August 21

On this day in 1959, Hawaii became the 50th state admitted to the United States. This was not without controversy. Christian missionaries began settling in Hawaii in the 1820’s. Various land purchases gave white settlers the best farming land, and relegated many native families to less-desirable land. Hawaii was a sovereign nation until 1893, when a group of American settlers, supported by US Marines, staged a coup against Queen Liliuokalani. Though Hawaiian sovereignty and statehood still have various factions of native supporters and opponents, it’s important for Christians to reflect how missionary activity has often been used in colonization. 

Also on this day, the preacher Nat Turner led an uprising of enslaved people in Virginia in 1831.

Today marks the death, in 1996, of Mary Two-Axe Earley, a Mohawk and Oneida women’s rights activist who was stripped of her indigenous status by Canadian law when she married. She began a campaign to have this discriminatory law changed, and faced pushback from both the majority-white establishment and the male indigenous power structure in Canada. The law was eventually repealed and tens of thousands of women regained their native status in 1985. 

Reflection: 

James Michener wrote a novel titled Hawaii that was published the same year that Hawaii became a state. This is a quote from the book: 

The word “missionary” comes from the Latin “missio,” to send. I think of Elwood’s catch phrase in The Blues Brothers: “We’re on a mission from God.” It’s an extension of the theological belief that God uses normal human beings to convey divine revelation and enact God’s saving and healing work. 

I’ve learned about missionary activity from both the perspective of the Church and the perspective of decolonization activists. The Church has traditionally viewed missions as a way to fulfill the Great Commission in Matthew 28, to “go into all the world and teach them to be disciples.” Decolonization activists tend to view it as an extension of colonialism, a way to colonize people’s minds while the settlers and invaders strip away the natural resources and culture of the indigenous population. 

I believe the church has long misread the Great Commission. “Making disciples” is about teaching, and the primary teaching is love. The Church has viewed “disciple-making” as adding converts to Christendom, instead of actually teaching people to love—by example, not by doctrine. It is hard for me to imagine Jesus going into another culture in order to homogenize it with medieval Christianity. 

I do like the verb “witness,” which means both to tell and to observe. To witness is to in-carnate, to see with human eyes and live in human flesh. I’ve had the honor to know some of these missionaries, and their lives are a witness to any culture in which they find themselves. 

Prayer: God, we repent of imperial and colonial Christendom. Teach us to be missionaries in our own culture—a witness of an alternative way to live according to your Good News. Amen.