The Promise in Polynesia
Pao'o. A Compendium Short Biography
Once upon a time in the 18th century B.C., when Babylon was the largest city on the earth under the rule of the great Hammurabi and Egypt was already in its thirteenth dynasty, a simple nomad in Mesopotamia radically redirected his life according to a promise:
“The Lord had said to Abram, ‘Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.’ So Abram went, as the Lord had told him…’”1
This ancient promise was threatened, time and again, by barrenness, family dysfunction, and power plays. Its fulfillment, though often obscured, never wavered. The story of the promise-fulfilling continued to be written according to its own design.
“I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore.”2
In the 18th century A.D., during the Industrial Revolution in the West, the European colonialization of the Americas, and the development of the Atlantic Slave Trade, a Polynesian named Pao’o gave a final push to his paddle. He had traveled 62 nautical miles from the island of Mare to the neighboring island of Lifou. (See map below.) His canoe arrived with a thud on the sandy shores of the island of Lifou and with nothing more than a Bible and a bundle of clothing, the promise of Abram’s God, which had endured more than 3,000 years, had traveled 10,000 miles away from the land of its birth.
Decades earlier Pao’o’s journey seemed impossible. In Europe, the promise had become tangled in the power struggles between countries. Divisions between Catholics and Protestants threatened to overwhelm the core message of the Christian faith. Philosophers began to reject Abram’s promise. In response, modernist theologians tried to reshape the faith into a more “suitable” form. Christian fundamentalists reacted by “going on defense” against the rapidly changing Western world. Europeans were losing sight of the promise and sliding into deism.
Polynesia had tensions of its own. On his visit, Captain Cook thought Chief Tu of Tahiti was in charge of the area. But the political and religious reality was more complicated. Tu, also known as Pomare, received his authority from the “Jerusalem” of Polynesia. The island of Raiatea was the home of the god Oro. It was believed that he ensured plentiful crops in response to partly phallic dance dramas at the seaside open-air stone temple on the island. A traveling society of devotees, the Arioi, took the worship to other islands, providing sexual favors to the chiefs with no strings attached; being prohibited from marriage and required to kill any resulting children at birth. Oro was also a fierce god of war who played a key role in the intermittent struggles for power among the Polynesian chiefs. Pomare was powerful, but some rival chiefs did not accept his authority as supreme.
But the theme of the promise-fulfilling overcame these global barriers.
The heart of the faith emerged rather unexpectedly among the Welsh people of the British Isles. Their revival spread across the United Kingdom with a fresh emphasis on:
the recognition of the gravity of sin.
a response of heartfelt repentance.
trust in the self-sacrifice of Christ to restore the believer to union with God.
Those who experienced this revival described a newly warmed heart and a life redirected to the love and service of God and their fellow human beings. Many, in fulfillment of the promise to Abram, became passionate about sharing their experience with others around the world.
But how and where should they begin? Their mission needed a new structure that would transcend Catholic and Protestant institutions. In 1795 The London Missionary Society (LMS) was formed.
“…our design is not to send Presbyterian, Independency, Episcopacy, or any other form of Church Order and Government, about which there may be differences of opinion among serious persons, but the Glorious Gospel of the Blessed God to the Heathen: and that it should be left (as it ought to be left) to the minds of the persons whom God may call into the fellowship of his Son from among them to assume for themselves such form of church government, as to them shall appear most agreeable to the Word of God.”3
That was the “how.” But what about the “where?” Eleven years before the formation of the LMS, Captain Cook’s 1768 voyage of discovery to Tahiti, New Zealand, and Australia had captured the British imagination. An affordable paperback of his Voyages made his descriptions of Polynesian society, entirely cut off from the rest of the world for 3,000 years, a fascination for them.
Pao’o was born in the early 1800s on the Polynesian island of Aitutaki, one of the Cook Islands in Polynesia. Since Cook’s contact, interactions between Europeans and Polynesians had centered on whalers and sandalwood traders. It wasn’t a good relationship. But Pao’o had an adventurous spirit. He joined a whaling vessel and visited several Polynesian Islands. On the island of Raratonga, he began to participate in Abram’s promise.
