Pacific Baha'i Communities 1950-1964
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Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Graham Hassall, Pacific Baha'i Communities 1950-1964, Guam: University of Guam Press & Micronesian Area Research Center, 1992, bahai-library.com.
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Pacific Bahá'í Communities 1950-1964

Graham Hassall
published in Pacific History: Papers from the 8th Pacific History Association Conferenceed. Donald H. Rubinstein, pp. 73-95

Guam: University of Guam Press & Micronesian Area Research Center, 1992

The spread of Bahá'í
communities throughout the Pacific islands may be too recent a
phenomenon to yet warrant close historical consideration. Several
factors combine, nonetheless, to suggest the usefulness of an
initial survey of the Bahá'í contribution to contemporary
Pacific religious history. Passing references to Bahá'í
activities have appeared in secondary literature, with little
supporting detail. Furthermore, these have in some cases suffered
from errors of fact and interpretation that signal the need for a
more substantial account. A more compelling motivation, beyond
matters of historiography, lies in the usefulness for comparative
purposes of the observation of a philosophy and practice of
religion which combines some motivations shared with traditional
Judeo-Christian systems of belief, with approaches to religious
teaching and practice (and their expression in propagation and
organisation) that originate outside Western traditions. Whether
as mission history, as social history, or as a study in
comparative religion, a survey of the emergence and consolidation
of Bahá'í centres thus implies observance and recognition of
alternative paradigms of action and belief in a manner that sheds
light on other facets of these contemporary Pacific societies.
Even though the admitted infancy of Pacific Bahá'í communities
challenges the possibility of adequate historical construction,
and no matter that the sources are uneven and uncollected, and
patterns of community and individual action are as yet incomplete
and underdeveloped, the attempt is made in this paper to identify
the patterns of establishment of Bahá'í communities in the
Pacific.

Origins and beliefs

The spread of the Bahá'í
movement from the East to the Pacific was more direct than might
have been imagined. The Prophet-founder of the Faith,
Bahá'u'lláh (Mirza Husayn Ali, 1817-1892), born in Persia and
subsequently exiled to the extremities of the Ottoman Empire at
the urging of first Persian then Turkish religious authorities,
had proclaimed a world-wide mandate for his teachings. He died in
Palestine in 1892. But the pivotal doctrine of the "oneness
of humanity" that lay at the centre of his pronouncements
and writings required of his followers an imparting of his Faith
to all corners of the globe.

Another central Bahá'í
belief, and one having particular relevance to the study of
Bahá'í approaches to Pacific religions, is the
"progressive revelation" of religion to humanity from a
common Divine source, through a series of messengers. By this
belief Bahá'ís profess their recognition not only of
Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, and Hinduism (to refer to
the religious traditions whose originators are well known), but
recognition also of the existence of other Prophets in the past,
whose personality and detailed teachings are no longer known. The
acceptance of a multiplicity of religious teachers in the gradual
unfolding of the world's spiritual destiny allowed the Bahá'ís
to admit the possibility of the divine origins of primal
religions, and of other beliefs based on "custom". This
acceptance in turn informed the Bahá'í approach to Pacific
belief systems with an underlying sympathy that did not require a
detailed knowledge of their specifics. It also removed from the
Bahá'í position the possibility of fundamental hostility toward
other religions, whether western or non-western.

Bahá'u'lláh's mission
was taken up by his son, `Abdu'l-Bahá, named by him the
"Centre" of his "Covenant". `Abdu'l-Bahá
travelled through Europe and North America expounding on
Bahá'u'lláh's teachings about the possibility of
"Universal Peace". A series of letters addressed by
`Abdu'l-Bahá to the Bahá'ís of North America during the period
1915-17 known as the Tablets of the Divine Plan, listed
destinations to which his advanced age prevented him from
proceeding: included were eighteen island groups in the South,
North and Eastern Pacific Islands. In a sense this list
established a program of mission.

By the time of
`Abdu'l-Bahá's death in Palestine in November 1921 followers had
reached Australia, the Society Islands and Hawaii - and through
Hawaii, the countries of North-East Asia. Within several years
there were Bahá'ís also in New Zealand and Fiji. Six decades
after the Prophet's death his teachings had spread in some form
to all the major Pacific Island groups.

'Abdu'l-Bahá nominated
his eldest grandson, Shoghi Effendi Rabbani (1897-1957), as his
chosen successor, and first "Guardian" of the Bahá'í
Faith. During a thirty-six year ministry, Shoghi Effendi directed
a program of Bahá'í expansion based on and supplementing the
tasks first elaborated in 'Abdu'l-Bahá's Tablets of the
Divine Plan. It was under Shoghi Effendi's leadership,
particularly in the period from 1953 until his death in 1957,
that Bahá'ís entered the Pacific Islands in a systematic way.
Interpretation in questions of religion relies on the perspective
of the observer: to some, the Bahá'ís were supporters of an
"eastern" Faith; the Bahá'ís saw themselves, however,
as members of a religious movement, admittedly small and new, but
global in perspective, philosophy, and practical operation.

Administration

Before examining the
movement of Bahá'ís to the Pacific, it is necessary to note the
administrative structure established in the writings of
Bahá'u'lláh, `Abdu'l-Bahá, and Shoghi Effendi, and
subsequently in operation in Bahá'í communities world-wide.
Local and national Spiritual Assemblies are elected annually
through secret ballot elections for which campaigning and
nominations are completely disallowed. Ideally, Spiritual
Assemblies comprise the "choicest and most varied and
capable" members of the Bahá'í community". Local
Assemblies are intended to operate at the "first level of
human society", that is, at the grass roots, where the
concerns are those of individuals and families. National
Assemblies constitute a "second" level of government,
and administer the affairs of Bahá'í communities at a broader
level. Worldwide leadership is entrusted to the Universal House
of Justice, a body elected at five-yearly intervals since 1963.
Emphasis in decision-making is placed on consultation, and the
rules for consultation discourage the dominance of any individual
over the group.

This government by
administrative bodies that are elected at local, national, and
global levels is accompanied by a second branch of
"appointed" individuals, who are empowered to give
advice, but not to dictate or command. Within each country,
Auxiliary Board Members are appointed to advise on the progress
and well being of the community; Counsellors are appointed at
continental level and work with National Assemblies. This
administrative pattern is not viewed as an "end in
itself", but as an instrument for the ordered application of
spiritual teachings to individual and group life. Its brief
description here, while diverging from our theme, assists in
understanding the authority structure adhered to, and being
established by, the Bahá'ís of the Pacific.

Pacific Presence before
1953

The first Bahá'ís to
travel to foreign lands to spread their Faith regarded themselves
as emissaries rather than missionaries: they did not travel under
the instruction or subsidy of a mission board, and because
support was moral rather than financial, their number was limited
to the few who enjoyed some form of financial independence. Agnes
Alexander, who in 1914 had taken the Bahá'í teachings from
North America to her native Hawaii (where her Christian
missionary family had established itself and attained some local
prominence), subsequently settled in Japan, and was instrumental
in Bahá'í expansion in North Asia.

Clara and Hyde Dunn
relocated from California to Australia, and effectively
established Bahá'í communities in Australia and New Zealand.
Among their contacts in Auckland was Miss Nora Lee, an English
woman who early in 1924 took work in Labasa, Fiji (as a
"nanny" to the children of expatriate employees of the
sugar industry). Miss Lee maintained contact with New Zealand
Bahá'ís until at least 1927, but her subsequent movements and
involvement remain unknown. Joseph Perdu, a Bahá'í of
Persian/Indian background, who had been travelling in Australia,
visited Fiji in July 1950, and converted some Islamic (Ahmadiyih)
Fiji-Indians through his eloquent presentation of Bahá'í
interpretations of Quranic verses and Islamic traditions. Some
among these first converts faced life-threatening family
persecution for remaining in their new faith.

The only other Bahá'ís
to reside in the Pacific prior to the 1950s were John and Louise
Bosch, who ventured from California to Tahiti for five months in
1920. A clergyman situated there is reported to have subsequently
corresponded with Abdu'l-Bahá. There were several other
respondents to the Bosch's message, included Miss Arianne
Drollete (later Vermeesh), Ernest Marchel, and Mr and Mrs Georg
Spitze.

American Bahá'í Loulie
Mathews placed Bahá'í literature in public libraries during
brief stops at Pacific Island ports during a world cruise. Some
Australian and North American Bahá'ís in Papua and New Guinea
or in the North Pacific, during World War Two. There is
speculation that Americans distributed Bahá'í pamphlets while
stationed on Malaita in the Solomon Islands. After the war,
several Bahá'ís obtained work with the colonial administration
in Port Moresby, but little progress appears to have been made.

The Global Crusade

By 1953 there were twelve
‘National’ Bahá'í communities worldwide, for each of
which Shoghi Effendi devised a ten-year plan of action as part of
a "Global Crusade". Seven of these twelve National
communities were allocated tasks within the Pacific. Fifteen
"virgin" territories (ie, areas where there were no
Bahá'ís) were allocated among these seven "sending"
communities: the United States was to open the Caroline Islands
and Tonga; India, Pakistan and Burma to open Mariana Islands;
Persia to open Solomon Islands; Canada to open Marquesas and
Samoa; South America to open Cook Islands; Central America to
open Gilbert and Ellice Islands, Marshall Islands and Tuamotu
Archipelago; and Australia and New Zealand to open Admiralty
Islands, Loyalty Islands, New Hebrides and Society Islands.
Because the American Bahá'í community was regarded as the
"chief executor" of 'Abdu'l-Bahá's "Divine
Plan", its members were free to settle any territory they
could enter.

There is no evident patten
to the allocation of these territories among the various Bahá'í
communities. Ties of language, culture, or government that linked
Pacific territories with metropolitan powers were not replicated.
The Mariana Islands were allocated to the National Assembly for
India, Pakistan and Burma and not - as one might have expected -
to that of the United States. Similarly, the Society Islands were
allocated to Australia rather than to France, while Samoa
(Western and American) was allocated to Canada rather than to
Australia and New Zealand. The British Bahá'ís worked in Africa
and Europe rather than the Pacific (and also had responsibility
for Hong Kong). Such an allocation of tasks appears at first to
have been inefficient or even illogical: it did not build on
existing established cultural, economic and political ties, and
required Bahá'í pioneers to enter societies with which they
were completely unfamiliar. The eventual success of their
efforts, on the other hand, in places where such success might
not or could not have been imagined, was no doubt evidence of the
"organic unity" that could be created between diverse
cultural groups.

