Sharing and Caring: Melanesian Bishop Visits U.S.A.
Diocesan Press Service. March 8, 1966 [41-8]
Elizabeth Bussing
Imagine a diocese of many islands in a tropical sea, a diocese in which villages take the place of parishes, where the priest serves 14 or more villages and the catechist cares for the spiritual needs and Christian education of his neighbors between the priest's visits.
This is the Diocese of Melanesia, a vast area in the Solomons, New Hebrides and Santa Cruz Islands the home of the Melanesians who are a distinct ethnic group. Their assistant Bishop, the Rt. Rev. Leonard Alufurai, visited the Dioceses of East Carolina, Erie, and Kansas in February. He came as a response to MRI, which he prefers to call "sharing and caring".
Bishop Leonard told us that the Diocese of Melanesia is unique in the Anglican Communion. Its 60,000 churchmen are led by 123 priests of whom 110 are Melanesians and only 13 are foreigners or "Europeans". This is probably the largest proportion of native clergy in any missionary diocese in the Anglican Communion. The development of a local clergy is the outgrowth of a program initiated by Anglican missionaries 117 years ago.
Melanesian men with no more than grammar school education are sent for five years to seminaries in the Solomons and New Hebrides - a few go to New Zealand for further theological education. In local seminary they study Bible, Church History, Liturgy and Ceremony (they enjoy ceremony especially). The Bishop feels that the training program for priests is adequate to the local needs and is more feasible for the area than the longer and more expensive theological training customary in England and the United States.
There are six genuine languages used throughout the Diocese - these are not dialects. Bishop Leonard speaks three of them in addition to fluent English. The English Prayer Book has been translated into all six languages.
"The entire life of the Melanesian is integrated into the Church," Bishop Leonard told us. "Before a family moves into its house (a thatched hut) it must be blessed by the priest. The first fruits of a new garden must be blessed; if a man makes a fishing net it is blessed before it is used and the first catch will be blessed and shared with the Church in the village. When a person returns from hospital the first thing he does is to make a thank offering. If a member of the Church brings home money ( a rare commodity on the islands) he must give some to the Church. Tithing is a general rule whether the payment be in cash or in kind," the Bishop concluded.
Payments in kind however are more likely because the islands are essentially on an agricultural economy. Only 25 per cent of the people ever earn money.
The natives produce all of the necessities of life with their own labor. There are no large towns; the people live in villages of from 50 to 500 persons, and leave their homes daily to work. There are few cows, pigs or chickens and therefore the people seldom have meat: fresh fish is their chief source of protein. Melanesians must compete with Japanese fishermen to get their share. Coconuts, bananas, maize and sweet potatoes are staples of the diet. Exports are limited to a few items such as copra, shells (formerly used by the Japanese for buttons and now and ingredient in paint) and some cocoa. Since these are common materials, available in vast areas of the globe, little exchange can be earned by the Melanesians from these sources. This reduces the islands primarily to a barter type of economy.
The Bishop, 42 years old, is the father of six children ranging in age from 2 ½ to 14 and the son of parents whose early religious life revolved around ancestor worship. At the age of 12 when the missionaries came to his village his parents were converted and he became eager to join the Melanesian Brotherhood founded in 1924 as a religious order for the laity with the monastic vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. After attending school in the islands and later in New Zealand, his Bishop recommended that he enter the sacred ministry. He was ordained deacon in 1952 and Consecrated Bishop in 1963. Mrs. Alufurai is president of the Mothers' Union which is similar to the British organization and roughly equivalent to the Episcopal Churchwomen in this country. However the Mothers' Union does not admit divorcees or the unmarried. This, the Bishop says, is no hardship because they have neither.
Like the native priests the Bishop wears black shorts and a white tee shirt at home. The priests wear silver crosses and the Bishop the usual pectoral cross and episcopal ring. While in this country he wore the conventional clerical black suit with red rabat.
On his home volcanic islands the temperature is tropical and the principal difference between the rainy and the dry season is that during the latter it rains a little less, he told us. Bishop Leonard communicated with us with perception and alacrity on our level, despite the total difference in background. Communication with other cultures and economies is quite limited in the Islands although airplanes and radios are compensating to some extent for this isolation. T. V. has not yet made its debut and it was generally agreed between the Bishop and your reporter that this did not present a handicap.
Bishop Leonard travels most of the time in the islands using an 87 foot long motor boat which carries 24 passengers - teachers and children going between home and schools for all schools are boarding schools, and other passengers.
We were sorry to see his plane leave to wing him back to his home when we took him for departure to the San Francisco airport where he had come in less than a month before. We had so enjoyed his visit and felt that he had illuminated some of the problems of MRI. "Your great wealth and the power it gives you is your strength," he said. Then he added, " I was pleased with the deep and real interest in my people which I found among your people." When we asked him what he thought his diocese had in greatest abundance to give us, he answered, "I think perhaps my people's habit of making their religion central to their whole life might be our export." His wholly loving and spiritually stimulating personality made this simple statement as convincing as it was humbling for us.