how a handful of American missionaries moved into an unfamiliar culture and within a few short decades dominated every facet of society. It is an intriguing tale of struggle and interpersonal conflict, so fascinating that in recent years it became the subject matter for James Michener’s best-selling novel Hawaii, a novel that in many ways misrepresented Christian missions in the islands. Michener’s ranting, bigoted missionary, bent on destroying the native culture, is not typical of missionaries sent to Hawaii. True, they were tainted by the pervasive nineteenth-century sentiments of racial superiority, but they also shared concern for the well-being of the Hawaiians.
The Hawaiian Islands were inhabited around A.D. 900, but not until 1778 did Hawaii become known to the Western world, and then only by accident. Captain James Cook was sailing from Tahiti to the west coast of North America when he discovered this island paradise. During his first visit he was thought to be a god by the Hawaiians. But on his second visit in 1779, their reverence for him began to wane, and during a quarrel with one of the chiefs, Cook was killed. Despite this incident, contact with Hawaii continued, and the breach was soon mended. In the decades that followed, trade was established with the Western world, and the islands became a favorite stopover for ships trading in the Far East. During these layovers native boys were sometimes invited to sail with the crew, and some of the Hawaiian youths found their way to the United States.
It was this contact with the native people that sparked American interest in Hawaiian missions. The best known of these youths was Obookiah, who was found crying one morning on the steps of Yale College because of his unfulfilled desire for learning. Edwin Dwight, a student, began tutoring him, hoping that he would return to Hawaii and evangelize his people. Obookiah made a profession of faith, but he became ill and died during the winter of 1818. However, his story stirred enthusiasm for bringing the gospel to Hawaii.
Hiram Bingham, missionary to Hawaii.
The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) took the initiative, and within a year after Obookiah’s death a contingent of missionaries were ready to sail to Hawaii. Perhaps fearing the enthusiasm might die down, the directors moved with a sense of urgency. Potential candidates were contacted and interviewed in record time and urged to secure wives and prepare to leave. The Board was conscious of the problems single missionaries faced in the South Seas. Of the seven couples who left for Hawaii in October of 1819, six of them were married within a matter of weeks before departure.
During the five-month voyage, Hiram Bingham, a graduate of Andover Seminary, assumed the leadership of the little band. He and Sybil had been married less than two weeks before sailing—and precisely two weeks after they first met. They were well suited for each other, and their leadership held the team together. On arriving in Hawaii wholly unprepared for what lay ahead, the New Englanders were shocked by what they found, as is evident from Bingham’s telling description: “The appearance of destitution, degradation, and barbarism among the chattering and almost naked savages … was appalling. Some of our number, with gushing tears, turned away from the spectacle. Others with firmer nerve continued their gaze, but were ready to exclaim, ‘Can these be human beings? … Can such things be civilized? Can they be Christianized? Can we throw ourselves upon these rude shores, and take up our abode for life among such people, for the purpose of training them for Heaven?’”11
Whether or not the Hawaiians made any adverse observations about their priggish New England visitors is unknown, but at least they had the courtesy to warmly welcome them—“far more courtesy,” according to one historian, “than they deserved.”12 Fortunately for the missionaries, the timing of their visit was favorable. With a new king, a significant change had recently occurred. Idolatry and human sacrifice had been outlawed, and the long history of tribal warfare seemed to be over. The missionaries were given permission to go ashore and to begin their work.
The task that lay ahead was enormous, especially if they hoped to fulfill the assignment they had received from the Board: “You are to open your hearts wide and set your marks high. You are to aim at nothing short of covering these islands with fruitful fields, and pleasant dwellings and schools and churches, and of raising up the whole people to an elevated state of Christian civilization.”13 A “state of Christian civilization” meant a New England version, far removed from the easygoing lifestyle of the Hawaiians. Not surprisingly there was resistance, or if not that, at least a complete lack of understanding of the Puritan moral code.
The greatest resistance the missionaries confronted (as was the case in the South Pacific) came from their own people—sailors who were upset with interference in native lifestyle, which encouraged young women to go on board the trading vessels and sell themselves for a few cheap trinkets. As the missionary influence increased, the practice declined. More than once Bingham and his colleagues faced the wrath of the sailors. In one incident, sailors from the Dolphin came ashore and attacked Bingham with knives and clubs and would have no doubt killed him but for a rescue by faithful Hawaiians.
Despite the opposition, the progress of missions in Hawaii moved with amazing speed. Churches and schools were established, and soon they were overflowing with students hearing the gospel and learning to read. A school organized by Sybil Bingham enrolled several leading women, including the king’s mother, who was baptized in 1823. The most noteworthy conversion was that of Kapiolani, a queen who had lived in dread fear of the goddess Pele who, according to tradition, resided in the fuming volcanic crater of Kilauea. After professing faith in front of hundreds of horrified onlookers, she flaunted Pele by climbing up the volcanic mountain and descending into the crater to demonstrate the impotence of this false god. She threw rocks and sacred berries into the lake of lava as she ridiculed the superstition of the people. Then, returning to the bystanders, she testified of her faith. It was a dramatic incident that did more to pave the way for Christianity in Hawaii than all the missionary diatribes against Pele put together.
