Praying for Independence: The Presbyterian Church in the Decolonisation of

Vanuatu
HELEN GARDNER
© 2013 The Journal of Pacific History, Inc.
Helen Gardner, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts and Education, Deakin
University.
E-mail: helen.gardner@deakin.edu.au

ABSTRACT

The establishment of the Presbyterian Church of the New Hebrides in 1948 as an independent
church was viewed by some participants as a step towards the independence of the nation, which
occurred some 32 years later. This paper argues that the church was slow to promote an anticolonial
perspective through the 1950s, though, as Indigenous clergy took on more senior roles in the
church, there was a corresponding increase in political consciousness. The trans-colonial
experiences of many young clergy – for education around the region or for meetings in the newly
formed Pacific Conference of Churches in the 1960s – exposed participants to anticolonial
theologies and the decolonising Pacific.
When Indigenous clergy gained full control over the Presbyterian Church in 1973, they
simultaneously demanded the end to the Condominium.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MISSIONS, COLONISATION AND COLONIALISM IN

THE PACIFIC

Islands is a recurring theme in the history of the region, yet there has been little secular historical
analysis of religious institutions and the decolonisation of the Pacific. This is surprising, as the
churches and missions of the Pacific were either explicitly or implicitly involved in the
decolonisation of Pacific Island colonies: they had the ear of colonial administrations, encouraged
nascent forms of political representation, largely trained the independence generation and reached
deep into village life. As a result, the parliaments and cabinets of the decolonising nations included
clergy of all denominations, and the Indigenous elite spread the gospel of independence and
decolonisation through the networks of both church and state. Asian and African scholarship leads
the way in the secular investigation of the Christian churches in the processes of decolonisation.

In the Pacific, however, it is church historians who have researched this important phenomenon
and in the case of Vanuatu have edited a range of publications on church and nation with
contributions by leaders who moved between pulpit and parliament.

Based in part on this literature, this paper traces the processes of decolonisation through the
Presbyterian Church of the New Hebrides (PCNH) and examines the role of this church in the
formation and promotion of national consciousness. Scholarship on this theme is further
encouraged by the anthropological ‘turn’ towards the study of Christianity in the Pacific in the last
15 years, offering historians new analyses of the localisation of international religious movements.
From the foundation of the World Council of Churches in Amsterdam in 1948, clergy and
congregations in the Pacific were increasingly influenced by a new liberal political agenda for a
just world based around sovereign, self-governing nations. As the new nations in the Pacific
emerged during the final phase of postwar decolonisation, many Pacific churches were further
influenced by the Marxist liberation theologies of the 1970s. The first parliament of the
independent nation of Vanuatu included several continuing or former clergymen – Catholic,
Anglican and particularly Presbyterians – as well as many theologically literate lay people.

This paper considers the local, regional and international influences on the Presbyterian clergy
from the post-war period until independence in 1980 and argues that the regional experiences of
the Presbyterian elders and clergy in the 1960s shaped their political and anticolonial
consciousness.

Church Independence

For many Christian missions around the world, calls for decolonisation from colonial rule spurred
the formation of independent churches. In the 1950s and 1960s, African missions of all
denominations followed the Asian lead and began to separate from the home missions to become
independent churches, usually – though not always – preceding political independence.

Australasian Presbyterian missionaries served with the Presbyterian Church of Korea, which
became independent in 1908, and supported nationalist criticism of the Japanese occupation. The
Presbyterian mission to the New Hebrides was a particularly early example of church independence
in the Pacific and separated from the Australian and New Zealand assemblies to form the New
Hebrides Presbyterian Church in 1948. The independence of the church was part of an ambitious
ten-year plan to reform the mission, led by the Reverend Victor Coombes, a former missionary to
India who was influenced both by international church moves against colonialism in the period
prior to World War II and by the long Presbyterian struggle against the Anglo/French
Condominium.

He was supported by Victorian minister and former missionary to Korea, George Anderson,
who made a prophetic statement on the self-determination of the church and the
nation, following a tour of the islands in 1943: It is becoming increasingly plain that the future of
the New Hebrides must lie with the people of the New Hebrides. There will be difficult and
uncomfortable periods, perhaps for a generation, but it is surely quite necessary that the leadership
of the Church, with our encouragement and help, must be brown, not white. Coombes’s post-war
vision of decolonisation was clear. In his outline for the independence of the church he spoke of
the demands of ‘backward peoples’ for ‘self-expression, self-determination and to an extent, self-
government’.

Yet while the church decolonised in name, it has been argued that the rhetoric of a ‘self-governing,
self-propagating church’ fell short of the reality. Lake insists that all decisions on finance and
education were effectively controlled by a white missionary council well into the 1960s.10 The
independent church was not the result of demands by the local clergy as the level of Indigenous
ordination was low, though it still outstripped those of other churches in the region. Kamisetea was
the first ni-Vanuatu pastor, ordained in 1895. In the years between his ordination and the
independence of the church, only 32 ni-Vanuatu were made pastors, nearly half of whom were
ordained in the 1940s in the rush to meet the needs of the new assembly.

A clue to the level of participation of local church members in the independent church can be found
in the order of service for the inaugural assembly: Pastor Kalorib offered the prayer of invocation,
and Pastor Samuel was one of the two scripture readers. The sermon, declaration of inauguration
and history of the mission were all given by Australasian missionaries. Despite this inauspicious
start, the inaugural assembly of the independent church included seven ni-Vanuatu pastors and at
least 15 elders, also an ordained position and not to be underestimated in church and village life,
or in national politics following independence. By the following assembly, ni-Vanuatu pastors had
more than doubled to 17, with 21 ordained elders, and they easily outnumbered their 14
Australasian counterparts. Victor Coombes attended the next three assemblies to assist in guiding
the constitution through the strict Presbyterian process of meetings and committees.