Pioneers

Propagation of Bahá'í
beliefs and values proceeded in at least four phases. The first
required successful settlement of "pioneers" in each of
the Pacific Island groups. This was followed by a period of
contacts with individuals, which occasionally resulted in
conversions. A third phase witnessed group conversions, generally
within family groups, or clan-structures. Finally, when the
numbers of Bahá'ís reached significant levels administrative
bodies were established. Each of these phases will now be
described in brief. Between October 1953 and October 1955 some 23
Bahá'ís entered the virgin territories and a further six
entered consolidation territories.

Pioneers were not clerics,
and had no ascribed status in the Administrative Order. They had
not undergone special training - whether theological or practical
- and did not necessarily feel they had been "called"
to their work. They mostly possessed middle-class backgrounds,
were both retired and subsisting on accumulated funds, or else
able to adapt themselves to the environment in which they found
themselves. Some were bookkeepers, clerks, health workers, and
teachers. A few took whichever itinerant jobs became available.
Dulcie Dive, a bookkeeper, managed a store in Rarotonga. Bertha
Dobbins, an Adelaide school teacher, established a school in Port
Vila. Violet Hoehnke found employment as a nurse with the Health
Department in Papua New Guinea. Irene Jackson obtained a
secretarial position at the radio station in Suva. Pioneers to
Micronesia were invariably associated with the armed services.
Virginia Breaks was employed in the Caroline Islands with the
government health department. In a few instances pioneers were
artists, writers, or incorporated their period as a pioneer into
their career path.

Several pioneers
established trade stores and other businesses. Rodney Hancock, a
New Zealander, established trade stores, an import-export
business, and other ventures in Rabaul on New Britain in Papua
New Guinea. Alvin Blum, the only American ex-serviceman to return
to live in the Solomon Islands having served there during the
Second World War, established a number of businesses in Honiara.
Some individuals intended pioneering for fixed terms, and
remained in the Pacific for periods ranging from several months
to several years. Others moved more permanently.

The first settlement of
pioneers was not easy to accomplish. The pioneers did not, or in
some cases could not, obtain recognition as missionaries, and
received no special status from colonial governments. In Western
Samoa and Fiji laws provided that religious groups have at least
300 members before they could obtain visas for foreign religious
teachers. Numerous religious bodies began entering the Pacific in
the post-war period, and colonial governments monitored the
progress of each movement closely. Access to the Trust Territory
of the United States was made difficult by a law preventing
employees from supporting particular religions, and, until 1962,
by regulations permitting the entry of military personnel and
their families only to the region. In Western Samoa, an
application by an American Bahá'í to entry as a missionary was
rejected by the government Secretary who seeking to ensure that
"the comparative peace surrounding religious matters in
Western Samoa" was "not disturbed by the formation of
new or disruptive elements".

Aware of such
sensitivities, the Bahá'ís themselves sought to enter new
countries without unsettling established interests. The pioneers
were advised to proceed with great caution, until officials and
others became familiar with their reasonable manner of operation.
They were to avoid publicity or newspaper coverage, and to avoid
contacting public officials or political leaders until levels of
trust and confidence with local officials and society had been
established. For the first pioneers to the GEIC this relationship
based on familiarity did not emerge. Roy Fernie, having arrived
in the Gilbert Islands intending to study parapsychological
phenomena in connection with Duke University, fell foul of local
authorities, firstly through his enthusiasm as an amateur
magician and subsequently through their scepticism at his offer
to build a school. A charismatic figure who also played the piano
and performed magic tricks, he thrilled curious locals with an
impromptu show on his first day on the island, and within weeks
attracted Sunday audiences of such magnitude as annoyed the
resident Catholic priest. Fernie was most likely unaware of the
fact that sorcery and magic were practiced widely in Gilbertese
culture, but were being actively suppressed by the Catholic
mission. Furthermore, Fernie's efforts to establish an English
language school, and the fund-raising activities he organised in
Turaubu to accomplish it, hindered the capacity of the Turaubu
Catholics to raise funds to match those of their rival village,
Koinawa.

Significantly, when former
Catholic seminarian and mission teacher Peter Kanare Koru became
the first Gilbertese Bahá'í, in Tarawa in 1954, Shoghi Effendi
urged him in a letter of welcome be "very discreet in
spreading this Message", explaining that the Bahá'ís did
not wish to become a "source of discord, or arouse
opposition". But events took their own course. It was
commonly known that religious bodies required a minimum of 200
members to acquire official recognition. Ieuti suggests that
mission authorities pointed out to the British administration
that the Fernies did not have this number of Bahá'í followers,
and urged they be deported. The mission had on several occasions
used its journal, Te Itoi nin Ngaina, to "warn"
its members against examining this new religion - an action which
had had the opposite effect. Consequently, some two hundred
Abaiang residents announced their wish to become Bahá'ís. On 24
September 1955 the government gave legal recognition to a
Bahá'í institution, the Tuarabu Local Spiritual Assembly.

In an additional move,
landowners on Abaiang who had leased land to the Bahá'ís now
requested that they move. Abaiang Island Council, whose members
had been working with the Fernies to establish a much-desired
school, unexpectedly voted to expel the Americans and Peter
Kanare from the island, and Resident Commissioner Bernacchi and
District Commissioner Turbott refused to intervene in the matter.
The final episode was tragic. The Resident Commissioner
prohibited Kanare from remaining on either Tarawa or Abaiang.
While waiting for transport to their home island of Tabiteuea,
Kanare's wife, then in labour, was denied adequate medical
treatment and died soon after childbirth. Roy Fernie was deported
from the Colony in November 1955 while Elena Fernie remained on
Abaiang until 1956 working with the new, 200-strong, Bahá'í
community. Fernie held only good intentions. But on Abaiang he
worked too hastily, and was most likely ignorant of the tension
that had existed between church and state for nearly a decade on
the question of state-run schools. Nowhere in the Pacific was the
arrival of Bahá'í pioneers more bitterly opposed.

In hindsight, the level of
ignorance among officials in some colonies appears comic: in 1956
a bureaucrat in Papua New Guinea described Bahá'í as "a
movement to be watched". It was thought to be expecting an
imminent World War, and to be preparing to re-organise the world
in the aftermath. "Secret files" containing (invariably
inadequate) encyclopedia extracts about Bahá'í were passed over
bureaucratic desks as incredulous officials looked for
connections with Communism. In the Solomon Islands, officials
pondered Alvin Blum's "real motives" for sponsoring
into the Protectorate over-qualified Persians to assist with his
business interests. More accurate information gradually filtered
through official channels. In 1955, for instance, the High
Commissioner for the Western Pacific reassured administrators in
British colonies this was "not a militant or political
religion and that as a religion there was no objection to
it".

Entry to French
territories was particularly difficult. French government policy
denied non-French citizens long-term residency in French Overseas
Territories, and both New Caledonia and the Society Islands had
been assigned to the Australian Bahá'ís, none of whom were
eligible for permanent residency. Consequently, pioneers to New
Caledonia and French Polynesia were itinerant rather than
domiciled, and travelled between colonies when their visas
expired. Access to the Loyalty Islands was even more challenging,
as at first the Australian Bahá'ís did not know they were
designated off-limits to all Europeans, including French
citizens.

International Support

Committees were
established in the metropolitan countries for the purpose of
coordinating the movement of pioneers in the Pacific, and to
assist them to the extent possible. In Australia, the
Adelaide-based "Asian Teaching Committee" corresponded
with pioneers in the island groups allocated to Australian and
New Zealand responsibility from 1954 until 1959, when the
Regional Assembly for the Bahá'ís of the South Pacific was
first elected. In an age prior to modern communications
facilities, the Asian Teaching Committee's newsletter Koala
News kept the Bahá'ís informed of developments throughout
the region. Prominent American Bahá'í Mildred Mottahedeh
visited the pioneers in Fiji, Samoa, Tahiti, the New Hebrides and
other islands in 1954 to encourage them, and to present a
first-hand report of conditions.

The first Bahá'í
Communities

Where the pioneers were
successful, groups of nine or more Bahá'ís were able to form
the basic unit of the Bahá'í administrative pattern, the Local
Spiritual Assembly, which then provided the collective leadership
of Bahá'í affairs at local level. By April 1957 there were 210
Bahá'í centres in the Pacific. The first Local Assemblies were
established in the metropolitan centres: in Suva in 1950,
Rarotonga in 1956, Honiara and Apia in 1957, Nuku'alofa in 1958,
Port Vila in 1960, and Noumea in 1962. An Assembly established in
Papeete in 1958 was not sustained in the early years. Within each
island group, additional Local Assemblies were subsequently
established in outlying regions. In 1959 the Regional Spiritual
Assembly of the South Pacific was established, with jurisdiction
over 10 island groups. By 1963 there were thirty-six Local
Assemblies, 127 localities, and some 1550 Bahá'ís in the South
Pacific (800 of whom were in the Solomon Islands).

Table: Allocation of delegates to the Annual Convention of the Regional Spiritual
Assembly of the South Pacific, 1959-1963

[Note: in converting this document to HTML, the table data below may have
been mis-aligned. I.e., some data might be in the wrong columns. -J.W., 2011]

TerritoryLocal Assembly19591960196119621963

Cook IslandsRarotonga21111

FijiSuva12111

Solomon IslandsHoniara22121

HauHui..122

Roroni....1

Auki....1

TongaNuku'alofa22231

Mua..121

Houma....1

Kolonga....1

Vaini....1

SamoaApia22121

Nofoali'i..111

Fasito'outa..111

IliIli...11

Mata'uta....1

Lotoanu'u....1

Samatau....1

PagoPago....1

Magi....1

GEICBetio23131

Tuarubu85262

Kuria.2121

Tebero...11

Bouta..111

Eita..111

Tekaman..1.1

Taku...11

Utiroa....1

Terikiai....1

Makin....1

Bubuti....1

Aobike....1

Bikenibeu....1

New HebridesPort Vila..121

New CaledoniaNoumea....1

Total1919193838

In addition to
establishing these new communities in the Pacific, and the
establishment of local and national administrative bodies (in
anticipation of the later establishment of the Universal Houses
of Justice); specific tasks for the decade to 1963 included the
translation and publication of literature; acquisition of local
and national centres [Hazíratu'l-Quds], endowments and other
sites for future Temples [= Houses of Worship, or "Mashriqu'l-Adhkárs"];
and the securing of recognition in law of Bahá'í administrative
institutions, properties, and Bahá'í Holy Days.

