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September 9, 2025 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Andover Theological Seminary

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the people of New England were taking a new interest in religion. The devotion to their Puritan faith, which was characteristic of the first generation of colonists, had yielded long since to the claims of everyday living. (Rowe)

At the time, there were three schools of religious thought among Congregationalists. The first was known as the Old or Moderate Calvinists (with convictions of their Puritan ancestors.)

A second group was called Hopkinsians (from their spokesman, Samuel Hopkins) stressed certain Puritan principles to an extreme, like divine sovereignty and predestination; and a third party in Congregational circles was more liberal in its theological interpretations.

Although Massachusetts had stayed fairly true to its Calvinistic Puritan beginnings in the form of Congregationalism, by 1800 a new sect had swept Boston by storm: Unitarianism. This form of Protestantism rejected the aspects of Calvinism inherent to Congregationalism at the time.

Rather than accepting that all people were fallen and could only be chosen by God to be saved – predestination – early Unitarians emphasized reason, free will and the power of people for both good and evil. Also, as the name suggests, they disavowed the idea of the Trinity, believing instead that Jesus was solely a prophet and an example to live by. (Balboni)

The Old Calvinists were especially desirous to have a theological school at Andover. The Legislature of Massachusetts on June 19, 1807, authorized the Trustees of Phillips Academy to receive and hold additional property “for the purpose of a theological institution and in furtherance of the designs of the pious founders and benefactors of said Academy.”

The Phillips family was loyal to religion, as well as to education. They provided a gift to erect two buildings for the Seminary, the first American foundation for a chair in theology outside a university (a foundation for purely theological education was almost unknown in America.) (Rowe)

The Seminary was built on the campus of Phillips Academy in Andover. The Academy was founded during the American Revolution as an all-boys school in 1778 by Samuel Phillips, Jr (the oldest incorporated boarding school in the US.) The great seal of the school was designed by Paul Revere.

The purpose of the Founders for the Seminary, according to their constitution, was to increase “the number of learned and able defenders of the Gospel of Christ, as well as of orthodox, pious, and zealous ministers of the New Testament ; being moved, as we hope, by a principle of gratitude to God and benevolence to man.” (Rowe)

Seminary students partook in three years of study and four major subjects: the Bible, church history, doctrinal theology, and practical arts of the ministry. (Balboni)

The Andover Theological Seminary was dedicated September 28, 1808. The establishment of a school of divinity was a part of the original plan of the founders of Phillips Academy, although not to make it a distinct institution. (Bailey)

In addition to ministers, the seminary also produced hundreds of missionaries. Over the school’s 100-year stay in Andover, its graduates proselytized in Greece, Bulgaria, Armenia, Palestine, Turkey, India, Burma, China, Japan and all over Africa and Latin America. (Balboni)

Two notable graduates were part of the Pioneer Company of missionaries to Hawaiʻi. Hiram Bingham and Asa Thurston were classmates at Andover Theological Seminary (completed Seminary courses 1819;) they were ordained on September 29, 1819 at Goshen, Connecticut. (Joesting)

“On Saturday the 23d of October, the mission family, with a large concourse of spectators, assembled on Long Wharf; and after a prayer by the Rev. Dr. Worcester, Messrs. Bingham and Thurston sung, “When shall we all meet again?” and took a final farewell of their friends.”

“In this far distant land of strangers … it is a comfort to us to look back to that radiating point of missionary light and love, and to remember the privileges which we enjoyed, when treading, like you, on consecrated ground. The rising palaces of that hill of Zion, its treasures of learning and wisdom, and its fountains of consolation are still dear to us, though we shall never look upon its like again.”

“But it is the noble purposes of benevolent action, formed, matured, or Cherished and directed there, which gives us the most impressive view of its beauty and strength, and inspires our liveliest hopes, that that institution will be the most important to the church, and the most useful to the heathen, which the world has ever seen.”

“When we look at the history of that Seminary and of the American Board; when we see their connexion and their joint influence, hitherto so powerful, and so well directed, and the peculiar smiles which the Redeemer has bestowed upon them …”

“… our ears are open to hear the united song of heathen lands,—‘How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things.’” (Letter from Bingham and Thurston to the Society of Inquiry, February 20, 1821)

In 1908, the Seminary moved to Cambridge and in the fall of 1931 shared a campus with Newton Theological Institution in Newton, Massachusetts. In 1965, after three decades together on one campus, the two schools officially merged, becoming Andover Newton Theological School.

