It was bound to happen sooner or later — a collision between two belief systems, one rooted in centuries-old Hawaiian cultural kapu and traditions, and the other, also centuries old, the Christian religion.

For decades, Hawaiian pastors have been able to deftly navigate between the two worlds in a strange accommodation and mutual tolerance of Hawaiian practices and Christian dogma.

With the Christian cross in the one hand and the four major Hawaiian deities of Ku, Kane, Kanaloa and Lono in the other, we’ve remained relatively and amazingly conflict-free — until now.

No question that Hawaiians by the hundreds of thousands have embraced Christianity, as manifested in the evolution of deep and abiding traditions such as Hawaiian music sung joyfully by congregations of Hawaiians, and Christian blessing ceremonies performed by Hawaiian kahu.

At the same time, Hawaiians have also retrieved and returned to holding reverent traditions cast out by the first missionaries such as hula, the family aumakua, and ceremonial chants acknowledging the Hawaiian pantheon of gods manifesting themselves in nature.

One of these deeply held Hawaiian traditions is the reverence and kapu placed on burials — to hold sacrosanct the dignity of ancestral remains to be left undisturbed in their final resting places.

From this belief sprang a complicated regime of burial laws, supported by federal legislation (Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act or NAGPRA) that echo the same principles of public policy.

Disturbing, or worse, attempting to remove and re-bury ancestral remains for any reason, requires navigating a complex and unpredictable public process with the benefit of the doubt going to the lineal descendants of those in the ground.

No one foresaw that Kawaiahao, the church of the alii, the bedrock of Hawaiian spiritual institutions, would opt for the lowest standard of burial disturbances provided by law.

Because the church is on the grounds of a formally designated cemetery, they sought and were granted a state Board of Health ruling that placed them outside the state’s native Hawaiian burial laws and federal NAGPRA. They are exempted from meeting the far more rigorous standards of Hawaiian burial law.

Even worse, under the health law they are required — yes, required — to dig up all of the iwi under the new building’s footprint. These iwi could number in the hundreds.

Auwe.

This legal shortcut has set up a collision course. No matter that the church has won a legal battle in getting their exemption; it seems that kupuna wisdom would tell them that the best approach they can take is to willingly rise to the highest standard of respect for Hawaiian ancestral burials, which would be to voluntarily comply with national and state policy on the subject.

This would require, at a minimum, preparing a burial plan.

It might also require redesigning the project to minimize burial disturbances.

This course of action would drive up the cost of the project, which is no small matter.

But the church must rise to a higher level of cultural morality in order to preserve more than a hundred years of mutual respect and understanding between the two belief systems.

This is a defining moment in Hawaiian history.

The church has always shown great dignity and respect for Hawaiian culture. Kawaiahao, as the church of the alii, must find a way to turn conflict into opportunity and rise to leadership that brings us together as a people, with honor and dignity.

Meanwhile, put the shovels down and start listening to each other.