Posted on: Saturday, February 5, 2005

EXPRESSIONS OF FAITH

By Rev. Dr. Brian J. Grieves

Returning to visit the most beautiful fleet of islands anchored in any ocean always causes a surge of joy in my soul. Having lived on O'ahu for 27 years, one cannot help but feel the embrace of her beauty, cultures and peoples.

The first glimpse of her from an airplane window always reveals the beauty of mountain and water, of mauka and makai. My first arrival was in 1960 as a teenager on the long gone Matsonia, sister ship of the famed Lurline. The excitement of watching the islands come into view from the ship's railing must have been similar to the early missionaries as they sighted land in the 1820s. Surely they were as awed by the beauty of the islands as we are today.

Yet, I lament that those missionaries brought a spirituality that undermined appreciation for the beauty they encountered. So much of Christian spirituality is focused on the fall, the act of original sin, with all its guilt-laden theology.

Hawai'i is often referred to as a paradise, but this didn't prevent the missionaries from finding sin present among the "heathens." How sad they didn't know God already was present in the islands when they arrived, not only as creator, but also in the spirituality of the kanaka maoli.

If the missionaries had been as open to the possibility of learning about the nature of God from the indigenous peoples, they might have discovered wonderful insights, not unlike that found in Celtic spirituality. Sadly, the mentality of missionaries worldwide was that they had all the answers and the "natives" were simply a receptacle for their message of salvation.

This is not to say that sin was not present before the arrival of the missionaries. Or that the missionaries did not include some truly fine people, some of whom are held in high esteem today by both indigenous and immigrant peoples.

Clearly the missionaries, along with others, brought disease, deadly epidemics, and their own frailties and misjudgments about the people they were evangelizing. It never occurred to them that they might benefit spiritually from understanding indigenous religious practices even as they shared the good news of Christ.

Instead, the attitude was generally of superiority all too prevalent in Eurocentric cultures. With that mindset, it is not too difficult to understand how an attitude prevalent in the missionary community eventually led to the most arrogant of all events, the overthrow of the monarchy.

The various Christian denominations present in the Islands today have an ongoing obligation to contribute to a just resolution of this unresolved injustice of history, to be a church that is part of reconciling the brokenness among us. I don't know what a just resolution is, and it is not really for me to say. But, whatever it is, genuine reconciliation between the Hawaiian and haole communities will result in a more beautiful and peaceful Hawai'i, and reflect more accurately God's purposes for this incredible gift of creation, truly worthy of the name paradise.

The Rev. Dr. Brian J. Grieves is the director of peace and justice ministries for the national Episcopal Church.