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Filed Under: Missionaries / Churches / Religious Buildings, Schools Tagged With: Hiram Bingham, American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions, ABCFM, Pioneer Company, Asa Thurston, Seminary, Andover Theological Seminary, Phillips Academy, Hawaii

May 21, 2025 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Hopu

Hopu, “was born about the year 1795, in Owhyhee, one of the Sandwich Islands.  After my mother had left me, she went and told one of my sisters to take my life away … (however, his) aunt took a blanket with her … (took him in her arms and took him) into her own brother’s house.”  (Hopu)

“Then her brother said unto his wife, this child shall be our son, for his name shall be called Nauhopoouah Hopoo, and we will be his feeders. So they nourished (him)”.  He lived with his uncle until he was four; then returned to his parents until he was eight (later living with his brother.)

“Among the American traders who frequently visit the Sandwich Islands, was Captain Brintnal, of New-Haven, (Conn.) who in 1807, touched and tarried some time at Owhyhee, one of these Islands.”  That year, Hopu and Henry ʻŌpūkahaʻia sailed with Captain Brintnall on the ‘Triumph.’

The Triumph set sail for the Pacific Coast of North America to pick up sealers, one of whom, Russell Hubbard, was a Yale student from Connecticut. Six months later the ship returned to Hawaiʻi, then went on to China, and finally New York. During the long voyage Hubbard tutored Henry and Hopu in English, and taught them about the Bible.  (Cook)

The ship returned to America by the way of China, and arrived at New-Haven early in the fall of 1809.  On their arrival on the continent, Hopu was given an additional name Thomas.

“After Hopoo had lived for a season in New-Haven, his disposition seemed inclined rove than to study.  He rejected an invitation of Obookiah to go with him to Andover and be taught.”  (ABCFM)  However, he learned to write and spell some basic words.  He chose the life of a sailor – he served on an American ship in the War of 1812.

After returning from his last voyage, he hired himself out in several families as a servant or coachman.  For about nine months, Hopu settled down with a Grangor family at Whitestown, NY. He lived with various families, until September 1815, when he returned to New-Haven, joined ʻŌpūkahaʻia and resumed his studies, including religious instruction.   (Narrative of Five Youth, 1816)

“In this place I become acquainted with many students belonging to the College. By these pious students I was told more about God than what I had heard before … I could understand or speak, but very little of the English language. Friend Thomas (Hopu) went to school to one of the students in the College before I thought of going to school.”  (ʻŌpūkahaʻia)

Hopu and ʻŌpūkahaʻia stayed together in school at Litchfield Farms from the late-1816 until April 1817, when they started their training at the Foreign Mission School in Cornwall. Of the four Hawaiian boys who came with the pioneer party, Hopu was best prepared to serve, for he had proved a good scholar, even in theology. (Kelley)

On October 23, 1819, the Pioneer Company of American Protestant missionaries set sail on the Thaddeus for the Islands.  These included two Ordained Preachers, Hiram Bingham and his wife Sybil and Asa Thurston and his wife Lucy; two Teachers, Mr. Samuel Whitney and his wife Mercy and Samuel Ruggles and his wife Mary; a Doctor, Thomas Holman and his wife Lucia; a Printer, Elisha Loomis and his wife Maria; a Farmer, Daniel Chamberlain, his wife and five children.

With the missionaries were four Hawaiian students from the Foreign Mission School, Thomas Hopu, William Kanui, John Honoliʻi and Prince Humehume (son of Kauaʻi’s King Kaumuali‘i.)  (Unfortunately, ʻŌpūkahaʻia died suddenly of typhus fever in 1818 and did not fulfill his dream of returning to the islands to preach the gospel.)

They reached Hawaii on March 30, 1820. When the boat which they had sent to a landing on the Kohala coast, returned to the vessel, these were the tidings given to the missionaries: “Kamehameha is dead; his son Liholiho is king. The tabus are at an end; the idols are burned; the temples are destroyed.  There has been war. Now there is peace.”  (HEA) They later landed in Kailua-Kona, April 4, 1820.