Perhaps unaware of this
methodical and multi-national approach to mission, Charles Forman
has considered the growth of Bahá'í communities in the Pacific
"surprising":

Stemming from a
reformist movement in Islam and appealing mostly to
intellectuals in the West, with a message of
interreligious unity and international, interracial
harmony, they seemed poorly adapted to growth among
vigorously Christian, practical peoples with little
cosmopolitan experience. Yet a certain amount of response
was forthcoming from some youths of wider experience and
education and from some village folk among whom their
missionaries settled. They had some noticeable response
in Fiji, Kiribati, the Solomons, Tonga, Samoa, and
Vanuatu. Probably their greatest single increase came in
1966 when they won the adherence of Tommy Kabu, leader of
an important modernising movement in the Purari river
area of Papua, along with many of his followers.

While true that some
"Western intellectuals" had become Bahá'ís, it would
not be correct to limit the Faith's appeal to such a group:
"eastern intellectuals" also became Bahá'ís. Most
importantly, to correct the impression being offered by Forman,
the majority of the religion's adherents were - and still are -
villagers and peasants living in rural environments, whether in
Africa, Asia, Central and South America, or in the Pacific.

The lack of
"cosmopolitan experience" among Islanders in the 1950s
may have made more difficult the task the first Bahá'ís in the
Pacific had in communicating the full implications of Bahá'í
teachings - such as the unity of God and of His Prophets, the
principle of independent and rational investigation in the
pursuit of "truth", the elimination of all forms of
superstition and prejudice, the equality of the sexes, compulsory
education, abolition of extremes of poverty and wealth, and the
adoption of an auxiliary international language. These and other
principles, seen by Bahá'ís as necessary to the establishing of
a "permanent and universal peace", and based on a
conception of religion as providing the basis for order and
progress in society, nevertheless remained at the core of the
pioneers' message, no matter how remote the clan, village or
island being addressed. Presuming that Forman's image of Bahá'í
- both as religion and as community - reflects that held by the
majority of writers on contemporary religion in the Pacific, an
effort will be made in this paper to broaden it by taking into
consideration additional evidence.

Propagation

The first Pacific
Islander Bahá'ís

A second phase in the
propagation process comprised a period of isolated contacts with
individuals, and sporadic conversions. The techniques adopted by
the Bahá'ís to spread their message were relatively
straightforward. News that a new European was in town, who spoke
of a religion that was in some ways similar to Christianity, but
in other ways different, was sufficient to attract initial
inquirers. The first islanders to adopt the new Faith, as Forman
observed, were often educated young men, who encountered the
pioneers in the colonial capitals. One such convert was Tommy
Kabu (1922? -1969) from the I'ai tribe of the Papuan Gulf's
Purari people. Intent on effecting cultural, social and economic
development among the Purari, Kabu had embraced the Bahá'í
Teachings as the vehicle for change, but had died before
significant advances had been made.

A common theme in the
conversion of the Papuan, Tommy Kabu, the New Irelander Apelis
Mazakmat, the Malaitan Hamuel Hoahania, and the Gilbertese Peter
Kanare Koru, was their attraction to the racial equality
practiced by the pioneers, and their desire to implement such
equality in their societies.

The first converts in
Samoa and Tonga were well educated, and some had trained in
theological colleges. Niuoleava Tuataga, born about 1941 into a
family of planters at Talimatau in Western Samoa, and educated at
a Catholic mission school and at the LMS Malua theological
College, became a Bahá'í after meeting Suhayl Ala'i, a pioneer
in Pago Pago, in 1958. Lisiata Maka, born in 1920, a costing
clerk, licensed lawyer, and legal adviser in Tonga's lower court
and supreme court, having become a Bahá'í 1957, completed
substantial translations of Bahá'í Scriptures into Tongan, and
later assisted in obtaining legal incorporation for Local
Assemblies in Tonga, and for the Suva-based Regional Assembly. He
was among the first Islanders elected to the Regional Assembly,
and was later appointed to the Continental Board of Counsellors.

In the Solomon Islands a
government dresser and former SSEM teacher/evangelist, Hamual
Hoahania, was contemplating a return to custom religion when he
encountered Alvin and Gertrude Blum in Honiara. A chief among the
people of Hau Hui on Malaita, with a reputation as one of the
most cooperative cocoa producers in the Protectorate, Hamual's
conversion precipitated the first mass entry of Pacific Islanders
into the Faith after the events in the GEIC in 1954-55.

It has been suggested that
islanders who converted to newly arrived religions, including
Bahá'í, did so on the basis of discontent with the established
missions, and in some cases were the "malcontents" of
their societies. While there is no doubt that this may have been
so in particular cases, insufficient knowledge has been gathered
to establish trends. Kirata suggests that those who accepted the
Bahá'í Faith in Kiribati had been just "nominal
Christians". The recollection of the Peter Kaltoli
Napakaurana, of Irira Tenuku on Efate, has parallels with
incidents in the Solomons, Papua New Guinea and elsewhere:

During 1953 there
were many stories circulating in Port Vila, on Efate
Island, and subsequently all over the New Hebrides, about
the arrival of a woman missionary who had brought new
teachings from God. This person was Mrs Bertha Dobbins.
In 1954, I heard this news inside the Chief's nakamal
on Ifira Tenuku (Fila Island), and decided that I should
go and find out for myself the new Message. So one Sunday
morning, I went to visit this woman missionary. She
explained some of the sacred verses in the Bible, and I
heard the name Bahá'u'lláh for the first time. I was
very interested in her explanations. Some time later, I
went back to Mrs Dobbins and told her that I wished to
join the Bahá'í Faith.

The absence of a
priesthood meant that the community was not divided into
"clergy" and "laity". Furthermore, having no
clergy, the Bahá'ís did not seek to recruit young men to be the
equivalent of "catechists" or as candidates for
training as clerics. Appreciation of the absence of such
opportunities may even had discouraged a certain number of
potential converts. This may or may not have contributed to the
initial attraction to, then drift from, the Bahá'í community of
such noted islanders as Bill Gina and Francis Kikolo in the
Solomons. The British administration in the Solomons Islands felt
the conversion of Bill Gina, the best educated Solomon Islander
of his time, presented a "very real possibility" that
the Bahá'ís would "expand at the expense of the Methodist
Mission". Gina, however, returned to a secure position in
the Methodist Mission. Francis Kikolo also withdrew his
membership. In Papua New Guinea Elliot Elijah demonstrated
considerable interest at the same time that Mazakmat joined; and
in Fiji Ratu Meli Loki became a Bahá'í for a period.

As Bahá'í communities
grew in size, pioneers ventured out of the towns to speak about
the Faith, generally in villages where a link had been
established, or from which they had received an invitation. In
Papua New Guinea Apelis Mazakmat, who met Vi Hoehnke while
teaching at a school on Manus, was attracted by the Bahá'í
teaching of racial equality. To the European missionaries in the
Nalik area, Mazakmat (1920-1986) epitomised the post-war
"native trouble-maker". Of mixed Catholic/Methodist
parentage, he clashed with a Catholic priest in 1949 who refused
to wed him to a Methodist woman. He joined the movement early in
1956, after learning more about it from Rodney Hancock in Rabaul.
Mazakmat took Hancock to some New Ireland villages, and
introduced him to friends he thought would be interested in the
Bahá'í teachings. Of the several villages Hancock spoke in, the
response in Madina was the most immediate, and several people
joined. The formation of a nine-member "Local Assembly"
in Medina in 1957 was noted with curiosity.

Early expansion in the
Solomon Islands similarly followed an invitation to the
Bahá'ís. Hamuel Hoahania received overtures from the Takataka,
a "custom" society which had never accepted
Christianity, to learn more about the Bahá'í Faith. A Takataka
chief, Waiparo, who had known Alvin Blum, had instructed them
prior to his death to "look for the man who was to come with
the Bahá'í Faith and to accept it". The situation was
complex, as police intelligence felt Waiparo was looking for a
religion through which he could avoid paying government taxes.
Late in 1962 Gertrude Blum spent three weeks on Malaita during
which time there were eighty declarations in four villages. Some
300 Malaitans subsequently became Bahá'ís, a success that
prompted some SSEM mission workers who had been attempting to
attract these people for a considerable period of time to spread
false rumours about the Bahá'ís and the pioneers. By 1963 there
were fifteen Bahá'í groups in the Solomon Islands, four of
which had reached ‘Assembly’ status (Honiara and Roroni
on Guadalcanal and Auki and Hau Hui on Malaita); nine of the
eleven other localities were on Malaita.

An expedition to Tanna in
the New Hebrides (Vanuatu) was less successful than the work on
Malaita which had inspired it. A young American who had recently
become a Bahá'í in Australia arrived in the New Hebrides early
in 1962. Shortly after, he visited Tanna to teach the cargo
community at Sulphur Bay known as John Frum. This people,
through their interpretation of the American military presence on
Tanna prior to and during the second World War, had developed
expectations that Americans would at some future time deliver to
them a large cache of Western goods, and sustained an ideology
which rejected the Presbyterian Church on the island, and
demonstrated ambivalent attitudes toward colonial authority and
sovereignty. Despite the British administration's reservations
about the American's impact on the cultists' expectations,
Slaughter and New Hebridean Bahá'í Taumoe Kalsakau approached
customary chiefs and cultists, as well as Catholic, Adventist and
Presbyterian clergy to present Bahá'í literature.

The lack of clerical
offices and the consequent lack of "career"
opportunities within the Bahá'í structure has been noted. By
having no clergy, the Bahá'ís presented a peculiar case to
colonial bureaucracies. The Fijian government, in particular,
refused to allow Bahá'í "travel teachers" to visit
the Crown Colony", despite being acquainted with the fact
that the Bahá'ís could not furnish clergy who may well have
qualified for entry.

In some places the third
phase of growth comprised family or sub-clan conversion. Rarely
did an entire family, or an entire clan, choose to change
religion, and this "fracturing" of social units, which
remains prevalent in Pacific societies, was attributed to the
actions of the Bahá'ís (or missionaries, in the case of other
denominations), rather than attributed to the conscious and free
actions of Pacific Islanders.

