Pacific Theology Books

For most people life is governed by power and rule, but behind these there always lies the mystery of human nature, doubtful and mysterious, and right now and again to go off at an angle and disrupt the soft working of coordinated practice. Some man or woman will appear who departs from the normal method of practice, who follows values rather than rules, and whose methods are unpredictable, and often, in the eyes of on lookers, unwise.

The Christian Gospel was first announced by the European missionaries and after two to three decades, the young Christian communities of the pacific Islands started sending their own missionaries. In the last 150years, over 1200 Pacific Islanders served as Christian missionaries and many of them pioneered in the places they went to. This book examines the significant work and impacts influenced by the pacific islander missionaries.

European missions to the Pacific Islands are well recorded. But most missionaries in the islands are, and almost always were Polynesians, Melanesians and Micronesians. This fascinating book contains the stories of Polynesian missionaries to Melanesia, written by Polynesian missionaries themselves or by descendants of missionaries. This book contains chapters on some of the first and most famous Polynesian missionaries in Melanesia, as well as on later missions to the present time.

Blessed are the dead which die in the lord. These noble men and women who fell on the battle field were comforted by the thought that they were winning a new empire for their divine master.This volume is intended to present the past and presence of the kinship of the Harvey Islanders and the M?ori’s and the Christian missionaries. Missionary’s account of Cook Islands history up to 1894.

The pre-Christian history of Mangaia — the southernmost of the Cook Islands — was documented by Sir Peter Buck (Te Rangi Hiroa) in Mangaian Society, in 1934. Missing from the book was the final chapter, which documented changes in Mangaian society following the establishment of a London Missionary Society mission in 1824.

The Turning Wheel’ traces the maturing of a Church which in the 1950s was completely dependent on missionaries but now is sending out its own missionaries. There are four parts in the book. Part I deals with the development of parishes and schools. Part II with the renewal that took place after Vatican II until the first coups in Fiji. Part III deals with the Columbians’ response to the coups and their mentoring of local missionaries, both ordained and lay. Part IV examines and evaluates the different aspects of the missionary work done over the 65 years.