Protestant missions in the Solomon Islands 1849-1942

Abstract

IT is the aim of this thesis to examine the origins and growth of Protestant missionary activity in the British Solomon Islands Protectorate and to outline its effects upon the lives of the islanders. Four missions are concerned in this study: the Anglican Melanesian Mission, founded by Bishop Selwyn of New Zealand in 1849, the Methodist mission, sent to the group in 1902 by the Methodist Church of Australasia, the South Sea Evangelical Mission, an undenominational society which grew out of mission work among labourers on the Queensland plantations, and the Seventh-day Adventist mission which arrived from Australia in 1914. The period of the investigation is the 90 years between the foundation of the Helanesian Mission and the Japanese invasion of the Solomons in 1942. The first eight chapters comprise a detailed historical account of the four missions. Three major themes emerge. Host striking is the extent to which mission policy reflected the personality and preoccupations of its local leader; only the Seventh-day Adventist mission was administered as a unit of a world-wide organization. Secondly, each mission was soon involved, if only to a minor extent, in a programme of popular education and medical work. Whereas the former was essentially a closed system, aimed at the propagation of Christian teaching and a continuous supply of evangelists, the latter, especially in the western Solomons, made a significant contr:Lbuti on to the physical well-being of the islanders. Thirdly, the European missionaries tended - increasingly it seems - to separate themselves f'rom the indigonous society. With rare exceptions, practical policy was governed by the assumption that the missionary was a permanent institution. In the final chapter the Solomon Islanders reception of Christianity is analyzed with examples drawn from each mission. The popularity of Christianity, especially in the early years of the twentieth century, owed much to the fact of' its European origin. Externally, Solomons Christianity reflected to a considerable degree the practice of its parent churcheS. On the other hand, in matters of belief most islanders drew heavily on their pagan past, even at'ter several generations of mission influence. By 1942 Protestant Christianity had an assured place as a major European in1'luence in the Solomons. Critics could point to its suppression of harmless customs, the divisive effects of sectariantism and the lassitude of much church life. At the same time Christianity had acquired a momentum of its own, only partly derived from its European teachers. It had introduced a basis for the breaking down old barriers. For many islanders it had provided a means of adaptation to a new and often disturbing pattern of life. The ultimate significance of the Protestant missions in the development of the Solomons remains a matter for conjecture.