Anyone who has read James Michener’s panoramic historical
novel
”
Hawaii
”
is familiar with the role Christian missionaries played in the
development of those islands in the 19th century.
Anyone who has read James Michener’s panoramic historical novel “Hawaii” is familiar with the role Christian missionaries played in the development of those islands in the 19th century.
Today, although the state is home to members of nearly every faith and diverse worship buildings are found on every island, the legacy of Christianity is still quite apparent.
A recent visit to the “Garden Isle” of Kauai made this fact apparent. A case in point is St. John’s Episcopal Church in Elelee, on the island’s relatively undeveloped West Side.
Anglicanism and the Episcopal Church have had a remarkable influence on Hawaii because of King Kamahameha IV and Queen Emma, a lifelong Anglican. When they invited the Church of England to minister in Hawaii, they made many gifts of land to the church, including the site of today’s St. Andrew’s Cathedral and St. Andrew’s Priory and School for Girls in Honolulu.
The present-day Episcopal Diocese of Hawaii includes members of all ethnic groups but is beginning to focus more on people of Native Hawaiian descent.
During my visit to St. John’s there was a worship team from a parish in Honolulu which is visiting the neighboring islands to introduce congregations to worship in the Hawaiian language using an indigenous language translation of the “Book of Common Prayer,” the liturgy used by Anglicans/Episcopalians around the world for worship services in many different languages.
The leaders of the service, dressed in muumuus, Hawaiian shirts, and leis, led the English-speaking congregation through a liturgy featuring prayers, Bible-readings, and hymns written in the Hawaiian language, accompanied by ukulele music.
The church building is traditional, built in 1940 by students of the Kalaheo Vocational School.
The Mass began with an opening call to worship from Paul Lucas Noahoa, one of the visitors from Honolulu, who blew a conch shell (a traditional instrument of communication in the South Pacific).
At the time set aside for announcements the church’s vicar (pastor) the Rev. Mary Lindquist, thanked the group for sharing their Hawaiian language and expressed the hope that she could begin learning more of it herself to better reach out to those of Hawaiian descent.
The liturgy ended with the singing of “Ke Aloha A Ke Akua” (“The Queen’s Prayer”). This hymn, written by Queen Lili’oukalani (1838-1917), is commonly used in English-speaking Episcopal congregations. She was the last queen before the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy and reportedly benefited greatly from the support of her Anglican former subjects during the final years of her life.