Queen Kapiolani’s dramatic flaunting of the goddess did more to pave the way for Christianity in Hawaii than all the missionary diatribes against Pele put together.
By 1830, after only a decade in Hawaii (and after a second group of missionaries had arrived), the missionaries had spread out to other islands. Bingham was held in high regard, and many chiefs looked to him as far more than just their spiritual leader. According to one observer, they even let “King Bingham” tell them what laws to make. “The blue laws of Connecticut are the laws of Hawaii,” wrote another critic.14
But the blue laws did not fit Hawaii. It was a frustrating situation, according to Bradford Smith, particularly in dealing with sexual sins:
Patiently the brethren tried to explain the seventh commandment. But in rendering it into Hawaiian they learned to their horror that there were about twenty ways of committing adultery Hawaiian-style. If they used any one of the twenty names, that left all the other avenues to pleasure wide open. They ended up with the vague phrase, “thou shalt not sleep mischievously,” thus making the whole thing a state of mind.15
Even the most faithful Hawaiian Christians struggled with sexual immorality. In summing up the situation, missionary teacher Lorrin Andrews wrote that “adultery has been the crying sin of native teachers.” Another missionary wrote, “Most teachers have lain with many or all of their scholars.” The missionaries had believed they were aiding the cause of morality when they insisted converts wear clothes, “only to discover,” according to Smith, “that the clothes the girls put on became a source of allurement to men who all their lives had taken nudity for granted!”16
The missionaries themselves stayed above the lax moral environment, but they did face other temptations, particularly in the area of materialism. Some of the missionaries were accused of marketing goods in competition with the foreign merchants and traders. Artemas Bishop, for example, was employing natives to manufacture cigars in exchange for educational materials, using the proceeds to build himself a home. Another missionary, Joseph Goodrich, acquired a sugarcane plantation and built his own sugar mill; still another was raising coffee beans.
Such commercial activity was not sanctioned by the American Board, and a hot debate over this issue and others raged between some of the missionaries and the directors. Writing home to his father, Lorrin Andrews castigated his superiors: “Are we to be made slaves of ?… You are now paying your money to the A.B.C.F.M. to keep your son in bondage to the Prudential Committee.”17 Andrews and others wanted freedom from what they described as dictatorial control. Ironically, the economic situation in America gave them just that. Hard times caused by the Panic of 1837 forced the Board to cut back its support, and the missionaries had little choice but to diversify and to earn their own support.
Amid all of the problems of immorality and materialism and the controversy between the missionaries and the directors, evangelistic work continued with surprising success. By 1837 the missionary force numbered sixty, the majority of whom were hardworking and dedicated to the mission work. After twenty years of ministry, a spiritual awakening took place. Revival swept through the islands in the wake of Titus Coan’s itinerant evangelistic ministry. Unlike some of his staunch New England brethren, he was not afraid of emotionalism and welcomed “the gushing tear, the quivering lip, the deep sigh, and the heavy groan.”18Coan preached as many as thirty sermons a week as he traveled, and thousands professed faith in Christ. Churches grew rapidly, some reaching a membership of two or three thousand and more. More than twenty thousand Hawaiians were accepted into church membership during the revival, boosting the church roles almost twenty-fold.
By 1840 the New England missionaries could look back with a sense of accomplishment, but problems lay ahead. They were now faced with competition from Catholic priests, whose methods, according to Bradford Smith, had more appeal. “Instead of asking for contributions, Catholic priests were giving presents, especially to children who were brought to be baptized. They held short services with no sermons, had no objections to smoking or drinking, promised indulgence to the sinners and willingly received any to membership. Instead of building good Yankee houses they adopted the Hawaiian style of living.”19 Many of the Hawaiians who had flocked to hear Coan now turned to Catholicism. In less than a decade, evangelical Christianity was on the decline.
Sacrificial love often characterized the ministry of Roman Catholics more than it did the ministry of the Protestants. One striking example is that of Father Damien, a Belgian priest who, in 1873, volunteered to work on Molokai, a desolate, rocky, barren island inhabited only by the leprous “refuse” of the other islands. On his arrival, he immediately set up social programs and began an intensive evangelistic outreach. So successful was he that news of his work was carried all over the world, and financial assistance and supplies began pouring in. After more than a decade of tireless work, however, he realized that he himself had contracted leprosy. For four more years he continued his labor of love, now able to totally identify with those around him in the world of the “living dead.” When he died in 1889 at the age of forty-nine, his work was world-famous.
Besides the influx of Roman Catholics, the departure of the Binghams (who returned permanently to the United States due to Sybil’s ill health) contributed to the decline of Protestant missions. The most serious impediment to a vigorous missionary enterprise, however, was an ever-increasing drift toward materialism among the missionaries. Several missionaries were charged with land grabbing and were too involved in business ventures to give themselves wholly to the work. Many of the missionary children remained in Hawaii, holding political offices and becoming wealthy landowners. All this brought Hawaii into a close political relationship with the United States, but at the same time it adversely affected the church. By the turn of the century the once-vibrant Protestant church that had numbered well over twenty thousand had dropped to less than five thousand. The missionaries had succeeded in their commission to bring “civilization” to Hawaii but were less successful as missionaries.
