The first missionaries to the islands in 1820 should be appreciated for helping the Hawaiian monarchy ward off European conquest, using literacy and Christianity as tools, says Tom Woods, director of the historic Mission Houses Museum.
Woods will speak about positive contributions missionaries made to Hawaii in his keynote speech next week to the 190th ‘Aha Pae‘aina, the annual statewide meeting of the Hawaii Conference of the United Church of Christ.
Hawaii’s first missionaries were from the Congregational Church, now known as the UCC, said Diane Weible, associate minister of the church’s Hawaii division.
About 200 delegates from 130 churches on all islands will meet Friday and June 9 for fellowship and business at the Kanana Fou Congregational Christian Church in Waipahu.
In keeping with tradition, the churches — consisting predominantly of Hawaiian members — will hold their own Aha Iki on Wednesday and Thursday at Kawaiaha‘o Church, Weible said.
In an interview, Woods said criticism of the missionaries has not been entirely fair and that "their legacy, primarily in literacy and contributions to a constitutional government, and their legacy of Christianity are not appreciated enough."
Woods said not enough attention is placed on the formative years before the overthrow of the monarchy in 1893, when "Hawaii became a modern nation. Missionaries had a positive impact on its development at that point.
"Missionaries came with no power, no guns, no troops. They came with an idea. The alii were open to Christianity and literacy, and they eagerly accepted both."
Woods said the alii were aware of Hawaii’s vulnerability to European imperialist countries with superior firepower, which looked to invade areas considered "uncivilized" at the time, meaning illiterate and un-Christian. Missionaries helped Hawaii maintain its sovereignty by teaching its people to read and write, and about Christianity in full partnership with the alii, he emphasized.
"There was no way that Hawaii could have created the miracle that they did in the mid-19th century — it became one of the most literate nations in the world in a generation — without a partnership between the missionaries and the alii," Woods said. They also helped the alii form a constitutional government in 1840, the same year it became required by law that all common people attend school, he said.
"People have the misconception that missionaries forbade speaking of the Hawaiian language, but nothing could be further from the truth. The missionaries learned the Hawaiian language so they could preach in Hawaiian. They taught the Hawaiians to read and write in Hawaiian. That certainly doesn’t sound like suppression to me.
"Every missionary isn’t the same … but most thought it was important for Hawaiians to retain their native language because they knew without language, culture would not persevere, that language was the heart of culture."
Missionaries did oppose the hula, he acknowledged, because they considered it sexually provocative and that it would lead to fornication, adultery and the spread of disease. They also were against surfing because it did not adhere to their strict work ethic, he added.
He said Congregational missionaries have been maligned for their role in the overthrow but said only a few of their descendants played a part in the takeover with the aid of the U.S. military. (However, the national United Church of Christ issued an apology 100 years later, he added.)
"People don’t really seem to understand that the missionary period ended in 1863" — 30 years before the overthrow, he said. The American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions in Boston withdrew financial support to its missionaries because it felt no need to continue — "Hawaii had become a Christian nation," he said.
Woods, a consultant on various Hawaii museum projects in the past 20 years, moved from Wisconsin to Hawaii in 2010 to head the Hawaii Mission Houses. HMS has recently been made the steward of the UCC’s Hawaii archives, with the stipulation that they be made available to everyone online, he said. Large collections are accessible at www.missionhouses.org; click on "Library" in the index.