Hopu and Kanui remained with the Thurstons and Holmans at Kailua to serve as interpreters and aides to the king. Hopu was reunited with his father, who moved his family to Kailua, where Hopu cared for him teaching him to know Jesus and praying with him faithfully. He also served the king’s household and aided Thurston by translating his teachings and preaching.  (Kelley)

Later at Lāhainā, “Hopu, in visiting the back part of Maui with the king, was particularly attracted by one of the daughters of the land.  When he returned to Honolulu, he brought to our cottage the girl of eighteen, wishing to commit her to me for special training.”  (Thurston)

Hopu declared “since the Almighty has excited in my heart such yearnings for her, I think it is his will that I marry her.” Lucy Thurston named her Delia.

“Their marriage (August 11, 1822) was publicly solemnized in the church. The king and principal chiefs were there.  (It was the first Christian marriage in the Islands.)”

“Hopu appeared as usual in his gentlemanly black suit. By his side stood Delia, dressed in a … complete and fashionable dress in white, was added a trimmed straw bonnet. It was the first native woman’s head that had been thus crowned.”  (Thurston)

After helping Bingham in Honolulu for some time, Hopu settled in Kailua where he kept busy teaching, holding Sabbath meetings for the governor, assisting in translating the Bible, and caring for his father (who died after four years at the age of 80. His funeral service was the first missionary one to be held in Hawaiʻi.)  (Kelley)

Throughout those early missionary years in Hawaiʻi, Hopu appears here and there preforming his duties; forcibly delivering a sermon, spreading cheer, comforting and aiding to those suffering.

Chester Lyman, visiting the islands in 1846 found Hopu working in a store in Honolulu. He reports he was over 50 and an interesting man.  He has been a consistent and useful man since he returned and is now one of the deacons of the Kailua Church where he resides.  (Kelley)  The image shows Thomas Hopu.

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Filed Under: Missionaries / Churches / Religious Buildings Tagged With: Hawaii, Hawaii Island, Hiram Bingham, American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions, ABCFM, Henry Opukahaia, Thomas Hopu, Hopu

April 11, 2025 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Morse and the Missionaries

Jedidiah Morse was a country boy from Woodstock, Connecticut who attended Yale during the American Revolution. In the middle of his college career, a spiritual awakening came to Yale.

Jedidiah fell under conviction of sin, and, in the spring of 1781, gave his life to Christ – this energized him in all parts of his life.

Daniel Webster said Jedidiah was “always thinking, always writing, always talking, always acting.” Jedidiah’s motto was “better wear out than rust out.”  (Fisher)  Morse was a pastor, a graduate of Yale and a former teacher of young girls in New Haven.  (Spoehr)

Recognizing the inadequacy of the textbooks available in America at the time, Morse compiled and published the first American geography book.  Morse has been informally accredited by some as being “the father of American geography.”

Jedidiah and his sons started the first Sunday school in New England. (The family continued this kind of work when they moved to Connecticut; his son, Samuel, became the first Sunday school superintendent in New Haven.)    (Fisher)

Morse had set up a separate Theological Seminary at Andover in 1805. The Andover Seminary served as the recruitment and educational base of operations for a new American project, international missions to evangelize the world as the “School of Nations”.

In 1810, a group of Americans (including Rev. Jedidiah Morse) established the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missionaries (ABCFM) at Farmington, Connecticut.  (Wesser)

Jedidiah brought all the separate strands of the Christian community in New England together to found Andover Theological Seminary.  Out of Andover’s first graduating class came America’s first foreign missionaries, and the school became known as a missionary training ground. (Fisher)

To them, Christianity was not a “personal religious question” or “feeling,” but rather as a profound philosophical passion to “do good works”.  (Wesser)

Morse was an abolitionist and friend of the black community in Boston, when abolitionists were few. Also, a significant portion of his life was spent looking for ways to benefit Native Americans and preparing the way for missions among them.  (Fisher)

ABCFM accounted for 80% of all missionary activities in America; reformed bodies (Presbyterians and Congregationalists, in particular) made up nearly 40% of the participants.

On October 23, 1819, the Pioneer Company of American Protestant missionaries from the northeast US set sail on the Thaddeus for the Sandwich Islands (now known as Hawai‘i.)  There were seven American couples sent by the ABCFM to convert the Hawaiians to Christianity in this first company.

These included two Ordained Preachers, Hiram Bingham and his wife Sybil and Asa Thurston and his wife Lucy; two Teachers, Mr. Samuel Whitney and his wife Mercy and Samuel Ruggles and his wife Mary; a Doctor, Thomas Holman and his wife Lucia; a Printer, Elisha Loomis and his wife Maria; and a Farmer, Daniel Chamberlain, his wife and five children.