One of the most innovative and far-sighted missionaries to the Pacific islands was John Williams, sometimes referred to as the “Apostle of the South Seas” or the “Apostle of Polynesia” because of his widespread influence in missions in that part of the world. He was born in England in 1796, the year the Duff was dispatched to the South Pacific by the London Missionary Society. He grew up in a working-class district of Tottenham, and at fourteen was apprenticed to an ironmonger. During this time he joined a gang and turned his back on his spiritual upbringing. Then, on a January night in 1814 while he was loitering with friends on a street corner, his master’s wife exhorted him to come to church. He reluctantly agreed, and that night in the Old Whitefield Tabernacle, his life was forever changed. From that time on, his leisure hours were spent teaching Sunday school, distributing tracts, and visiting the sick.
The pastor of the Tabernacle Church, Matthew Wilkes, took a special interest in Williams and encouraged him to enter the ministry and later to apply to the LMS. Although he was only twenty years old and had no formal Bible or missionary training, he was accepted. After a hastily planned marriage to Mary Chawner, they set sail for a small island near Tahiti.
In 1718 they moved farther west to another small island where they spent three months before finally settling on Raiatea, their base for the next thirteen years. Although Raiatea was a small island with a population of less than two thousand, it held great significance for the Polynesians because it was the home of the Polynesian god Oro, whose shrine was a center of human sacrifice. Williams and his family were warmly welcomed by the natives, but behind the cordial facade was a cultural heritage that placed little value on human life. Besides human sacrifice and the all-too-common practice of infanticide (usually burying the little one alive), the natives had a very lax moral code. According to Williams, “men and women, boys and girls, completely naked, bathe together in one place, without shame and with much lasciviousness…. Promiscuous intercourse is as common, also, as it is abhorrent. When a husband is ill, the wife seeks his brother and when the wife is ill, the husband does the same…. When we tell them of the necessity of working they laugh at us.”20
How to approach these people was Williams’s first challenge. He was not trained in cross-cultural evangelism, so his first priority was to change the culture. He had come, not just to bring Christianity, but to bring civilization: “For the missionary does not go to barbarise himself, but to elevate the heathen; not to sink himself to their standard, but to raise them to his.” To demonstrate the superiority of Western civilization, Williams erected a large seven-room house with a verandah overlooking the water and landscaped gardens on all sides. He encouraged the people to follow his example: “Many have built themselves very neat little houses and are now living in them with their wives and families. The king, through seeing ours and by our advice, has a house erected near to us…. Perhaps the advocates of civilisation would not be less pleased than the friends of evangelisation, could they look upon a portion of natives diligently employed in various useful arts.”21
Williams had come to the South Seas, not just to bring Christianity, but to bring civilization.
Williams’s emphasis on civilization did not diminish his zeal for evangelism. Despite all of his other activities, he conducted five services on Sunday and others during the week, and personal evangelism was a regular part of his daily routine. The bulk of missionary work, however, he assigned to native converts, who he believed could reach their own far more effectively than he could.
From his first months in the South Seas, Williams had felt confined by the small populations of the individual islands and the inability to travel freely from island to island. Commercial vessels visited the islands on occasion, but their irregularity made any hope of planned travel impossible. The obvious solution to the problem was for the mission to have a ship of its own. Other missionaries had tried to construct vessels, only to discover that the task was more complex than they had anticipated. One such abandoned project was just the enticement that Williams (an ironmonger by trade) needed to fulfill his dream of moving freely from island to island. He recruited the help of other missionaries, and soon the ship was ready for launching—a day that called for celebration.
But the joyous celebration of the missionaries was not shared by the mission directors back home. Viewing the situation from a distance, they failed to recognize the necessity of better transportation and communication for the island missionaries. They vetoed the plan and resolved that “the Society cannot allow itself to enter into any engagement with regard to ownership or employment of the vessel.” The battle lines were drawn, and the years that followed were filled with conflict as Williams, in flagrant violation of the directors’ mandate, continued his nautical activity. The first vessel that he had helped salvage was defective, but in 1821, on a visit to Sydney, he solicited funds to purchase the Endeavour, and quickly turned a profit of some eighteen hundred British pounds through his commercial ventures. The directors viewed the purchase as a “great evil” and accused Williams of “engaging in … commercial transactions” that were “calculated to divert … attention from the great object of their mission.”22
By the time the directors’ mandates reached Williams, the situation had usually changed, and their stinging rebukes no longer applied to the current situation. His commercial ventures had dwindled after heavy custom duties were imposed, so he dutifully promised to “avoid any and every future entanglement of every kind.” But he did not back down on his determination to maintain a ship:
A missionary was never designed by Jesus to get a congregation of a hundred or two natives and sit down at ease as contented as if every sinner was converted, while thousands around him are eating each other’s flesh and drinking each other’s blood with a savage delight…. For my own part I cannot content myself within the narrow limits of a single reef and if means is not afforded, a continent to me would be infinitely preferable, for there if you cannot ride, you can walk.23
Partly due to financial problems, Williams reluctantly agreed to give up the Endeavour, but not without the suggestion that the directors themselves may have been the Devil’s tools in staying the progress of evangelism in the islands: “Satan knows full well that this ship was the most fatal weapon ever formed against his interests in the great South Sea; and therefore, as soon as he felt the effects of the first blow, he had wrested it out of our hands.”24
Without ready access to a vessel, Williams’s travel to other islands was curtailed, and he spent the next years building up the believers on the island of Raiatea and translating Scripture. Still he was frustrated by his confinement and the lack of additional reinforcements coming out from England. Evangelism of the South Seas was progressing too slowly. The LMS strategy simply was not getting the job done. Someone had to come to the rescue with forceful leadership, and Williams saw himself as that one. His on-site experience convinced him that he knew better than the directors how to conduct evangelism, which he maintained must involve extensive use of native missionaries. His plan was to commission and transport these missionaries to other islands and then periodically visit them and guide them in their ministry.
