Posted on: Saturday, February 12, 2005
Hot-button topics creep into panel's faith talk
By Mary Kaye Ritz
Advertiser Religion & Ethics Writer
As nearly 50 overwhelmingly Hawaiian members of the audience at Kamehameha Schools listened to a panel talk about the intersection of Hawaiian Christianity and native spiritual practices, issues of the day were also working their way into the Monday night program.
Billed as "Ho'omana 111: Sacred or Sacrilegious," the talk soon strayed to today's hot-button topics, including iwi reburial.
The panelists — three kahu and two lay people — talked about what is sacred to them, about reconciling the monotheistic nature of Christianity with polytheistic Hawaiian ways, and about accepting the exclusivity of Christianity while holding true to indigenous practices.
They weren't the only ones struggling to put the two faiths together.
"My stories and my language ... no one has the right to erase my stories," audience member Naomi Losch told the panel, adding that while she's a Christian, ways must be found to incorporate both.
"We need to reconcile ourselves to our Hawaiian-ness and our Christianity," said her friend, Roberta Naauao Jahrling.
How do Hawaiians do that in today's world, especially as Christian kahu lend their support for Hawaiian prisoners to celebrate a makahiki (ancient festival) in Oklahoma, and as debate rages about the disposition of ancestral bones — a very Hawaiian concept?
For panelist and kahu Kekapa Lee, who helped press an Oklahoma facility to give its Hawaiian prisoners the right to practice their native spirituality with a makahiki last weekend, the crux of the issue is freedom of religion.
"Among the United Church of Christ, there's a strong interfaith element," the outgoing head of the Association of Hawaiian Evangelical Churches said later. "But sometimes the question comes from other people. (They say) we cannot be Christian and be involved in other faiths."
He told Monday's audience that while Christianity may at times try to keep him in the box, he was urged by a kupuna of his to step out it.
"I always know whose I am," Lee said. "Therefore I can go anywhere. Being raised in Christianity can put you in the box, but I'm trying to break out, to be free, to explore and find a way free of those restrictions."
Other kahu, including Charles Yabui of Ka Hale Ho'ano o ke Akua Church in Kalihi, found no conflict exists. As he sees it, early Hawaiians used the language of their day to express concepts that would someday become Christianity. The polytheistic ways of Hawaiians' ancestors were simply their way of interpreting God, and once they were shown the way of Jesus Christ, all made sense.
Eventually the group came to this week's controversial topic, the disposition of iwi unearthed during the construction of the Wal-Mart complex.
Do bones have the spirit of the ancestor, or has the spirit left when that person dies? As Nathan Napoka explained later, older manuscripts say spirits departed and went to 'aumakua (personal gods) or the world of darkness, or there's the possibility of wandering spirit.
"Native Hawaiians feel iwi, once disturbed, should be put back to sleep," said Napoka, the history and culture branch chief of the state Historic Preservation Division.
His 94-year-old auntie, a Christian, was among those who taught him to perpetuate his Hawaiian culture.
"I never felt this rift between (Hawaiian-ness and Christianity)," he said. "When I was young, I thought all Christians sat down with the Bible and did dream interpretation. ... The ones who saw both are given both. What's wrong with having both?"