With the missionaries were four Hawaiian students from the Foreign Mission School, Thomas Hopu, William Kanui, John Honoliʻi and Prince Humehume (son of Kauaʻi’s King Kaumuali‘i.)

Prior to departure, a portrait of each of the company had been painted by Samuel Morse; engravings from these paintings of the four native “helpers” were later published as fund-raisers for the Sandwich Islands Mission and thereby offer a glimpse of the “Owhyhean Youths” on the eve of their Grand Experiment.  (Bell)

Over the course of a little over 40-years (1820-1863) (the “Missionary Period”,) about 180-men and women in twelve Companies served in Hawaiʻi to carry out the mission of the ABCFM in the Hawaiian Islands.

In addition to his religious endeavors, son, Samuel, showed enough artistic promise for his father to send him abroad to study painting after he graduated from Yale University in 1810.

Painting provided Samuel with pocket money to help pay his term bills at Yale. He became one of the small handful of important American painters in his generation, and many famous depictions of notable Americans are his work.

The portrait of Noah Webster at the front of many Webster dictionaries is his, as are the most familiar portraits of Benjamin Silliman, Eli Whitney, and General Lafayette.  (Fisher)

The problem was not a lack of talent, for Morse showed great promise as a painter, but he offered Americans grand paintings with historical themes, when all his paying patrons really wanted were portraits of themselves.

Eventually Morse accepted many portrait commissions, but even they did not bring the steady income he needed to support himself and his family.

At the same time, Morse was also deeply involved in trying to make a go of his newfound vocation as a daguerreotypist. Morse enthusiastically embraced this startling new technology and became one of the first to practice photography in America.  (LOC)

Morse the artist also became known as “the Father of American photography.” He was one of the first in the US to experiment with a camera, and he trained many of the nation’s earliest photographers.  (Fisher)

Oh, one more thing about Samuel Morse, while he did not invent the telegraph, he made key improvements to its design, and his work would transform communications worldwide.

First invented in 1774, the telegraph was a bulky and impractical machine that was designed to transmit over twenty-six electrical wires. Morse reduced that unwieldy bundle of wires into a single one.

Along with the single-wire telegraph, Morse developed his “Morse” code. He would refine it to employ a short signal (the dot) and a long one (the dash) in combinations to spell out messages.

Following the routes of the quickly-spreading railroads, telegraph wires were strung across the nation and eventually, across the Atlantic Ocean, providing a nearly-instant means of communication between communities for the first time.

Newspapers, including as the Associated Press joined forces to pool payments for telegraphed news from foreign locales. Railroads used the telegraph to coordinate train schedules and safety signaling. Morse died in 1872, having advanced a practical technology that truly transformed the world.  (PBS)

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Filed Under: Missionaries / Churches / Religious Buildings, Prominent People Tagged With: Hawaii, Samuel Morse, Photography, Hiram Bingham, American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions, Noah Webster, ABCFM, Sybil Bingham, Jedidiah Morse, Morse Code, Pioneer Company

June 15, 2024 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Whitman Mission

During the first ten or fifteen years of the nineteenth century, the US was swept by religious revivalism and many people were converted in the wake of the newly born religious fervor.  The Second Great Awakening spread from its origins in Connecticut and led to the establishment of theological seminaries and mission boards.

In the fall of 1819, the brig Thaddeus was chartered to carry the Pioneer Company of missionaries to the Islands.  There were seven American couples sent by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) to convert the Hawaiians to Christianity.

Over the course of a little over 40-years (1820-1863 – the “Missionary Period,”) about 180-men and women in twelve Companies served in Hawaiʻi to carry out the mission of the ABCFM in the Hawaiian Islands.

Since work with any non-English speaking people in the US was classified as being foreign missions by most Protestant denominations throughout the nineteenth century, the ABCFM also looked to missions for the American Indians.  The Board began its Indian work in 1816, when a few missionaries were sent to the Cherokee.

Then, on January 12, 1835, “…one of our elders expects shortly to leave us to join the company of Missionaries to go beyond the Rocky Mountains.” (Hotchkin, Report to American Home Missionary Society)  Dr Marcus Whitman had volunteered to go.

Upon return from a short investigative trip, Whitman had observed that it was possible to take women over the Rockies, hence he could return, be married to Narcissa Prentiss to whom he was engaged, and take her with him to Oregon.