His plan required a ship, and once again he was at odds with the mission directors; nevertheless, he began the construction project. Soon the fifty-ton Messenger of Peace was ready to sail, and he began his itinerant ministry. By the time the directors learned about it, the plan was in operation and there was little they could do. Once again, Williams had flouted the will of the directors. He defended his action, convinced that he had sacrificed too much for the cause of missions to be stymied by short-sighted bureaucrats. Both he and his wife suffered from ill health, and seven of his ten children had died in infancy. There was too much at stake to relinquish his dream.
While many missionaries were grateful for the increased communication and freedom the Messenger of Peace brought, others resented the implied power and prominence Williams was gaining over the mission work. The directors too feared the consequences of his growing influence and prestige: “Take care that you give the glory to God—take care that you appropriate none of it to yourself—instead of yielding to the temptation … to become high-minded.” That Williams was stung by the implied rebuke is indicated by his response: “The calculating suspicious spirit evident in your letter I am not aware of having merited at your hands. Letters written in such a strain produce in our minds feelings and sentiments toward the Directors of the Society that I never wish to cherish.”25
Despite continuing conflict, Williams’s plan moved forward with great success. Under his supervision, evangelism was conducted almost entirely by native teachers, most of whom had very limited training. Of them, Stephen Neill writes:
But few marvels in Christian history can equal the faithfulness of these men and women, left behind among peoples of unknown speech and often in danger of their lives, to plant and build Churches out of their own limited stock of faith and knowledge, supported only by the invigorating power of the Holy Spirit and the prayers of their friends. Many watered the seed with their own blood; but the Churches grew, and far more widely than if reliance had been placed first and foremost on the European missionary.26
By 1834, after nearly eighteen years, Williams could say that “no group of islanders, nor single island of importance, within 2,000 miles of Tahiti had been left unvisited.” It was a tremendous accomplishment, yet it was only a beginning. More funding and reinforcements were needed, and he was determined to return home and make an appeal in person.
Arriving with his family in England in the summer of 1834, the thirty-eight-year-old Williams found that his reputation had preceded him. The Archbishop of Canterbury had proclaimed that his ministry was adding a new chapter to the book of Acts, and others too had been lavish in their praise. In person, he was an overnight sensation. People flocked to hear the exotic tales of the Pacific islanders and the danger-filled life of a missionary. He met their expectations, sometimes donning a native costume—though not always with success, at least as he counted success. After one service he lamented, “I tried to work on their sympathies by giving them affecting accounts of heathen cruelties and wrung tears from their eyes, but only four pounds from their pockets. They are a cold-blooded lot.”27
While Williams’s meetings aroused lively interest and were well attended, it was his book, A Narrative of Missionary Enterprises in the South Seas, that brought in financial support. Copies were sent to wealthy and influential individuals, who responded with sufficient funds to purchase another ship. This time the directors did not object. They did not want to discourage the enthusiasm he had created in the LMS missionary work in the islands. The Camden (twice the size of the Messenger of Peace) was purchased in the spring of 1838, and after nearly four years of home leave, Williams was ready to sail with his family and new recruits—including his son and new daughter-in-law. It was a rousing send-off, and the speeches were laced with hyperbole. He was being hailed as the greatest missionary of his times.
Back in the South Pacific, Williams quickly resumed his work, visiting island stations and reinforcing the work of native missionaries, but disappointment met him on every hand. According to one historian, Williams “found that in spite of the glowing reports still being returned to Britain by LMS missionaries, matters had gone from bad to worse…. The islanders were turning away from Christianity, disillusioned and tired of the constant demands of the missionaries.” There were problems, too, between the missionaries themselves, especially between the LMS missionaries and the Wesleyan Methodists. And even worse in Williams’s eyes, the Roman Catholics were making “a most desperate effort to establish Popery in the islands.”28
Williams’s leadership and years of experience were desperately needed to help stabilize the situation and restore continuity to the scattered islands he had opened to Christianity. But he was more of a salesman than a repairman, and the unreached islands to the west were beckoning him. For years he had dreamed of expanding westward as far as the New Hebrides, and now, with the acquisition of the Camden, there was nothing standing in his way. The natives were dangerous, but he had risked his life before and was determined to do so again, despite his wife’s objections.