Decades before Pao’o landed on Raratonga, a Polynesian named Papeiha, from the island of Raiatea, landed there. As the first Christian missionary to Raratonga, Papeiah fulfilled a Raratongan prophecy. Four months before his arrival, unbeknownst to Papeiah, a prophet of the god Oro had predicted that a ship bearing women and Bibles would soon arrive. Unfortunately for Papaeiah and his landing party, the prophet continued making his goal clear: “…when that shipload of women arrived he would share them out to all the people and they shall ravish them.”4 As soon as the Raiatean women accompanying Papeiha came ashore they were molested.
Understandably, Papeiha’s team left the island and returned to the ship. Papeiha took all his belongings to the departing ship but returned to make his home on the island with nothing more than the clothes on his back and a few books under his arm.5 Over time, almost all the islanders became Christ-followers through this pioneering work. The king of Raratonga even developed a plan for a chapel with a capacity of 600.
Pao’o was trained under the LMS missionary Aaron Buzacott.6 During his first posting in Samoa, he began learning other languages to speak of Jesus in the “heart language” of people across Polynesia. He became one of twenty-five Polynesian missionaries who shared Abram’s promise in the area before the European missionaries arrived.
Following in the footsteps of Polynesian pioneers like Papeiha, Pao’o arrived on the island of Lifou. Unlike Captain Cook, he quickly became aware of the underlying politics of the island. Lifou was under the competing power of two chiefs. Pao’o knew he would have to work within the existing power structure while being clear that his work must transcend them if Abram’s promise were to take root and grow.
The chief of the southern district of Losi gave him his first opportunity. Bula, as the chief was called, invited Pao’o to be his enemu, a special relationship, not unlike God’s special friendship with Abram, in which a chief would protect and provide for a single friend. Pao’o accepted. But with the promise came a challenge. Bula was one of the chiefs involved in sporadic warfare on the island. As Pao’o taught the Bible and built a thriving community of Jesus-followers, he emphasized his goal of sharing the promise rather than sharing in the island’s politics.
Nevertheless, Ukeneso, the rival chief in the Northern region of Wet, began to resent the relationship between Pao’o and Bula. He reached out to Catholic missionaries in Polynesia to find an enemu of his own. However, as he did so, a prophet of Oro urged the chief and his people to reject all Westerners. This was the opening that Pao’o needed.
He sent Polynesian teachers from Samoa to the “lesser” chiefs in Ukeneso’s district and one of the young leaders, Wianya, became a Christian, and his region became one of the most important Protestant centers on Lifou. In the meantime, Pao’o established a mission base on neutral territory where his teachers across the island could gather for encouragement and training without being seen as representatives of any one of the chiefs on the island. During his eighteen years on the island, Pao’o married a local woman, became known as a consistent peacemaker, and proved his character as a Christian pastor. He died on Lifou after a long illness but not before earning the moniker “the apostle of Lifou” as he is known today.
“And they lived happily ever after” is a bit of a stretch. The promise has its challenges on Lifou as well. But today Lifou is known as a “devoutly Christian” island.7
Further Reading about Pao’o and Polynesia:
John Garret, To Live Among the Stars: Christian Origins in Oceania (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1982).
Samuel MacFarlane, The Story of the Lifu Mission (London: J. Nisbet & Co., 1873)
Gerald H. Anerson, Editor, Biographical Dictionary of Christian Mission (Cambridge, Eerdmans, 1998) Pao’o, p. 514
Genesis 12:1-4a
Genesis 22:17
John Garret, To Live Among the Stars: Christian Origins in Oceania. (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1982) p. 10.
Ibid., p.82.
Ibid.
Buzacott was the son of a metalworker who apprenticed for three years with a gentleman farmer in Devon. Through that farmer, he became a devout Christian. He then continued to train as a metalworker while also teaching Sunday school and preaching in villages in the UK. Later he joined the LMS and traveling to Polynesia.
Bronwen Douglas, Across the Great Divide: Journeys in History and Anthropology. (United Kingdom: Taylor & Francis, 1998)
Fascinating!