Melanesia and Its Churches: Past and Present.

Kruczek, Zdzislaw Ziggy

Melanesia and Its Churches: Past and Present, POINT No. 31

By Franco Zocca SVD and translated by Maurice McCallum CFC, 2007, Melanesian Institute, Goroka, 218 pages.

One who longs for solid, condensed information on Melanesian Christianity can easily find it in the recent publication of Franco Zocca SVD, in the serial publication of Melanesian Institute POINT No. 31. The author is a senior staff member on the faculty of that Institute and employs historical and statistical facts to flesh out broad themes on the general topic of evangelization in Melanesia. He is a religious sociologist of distinction with a very rare breadth of coverage of both the languages and the situations on the ground in all of Melanesia, past and present, stretching from West Papua to New Caledonia.

Eight chapters trace the roots of the Melanesian past, the recent development of Christian faith and the present challenges, not only from the historical perspective but also from the cultural point of view. Such an approach makes the publication of considerable interest not only for historians and missiologists but also for scholars in other related disciplines (e.g. anthropologists) and students.

The term 'Melanesia' was derived in modern times from the ancient Greek words: melas and nesos (black, island + place). The term was invented by a French sea captain and explorer, Dumont d'Urville, in the first half of the 19th century (combining the two words according to Greek grammar and then adding the 'feminine' ending -ia, used to mark the names of European countries--countries being usually regarded as feminine). Though focusing on Melanesian realities, the author leads the reader through the whole region, using the wider context of the whole Pacific area. He studies its geographical setting, topographical shape, geodesic phenomena, climate, natural particulars, flora, fauna, agricultural possibilities and resources.

The large number of the Melanesian languages, about 1300, shows how unique are the cultures of the humans who first colonized this large tropical area (ca. 50,000 years ago, well before we know of any humans in the two Americas). Further reading will provide interested persons with the traditional, cultural and religious heritage of Melanesia. Fr. Zocca treats Melanesian culture as a special variety of a whole life system. This system integrates buildings, tools, ways of placing and making houses, transport arrangements, comestibles, tribal structures, gender issues and relations, warfare and trading exchanges. These age-old customary values have strong interconnections and are rooted in Melanesian's traditional religious convictions and codes. These deep, underlying structures reveal themselves to us in the various forms of myths, dances, ceremonies and observable practices.

Then the author follows accepted standards of presenting the historical events in Melanesia, such as European discoveries, colonization and annexation. He describes how at the beginning of the 16th century Portuguese and Spanish navigators discovered Melanesia for the European peoples. The Spaniards are especially prominent, as they were the first to reach Melanesia via the wide Pacific, coming westwards into the Solomons from the side of South America but quickly losing interest in it, in favour of the Philippines. Then at the beginning of the 17th century the Dutch intruded into Portugal's domain, which included some of this part of Oceania. The Englishmen were next to appear there, followed eventually by the French and then the Germans.

In the 19th century there was much 'hunting' for cheap labor from the Pacific (blackbirding). The New Hebrides and the Solomon Islands were most famous for this practice. In Fiji the British colonizers followed another pattern and recruited workers for the sugar plantations from India. No wonder that almost half of today's Fijian population is of Indian origin, a fact which creates a special problem for the nation, having both advantages and disadvantages. The arrival of the white race in Melanesia caused various diseases and a rapid depopulation in some of its parts. And at the beginning of the 19th century the European governments finally began to try to colonize the various Melanesian territories, seen as the most difficult and dangerous places on earth for Europeans.

The first part to be colonized was Dutch New Guinea, West Papua in 1828 (though this remained a mere legal claim for a long time) and the last the New Hebrides in 1906 as a French and English Condominium. Australia was the last colonizing Government in place. It took over Papua as its own colony from the hands of Great Britain in 1906 and then obtained the German part of North-East New Guinea as a Mandated Territory in 1921 from the hands of the League of Nations, or even in advance of such permission. All these colonizing powers left positive and negative legacies in the Melanesian region. No one Melanesian state functions without most of these unfortunate political disadvantages, whether now independent or still under European political control (West Papua under the Indonesian Government and New Caledonia as an Overseas French Territory).