Marcus hoped to find another couple to join them in their Oregon venture. He heard of Henry and Eliza Spalding who were to be missionaries among the Osage people; they had already started for their destination, but Marcus caught up to them and convinced them to join the Oregon missions.

The Whitmans and Spaldings formed the forerunners of the ABCFM’s missionary effort in the Pacific Northwest.  In April 1836 Whitman’s party set out from Liberty, Missouri. In May they overtook an American Fur Company caravan near the junction of the Platte River and the Loup Fork, in Nebraska.

Traveling via Fort Laramie, Wyoming, and across South Pass, they arrived at the Green River Rendezvous in July. Escorted by two Hudson’s Bay Company traders, the party then set out on a long journey via Fort Hall to Fort Vancouver, where it arrived in September.  (LegendsOfAmerica)

Whitman chose a spot in southeastern Washington on Mill Creek on the north bank of the Walla Walla River, 22-miles above its junction with the Columbia and the Hudson’s Bay Company post of Fort Walla Walla. The local Indians, the Cayuse, called the spot Waiilatpu (“Place of the Rye Grass.”)  Spalding chose a site 110-miles farther east, where he founded among the Nez Perce Indians what came to be known as the Spalding Mission, Idaho. (LegendsOfAmerica)

The two wives were the first US women to travel across the continent.  The next March, Mrs. Whitman gave birth to a daughter, Alice Clarissa, the first US child born in the Pacific Northwest.  (Two years later the child died in a tragic drowning accident.)

Several Hawaiians lived at the Whitman Mission; a Hawaiian known as “Jack” and another Hawaiian whose name is unknown worked for a fur-trading company called the North West Company and helped Whitman establish the Waiilatpu mission; first they helped to build the Whitman’s home.

When Narcissa first saw it, she wrote home to her parents, “Where are we now, and who are we that we should be thus blessed of the Lord? I can scarcely realize that we are thus comfortably fixed, and keeping house …”

“We arrived here on the tenth-distance, twenty-five miles from Walla Walla. Found a house reared and the lean-to enclosed, a good chimney and fireplace, and the floor laid. … My heart truly leaped for joy as I alighted from my horse, entered and seated myself before a pleasant fire.”  (PBS)

In addition, the Whitmans knew an individual named Mungo Mevway; he was the son of a Hawaiian father and a Native American mother.  (Mevway married a member of the Spokane tribe around October 1842.)

Iosepa Mahi and his wife, Maria Kewau Mahi, were two later arrivals from Hawaiʻi.  “At Waiilatpu they had the pleasure of being waited on by two native Hawaiians, Iosepa Mahi and wife, from Mr. Bingham’s Kawaiahaʻo Church, who had come to Oregon the year previous to assist Dr and Mrs Whitman in their domestic concerns.”  (Edwin Hall Journal, 1839)

The Mahis were two of the charter members of the original Oregon Mission Church, being admitted by letter from the Kawaiahaʻo Church at its organization on August 18, 1838.

When Mahi died, Mrs. Whitman wrote of him in a letter to her mother on October 9, 1840, “Our loss is very great. He was so faithful and kind – always ready to relieve us of every care, so that we might give ourselves to our appropriate missionary work – increasingly so to the last. He died as a faithful Christian missionary dies – happy to die in the field – rejoiced that he was permitted to come and labour for the good of the Indians …” (His wife returned to Hawaiʻi in January 1842.)

There are more ties to Hawaiʻi beyond the help given to build the mission.  After the Oregon missionaries had found that their earliest ideas of instructing the Indians in the Gospel by teaching them English, without reducing their own language to writing,
were not only impracticable but absolutely impossible, they wrote to their brethren of the Sandwich Islands mission asking if it were not possible to have a second-hand printing press given to them.  (The Friend, May 1923)

On April 19, 1839, Hiram Bingham, head of the Hawaiʻi mission wrote, “The church & congregation of which I am pastor has recently sent a small but complete printing and binding establishment by the hand of Brother Hall, to the Oregon mission, which with other substantial supplies amount to 444,00 doll.” (This is not the same press that Bingham brought on their initial voyage to Hawaiʻi.)

“The press was a small hand press presented to this mission but not in use. The expense of the press with one small font of type, was defrayed by about 50 native females including Kīnaʻu or Kaʻahumanu 2d. This was a very pleasing act of Charity. She gave 10 doll. for herself & 4 for her little daughter Victoria Kaʻahumanu 3d.”  (Bingham) (The press remained at Lapwai until 1846, when it was sought to be used for printing a paper in Salem.)

