In 1822, a bunch of Protestant missionaries arrived in Hawaiʻi. However not like the handfuls of American missionaries who set out from New England all through the nineteenth century, this group set sail from one other Polynesian island, Huahine. Amongst these on board have been three English missionaries and 4 Tahitian missionaries.
Though the Tahitians settled in Hawaii a whole bunch of years in the past, the 2 kingdoms had little contact till latest many years. The mission group noticed the journey to Hawaii as a mere stopover on the way in which to renewing the mission to the Marquesas Islands. As an alternative, in a sequence of fortuitous coincidences, Tahitian missionaries related with Hawaiian royalty and used their shared Polynesian tradition to share the gospel with them.
ANDafter centuries of no contact between Tahiti and Hawaiʻi, British explorer James Prepare dinner unwittingly sailed the traditional sea route between the 2 kingdoms in late 1777. When he landed off Kauaʻi in 1778, Prepare dinner requested the native Hawaiians in the event that they knew Tahiti, and so they replied that 12 months, as they known as Tahiti, was their homeland within the South Pacific. (Within the Hawaiian language, 12 months covers each the islands of Tahiti and all lands in all instructions past the horizon of Hawaiʻi.)
Whereas the ancestors of the pioneer settlers of the Hawaiian Islands are most likely the unique inhabitants of the Marquesas who arrived between 1000 and 1200, a second wave of settlement got here from Tahiti between 1200 and 1400.
By the 1400s, the Tahitians managed Hawai'i politically and adjusted the way in which it practiced faith. An influential Tahitian they know that (kahuna, priest) launched human sacrifice and helped discovered the omnipotent royal caste often known as king. Over time, members ali'i he turned thought-about divine.
Regardless of their earlier shut relationship, inside a century of this reformation, long-distance navigation between the 2 kingdoms ceased. After Prepare dinner died in Hawaii in 1778, his maps, engravings, and journal entries positioned most of the Polynesian islands on international maps of the Western world. Quickly Western explorers and missionaries have been poring over his work, wanting to set out on their very own journeys.
One in all these people was William Carey, who, whereas paving his boots, learn an in depth account of Tahiti in Captain Prepare dinner's Pacific Journals and first felt the lure of the mission. To direct his prayers on this topic, the person later known as the “Father of Fashionable Missions” hung a hand-drawn map of the routes of Prepare dinner's voyages and envisioned Tahiti as probably the most promising place for a mission to the “heathens,” a Christian nation.
By 1795, service provider ships and exploratory expeditions ceaselessly made the one-month voyage (about 2,400 nautical miles) between Tahiti and Hawaiʻi. Enthusiasm for sending missionaries to Tahiti grew within the British Isles due to its heat local weather, the detailed accounts of the folks written by explorers, and the mistaken perception that the Polynesians spoke a quite simple language.
Though Carey ultimately sailed to India himself, in 1796 the London Missionary Society (LMS) despatched its pioneering international mission to Tahiti. Virtually instantly, the Tahiti mission suffered from inside private conflicts and struggled to evangelize the Tahitian folks. Thomas Haweis, a outstanding Church of England clergyman, assembled a bunch of carpenters, masons, and different expert males within the hope of evangelizing the Tahitians by instructing them sensible trades. Haweis' mission principle largely failed and by 1805 nearly all the authentic missionaries had left for Australia.
Nevertheless, the introduction of the gospel affected Tahitian society. In 1814 a revival broke out and the Pomares, an influential royal household, transformed to Christianity. Lots of extra adopted after Pomare II, who had efficiently defeated his fellow Tahitians and brought management of the island, provided his former enemies feasting and celebration relatively than the same old bloodbath. His Christian mercy drew many Tahitians to Christ.
Regardless of this evangelistic success, missionary organizations ultimately modified their methods and adopted seminary chief David Bogue's principle of evangelical missions. Bogue advocated seminary coaching for ordained missionaries and the recruitment of educated younger males and their wives as leaders.
William and Mary Mercy Ellis of London match the invoice completely. In 1816, the Ellises landed on the LMS mission station at Matavai Bay on the island of Tahiti and shortly met an area Christian couple, Auna and Aunawahine.
Auna got here from a priestly household that served the {powerful} god Or and was skilled by his personal father to in the future do the identical. However after preventing alongside Pomares, his life took a significant flip. Auna declared himself a Christian and studied on the LMS Bible Faculty within the islands, ultimately turning into a deacon in a mission church. Inside months of assembly, the 2 {couples} traveled collectively to Huahine (one other island that might later turn out to be often known as French Polynesia) to begin a church that quickly hosted a thriving congregation.
WWhen Auna, Aunawahine, and the Ellises left Huahine to reach in Hawaii in 1822, they shortly encountered one other missionary group that felt threatened by the newcomers: the American missionaries who had landed in 1820. The American missionaries had established two mission stations, however had not but fluent within the Hawaiian language and subsequently unable to translate the Bible or preach sermons with out the usage of native translators.
Moreover, that they had no success in remodeling king. The Hawaiian folks strictly adopted the lead of their rulers and king he required missionaries to be skilled first doc (studying and writing). Lack of expertise of the language stopped the mission.
