Home: The Annexation Of Hawaii: A Collection Of Document
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822 HAWAIIAN ISLANDS. Hawaiian pastors and missionaries, except so far as it has its bearings on my instructions "to induce in the Hawaiians more of the sentiments of personal independence and self-reliance, and to develop that strength of character which shall enable them to withstand the unfavorable influences that have hitherto depressed them, and still exist from their contact with so large a foreign population." You will pardon me in what I have to say if I introduce more of the personal element than you would meet in ordinary diplomatic correspondence. It is this very element that throws upon any such question those side lights that give the aspect of vitality and reality to what else might be only abstract discussion of abstruse principles of government and social order. When I arrived here June 1, 1877, and began to study the situation, I found that I must first disabuse myself of the notion that it was Hawaiian civilization and a Hawaiian government under which I was to live. Such nomenclature was right and proper, but the church and state, nominally Hawaiian, was really managed by the few foreigners who had the direction of affairs. Not that the foreigners were exercising an usurped authority and the natives simply subject to their beck and call, but rather this, that the management of affairs of church and state was under the direction of the missionaries in the one case, and trusted advisers in the other; and that without such direction, -_ not to say control, both churches and government would disintegrate speedily because of utter lack of the needful ability to maintain an independent organic existence. The number of superannuated missionaries has constantly diminished till now there are only three surviving, only one of these an ordained preacher. The management of the churches has fallen entirely into the hands of the native pastors, with no direct continuous personal ' supervision. What I can do by correspondence or by chance visits and what Mr. Emerson can do by similar means (only in his case these are official and in some places semiannual,}-this constitutes all that we two workers can well do for the 57 Hawaiian evangelical churches, with their membership of 5,427 communicants out of a total population (native) of 34,430, with only one foreign pastor (Rev. H. H. Parker, of Kawaiahao Church, Honolulu) among the whole number (34) of pastors. The native churches are growing poorer and feebler each year, less able. and willing to support the native pastorate. One reason for this growing unwillingness is the demoralization of our churches under the influence of the native sovereign. Kalakaua. It was his custom to appoint natives to office without regard to fitness, but rather because of social position among their own people and subserviency personally to himself. In this way, as our church members are among the better class of Hawaiians, they were selected as officials, but made to feel that their tenure of office depended upon his own pleasure. As there were not offices enough to give to all jealousies arose, and removals were necessary to make places for some whom it was the necessity of the moment to placate. In this way a greed for office-holding was introduced and fostered, till in perversion of the native translation of 1 Corinthians, 12 31, office seeking was made to seem the duty of every church member (seek the "highest offices for yourselves"). Another means of demoralizing the native churches was the idea-instilled assiduously by the King, that a State church was the desirable religious establishment for Hawaii. He was to be the head, and