“The Press was located at Lapwai, and used to print portions of Scripture and hymn books in the Nez Perces language, which books were used in all the Missions of the American Board. Visitors to these tribes of Indians, twenty-five years after the Missions had been broken up, and the Indians had been dispersed, found copies of those books still in use and prized as great treasures.”  (Nixon)

The Whitmans at Waiilatpu and the Spaldings at Lapwai carried on their work in their separate stations for about two years with but little outside help beyond that of a few Hawaiians and an occasional wandering mountain man. (Drury)

The Cayuse were a semi-nomadic people who were on a seasonal cycle of hunting, gathering and fishing.   Whitman introduced agriculture in order to keep the Cayuse at the mission and introduce Christianity.

They needed to be self-sufficient and spent a lot of time growing crops and looking after farm animals. These animals included a flock of sheep that were sent to Waiilatpu by some of the ABCFM missionaries in Hawaiʻi (Maki and his wife accompanied these sheep on their long journey to the Whitman Mission.)

In 1843, Whitman accompanied the first major overland immigration from the US to Oregon, successfully guiding the first immigrant wagons to reach the Columbia River; the mission at Waiilatpu was a major stop on the immigrant trail.  Their small expedition was the first to bring families to Oregon by wagon.

In 1847, one of those emigrant wagon trains brought measles to the mission. The white children recovered, but the local Cayuse tribe had no resistance. Half the tribe died.

Marcus was considered to be a te-wat, or medicine man, to the Cayuse people. His medicines did not work when trying to cure Cayuse infected with measles. It was Cayuse tradition that if the patient died after being treated by the medicine man, the family of the patient had the right to kill the medicine man.

On November 29, 1847, eleven Cayuse took part in what is now called the “Whitman Killings” and “Whitman Massacre.” The majority of the tribe was not involved in the deaths of the Whitmans and the eleven others, however, the whole tribe was held responsible until 1850. In that year, five Cayuse were turned over to the authorities in Oregon City and hanged for the crime of killing the Whitmans.

The story of the Whitman mission came to an end, however, the legacy of Dr Whitman lived on. Stories of his 1842 ride east to stop the ABCFM from closing some of the Oregon missions became a legend that “Whitman saved Oregon for the Americans”, making it seem that Whitman promoted a manifest destiny for America.

Cushing Eells, an associate of Whitman, built Whitman Seminary on the grounds of the old mission; it later moved to Walla Walla and became Whitman College. A statue of Dr. Whitman was erected in Statuary Hall in Washington DC.  (My mother, a Hiram Bingham descendant, attended Whitman College.)  (Lots of information here from NPS)

© 2024 Hoʻokuleana LLC

Filed Under: Missionaries / Churches / Religious Buildings Tagged With: Hawaii, Hiram Bingham, American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions, ABCFM, Henry Spalding, Washington, Whitman College, Whitman Mission, Marcus Whitman

September 17, 2023 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

United in a Song of Praise

The Prudential Committee of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) in giving instructions to the pioneer missionaries of 1819 said:

“Your mission is a mission of mercy, and your work is to be wholly a labor of love. … Your views are not to be limited to a low, narrow scale, but you are to open your hearts wide, and set your marks high. You are to aim at nothing short of covering these islands with fruitful fields, and pleasant dwellings and schools and churches, and of Christian civilization.”  (ABCFM)

Their message was simple, “As ambassadors of the King of Heaven, having the most important message to communicate, which he could receive, we made to him the offer of the Gospel of eternal life, and proposed to teach him and his people the written, life-giving Word of the God of Heaven.”  (Bingham)

One of the first things Bingham and his fellow missionaries did was begin to learn the Hawaiian language and create an alphabet for a written format of the language.   Their emphasis was on teaching and preaching.

These missionaries taught their lessons in Hawaiian, rather than English.  In part, the mission did not want to create a separate caste and portion of the community as English-speaking Hawaiians.  In later years, the instruction, ultimately, was in English.

The arrival of the first company of American missionaries in Hawaiʻi marked the beginning of Hawaiʻi’s phenomenal rise to literacy. The chiefs became proponents for education and edicts were enacted by the King and the council of chiefs to stimulate the people to reading and writing.