The converts on New
Ireland in Papua New Guinea were drawn from several of Nalik's
seven clans, and included the area's supreme malanggan
carvers, Michael Homerang, (Mohokala clan) and Sinaila
(Mohomaraba clan). Early in 1958 there were a further 10
conversions, and some 30-40 over the next four years. According
to Hancock, the Methodist mission had "given up" the
Medina people, as many were "drunkards who had their own
brews and stills", and many responded simply because he, by
staying in village houses and eating off the same plates and with
the same spoons as the villagers, broke with the traditional
"missionary" habit of eating and sleeping separately.

Local Bahá'í
Administration

In the fourth phase,
converts established Local Assemblies, and began to administer
their own affairs. Authority with the Bahá'í community is
invested in groups, rather than in individuals, and decisions are
made through consultation, rather than by decree. Whereas
pioneers continued to liaise with their respective home Teaching
Committees, and provided counsel to local, and inexperienced
Bahá'í communities, responsibility for local matters was
devolved to administrative institutions. Island teaching
committees were established to plan propagation activities to
outer islands and remoter villages and whenever the number of
members in a local civil area reached nine or more a Local
Assemblies were established.

In 1957 Regional
Assemblies had been established in North East Asia and South East
Asia, and similar regional bodies operated throughout Africa and
Central and South America. In each case, delegates to an annual
national convention were allocated among the Local Assemblies
throughout the region, according to the size of their
memberships. By 1959 there were sufficient local assemblies
scattered across the Pacific to establish a Regional Assembly for
the Pacific Islands. By virtue of its numerical strength in
proportion to the other Assemblies, Tuarubu Assembly on Abaiang
in the Gilbert Islands was eligible to send eight of the nineteen
delegates to convention, yet because of its remoteness, the
prospect of doing so was limited. This disproportionately large
Bahá'í community, being in such a remote region, was
potentially an administrative burden, and a cause for concern,
since it was the task of the delegates to elect the Regional
Assembly, yet none of the eight Gilbertese was able to attend
convention to meet representatives of the other Bahá'í
communities.

Some pioneers were
apprehensive at how the lack of familiarity with the community's
regional administrative affairs and personnel on the part of so
many delegates might affect the composition of the Regional
Assembly in its first years (and by implication, hinder its
administrative effectiveness). The stipulation that Bahá'í
elections be absolutely free of electioneering and nomination
meant that the subject could not easily be broached.
Nevertheless, although the Regional Assembly was elected in
successive years under a variety of such hindrances, its
administrative capacity was never questioned. Irene Jackson, the
Assembly's founding secretary, was annually re-elected,
facilitating the consolidation of its secretariat in Suva.

The Assembly faced several
major obstacles to its effective functioning. The paucity of
transport and communication facilities across vast distances made
the election of delegates to an annual regional convention
immensely difficult. Even where voting by mail was possible, the
delegates in one location were poorly equipped to assess the
merits of Bahá'ís living elsewhere. Further obstacles included
lack of budget and manpower. The Regional Assembly's budget in
its first year of existence was 1,295 pounds, including 25 pounds
for propagation activities in each territory.

For each Bahá'í
community the Regional Assembly developed a four-year plan of
action (1959-1963) and appointed an "Island Teaching
Committee", as well as committees with such diverse
portfolios as a temple site, legal issues, a library, a
newsletter, publishing, audio-visual, and child education. It
also appointed a committee to overseas its Suva property
(Headquarters = Hazíratu'l-Quds). The Assembly, in addition,
decided on the printing of enrolment and registration cards; and
adopted a budget. The Island Teaching Committees had the tasks of
encouraging Bahá'í communities in their various activities with
a view to establishing new Local Assemblies and increasing the
number of Bahá'ís; making propagation plans in consultation
with the Regional Assembly; providing regular reports to the
Regional Assembly; preparing translations, and holding
"summer schools".

Reports to the Regional
Assembly were often in pencil, on pages torn from exercise books,
in halting English. Throughout the Pacific the pattern of
Bahá'í administration was learnt gradually: elections were not
always held on 20 April (the prescribed date for the holding of
Bahá'í elections - Ridvan); the distinctions between eligible
(Bahá'ís, male and female, aged 21 or more) and ineligible
voters (non-Bahá'ís, non-adults) in Bahá'í elections were not
necessarily observed; the procedure for elections (secret,
democratic voting without nominations or electioneering) was not
always adhered to; and the notion of the equal participation by
women in all facets of Bahá'í activities was not everywhere
practiced. Where discrepancies occurred, efforts were made to
rectify the practice at subsequent elections.

Despite such limitations,
fourteen of twenty Local Assemblies in the region were totally
run by islanders by July 1962. The formation of thirty-six Local
Assemblies by 1963 meant that no less than 324 adult Bahá'ís,
of both sexes, were directly involved in the administration of
their local Bahá'í communities. While this rapid localisation
was in some ways advantageous, it also brought difficulties. Few
Islander Bahá'ís had a deep knowledge of Bahá'í
administration, and within a few years there were many areas in
which the numbers were adequate to form Local Assemblies, but the
ability to do so was lacking. The administrative and leadership
structure of this community had been localised at almost the same
speed as it was propagated. Few Pacific Islanders, however, were
elected to the Regional Assembly in the first five years.

Table: Regional Spiritual Assembly Membership 1959-1963

19591960196119621963

A. BlumA. BlumA. BlumA. BlumA. Blum

I. JacksonI. JacksonI. JacksonI. JacksonI. Jackson

M. SneiderM. SneiderM. SneiderM. SneiderM. Sneider

S. Ala'iS. Ala'iS. Ala'iS. Ala'iS. Ala'i

D. DiveD. DiveD. DiveD. DiveL. Ala'i

G. BlumE. BlakelyE. BlakelyE. BlakelyE. Blakely

L. MakaJ. RussellTuakihekoloL. MakaTuakihekolo

S. PercivalW. KhanW. KhanS. PercivalS. Percival

W. KhanM. RowlingM. RowlingM. RowlingM. Rowling

With the establishment of
Local Assemblies, Island Teaching Committees, and the Regional
Assembly, the movement of Bahá'í teachers to outer regions
became more closely coordinated. The major method in Bahá'í
propagation in the Pacific was termed "travel
teaching", in which individuals, communities or committees
made a plan to travel to a particular location, to talk with
receptive individuals or villages. Towards the end of the World
Crusade (1963) there was a steady stream of Bahá'í visitors to
the Pacific. Some were figures of international renown, able to
conduct radio interviews, audiences with government leaders, and
public meetings. Others filled humbler roles, visiting Bahá'í
communities and encouraging them in their efforts. The difficulty
in acquiring visas, however, continued to obstruct the movement
of both Europeans and Islanders.

Social Change

The Bahá'í strategy for
mission, to the extent that there was one, did not consist of
acquiring land and building mission stations, and establishing
educational and health facilities through which to minister the
surrounding population. It comprised, rather the sharing of the
Bahá'í principles with those willing to give a hearing, seeking
their positive response, and incorporating them at the local
level into the process of creating Bahá'í communities. If
schools were to appear they would emerge from indigenous rather
from imposed aspirations; if meeting houses were built, or
conferences convened, the activities would have as their basis an
attraction of hearts and minds, and have as their focus the
discussion of human and social relationships.

Several items of
correspondence exist indicating the manner in which Bahá'í
Pacific Islanders approached inter-religious encounter. A travel
teacher reported the process as used in Western Samoa in 1962:

At the beginning
of our lectures, we read that law about the Sabbath Day
from the Bible, adding the social laws of Moses, and then
confined the talk about the confirmation of the laws from
that time on until Bahá'u'lláh give us the new laws to
suit the need of the people of this generation which will
make them live in harmony, peace and justice. Five new
believers enrolled after our lecture.

Exchanges concerning
Christian doctrines, as well as the linkage between Christian
belief and islander culture, were often at the heart of
exchanges. Timeon Leaiti, reported his visit home to the Ellice
Islands, having become a Bahá'í in the Gilbert Islands:

When I first
arrived here, my family you know were all Christians and
they tried to change my opinion. They said "you must
turn back to the L.M.S. then you will get peace, but I
said no, I am a Bahá'í Faith. A Christmas day came, and
the head of the L.M.S. (old Beru men) in the Maneaba
needed myself for talking about my Faith. I did, but
their hearts were very hard..."

New Hebridean Bahá'ís
who sought to "travel teach" on outer islands were
subject to close inquiry by church members. On Tongoa in 1962
Toaro Pakoa was called before a "session meeting" of
the Presbyterian Church Council, who wanted to know how he could
espouse another religion, having been baptised a Presbyterian.
Travel teachers to Aneityum and Tanna received similar treatment.
Consequently, it was not easy to find volunteers for such trips,
and Bertha Dobbins assessment was:

"It would be
better if the natives themselves were helped to carry the
message to their waiting brothers and sisters in other
islands. The whole of the teaching here has been held up
on account of means to get to places and people must be
prepared to stay for a while in each area."

Few pioneers appear to
have made a study of the traditional culture of the peoples whom
they now lived, contenting themselves with familiarity with the
customs and habits of everyday life, and leaving to the islanders
the task of interpreting what modifications were required in
custom to satisfy the values and standards of their newly adopted
Faith.

This placement of
spiritual before material development precluded the premature
evolution of Bahá'í schools, transport systems, and medical
services, which many mission societies regarded as essential
requisites to the task of church building. Occasionally Pacific
Bahá'í communities were judged ineffective because such
expectations were not met. The Solomon Islands colonial
administration, for instance, anticipated a surge in membership
in the Western Solomons following the conversion of Belshazzar
Gina, providing that the Bahá'ís provided health and medical
services equal to those run by the established mission societies.
In similar vein, the Anglican Bishop of Melanesia warned the
annual conference of the Melanesian Brotherhood in 1962 against
"new sects" that had "no hospitals, no doctors or
nurses, no schools and no teachers", and which were
therefore "fruitless". Even census reports noted which
religions were providing educational facilities.

Several Pacific Bahá'í
communities persevered in the establishment of schools. Education
was prized by all Islanders keen for their children to
participate in the expanding possibilities beyond the village,
and the Bahá'í writings emphasised the importance of education
for both sexes. But this eagerness was frequently dampened by the
lack of resources available within the Bahá'í community. On
Malaita in the Solomon Islands, the Hau Hui Bahá'ís wanted a
school, and were prepared to build it on land donated by Hamuel.

