Hawaiians Journey to Park Street Church to Celebrate Commissioning of First Missionaries to Their Islands in 1819

Last week, over 100 Hawaiians flew to Boston to commemorate the commissioning of missionaries at historic Park Street Church two hundred years ago. Many Hawaiians leaders made the journey. Peter Young, the great-great-grandson of the mission's leader, Hiram Bingham, played a key role in the celebration at the church last Wednesday. The program also included Hawaiian music and hymns, some performed by Timberlane Regional High School in Plaistow, New Hampshire.

Contradicting the prevalent myth that dour and bigoted Christian missionaries to the Sandwich Islands destroyed Hawaiian culture, the Hawaiians, who travelled to Boston to take part in the celebrations, went out of their way to emphasize the many beneficial changes that the missionaries introduced to Hawaii. For example, the first missionaries, with help from native Hawaiians and support from the rulers, created the written Hawaiian language and translated the Bible into Hawaiian. The missionaries established the first school during their first year in Hawaii. They eventually helped to found nine hundred schools, which led to an astonishingly high Hawaiian literacy rate of 95% within several decades of the missionaries' arrival in 1820.