In early November of 1839, he and several native missionaries boarded the Camden and set sail for the island of Erromango in the New Hebrides. Little was known of the people of these islands except that they had viciously attacked European traders who had exploited their sandalwood trees.
After a two-week voyage the Camden reached the island. Natives soon appeared on the shoreline and waded into the bay to receive gifts from their visitors who had come near shore in a small boat. After the initial encounter, Williams and two other European missionaries went ashore and began walking with the natives to their village. Suddenly, without provocation, the attack came. Williams had time to turn and make a dash for the beach, but he was clubbed to death as he tried to out-swim his assailants. One of the missionaries made it safely to the boat, and he and Captain Morgan rowed back to the Camden. Unable to go ashore to recover the bodies, Morgan sailed for Sydney to secure help. Two months later they returned, and after negotiating with the natives, were given the bones of Williams and his comrade, the flesh of which had been eaten by the natives.
The tragic death of Williams was in many ways a baffling enigma to his colleagues and friends. Knowing the treachery of the natives, especially in the wake of the sandalwood traders’ fate, why did he not send native missionaries ashore first as was generally the practice? Their presence was far less threatening than that of Europeans who were presumed traders. Likewise, why did he not sense danger when he saw no women present? As a seasoned South Seas missionary, he certainly was aware that such a situation signaled impending peril. Why did he seem to blatantly ignore obvious precautions? Having just come down from a mountain peak of praise and adulation back home in England, he may have been dispirited by the dull routine of missionary work. As a courageous hero in the minds of his supporters, he had an illustrious reputation to uphold. Perhaps for a fleeting moment he lost himself in fanciful visions of his own invincibility.
The international publicity surrounding the tragic news of the death of John Williams sent a shock wave through the Christian church, particularly in the British Isles, where dozens of young men vowed to take his place. The Presbyterians, represented by John Geddie, were the first Protestants with staying power to enter the New Hebrides in the years following the tragedy. Geddie, described as a “tough, humorless, single-minded and incredibly brave” missionary, had been intrigued by the accounts of missionary heroism in the South Seas since his early childhood in Nova Scotia. In 1848 he and his wife sailed for Aneityum, the most southerly of the islands of the New Hebrides, and there they spent their lives translating Scripture, conducting evangelism, and training native workers. So effective were they that virtually the entire population of the island turned to Christianity. An inscription commemorating Geddie in one of the churches he established underscored his powerful influence: “When he landed in 1848 there were no Christians here; when he left in 1872 there were no heathen.”
Geddie’s success stimulated more interest, and soon other Presbyterian missionaries began to arrive. One of these was John G. Paton, perhaps the bestknown of the South Seas missionaries, who became immortalized largely because of his own play-by-play coverage of natives clubbing missionaries, published in his widely read, tension-filled autobiography. Paton, by his own account, tasted so many close calls at the hands of the natives that it was impossible to enumerate them all. Mere survival was a constant mental and physical strain, and staying alive was in itself an achievement worth noting.
John Paton was born in 1824 in Dunfries, Scotland, and grew up in a three-room thatched-roof cottage where his father earned a living by knitting stockings. The family was poor, and before he reached the age of twelve he was forced to quit school and spend his days working alongside his father to help support the family. The Patons were staunch Presbyterians whose lives were centered on church activities. Converted as a youth, he set his sights on missionary service that began in the Glasgow City Mission. He worked in the ghettos of Glasgow, where the impoverished industrial masses were spilling into the streets and where “sin and vice walked about openly and unashamed.” It was a difficult assignment, but one that prepared him well for the trials he would face in the New Hebrides. There was violent opposition to his evangelistic street work, but Paton’s philosophy did not allow for retreat: “Let them see that bullying makes you afraid, and they will brutally and cruelly misuse you, but defy them fearlessly, or take them by the nose, and they will crouch like whelps beneath your feet.”29
After ten years of city mission work, Paton began contemplating the need for missionaries in the South Pacific. Friends sought to dissuade him. “You’ll be eaten by cannibals,” they warned. He needed no reminder of the cannibals. The fate of the great John Williams was never far from his thoughts.
In the spring of 1858, after a three-month speaking tour in Presbyterian congregations, he married Mary Ann Robson, and they set sail for the South Seas. They were assigned to the island of Tanna, where they suffered severe culture shock: “My first impressions drove me to the verge of utter dismay,” wrote Paton. “On beholding these natives in their paint and nakedness and misery, my heart was as full of horror as of pity…. The women wore only a tiny apron of grass … the men an indescribable affair, like a pouch or bag, and the children absolutely nothing whatever!”30
It did not take him long to discover the harsh realities of the native lifestyle, and the problem of nakedness quickly paled by comparison. The natives were deeply involved in deadly warfare among themselves. Killings occurred almost daily and were accepted as a routine part of life, with occasional violent eruptions that threatened the whole population. It was a tension-filled time with hardly a moment for relaxation. Mary was continually plagued by illness, and childbirth only made her condition worse. On March 3, 1859, she died of fever, and less than three weeks later their infant boy died also. It was a time of despair for Paton. Only one short year had passed since they had solemnly repeated their wedding vows. “But for Jesus,” he lamented, “I must have gone mad and died beside that lonely grave.”31
During his first year Paton worked with native teachers who had come from Aneityum where John Geddie was serving. They not only effectively preached the gospel, but they also lived the Christian life—especially as it related to women. Women in the Tanna social structure were virtual slaves, often beaten by their husbands and occasionally killed. The example set by the native teachers and the protection they offered threatened the men, who attacked Paton and killed one of the native assistants. Disease also took a toll. When measles was brought to Tanna by European sailors, thirteen of the Aneityum teachers died. So severe was the outbreak, according to Paton, that one-third of the population of Tanna was wiped out.