The desire of the first
Bahá'í pioneers to the Gilbert and Ellice Islands to establish
a school showed the extent to which the school was a contested
site. All Gilbertese were anxious that their children receive
adequate schooling. For Bahá'í parents, the need was
particularly felt since mission schools, although funded by the
administration, frequently refused to teach the children of
Bahá'ís. Government educational facilities were, moreover,
inadequate to meet demand. The danger that one's children might
not become educated influenced some Bahá'í parents to recant
their faith, but there were sufficient numbers to continue. The
first Bahá'í school, at Tuarubu on Abaiang, had two government
registered teachers and approximately 30 students. But
disillusionment set in once Elena Fernie left in 1956, and some
parents returned their boys to the Island's Catholic secondary
school.

Four schools were
established about the beginning of 1961, and by 1963 there were
eight Bahá'í primary schools - in Abaiang, Tuarabu, Tabiteuea,
Eita, Utiroa, Taku, Tabetuea. But this hardly constituted an
"education system": schoolteachers were paid in
coconuts; Abaiang school was held in the teacher Taam's house. In
1962 some Gilbertese by-passed the Regional Assembly and
petitioned the United States National Assembly for assistance in
building a Bahá'í college. The North American Assembly was
told, after consulting the South Pacific Regional Assembly, that
Islanders in such remote places held the notion that Americans
had the means to solve all their problems; no college was built.

Application of Bahá'í
Laws

As noted at the outset,
Bahá'í beliefs were not necessarily antagonistic to custom, and
some of the largest concentrations of Bahá'ís have emerged on
islands such as Tanna in Vanuatu and Malaita in the Solomon
Islands, where custom has remained particularly strong. This is
not to say, on the other hand, that customary laws were in
complete accord with Bahá'í laws, and some accommodations of
the former to the latter have had to be made, in the application
of Bahá'í laws in the Pacific context.

In Bahá'í communities in
Western societies, the application of Bahá'í laws concerning
alcohol and drugs, marriage, and political involvements were
already well established: in the Pacific, new interpretations had
to be established. Whereas the consumption of alcohol and
habit-forming drugs is forbidden (the smoking of tobacco is
tolerated), many Pacific Bahá'ís, both islanders and in some
instances Europeans, suffered alcohol dependency, and Assemblies
at local and regional level spent considerable energy determining
the limits after which counselling ceased and administrative
sanctions were applied. Similarly, whereas Bahá'í law only
condones marriages between one man and one woman, to which all
living parents grant their consent, relationships in Pacific
cultures varied widely - often involving "companionate
marriage" prior to formalities in order to establish the
fertility of the couple, and in other instances approving of
concubinage, or the taking of several spouses. Bahá'í laws were
applied compassionately: new converts were granted extended
periods in which to align their personal status with Bahá'í
standards, and polygamous marriages contracted prior to
conversion were not disbanded (although additional partners could
not be acquired).

Bahá'ís do not become
involved in partisan politics, believing that such systems are
premised on conflict and cannot ultimately achieve social unity.
The question as to what constituted "partisan politics"
in the Pacific, however, remained open to examination. Islanders
who became Bahá'ís continued their chiefly roles, and
participation in customary offices was practised freely. For
Bahá'ís of high rank, such as Pa Ariki Terito (d.1995), one of
Raratonga's six Ariki, the pressure from kin to participate in
emerging western-style political parties was undoubtedly
considerable. Across the Pacific, several ambitious Bahá'ís
withdrew from the community to do so.

The Bahá'í Teaching that
the rights of women are equal to those of men constituted a
significant challenge to Pacific Bahá'í communities. Dulcie
Dive, a part-Maori New Zealander who arrived in Rarotonga, Cook
Islands, in October 1953, and remained there until shortly before
her death in 1962, wrote: "religion here has always been
taught by men. It was a man who brought Christianity to the Cook
Islands, not a woman. The people here will take religion from a
man. Probably if I had had a husband the Faith may have been
further advanced than just half hearted as it is at
present". Both Dulcie Dive, and Gretta Jankko - a Finnish
Bahá'í who arrived in the Marquesas from Canada in March 1954 -
survived the brutal attacks of deranged young men. Ms Jankko was
subsequently advised to leave the Marquesas, and had returned to
Finland by February 1955.

Growth 1963-1992

David Barrett's
"World Religious Statistics" in the 1988 Britannica
Book of the Year (1988, p.303), enumerated 59,000 Bahá'ís
in Oceania, but the exact size of Pacific Island Bahá'í
populations remains hard to establish. In Kiribati, for instance,
the 1985 national census indicated that 1503 Gilbertese, 2.38% of
the total population of 63,045 were Bahá'ís, while a Bahá'í
source, suggests a figure, in 1987, of 17.9%. In Tonga the
proportion of the national population that are Bahá'í rose from
3.9% in 1983 to 6.3% in 1987. In Tuvalu the Bahá'í population
rose in this period from 3% to 5.8%, and in the Marshall Islands,
from 2% to 11.5%. Similar growth rates are reported in other
Pacific nations, although poor progress in the French Overseas
Territories (New Caledonia, Loyalty Islands, French Polynesia and
the Marquesas Islands) and the Cook Islands (a Polynesian nation
in free association with New Zealand), is so far without easy
explanation.

In absolute terms, the
Papua New Guinea Bahá'í Community has the largest membership in
the Pacific, approximately 30,000. In addition to being a rapidly
growing community, it is geographically dispersed: by 1991 there
were Bahá'í Communities in 87 of the country’s 88
districts, at least 3 LSAs in each of its 19 provinces, and a
total of 259 LSAs nation-wide. In recent years the press has
covered such activities as National Convention, participation of
Papua New Guinean Bahá'ís in the Centenary of the passing of
Bahá'u'lláh in Haifa and Akka, and a seminar on "work
ethics and productivity" sponsored by the Port Moresby LSA.

National Communities

The Regional Spiritual
Assembly of the South Pacific Islands, established in 1959,
provided the basis for the subsequent emergence in 1964 of two
Regional authorities, one based in Honiara, for the South West
Pacific Ocean (Solomon Islands, New Caledonia, Loyalty Is, New
Hebrides); the other continuing in Suva, administering the South
Pacific Ocean (Fiji, Gilbert and Ellice Islands, Samoa, Tonga,
Cook Islands, Nauru). From these regional bodies individual
national Assemblies emerged between 1967 and 1985. By 1988 there
were 730 Local Assemblies in Australasia and a total of 2,866
localities. In 1992 these futures had risen to 876 and 4,094.

In the years 1964-1973
national Bahá'í communities in the Pacific conducted
individualised plans of action which combined goals for numeric
growth, administrative consolidation, and the acquisition of
physical infrastructure. Properties were acquired for
Hazirat'ul-Quds, future Mashriqu'l-Adhkár sites,
and endowments. The Pacific Bahá'ís undertook responsibility
for raising almost half of the expected cost of these properties,
with the Australian and New Zealand communities raising the
remainder.

Considerable progress was
made in Western Samoa. Head of State Malieatoa Tanumafili II,
having received a formal presentation of the Bahá'í Teachings
in 1967, quietly became a believer, and made his profession
public in 1973. Land for a future Mashriqu'l-Adhkár
(Houses of Worship) had been purchased in Apia in 1965, and the
domed Maota Tapua'i Bahá'í I Samoa was completed in
1984. Close relations between the royal families of Western Samoa
and Tonga, and the high chiefs of Fiji, have resulted in members
of these families either becoming Bahá'ís, or having intimate
knowledge of the Bahá'í Teachings. Of particular significance
have been the visits to other Polynesian royal and chiefly
families by Princess Tosi Malietoa, daughter of the Western
Samoan monarch. In 1993 Sir Julius Chan (then deputy Prime
Minister and now Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea), reported to
Parliament on his visit to the Bahá'í World Centre while in
Israel on state business. Amata Kabua, President of the Marshall
Islands, is another government leader who has a close
relationship with Bahá'í institutions nationally and
internationally.

The institutions of the
Learned

In addition to expansion
of elected administrative bodies, the institutions of the
appointed, or "learned", also grew. A three-member
Continental Board of Counsellors for Australasia was first
appointed in 1968. The eleven members appointed in 1995 included
the first Papua New Guinean member (Erama Ugaia), a Western
Samoan (Afemata Moli Chang), and a Marshallese (Betra Majmeto).
Although the first two Auxiliary Board members for the Pacific
Islands appointed in 1954, were Australians, indigenous members
were filling such positions within a decade. Samoan Bahá'í Niu
Tuataga was appointed an Auxiliary Board member in 1964, and a
Tongan Bahá'í, Mosese Hokafonu, in 1968. By 1968 the
Australasian Auxiliary Board had 9 members; by 1986 it comprised
eighty-one.

Official Recognition

In the 1980s the Bahá'í
Faith received increasing official recognition by governments and
agencies in the Pacific. In May 1981 the Pacific Conference of
Churches sent a letter to the UN Secretary-General expressing its
concern at the treatment of Bahá'ís in Iran. Since 1978 the
Bahá'í International Community has participated in conferences
of the South Pacific Commission, an inter-governmental body that
promotes the economic and social well being and advancement of
the peoples of the Pacific islands. In 1985 The Promise of
World Peace was presented directly or indirectly to the
leaders of most Pacific territories, and in 1986 Pacific Bahá'í
communities were active participants in the International Year of
Peace. The 18th Guam Legislature passed resolution 214
"Relative to recognising the International Year of Peace as
designated for 1986 by the United Nations, the promise of world
peace as exemplified by the Bahá'í Faith, and acknowledging the
importance of world peace to everyone.

Social and Economic
Development

In the 1990s the Pacific
Bahá'í Communities are focusing on community development as
much as on expansion. Some Pacific traditions privilege male
roles over female, or one ethnic group over others; and some
Pacific states continue to lack the infrastructure and public
policy to adequately promote education. The Bahá'í Communities
therefore face the challenge of entering into dialogue with these
traditions for the purpose of promoting racial and gender
equality, and explaining and demonstrating the value of education
for all children and youth of both sexes. A number of schools
have been established, some through individual initiative, such
as one at Middle Bush on Santo in northern Vanuatu. Others, such
as a high school in Kiribati, are a joint venture between the
Australian and New Zealand National Assemblies. In the Marshall
Islands the Bahá'ís operate state schools under contract with
the government.

Conclusion

This chapter commenced by
pointing out that literature on Pacific Bahá'í Communities
remains scant, and that such literature as does exist errs for
the most part in either the presentation of facts, or in the
presentation of the Faith’s origins, modus operanti, and
aspirations. In then sketching a brief history of the Bahá'í
Faith in various Pacific Islands, the chapter presents a view of
these communities which suggests they have a clarity of purpose,
and a coherence in administrative form and spiritual mission, as
might be desired by any religious community seeking to establish
itself permanently amongst societies that take matters of faith
so seriously.

