Pacific Theology Books

A theological reflection on the links between the Fijian vanua and theology. Dr, Tuwere (former principal of Pacific Theological College) takes us on a journey of reconciliation with Fiji’s multiculturalism as he searches to define contemporary Fijian identity. This voyage through different myths of migration and into the trinity of vanua, lotu and matanitu compels the reader to question assumptions about Fijian Society and Affirms the truth of the Gospel while challenging reigning falsehood. This book is seminal and proactive – it is an awakening.

This book examines the theology of God from an Oceanian point of view, using a Tuvaluan relational philosophy called ‘Vaa fesokotaki’ which literally means, the relational sacred space. Vaa fesokotaki is used as the hermeneutical lens through which to redefine the theology of te Atua. It refers to the deeply interconnected and multifaceted ‘relational space’ which defines the Tuvaluan (and the Oceanian) worldview.

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.

The narratives introduce to the Islanders and mission leaders to show how Christianity was adopted into the pacific cultures and interacted with traders and colonial administrators. The book further exploits the role of women, islanders and expatriates and how the Pacific Island Nations imperial twilights led to changes in the Christian mission and the emergence of self-governing islands churches with distinctive leadership style.

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.

Uvea is the first book written entirely by Wallisians living on the island of Wallis. The authors chose the themes of their chapters which range from the chiefly system, to language, to traditional and contemporary education, to religion, culture  and custom today. The authors have produced a book that takes the reader on a voyage across time and into the multiple’s worlds of Uvea.

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.

This book celebrates without apology the fact that indigenous spirituality lives and breathes in our Pacific person and personhood. In so doing, it celebrates what is core to indigeneity in the Pacific: our names and our naming; our knowing, being and seeing; and our identities and sense of belonging.

Within the pages of this book, an international group of Methodist scholars are united in the belief that another church and another world are not only necessary but possible. Holiness traditions, even though at times addressing matters too narrowly and at other times to triumphantly, are in agreement that the status quo in both church and world can be improved upon significantly. The question is not whether but how does this happen and how far does it go.

This book celebrates the 50^th anniversary of the PTC with historical reflections and personal reminiscences in the Pacific region at the backdrop of theological studies. Stimulating the various island churches and missions to confer regarding questions facing the churches on the neo-colonialism and communities in which each denomination and mission found itself.