By the summer of 1861, three years after Paton had arrived, the natives were on the verge of civil war, and Paton was in the middle of the conflict. At one point he and his one remaining Aneityum teacher locked themselves in a room for four days as natives waited outside to kill them. The coastal people despised him the most, and they were threatening all-out war against the inland tribes unless he left. Finally, in mid-January of 1862, the daily outbreaks of violence turned into a full-scale civil war. Using his gun for protection, Paton made his escape from Tanna to a trading vessel, leaving all of his belongings behind.
On leaving Tanna, Paton went to Aneityum and then to Australia, where he immediately began a tour of Presbyterian churches, telling the people of the terror he had endured in the New Hebrides. He was an effective speaker, and by the time his tour ended the offerings had netted him more than twenty-five thousand dollars to be used for the purchase of a mission ship, the Dayspring. In the spring of 1863 he sailed for the British Isles, where he continued his tour of Presbyterian churches, raising thousands more dollars for missions in the South Seas. While on tour he remarried, and in late 1864 he and his bride, Margaret, sailed for Australia, where they boarded the Dayspring and went on to the New Hebrides.
Soon after they arrived in the islands, Paton became embroiled in a controversy that nearly ruined his ministry. His own experience with the islanders and the experience of other Europeans had convinced a bellicose British commodore to sail his man-of-war through the islands and punish the natives of Tanna by destroying some of their villages—particularly the coastal natives who had so strongly opposed him. Paton later denied having “directed” the punishment, but he did accompany the expedition as an interpreter, thus making a direct link between missions and military action. Although the natives had been forewarned and there were few casualties, the incident nevertheless created an uproar. According to Paton, “The common witticism about ‘Gospel and Gunpowder’ headed hundreds of bitter and scoffing articles in the journals; and losing nothing in force, was cabled to Britain and America, where it was dished up day after day with every imaginable enhancement of horror for the readers of the secular and infidel press.” Some of Paton’s harshest critics, however, were not infidels but his own colleagues. A fellow Presbyterian missionary, John Geddie, who was on furlough at the time, was incensed when he heard the news, and he blamed Paton for this incident, which caused a negative fallout for missions. Paton himself complained that it made the “task of raising funds for our mission ship all the more difficult.”32
John G. Paton, pioneer missionary to the New Hebrides.
Paton’s second term in the New Hebrides was spent on the small island of Aniwa, since Tanna was still considered unsafe for Europeans. Once again he was accompanied by teachers from Aneityum, and he and his wife soon settled down to their new mission post. Although Aniwa was considered more peaceful than Tanna, the Patons and their native teachers still faced hostile threats. But now Paton had a psychological (if not physical) weapon to use against them. He warned them “not to murder or steal, for the man-of-war that punished Tanna would blow up their little island.”33
In the decades that followed, the work progressed; and with the help of native Christians they built two orphanages, established a thriving church, and set up schools—one a girls’ school taught by Margaret. Paton enacted strict laws, and crimes such as Sabbath breaking were punished. The people were expected to attend church. Of the first communion service on Aniwa, he wrote: “At the moment I put the bread and wine into those dark hands, once stained with the blood of cannibalism, now stretched out to receive and partake the emblems and seals of the Redeemer’s love, I had a foretaste of the joy of Glory that well nigh broke my heart to pieces. I shall never taste a deeper bliss, till I gaze on the glorified face of Jesus himself.”34
Paton spent the later years of his life as a missionary statesman, traveling in Australia, Great Britain, and North America, raising funds and speaking for the mission’s needs in the New Hebrides. By the end of the century all but a few of the thirty inhabited islands had been reached with the gospel. A school had been established to train native evangelists, who numbered more than three hundred, and some two dozen missionaries and their wives were serving with them.
Paton spent his final years translating the Bible into the Aniwan language and preaching. At the age of seventy-three, while on a preaching tour, he wrote of his busy schedule: “I had three services yesterday, with driving twenty miles between; as I go along I am correcting proof sheets.”35 The Patons returned to the islands for a brief visit in 1904. Margaret died the following year and he two years later, leaving their work in the New Hebrides to be carried on by their son Frank.
One of the most renowned missionaries to the South Pacific was John Coleridge Patteson, the first Anglican bishop of Melanesia, and a great-nephew of the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Patteson was born in 1827 into a well-to-do English family. His father, a distinguished judge, sent his son first to Eton and then Oxford, where Bishop George Selwyn, a family friend, encouraged him to enter the ministry. After graduation, Patteson sought ordination as an Anglican priest and then served briefly in a local parish before sailing to the South Seas in 1855—again influenced by Bishop Selwyn.