The Pacific Bahá'í
Communities have emerged rapidly since the years of the World
Crusade and have indigenised their institutions rapidly. They
have expanded numerically despite resistance from some
missionaries and petty colonial officialdom, and now represent
the largest of the newer religious communities in a number of
Pacific Island countries. Most significantly, they now constitute
a strong moral force, capable of forming partnerships with other
progressive Pacific communities that aspire to the preparation of
these island nations for the challenges of the coming
‘Pacific century’.

Endnotes

Note: footnote numbers have been lost in this online version.

This paper was researched in the following government, mission,
and Bahá'í archives: Papua New Guinea - PNG; Solomon
Islands National Archives - SI; Church of Melanesia
Archives, Solomon Islands National Archives - CM; Kiribati
National Archives - KI; and New Zealand National Archives
- NZ. Bahá'í Archives referred to are: Australia - ABA;
Fiji - FBA; Kiribati - KBA; Samoa - SBA; and
Vanuatu - VBA. Early sections of this paper adapt material
presented in my "Pacific Bahá'í Communities
1950-1964", in Donald H. Rubinstein (ed), Pacific
History: Papers from the 8th Pacific History Association
Conference (Guam, 1992) 73-95. For additional material I am
most grateful to the National Assemblies of the Bahá'ís of the
Cook Islands, Kiribati, New Caledonia and the Loyalty Islands,
Tonga, and Vanuatu.

See, eg, Leslie Newbigin, "The Great Encounter", Missionary
Review August 1960, 11; Matthew Cooper, "Langalanga
Religion", Oceania, xlii (1972) 2, 113; F.W.
Coaldrake, Floodtide in the Pacific (Sydney, 1963);
William L. Cook Pacific People Sing Out Strong (New York,
1982); Cliff D. Wright, Christ and Kiribati Cultures, Report
of Workshop on Traditional Kiribati Culture and Christian Faith
(Tarawa, 1981); Laumua Kofe, "Palagi and Pastors", in Tuvalu:
A History (Suva, 1983), 120; Asasela Ravuvu, Vaka i
Taukei: The Fijian Way of Life (Suva, 1983), 94; Baranite
Kirata, "Spiritual Beliefs", in Kiribati: A Changing
Atoll Culture (Suva, 1985); 83-84; Darrell Whiteman, Melanesians
and Missionaries (Pasadena, California, 1983); Charles
Forman, Island Churches of the South Pacific ( , ); Kunei
Etekiera, "Te Aro, The New Religion", in Talu Alaima
et al, Kiribati: Aspects of History, 43; H.P.
Lundsgaarde, ‘Post-contact changes in Gilbertese maneaba
organisation’, in W. N. Gunson (ed) The Changing Pacific:
Essays in Honour of H.E. Maude (Melbourne, 1978), 75, and
Howard van Trease (ed), Atoll Politics: The Republic of
Kiribati (Suva, 1993). In 1975 Crocombe suggested mentioned
Bahá'í missionaries in his list of "foreigners" whose
activities in the Pacific Islands required considerable analysis:
Ron Crocombe, Missionaries: sacred and secular, Association for
Social Anthropology in Oceania, Symposium on mission activities
in Oceania, March 1975 (University of the South Pacific Library).
More detailed accounts appear in Irene Williams, "The
Bahá'í Faith", in E. Afeaki (et al), Religious
Co-operation in the Pacific Islands (Suva, 1983); and Teeruro
Ieuti, The Kiribati Protestant Church and the New Religious
Movements 1860-1985 (Suva, 1992). Most recent statistics
appear in Manfred Ernst, Winds of Change: Rapidly Growing
Religious Groups in the Pacific Islands (Suva, 1994).

Bahá'u'lláh's chief doctrines centre on the imperative of
achieving world peace. He articulated religious values and social
and political mechanisms conducive to the rehabilitation of the
fortunes of what he termed the prevailing "lamentably
defective" world order. He claimed that all religious
revelation has had one common, divine source; that the evolution
of human society through successive stages of social and
political complexity has necessitated a progressive unfoldment of
such divine guidance; and that the Judaic, Christian, Islamic,
and even Buddhist and Hindu epochs are complementary, rather than
conflicting, components of Divine Revelation. Bahá'u'lláh's
texts have been printed individually in English translation, as
well as in compilations, eg, Writings of Bahá'u'lláh: a
compilation, (New Delhi, 1986), 717pp. His epistles to
European leaders are collected in The Proclamation of
Bahá'u'lláh (Haifa, 1972).

Bahá'u'lláh's "Covenant" with his followers is the
fundamental source of unity within the Bahá'í community. It
requires obedience to the written word of Bahá'u'lláh, and this
implies recognition of the authority he conferred on
'Abdu'l-Bahá in his Will and Testament. This same authority
'Abdu'l-Bahá subsequently conferred on Shoghi Effendi, whom he
named "Guardian" of the Bahá'í Faith. When the
hereditary institution of Guardianship ceased (Shoghi Effendi and
his Canadian-born wife Mary Maxwell [Ruhiyyih Khanum] had no
children), authority over the Bahá'í community transferred to
the Universal House of Justice, an elected body of nine members
residing in Haifa, Israel, which was first elected in 1963. As
this transfer of authority was explicitly anticipated in the
texts of Bahá'u'lláh, and since attempts to usurp it are deemed
illegitimate in advance, the unity of the world-wide community is
assured.

Letter from the Guardian to an individual Bahá'í, August 11,
1933, in Helen Hornby (comp.), Lights of Guidance (New
Delhi, 1983), 8.

Message from the Universal House of Justice to the Bahá'ís of
the World, Naw-Rúz 1974, in Helen Hornby (comp.), Lights of
Guidance (New Delhi, 1983), 4.

See Graham Hassall, "Outpost of a World Religion: the
Bahá'í Faith in Australia 1920-1947", Journal of
Religious History, 16 (1991) 3, 315-338.

Idris Hussein, of Islamic Ahmadiyah background, narrowly escaped
with his life when he became a Bahá'í in 1956: "Now my
father-in-law, backed up by others, planned to kill me. This was
well planned. The secret of this planning was brought to my
attention by a remarkable youth named Shyam Nand, who later
joined the Faith. It was at his home that this darksome deed was
devised." Letter to the author 31 December 1986. Z Khan The
Early History of the Bahá'í Faith in Fiji (n.d.) and Idris
H. & I. Williams, History of the Bahá'í Faith in Fiji -
the Family of Zaitoon Bibi, "Suva", FBA. Nur
Ali, the first Bahá'í in Fiji, was a well known and respected
public servant in Suva. He died in January 1962 and had the first
Bahá'í funeral in Fiji. His obituary appeared in the Fiji
Times, 27 January 1962.

Star
of the West 11:9, Spring (August) 1920, 152.

Bahá'í
World 1946-50, 492.

Ms Drollette lived with the Boschs in California between 1922 and
1924; her father visited the Bahá'ís in San Francisco: Star
of the West 15:6, September 1924, 178.

Loulie A. Mathews, The Outposts of a World Religion, n.p.
n.d. (after 1935), 11pp.

In the Mariana Islands, Bahá'ís in the U.S. armed forces were
stationed on Saipan (Joseph F. Peter, of Chicago), Tinian (Paul
Pettit, of Bucyrus, Ohio) and Jo Tierno, of New York; Ernest A.
Thayer, of Chicago, visited Eniwetok then Guam in April-May 1945:
Bahá'í World 1944-46,.455-6.

There is evidence that a Sergeant Wall of the US Marines had
given a Bahá'í pamphlet known as the "No 9 pamphlet"
to some Malaitans (communication from Bruce Saunders, 7 March
1993.) A Malaitan Bahá'í, Shebuel Mauala, wrote to Gertrude
Blum on 1 May 1960: "I want to ask you about one book call
the Bahá'í World Faith. Big one because I meet a man who [is] a
teacher for the SSEM a big teacher but he said he see this book
from Mr Grifas [Griffiths] a white man about 20 years ago or 30
years." ("ITC 1960" - Honiara).

Excerpt of letter from NSA of the United States, 24 July 1953.
"ATC Corresp. with NSAs and ATCs 1953-1959", ABA
0141/0038.

In some instances these plans were changed to meet
practicalities. In one case, an Australian, Lilian Wyss, whose
contract to work in the Solomon Islands was cancelled when her
prospective employers saw a sensationalised press article about
her plans, moved instead to Western Samoa. At the same the
Iranian and Australian Bahá'ís swapped responsibilities for the
Solomon Islands and Mentawai Islands respectively, when Persian
Bahá'ís were unable to enter the former but obtained visas for
the latter destination: a Persian doctor and his wife entered
Indonesia, while an American couple who had been living in New
Zealand moved to Honiara. Lilian Wyss reported "Alvin Blum
said I should to the newspaper interview, and if something went
wrong, he and Gertrude would go to the Solomons in my place. The
Blums then left for the Delhi Conference, I had the interview,
and a day after it came out in the newspaper, I had my job
cancelled, with two months wages in lieu of cancellation. I
cabled the Blums that the Solomons were waiting for them!".
Lillian Ala'i (nee Wyss), Interview, Sydney, 6 March 1984.

Territories to which no Bahá'ís had previously travelled were
called "virgin", and territories in which Bahá'í
communities previously or presently exist were called
"consolidation" areas. Of the first 29 pioneers, 18
were female, twelve were without spouses. There were five married
couples. Of the 19 single pioneers, three married while in the
Pacific. This first group of 29 included nine Australians, eight
North Americans, four New Zealanders, four Europeans (Norway,
Holland and France), two Indians of Persian descent, and two
Central Americans (from North America). Shoghi Effendi gave all
pioneers who arrived at "virgin" goals between April
1953 and April 1954 the title "Knight of
Bahá'u'lláh", in recognition of their service. This title
was also subsequently given to the first pioneers to reach virgin
goals after April 1954. By 1963 21 Knights of Bahá'u'lláh had
been named for Pacific territories.

In reply to a survey concerning pioneering undertaken in 1962
Irene Jackson observed: "The pioneers in the region had no
special training, and had simply answered Shoghi Effendi's call.
Their first task had been to learn the lifestyle of the people
among whom they settled", Regional Assembly to Bill Maxwell,
29 July 1962, "Regional Spiritual Assembly", FBA.

