Editor’s Note: This is the third installment in a series on Congregational Missions. The pre-Christian worship of Hawaii or the Sandwich Islands was the “Kapu System” which in addition to a caste system had an extensive system of taboos. To break them was to be punished by death. In the providence of God, 6 months before the arrival of the first Congregationalist missionaries, King Kamehameha II abolished the Kapu system and - unknown to him - prepared the way for the Good News of Jesus Christ. Here is the record of what God was doing to prepare those messengers.
(c) 2008 Dr. Phil Corr
As the 190th anniversary of the death of Opukahaia approaches, it is vital to reclaim his contributions to the bringing the Christian faith to Hawaii. Mark Twain learned about him in Sunday School. Children and adults continue to make pilgrimages to his burial site on the big island of Hawaii.
At least three publications survive concerning the life and death of the one who came to be known as Henry Obookiah. The following article draws from them and my dissertation.
The son of a Hawai’an priest, Opukahaia received passage on a ship to the United States after both of his parents died. He made his way to Yale College where Timothy Dwight (the president of Yale College, a leader of the Second Great Awakening, a leader of the American Board, and a grandson of Jonathan Edwards!) and others befriended him. Becoming fully convinced of the truth of Christianity, he proclaimed the Gospel in his prayers, letters, and conversations. He preached through his life and his death.
While a student at the Foreign Mission School in Cornwall, Connecticut, he, as a pastor to the other Hawaiians, met weekly on Saturday evenings with his companions and “questioned them individually concerning the state of their minds, and addressed to them such observations as the particular situation of each seemed to demand. Others in a few instances have been present, and have been greatly surprised both at the ability which he possessed of eliciting the feelings of his companions, and at the pertinency and wisdom of his remarks.
By 1817 Opukahaia had made up his mind to prepare as soon as possible to preach the Gospel in Hawaii. “He paid particular attention to preaching, and made many remarks upon the subject of sermons and the manner of preaching them.”
All scholars of the American Board’s mission to Hawaii agree that Opukahaia’s death influenced individuals and organizations to move forward with sending the first group of missionaries. Within two years of his death from typhus, the first group left New England’s shores for what were then well known as the Sandwich Islands.
Hagiography did develop around the person of Opukahaia. His name was invoked at the marriage of the leader of the first band of missionaries. In his concluding exhortation at the October 11, 1819, Hiram Bingham wedding, Thomas H. Gallaudet called his listeners to “Be faithful unto death. And may the mantle of Obookiah descend and rest upon you–Farewell!” The memory of Opukahaia was used as a motivation in the instructions to the missionaries and the Hawaiians accompanying them.
Thomas Hopu listened to the instructions along with John Honolii and William Kanui. Hopu’s and Opukahaia’s souls had “ ‘appeared to be knit together like those of David and Jonathan.’” In 1815, Hopu said, “ ‘I want to serve [Christ],– A want my … countrymen to know about Christ.’” When in the United States, Hopu converted John Honolii to Christianity.
Not long after returning to the Sandwich Islands, Honoore visited the blind and ill jester of the royal court. But that, dear reader, is the subject of the next article….
Phil Corr’s work on the web can be seen at: haystack06.org and fccofcc.com