George Selwyn, the first Anglican bishop to New Zealand, was, like Patteson, affluent and well-educated. He had served in the South Pacific for more than a decade, and he needed the assistance of Patteson in overseeing his enormous diocese, the size of which was a controversial issue. A clerical error had mistakenly granted him authority over a vast area of the Pacific, including Melanesia, and he guarded the region as though it were his personal domain.
When Patteson arrived in New Zealand, he found a thriving mission enterprise with twenty-two mission stations and some fifty thousand adherents. The work had begun in 1814 with the arrival of Samuel Marsden, an Anglican chaplain from Australia. Most of the church growth had come since 1830 when, during a four-year period, more than thirty thousand people had been brought into the church for instruction, largely due to the completion of the New Testament translation into the Maori tongue. The Anglicans had joined with the Methodists in training the new converts and church planting. In 1851 the general secretary of the Methodist Mission had reported: “Scriptural Christianity has taken deep root in the native mind, and is generally received throughout the length and breadth of the land. Very few remain in heathenism…. Almost all the aboriginal families throughout New Zealand read the Scriptures, and pray together, both morning and evening.”36
But this mission model for church growth was not to last. The mission work in New Zealand was closely tied to colonization, and smoldering barely under the surface was the burning issue of land. As was true with native Americans, the native people deeply resented the European colonists and their land-grabbing. As early as 1839 a missionary had warned of the impending danger of colonization: “An increase of settlers must affect the aborigines; and if colonization is carried forward in its various ramifications, we fear that … the people will soon be swept away.”37
By 1870 there were seventeen Europeans to every three Maoris. Tensions were rising among the native people, and many of those who had professed faith turned away—particularly the second generation. Some joined cultic movements that revived native traditions and looked to a glorious future free from European colonists. They rose up in arms but were subdued. “This is a miserable end to a chapter,” writes Alan Tippet, “that might have told of a glorious triumph.”38
In 1856, soon after Patteson had arrived in New Zealand, he left with Bishop Selwyn for a tour of Melanesia. As they sailed from island to island on their mission ship, the Southern Cross, they recruited native boys to join them on the ship and be taken to New Zealand to be trained in a mission school. They were convinced that bringing the boys apart for a proper education and sending them back to their own people as evangelists and teachers was the only viable method of evangelizing the South Seas. Other missionaries had made good use of native teachers, but generally without giving them adequate education and training to effectively lead their native churches without depending on the Europeans.
Back in New Zealand, Patteson was given the enormous task of directing and bringing continuity to the training school that included students with different languages and social customs. But he had a brilliant mind for linguistics, and during the course of his missionary career he became fluent in some twenty different Melanesian languages and dialects. Unlike most of his predecessors, Patteson had no desire to “civilize” the natives. He often praised their culture and intelligence and insisted they not be discriminated against. Describing them as “friendly and delightful,” he sarcastically queried, “I wonder what people ought to call sandalwood traders and slave masters if they call my Melanesians savages?”39
When their educational program was completed, Patteson accompanied the boys to their homes and then helped establish them in their ministry and recruited more to return with him for the school, which for a time had an enrollment of over fifty from twenty-four different islands.
As Patteson continued to minister in Melanesia, he noticed a change of attitudes among the people toward him and his ministry. The trust and confidence that they had once had seemed to be slipping. The outside commercial interests in the islands were rapidly expanding, and by the middle of the nineteenth century sugar and cotton plantations (particularly on the islands of Fiji and Queensland) were emerging as highly profitable ventures—ones that required an enormous labor force. This need created a new business in the South Pacific known as blackbirding, a system that made sandalwood traders appear benevolent by comparison. According to one historian, “The scum of the earth came to the Pacific in search of easy money in the blackbirding trade.” Sometimes young men and boys were bribed or tricked into coming along willingly, but more often they were kidnapped. “Gangs of white seamen would go ashore and carry off men and youths at gunpoint.” It is estimated that some seventy thousand young men were thus captured into slavery, rarely having the opportunity of returning home again.40
This terrible European blight on the islands of the South Seas, more than anything else, signaled the end to Patteson’s ministry. Despite his condemnation of the blackbirders and his efforts to disassociate himself from them, his very methods created suspicion in the minds of many of the native people, and it became much more difficult for him to persuade young boys to come with him for schooling. But Patteson kept up his hectic pace, and in April of 1871 he again set out on another tour of Melanesia in the Southern Cross.
The journey was disappointing from the very start. Everywhere he went it seemed he was following in the wake of blackbirders. There were some joyful times, including a large baptismal service for more than two hundred people on the island of Moto, but no longer did he receive a warm welcome as he had in the past when the natives came down to the shore and greeted their “bishopi.” They lived in terror, and if he wanted to see them, he had to seek them out.