Mrs Dobbins established Nur School in August 1954. It had over 30
pupils and full co-operation from the British Education Office
and successive Resident Commissioners, although most families
were too poor to pay student fees: see Bahá'í News,
November 1959. Forman is incorrect in stating that "Bahá'í
started a school in Vila about 1960": Charles W. Forman,
"Missionaries and Colonialism: the case of the New Hebrides
in the Twentieth Century," Journal of Church and State
14 (1972) 1, 77.

Vi Hoehnke subsequently lived for periods in Port Moresby,
Samarai, Rabaul, Wewak, and Goroka before retiring in the
mid-1970s at Mt Hagen in the Western Highlands. After many years
in Rabaul, Hancock moved to Kimbe, further south on New Britain.
‘Memoirs of Knight of Bahá'u'lláh Vi Hoehnke’, mss,
n.d. (possession of the author).

These included the town's first bakery, dry cleaner, soft drink
bottler, ice cream manufacturer, and movie house - in addition to
a taxi service, motel, among other enterprises on Guadalcanal and
later on Malaita. Blum's success on Malaita was noted by Ross:
"In 1967 a Bahá'í businessman opened a store in Auki, the
Malaita district administrative center, as the nucleus of a
development that has expanded to include a cinema and small
hotel", Harold M. Ross, "Competition for Baegu Souls:
Mission Rivalry on Malaita, Solomon Islands", in James
Boutilier (et al, eds), Mission, Church, and Sect in Oceania,
(Ann Arbor, Michigan 1978) 165.

National Bahá'í communities charged with sending pioneers to
Pacific goals established committees to co-ordinate their
placement, and to screen prospective pioneers: The United States
National Assembly established an International Teaching Committee
in addition to an "Asia Teaching Committee"
(newsletter: Newsgram); Canada established a "New
Territories Committee" (Round Robin); Australia and New
Zealand established an "Asian Teaching Committee"
(Koala News); South America established an "Asia Committee
of South America"; India, Pakistan and Burma established an
"Asia Teaching Committee"; Iran established an
"Asia and Pacific Committee of Iran". Candidates whose
health appeared deficient, or whose means of material support
appeared meagre, were not encouraged to proceed, although since
pioneering was voluntary, and no-one was under contract or under
obligation to remain for any set period, such screening was not
binding. A "Continental Pioneer Committee" for
Australasia was first appointed in 1965.

RSA secretary to RSA members 7 June 1962, "Percival", SBA.

Marcia Atwater, an American school teacher, entered in August
1954, but had little contact with the Marshallese before she left
in March 1955. Betty Llaas was present March 1956 to July 1959,
then Murial Snay from August 1957 to June 1959. In 1960, no
Bahá'ís remained: NSA of the United States to RSA, 17 July
1960, "NSA of USA", FBA.

Secretary, Government of Western Samoa to Secretary, Department
of Island Territories, Wellington, 18 September 1953. Island
Territories series 1/69/63. File LMN 1/10. NZ. Edith
Danielson, unable to enter Western Samoa, later settled in the
Cook Islands. Ironically, the head of state of Western Samoa,
Malieatoa Tanumafilii II, was later to become the first reigning
monarch in any part of the world to become a Bahá'í.

International Teaching Centre to all pioneers, 7 December, 1953.
possession Vi Hoehnke.

On 29 March 1949 the District Officer, Gilbert Islands District,
reported to the Secretary to Government the efforts of Bishop
Terrienne to suppress Catholic involvement in maneaba activities
"His Lordship was asked, recently, the reasons for his more
latterly change of attitude towards these traditional Gilbertese
dances [batere, ruoia, kamei] and he replied that, although
batere in itself may not be a pagan practice there is a tendency
for natives to undergo certain magic rites in order that they
might perform well at the dance and so attract the attention of a
member of the opposite sex....His Lordship has announced that
maneaba are places of evil and that converts to Roman Catholicism
should not frequent them. KI, 41/2.

14 December 1954, in Graham Hassall (ed), Messages to the
Antipodes: Communications from Shoghi Effendi to Australasia
(Mona Vale, forthcoming).

Teeruro Ieuti, The Kiribati Protestant Church and the New
Religious Movements 1860-1985, (Suva, 1992), 101. For detail
see chap. 3: "The Bahá'í World Faith".

The
Bahá'í World, 1954-63, 612, 1109, cited in Ieuti, 101.

At a record of discussion held at Honiara on 22 April 1953, for
instance, concerning education in the GEIC, attended by the High
Commissioner of the Western Pacific, the Resident Commissioner of
the GEIC, and other colonial officials, the High Commissioner
"expressed the hope that the Colony Government would be able
to persuade the Sacred Heart Mission to accept responsibility for
the establishment of island type schools in predominantly Roman
Catholic Islands, rather than compete with Government in the
establishment of Island Schools elsewhere: KI, 42/6/3.

Gordon W. Groves, Biography of Peter Kanere Koru, mss, June 1983
(Possession Ben Ayala, Hawaii). Lundsgaarde has suggested that,
in the case of the Gilbert Islands, the arrival of Seventh Day
Adventists, the Church of God of South Carolina, the Bahá'ís,
and Methodists, had "to some extent resulted in lessening of
negative feelings between adherents of the two principal
missions", but that in the 1960s most Gilbertese Protestants
and Catholics continued to regard these groups as
"pagan": Henry P. Lundsgaarde, Social Change in the
Southern Gilbert Islands: 1938-1964, mss. Dept. of Anthropology,
University of Oregon, 41.

D. Clifton-Bassett to the Assistant Administrator, Port Moresby
14 July 1956. 53 - 68/12/2. PNG.

Confidential Minutes of District Commissioners' Conference 27th
to 29th July 1955. 12/1/16. BSIP Records, SI.

In October 1953 Australians Gladys Parke and Gretta Lamprill
arrived in Papeete, Tahiti, on visas valid for three months and
renewable for a further five, but not renewable for more than
eight months in any one year. Neither spoke fluent French, and
had vague plans to move on to the Tuamotu Archipelago once their
visas expired. They returned to Tahiti four times. Efforts to
remain in New Caledonia were as difficult: Margaret Rowling, an
Australian, resided in Noumea from April to November 1954.
Another Australian, Bill Washington, sought to establish a
photographic business in Noumea in 1955 but his visa was not
renewed and he was obliged to leave. A Persian family was among
the pioneers who later settled for a more extended period in New
Caledonia: Shahpur Sohaili, "Pioneering In New Caledonia
During the Ten Year Crusade", mss, 1993, possession of the
author.

Consequently it was a French Tahitian of recent commitment and
poor instruction, Daniel Haumont, who won the honour of being the
first Bahá'í to visit the Loyalty Islands - although in less
than saintly circumstances. Having himself become a Bahá'í in
Tahiti in 1953, Haumont stayed on one of the Loyalty Islands for
two weeks from 11 October 1953, before declaring he could not
"make his life there" and returning to Tahiti and on to
the West Indies. Solomon Islands Bahá'í John Mills visited the
island briefly in August 1957 to learn that Haumont had not
mentioned his religion to anyone.

Shoghi Effendi, Messages to the Bahá'í World, 106.

Comprising the Bahá'ís of Muri and Arorangi villages.

Charles Forman, Island Churches of the South Pacific, 200.

Shoghi Effendi, World Order of Bahá'u'lláh, (Wilmette,
1938), XI-XII.

Acceptance of the Bahá'í Faith is not accompanied by ritual or
ceremony, individuals simply "declare" their belief in
Bahá'u'lláh and their willingness to observe Bahá'í law, and
sign an administrative card. There is no set procedure to prepare
initiates, and essential concepts are usually acquired through
participation in the community's activities prior to joining.
Study of Bahá'í history, teachings and philosophy are integral
parts of the calendar of Bahá'í communities worldwide,
irrespective of culture.

"The need in the
Caroline Islands is hampered by the government code which
prevents its employees supporting any particular religion. Yet
the natives say "when will you send us pioneers?"
Single male pioneers should go there and live among the natives
in patience. Guam is the center of education for natives in the
entire area. If taught there, they will return
to their homes with the message...", Bahá'í News
328:12, June 1958.

See Graham Hassall, "The Failure of the Tommy Kabu Movement:
a reassessment of the evidence", Pacific Studies,
14:2, March, 1991. Kabu's conversion is noted by J.K. Parratt,
"Religious Change in Port Moresby", Oceania, XLI
(1970) 2.

From conversation with Suhayl Ala'i, Suva, 9 July 1986.

Tippett has suggested that the theme of "unity of the human
race" was crucial to Hoahania's conversion: Alan Tippett, Solomon
Islands Christianity, 98.

"The Bahá'í Faith became operative in these islands at the
beginning of the 1960s. Since then, the Bahá'í have worked most
successfully among those who were only nominal Christians,
converting them to the Bahá'í faith. When Christianity was
first brought to the islands, some opposition was presented by
the islanders, probably influenced to some extent by European
traders who had long been established in the area. The Bahá'í
faith when it was introduced to the islands encountered a similar
suspicion, but this time it was not opposition from the traders
but from the Christian churches which had already become
successfully rooted in the Kiribati culture." Baranite
Kirata, "Spiritual Beliefs", in Kiribati: A Changing
Atoll Culture (Suva, 1985) 83.

Peter Kaltoli Napakaurana, ‘Testimonies of Pacific Islanders
as to how they heard of the Faith’, National Spiritual
Assembly of the Bahá'ís of Vanuatu, 3 December 1993, Vila,
Vanuatu.

Review of Politico-Religious Trends in the British Solomon
Islands Protectorate" (March 1959), BSIP FSC 3, vol 1. List
21.IX. SI.

Gina was educated in New Zealand under the sponsorship of John
Goldie, chairman of the Western Solomon Islands Western District.
His mobilisation of Solomon Islanders in support of better work
conditions in the 1950s antagonised the paternalistic British
administration: Colin Alen, District Commissioner, Western
Solomons, 19 March 1947, 11/SG/47 BSIP List 4. C91 SI. For
one version of events see G. C. Carter, Yours in His Service:
A Reflection on the Life and Times of Reverend Belshazzar Gina of
Solomon Islands (Honiara, 1990), 76.