Within five years of the missionaries’ arrival, a dozen chiefs had sought Christian baptism and church membership, including the king’s regent Kaʻahumanu.  The Hawaiian people followed their native leaders, accepting the missionaries as their new priestly class.  The process culminated in Hawaiian King Kamehameha III’s adoption of Christianity and a Biblically-based constitution in 1840.  (Schulz)

The missionaries left many other lasting legacies in the Islands, including their songs.  Some songs were translations of Western songs into Hawaiian.  Some were original verse and melody.

Oli (chant) and mele (song) were already a part of the Hawaiian tradition.

“As the Hawaiian songs were unwritten, and adapted to chanting rather than metrical music, a line was measured by the breath; their hopuna, answering to our line, was as many words as could be easily cantilated at one breath.”  (Bingham)

Missionaries used songs as a part of the celebration, as well as learning process.  “At this period, the same style of sermons, prayers, songs, interrogations, and exhortations, which proves effectual in promoting revivals of religion, conversion, or growth in grace among a plain people in the United States, was undoubtedly adapted to be useful at the Sandwich Islands. … some of the people who sat in darkness were beginning to turn their eyes to the light”.  (Bingham)

“The king (Kamehameha III) being desirous to use his good voice in singing, we sang together at my house, not war songs, but sacred songs of praise to the God of peace.”  (Bingham)

One of the unique verses (sung to an old melody) was Hoʻonani Hope – Hoʻonani I Ka Makua Mau.  Bingham translated it to Hawaiian and people sang it to a western melody that dates back to the 1600s.

The melody may sound familiar to many – it was originally called ‘Old 100th‘ and is attributed to Louis Bourgeois (he penned the melody in the mid-1500s.)

It was later attached to a verse of Thomas Hen’s ‘All People That On Earth Do Dwell,’ written in about 1674. It had many verses (I have been able to find a version that has 11-verses; some versions had fewer.)

While most people may not recall the initial verses, what appears as his last is likely widely remembered.  Many people suggest that Bingham’s verse is merely a translation of Hen’s last verse.  It appears that is not the case.

I had the opportunity to attend the Hawaiian Mission Houses’ program “Ke Ala O Ka Hua Mele” – a four-part discussion and musical series on the evolution of Hawaiian music.  One part focused on Himeni (Hawaiian Hymns.)

We were in Kawaiahaʻo Church, the Church choir sang several hymns; one was Hoʻonani Hope (Ka Buke Himeni – Bingham’s translation.)  This was waaay cool.

A handout given by the Church shows Hoʻonani Hope – the Hawaiian was Bingham’s translation and the English verse was printed next to it.

Here is Bingham’s Hoʻonani Hope:
Hoʻonani i ka Makua mau
Ke Keiki me ke ka ʻUhane nō
Ke Akua mau, hoʻomaikaʻi pū
Ko kēia ao ko kēlā ao
ʻĀmene

This translates to:
Let us give praise to the eternal Father
To the Son and to the Holy Ghost
To God everlasting, let there ring praise
Both in this world as well as the kingdom beyond
Amen

“In his first efforts at translation, while still groping in the darkness of Polynesian thought patterns so foreign to his own, his mind must have fastened upon one of the shorter forms of the 100th Psalm which cannot have been very different from those used in the Bethel Chapel by the foreign congregation and appearing in 1840 in probably the earliest hymnal printed in English at the American mission press in Honolulu.” (The Friend, May 1935)

Bingham’s Hoʻonani Hope is also referred to as the ‘Hawaiian Doxology.’

Here is a rendition of Hoʻonani Hope – Hoʻonani I Ka Makua Mau, the Hawaiian Doxology:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eUFK03l8MI

(It was the only rehearsal this ‘combined school choir’ had – Aaron Mahi conductor.  They were students from schools associated with the Mission – Punahou, Lahainaluna, Mid-Pacific Institute and Kamehameha Schools.)

The words of the ‘traditional’ Doxology are:
Praise God from whom all blessings flow;
Praise him, all creatures here below;
Praise him above, ye heav’nly hosts;
Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost
Amen

Bingham did not translate the ‘Doxology’ verse we are accustomed to. (He may have even made up some or all of the English verse, in addition to the translation into Hawaiian.) (A second verse written by Haunani Bernadino was added in 2005.

© 2023 Hoʻokuleana LLC

Filed Under: General, Missionaries / Churches / Religious Buildings Tagged With: Hawaii, Hiram Bingham, American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions, ABCFM, Kaahumanu, Kamehameha III, Doxology, Himeni

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