During this tour on September 21, 1871, the brilliant young Anglican bishop made his final island stop. On board ship were the crew, another missionary, and several young Melanesians who were on their way to Norfolk Island for training. After the morning Bible lesson, which was on the martyrdom of Stephen, Patteson went ashore. It was a routine stop, but he sensed trouble almost as soon as he touched shore, and others who sought to follow him inland were driven back to the ship by a barrage of arrows. Back on ship, they anxiously waited for some sign of their missionary leader, but he did not return. Finally, some native boys decided to go in after him. As they made their way to the shore, they saw natives pushing what appeared to be an unmanned canoe out into the water toward them. When they reached the canoe, they found Patteson’s body. It was marked by five separate wounds and covered by a palm with five knotted fronds, signifying that Patteson’s life had been taken in revenge for five of their own men who had been seized by blackbirders. Despite the universal hatred for blackbirders, many of the islanders were appalled by the murder, and for that reason his body had been washed and returned to the ship. Patteson’s body was buried at sea as were two native Christians who died of the wounds they had sustained.
Patteson’s death drew world attention to the despicable business of blackbirding and helped eventually to bring about its demise. It also inspired many to dedicate their lives to South Seas missionary work.
The blackbirding business that had wrought such havoc in the islands of the South Pacific was ironically the very gateway that opened portions of the Solomon Islands to Christianity. While some missionaries such as John Coleridge Patteson bitterly fought this traffic in human cargo, others such as Florence Young seemed to accept it and work within the system. A native of Sydney, Australia, Young was the first to publicly express concern for the spiritual welfare of the South Seas plantation laborers. Her brothers were the owners of Fairymead, a large sugarcane plantation on Queensland, and her visit to that estate changed the course of her life. Whether her brothers were actually involved with the blackbirders is unclear, though even “legitimate” means of recruiting laborers involved inhumane practices.
A member of the Plymouth Brethren, Young had studied the Bible since early childhood and was well suited for her teaching ministry that began in 1882. Her first little class of ten men was an inauspicious beginning, but the numbers grew, and soon she had eighty in her Sunday class and half that many coming out each evening. The response was far greater than she had anticipated. Cutting cane in the scorching sun twelve or more hours a day was killing work—literally. Many workers died under the strain, including Jimmie, her first convert. Nevertheless, they sacrificed their hours of rest to come out and hear the gospel.
The success of Young’s ministry at Fairymead encouraged her to branch out to other plantations on Queensland, where some ten thousand laborers lived in similar or even worse conditions. A monetary gift from George Mueller (also Plymouth Brethren) was the stimulant she needed to initiate the Queensland Kanaka Mission (kanaka being the term used for imported laborers). She secured the help of a male missionary teacher, wrote a circular letter to the planters in her district, and by the end of the century, through the work of nineteen missionaries, thousands had enrolled in classes, some carrying the message back to their own people.
In 1890 Young had felt the call of missions to China and had left to serve under the China Inland Mission, but she returned to the South Seas in 1900 to direct the work of the mission as it moved into a different phase of the ministry. Laws forbidding blackbirding and the use of forced labor had been enacted, and by 1906 most of the native workers had been sent home. Follow-up was needed, and Young and other missionaries sailed to the Solomon Islands, where they worked with recently returned converts to establish churches.
In 1907 the mission changed its name to the South Sea Evangelical Mission, and Young’s two nephews and niece, Northcote, Norman, and Katherine Deck, became very active in the work. As the years passed, ten more of her relatives found their way as missionaries to the Solomon Islands, where an evangelical church was planted that still thrives today.
In many respects the Pacific islands were the showpiece—the success story—of nineteenth-century evangelical missions. But the islands were also seen as the prime exhibit for the failure of the missionary enterprise. Whether from the news media or from novelists and anthropologists, missionaries were frequently portrayed as being the destroyers of culture. This was particularly true in the South Seas setting, commonly portrayed as an idyllic world until outsiders arrived, missionaries among them. “In Melville’s view,” writes William Hutchinson, “the missionaries, in Hawaii as throughout the South Seas, had participated all too willingly in the destruction of a once-happy people.”41 Although Herman Melville’s novels and other widely read pieces of fiction often exaggerated the carefree life in the islands, these writings had a profound impact on the missionary enterprise—causing some to turn their back on missions altogether and others to seriously reexamine their strategies of cross-cultural evangelism.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bell, Ralph. John G. Paton: Apostle to the New Hebrides. Butler, IN: Higley, 1957.
Griffiths, Allison. Fire in the Islands: The Acts of the Holy Spirit in the Solomons. Wheaton, IL: Shaw, 1977.
Gunson, Neil. Messengers of Grace: Evangelical Missionaries in the South Seas, 1797—1860. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978.
Gutch, John. Beyond the Reefs: The Life of John Williams, Missionary. London: McDonald, 1974.
Kent, Graeme. Company of Heaven: Early Missionaries in the South Seas. New York: Nelson, 1972.
Lennox, Cuthbert. James Chalmers of New Guinea. London: Melrose, 1902.
Paton, John G. The Story of Dr. John G. Paton’s Thirty Years with South Sea Cannibals. New York: Doran, 1923.
Pierson, Delavan L. The Pacific Islanders: From Savages to Saints. New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1906.
Smith, Bradford. Yankees in Paradise: The New England Impact on Hawaii. New York: Lippincott, 1956.
Tippett, Alan R. People Movements in Southern Polynesia: Studies in the Dynamics of Church-planting and Growth in Tahiti, New Zealand, Tonga, and Samoa. Chicago: Moody Press, 1971.