Another well known Fijian religious figure, Ratu Emosi, hosted
the Bahá'ís who visited Suva in April 1959 for the formation of
the Regional Spiritual Assembly. Emosi, who was then studying
Bible prophecy, and who translated a Bahá'í pamphlet
"Prophecy Fulfilled" into Fijian, later gained
notoriety for his religious practices, and eventually died in a
mental asylum.

The Methodist District missionary, Ben Chenoweth, complained that
the administration took "little or no trouble over the
matter": Chenoweth to Lutton, 1 July 1958, op. cit. His
article on the matter appeared as "Another Sect in New
Guinea: Bahá'ís and their teachings", The Missionary
Review, December 1958. According to Mazakmat the District
Education Officer, Brashford, discouraged involvement in a new
religion but a New Patrol Officer, Collins, encouraged him.
Newman, the Education Officer at Kavieng, informed Mazakmat that
the United Nations allowed "freedom of worship" and
consequently that "...no-one should stop you from believing
in what you want." Interview, 1986.

Patrol officers watched the impact of Bahá'í closely. An
excerpt on the Bahá'ís from the District of New Ireland's half
yearly report, (October 1958), was placed in a "Native
Thought File", T.G. Aitchison, "Native Thought
File", 18 February 1959. New Ireland District. 13913 -
51/1/9. TPNG records, PNG.

Irene Jackson to RSA members, 1962, "Percival", FBA.

A
Police report of 30 July 1958 noted a letter from Alvin Blum to
Waeparo, which had been intercepted by government headman
Puhanikeni, who had "seen that Mr Blum wants to bring the
Bahá'í to Takataka. The people thinking that this religion will
help them for some reason as tax. The people at Takataka were
waiting for this religion", Police Patrol Report, 15 July
1958, CF/DA/13/5. BSIP List 12/III. SI.

Gertrude Blum reported that this had the opposite effect, as SSEM
members were themselves becoming dis-enchanted with inter-mission
squabbling. Hau Hui LSA wrote "eating with Mrs Blum they are
very glad because for many years the European can't eat with any
native person. So that is why they are very glad to see the Faith
of Bahá'u'lláh for this new age on our island Malaita. Some
want the Faith and some want to break the Faith but it is very
hard for them because this is the Faith of Bahá'u'lláh...last
month two Europeans from Christian Faith talk against the Faith
and they say the Bahá'í Faith is not in many countries - just
only Holy Land, America, India, Australia and Fiji...Hau Hui
Local Assembly 8 October 1962 in letter to Regional Assembly
Members 7 June 1963(?), "Percival", FBA.

The British administration expressed to pioneer Bertha Dobbins
its surprise that a young, inexperienced, and American, member,
would be allowed to visit such an unpredictable environment: Paul
Slaughter to RSA 16 June 1962, "Percival", FBA.

NSA South Pacific to NSA Australia, 17 January 1966. 0045/0012.

Koala
News 24 April 1956, 2; 62:April 1959, 3; Australian
Bahá'í Bulletin May 1956, 4; July 1958, 2; May 1959, 2;
September 1959, 9.

Interview, Kimbe, New Britain, 12 December 1986.

The difficulties of inter-island travel, for instance, meant that
few Islander delegates attended. The return trip from GEIC took
three months in 1959 and Gilbertese delegates who attended the
1962 convention spent two weeks on a small vessel on each leg of
the journey, in addition to two months spent in Suva after
convention waiting for the boat.

"Regional Spiritual Assembly", FBA.

Regional Assembly to Hands of the Cause, 12 May 1959, "World
Centre of the Faith - General Correspondence", FBA.

Thus concern in the early years of the nine year plan for
additional pioneers who could assist in the formation of local
assemblies, in preparation for the establishment of more National
bodies: NSA South Pacific to NSA Australia, 4 February 1966.
0045/0012.

Dulcie Dive died in 1962. Nui Tuataga replaced her on the
Regional Assembly through a bi-election.

V. Lee to ITC Samoa, 19 November 1962. "ITC File 1962",
SBA.

23 June 1962, folder (no title), KBA.

New Hebrides ITC to RSA 1 April 1961, ITC Minute Book 1960-61, VBA.

"Inter-Island Teaching Conference 19022 July 1962", ITC
Minute Book 1960, "RSA of the Bahá'ís of the South
Pacific", VBA.

Irene Williams wrote " I had no idea of the work expected of
me, or how long I had to stay, what the situation was like in
Fiji, and whether I would be able to cope, or would I be like the
other white people working there and consider myself superior and
keep aloof. I had the ideals, but what about the practice of them
in my own life? These were my fears and thoughts as I flew
overnight by flying boat via Noumea and then on to Laucala Bay,
Suva. The Guardian had written that he wanted the pioneers to be
at their posts by 21st March, 1954. I arrived at 4pm on that very
day", mss, 1985.

"Review of Politico-Religious Trends", (March 1959),
BSIP FSC 3, vol 1. List 21.IX. SI.

F2.1. Bishop's Correspondence, Melanesian Brotherhood 1958-64, CM.

For instance, a report on "Religion" in the 1978
Kiribati census notes of the newer groups "...beginning with
the Seventh Day Adventist Mission in 1947, other churches
established centres in the Gilberts: the Church of God in the
Gilbert Islands (1957), the Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá'ís
(1967), and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints
(1975) were registered, and in 1978 claimed between them the
adherence of a little under 5% of the population. All except the
Bahá'ís are also involved in providing some formal education to
children in Kiribati": Eric E. Bailey, Republic of
Kiribati. Report on the 1978 census of Population and Housing,
vol. III, Ministry of Home Affairs and Decentralization,
Bairiki, Tarawa, 1983, p.97-98.

Kiribati:
A Changing Atoll Culture (Suva, 1985), p83, is incorrect in
stating that the "Bahá'í Faith became operative in these
islands at the beginning of the 1960s".

NSA South Pacific to the Universal House of Justice, 16 July
1966. 0045/0012. ABA

Mabel Sneider complained of some Gilbertese Bahá'ís that
"they do not know enough to want to suffer for the
Faith", ITC of the GEIC to RSA 15 July 1962,
"Percival", FBA.

Regional Assembly to the United States National Assembly,
"NSA OF RSA"; Regional Assembly to Bill Maxwell,
"Regional Spiritual Assembly", FBA.

RSA To Hands of the Cause, 28 July 1961, "World Centre of
the Faith - General Correspondence"; ITC GEIC to RSA 13 July
1962, "Percival", FBA.

Regional Assembly to United States National Assembly, 31 May
1962, "NSA of USA", FBA. According to Ieuto,
"The Bahá'ís could not continue these schools as they did
not get approval from the Universal House of Justice, and in the
late 1950s they were closed down": The Kiribati
Protestant Church, 101. This statement is not correct: the
Universal House of Justice was only formed in 1963. Furthermore,
as has been shown, the schools continued into the 1960s: another
explanation for their closure must be sought.

When asked about the application of Bahá'í marriage laws, the
Hands of the Cause in the Holy Land replied that, in the case of
African Bahá'ís, the Guardian had decided that "actions
taken prior to a person becoming a Bahá'í, contrary to the ways
of Bahá'í life, need not be changed...we have no right to
request any change in the situation surrounding common law
marriage. Hands to RSA 1 January 1961, "World Centre of the
Faith", FBA.

Cook Islands News 16 June 1964 listed all 6 Rarotongan Ariki as
being on the newly formed Cook Islands Party Central Committee:
David Stone, Self-Rule in the Cook Islands: The Government and
Politics of a New Micro-State, PhD, Australian National
University, 1971, 39-40.

D. Dive to S Percival 5 May 1962, "Percival", SBA.

Kiribati, Statistics
Office, Ministry of Finance, Bulletin No. 3/85, 1985 Population
Census, 25 September 1985.

Bahá'í News, July
87, 4.

Times of Papua New
Guinea 7 May, 1992, p5.

Times of Papua New
Guinea 28 May, 1992, p 19; 18 June 1992, p22.

Post Courier, 11
July 1995; 19 July, 1995.

The South-West Pacific Assembly devolved into the National
Spiritual Assemblies of the Solomon Islands (1971), New Caledonia
and Loyalty Islands (1977), and New Hebrides (1977); and the
South Pacific Assembly devolved into the National Spiritual
Assemblies of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands (1967), Fiji (1970),
Samoa (1970), Tonga and Cook Islands (1970), and finally, the
Cook Islands (1985). The National Spiritual Assembly of Papua New
Guinea was established in 1969. In the North Pacific, National
Spiritual Assemblies were established in the Marshall Islands
(1977), Mariana Islands (1978), Western Caroline Islands (Yap
& Belau - 1985) and Eastern Caroline Islands (Truk, Pohnpei,
Kosrae - 1985).

Universal House of
Justice, The Six Year Plan 1986-1992: Summary of Achievements
(Haifa, 1993, 114.

NSA South Pacific to NSA Australia, 22 October 1964. (0045/0012)

Michael Day, "A Beacon of Unity", Tusitala,
Autumn, 1985, 32-33.

Hansard, 11 August
1993. Sir Julius said ‘I feel that, as a Christian nation,
we need to have closer ties with the roots of our religion. My
delegation also visited the Bahá'í World Centre in Haifa,
Israel’s third largest city, where I also held talks with
members of the Universal House of Justice, the supreme decision
making body of the world Bahá'í community.’ Following this
visit the Universal House of Justice cabled: ‘Delighted
inform friends visit Bahá'í World Centre 12 June 1993 Sir
Julius Chan Deputy Prime Minister Papua New Guinea accompanied by
Lady Chan during course official visit Israel highly significant
that Universal House of Justice met with Sir Julius Chan in
response to his request for consultation on future role Papua New
Guinea as emerging nation and on destiny Pacific nations set
example unity mutual cooperation Sir Julius expressed
appreciation achievements Bahá'í community and admiration
Bahá'í approach personal social transformation meeting with Sir
Julius Chan following earlier meetings Prime Minister Cook
Islands and President Marshall islands further evidence
remarkable response Pacific leaders principles Bahá'í Faith
harbinger future application by world statesmen prescription
divine physician healing manifold ills humanity.

These Board Members, appointed by Clara Dunn, were Collis
Featherstone and Thelma Perks.

Between 1973 and 1986 the Propagation Board expanded from 36 to
45, and the Protection Board from 27 to 36.

Eighteenth Guam Legislature, 1985 ((first) Regular Session.
Resolution No. 214 (LS), 29 November 1985.

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-- Pacific Baha'i Communities 1950-1964 (Used by permission of the curator)