The linguistic gear of the brand new missionaries solely accentuated this deficiency. Fluency within the Tahitian language enabled William Ellis to know and converse the Hawaiian language.
“We perceived that the Sandwich Islanders. [an obsolete term referring to Hawaiians] and the Tahitians have been members of 1 nice household, and spoke the identical language with little variation: a reality which we thought-about essential within the intercourse we’d have with the folks,” he later wrote.
It additionally instantly facilitated a shocking interplay:
As our boats approached, one of many natives greeted us love, peace or attachment. We returned the greeting in Tahitian. The chief then requested, “Are you from America?” We replied, “From Britain.” Then he stated, “By means of Tahiti?” and when he answered within the affirmative, he remarked, “There are some Tahitians on the coast.”
Because the ship departed Hawaiʻi, the group made one other connection after a Tahitian canoed previous them in Honolulu Harbor.
“Aun's spouse quickly found that this Tahitian was her personal brother, who had left Tahiti as a boy, and had not been heard from for practically 30 years!” LMS Mission Station Inspector William Tyreman wrote in his diary.
For one Hawaiian monarch, this opportunity assembly had even higher significance. Kaʻahumanu, the late regent Kamehameha, who now dominated the dominion of Hawaiʻi, acknowledged moll (a way of religious energy) on this reunion. She instantly invited Auna and Aunawahine to reside in her royal residence.
That night the Tahitian mission group joined straight within the work of the American missionaries. Ellis recalled:
On the night of this present day we have been current when Auna learn the scriptures and publicly provided the household prayers in Kaʻahumanu's home: for the primary time we joined with out abnormal feeling within the worship of the true God with the folks round us. The following day, the seventeenth of April, which was the day our American associates held their weekly service, I had a chance of preaching within the Tahitian language.
That night, Ellis, who preached his sermon within the Polynesian language, took an important first step in breaking the icy relationship between the Kaʻahumanu and the American missionaries, particularly their chief, Hiram Bingham.
In mid-Might, Kaʻahumanu started to precise a powerful curiosity in Christianity and requested that Auna, Aunawahine, and the Ellis household transfer in with the royal household.
Quickly Auna and Aunawahine left Honolulu with Kaʻahumanu and went on a tour of the island of Maui and Hawaiʻi. Within the days that adopted, Auna dated the regent as her emotions about Christianity shifted from skepticism to conversion to enthusiasm that fueled her ardour for others who discovered the identical religion as her.
“I learn a part of the Tahitian Gospel from Matthew after which prayed to Jehovah to bless them with His salvation,” Auna wrote in Might from Lahaina as a part of his journal of their journey. “After the assembly we sat within the shade of the massive tou. [kou]-trees. Many gathered round us and we taught them the letters of the Hawaiian spelling.
Within the following weeks, Auna started to elucidate the fundamentals of Christianity by the Polynesian worldview and arranged a service across the morning surf. At one level, one chief ordered his neighborhood to do away with their idols—and greater than 100 have been burned.
“Then I remembered what I had witnessed in Tahiti and Moorea, when our idols have been thrown into the flames… and I praised Jehovah, the true God, in my spirit, that I now noticed these folks following our instance, Auna wrote.
Kaʻahumanu returned from her tour of Maui and the island of Hawaiʻi, now keen to advertise Christianity. She supported the creation of the Hawaiian Bible and used the Ten Commandments to form the civil regulation of her kingdom. Quickly after, she started visiting villages in rural Oʻahu and neighboring islands, instructing the Bible and preaching the gospel.
LWhen Aunawahine fell sick, he returned to the Society Islands in 1824, the place the couple served their folks. Auna died in 1835.
Equally, because of Mary Ellis' sick well being, in 1824 the Ellises left for England, the place William turned a touring promoter of LMS assist and fundraising. He started images within the early days of the artwork and used this talent to enter Madagascar on a brand new international mission, gaining favor by photographing portraits of the island's rulers.
The arrival of Tahitian missionaries in Hawaii in 1822 completely linked the English mission within the South Pacific with the American Hawaiian missionaries within the North Pacific and possibly saved the latter mission from failure. As a result of Tahitian missionaries got here from Kahiki, the legendary Hawaiian homeland and conventional supply of nationwide religious revelation, moll The (spirit) of the mission was positioned within the Polynesian cosmos. It opened the door for Hawaiʻi to turn out to be one of the profitable American Protestant international missions of the nineteenth century.
“Working with Hawaiians Thomas Hopu and John Honoli'i, Auna was influential in recommending Christianity to Native Hawaiian decision-makers at a time once they wanted convincing in phrases they understood,” wrote John Garrett in Dwelling Among the many Stars: Christian Origins in Oceania. “The Church of the Sandwich Islands owes an excellent and never at all times totally acknowledged debt to her Tahitian guests.”
Christopher “Chris” Prepare dinner is an creator from Kauaʻi, Hawaii, and a researcher of the monarchical and missionary eras of Hawaiian historical past. He’s a graduate of the College of Hawaiʻi and the creator of a biography of Opukahai-Henry Obookiah, the primary baptized Native Hawaiian Christian. He blogs at www.obookiah.com