In the fourth chapter the author arrives at his main topic, one announced in the book's title, and deliberates on the evangelization of Melanesia. Although the Catholic missionaries had already touched the fringes of the Melanesian region in the 16th century, the real history of its Evangelization is agreed to have begun only at the beginning of the 19th century. Actually the Protestants were the first to make a successful missionary attempt anywhere in the Pacific, in 1797 on Polynesian Tahiti. In Melanesia the islands of Fiji were the first place where missionaries moved and were able to survive, in 1830, although--as some other scholars point out--the first Fijians' very first contacts with Christianity were made in 1815. Some decades after the Wesleyan Methodists the Catholic missionaries arrived and began their unsuccessful work. Fortunately in 1844 they tried again. Then other denominations followed them. In the other political entities, Vanuatu (New Hebrides), Solomon Islands, New Caledonia, Papua New Guinea and West Papua, evangelization was carried out by various denominations and at various times, sometimes more than once. The New Hebrides was visited by Presbyterians in 1839 for the first time, but the expedition was disastrous and ended in a cannibalistic feast. The Catholics arrived in New Caledonia in 1843. After four years of hardship their mission was wiped out by angry and suspicious islanders while one missionary was killed trying to escape the rampage. The Solomon Islands were a very difficult field for Catholics and their early efforts ended with death of Bishop Jean-Baptiste Epalle SM in 1845. The Anglicans were more fortunate at the beginning, but in 1871 their bishop, John Coleridge Patteson was killed there, along with two local missionaries from the Pacific islands, a common source of early catechists for many Protestant groups. In 1847 the Catholics made a first attempt to evangelize Papua New Guinea, first on Woodlark Island (coming back from the East), and in 1848 at Umboi Island (Rooke, Siassi), which ended with the martyrdom of Blessed John Mazzucconi of PIME in 1855. Later efforts by the Protestants, with the London Missionary Society and the Methodists in 1874 and 1875, brought more success for them.

In West Papua the Protestant Utrecht Society began their work at Dorei Bay in 1855. Their achievements were very small for half a century. The abovementioned missionary societies and religious communities of Protestant groupings and Catholic Church were the roots of the sort of Christianity first planted on Melanesian soil. The other denominations and religious movements that now are growing in their hundreds in Melanesia are a phenomenon of a largely post-missionary surge, coming well after the original three evangelizing phases of Contact; of Penetration; and of Absorption, all by the 'mainline' or 'mainstream' churches. The author briefly describes the characteristics of these major phases while studying another, fourth, phase, the so-called phase of Autonomy (pages 155-163). His comments on that matter, although very condensed, are especially informative and will be very useful for lecturers, all kinds of enquirers into the nature of Melanesian realities, and all those who themselves are deeply involved in these realities on an everyday basis.

Chapters six and seven are entitled 'Messianic Movements in Melanesia' and 'The Rise of Independent Indigenous Churches and of Pentecostal Movements in Melanesia'. Rapidly running through an enormous amount of content, the experienced author discusses the phenomena of the 'cargo cults', movements which appeared in Melanesia some time after the intrusion of the Europeans. In these chapters Fr. Zocca looks into the rise of various independent local groups and charismatic movements and puts the question: are the cargo cults of a messianic character? According to him - yes, they are! Even at present their shape can be observed in the forms taken by various secular manifestations, or in the ways so many converted Christians are constantly moving into other denominations--messianic Adventist, Pentecostal groups and newer churches--in order to gain something material from the outside world in the various forms of cargo. Scholars call such underlying and persistent attitudes a 'cargo mentality' or 'cargo thinking'. The issue of how to interpret the explosion of new religious groupings and movements is a burning one today. The scholars say that the traditional Melanesian beliefs in spirits, their 'magical, enchanted vision of the world' and their emotional approach to any imported religion are the reasons (socio-cultural) for the emergence of the so-called new Melanesian churches.

In the final parts of his book Fr. Zocca analyses and studies the various indigenous churches, denominations, communities, movements and even non-Christian groups in Melanesia; their setting, structures, activities, number of adherents and engagement (or not!) in ecumenism. In conclusion he says that the present Christianity of Melanesia must keep wide awake and realize that its mission is not finished, must be aware that its assignment never ends, and be ready to offer new strategies towards finding solutions for new, modern 'evils', be mindful of the needs of a growing urban population, and remain 'missionary', prepared for the creation of a more Melanesian religious and social life through the creative exercise of its theology and other academic disciplines, and through constantly renewed and creative activism.

Zocca's book suffers from a number of minor inaccuracies, errors, misspellings and omissions, but it is of great value, has the best statistics currently available, and is unreservedly recommended for reading, not only by experts or specialists but also by anyone at all who is genuinely interested in the region of the world which since the 1830s has constantly been called Melanesia. Let us hope that its minor deficiencies can be corrected in future printings, as this fine treatment has, at the moment, no rival among anything currently available in print, published between just two covers, of such a low price, and in such an easily manageable format.

Zdzislaw Ziggy Kruczek CSMA

Good Shepherd Seminary

Fatima / Banz, WHP