Australasian missionaries of the 1950s and 1960s have been criticised from both within the church
and without for thwarting or delaying Indigenous leadership and resisting the rising nationalism of
younger pastors. In his autobiography, pastor and politician Sethy Regenvanu described his dismay
at the level of theological education offered by the Tangoa Training Institute in the 1960s and the
continuing paternalism of Australasian missionaries.15 The British administration, seeking a path
to independence, was frustrated that the ‘third force’ of Presbyterianism in the colony, while long
opposing the ineffective Condominium, was not supporting the nationalism essential for the
development of an educated anti-colonial elite.16 This was in direct contrast to the Church of Christ
in the northern islands led by Abel Bani from Aboa, who forged an alliance with Jimmy Stevens,
the leader of the Nagriamel movement. Their combined effort against land alienation in Santo was
the most effective anti-colonial movement in the islands during the 1960s.

This paper considers the historical conundrum that, while there is clear evidence of Presbyterian
paternalism and a reluctance to countenance the independence of the New Hebrides among some
Australasian missionaries in the 1950s and 1960s, nevertheless the PCNH became a key player in
the independence movement in the 1970s. Unlike the Anglican and Catholic Churches, the
democratic political structure of the Presbyterian Church allowed the institution openly to back the
call for independence, as decisions were made from the body of the church rather than imposed by
a church hierarchy. By contrast, many Anglican and Catholic priests were deeply involved in the
independence movements though their churches sought to maintain at least a semblance of
institutional separation from colonial politics. It was clear to observers, however, that the Anglican
Church covertly supported independence, while the Catholic Church echoed the efforts of the
French Administration to covertly delay or thwart political change. This paper traces the paths to
a national consciousness for the Presbyterian pastors of the 1960s and 1970s. It examines
particularly the rise of political activism through regional engagement with the theological colleges
of the Pacific as the radical theologies of social justice swept Latin America and the Third World
churches. These ideas were spread through the New Hebrides in the crucial decade of the 1970s as
ni-Vanuatu Presbyterians gained full control of the church and became leaders in the independence
movement. Australasian missionaries of the late 1960s and 1970s were also drawn to the radical
theologies of period, and many became active partners in the political activities of their ni-Vanuatu
counterparts.

Further, recent works by church historians Malcolm Campbell and Randall Prior suggest that the
spark ignited by the young ni-Vanuatu pastor activists galvanised the older church leaders into
support for Presbyterian demands for independence. During this period, Presbyterian pastors
initiated the shuffle between pulpit and first the Advisory Council of the New Hebrides and then
the Parliament of Vanuatu. Clergy politicians continue to characterise the politics of Melanesia
generally and Vanuatu in particular.

Following the inauguration of the church, Presbyterian pastors gradually took on more important
roles and were paired as chaplains with Australasian moderators to learn the tasks of church
leadership. Moderators lead the committees that govern the church at each level: session (a
committee of elected elders from a single church), presbytery (elected elders from a group of
churches) and the general assembly, which was defined first by the colonial then national border.
The latter is the ‘supreme court’ and meets annually with all the ministers of the presbyteries and
a representative elder from each of the sessions. At the general assembly, the moderator begins the
meeting with a sermon, takes the votes of the members, announces decisions and ensures they are
properly recorded and implemented. Moderators, elders and clergy are well versed in the
procedures of meetings and in Presbyterian polity, which has scriptural backing as the form of
government set forth in the Bible.

In Vanuatu, the role of moderator is held for one to two years and is the voice of the church in
local, national and international forums, ensuring leadership in the months between assemblies. He
(the role has never been held by a woman) visits presbyteries and sessions to canvass the concerns
of congregations.
Saurei of Fila Island in the Vila ‘charge’ was nominated for moderator designate for 1951, but the
procedures were questioned and, following a new call for nominations, the Revd Murray won the
vote decisively 35 votes to five.21 The church was independent for seven years before the first ni-
Vanuatu moderator, Salerua Poruza, was successfully nominated in 1955. He undertook the
teacher/catechist course in the late 1920s and was active as an elder and teacher in the South Santo
area as well as Tangoa. Yet he was not ordained until 1947, when he joined the rush of ordinands
in preparation for the independent church.

Ni-Vanuatu clergy used the assemblies as a platform to voice their political concerns. In 1955,
Thomas Kalmar, who became the second ni-Vanuatu moderator in 1959, moved a motion along
with elder Kaltak from Erakor, condemning the influx of Japanese into the New Hebrides for the
fishing industry and demanding the Anglo/French Condominium take steps to give ni-Vanuatu a
voice in the government.

Afraid that land, women and shellfish might be at risk from these new migrants, Pastor Saurei and
Pastor Albert moved another motion to voice their concern that the chiefs had not been consulted
before the Japanese fishermen arrived. As Clive Moore demonstrates in this special issue, the
Anglo/French administration in the New Hebrides trailed the Solomon Islands and Papua New
Guinea in developing a forum for local representation.25 Two years after Kalmar’s demand
for a ni-Vanuatu presence in colonial affairs, the Condominium finally established an Advisory
Council in 1957 with limited ni-Vanuatu involvement, most notably Dr Kalsakau, trained in Suva
at the Fiji School of Medicine. The council was composed of the two resident commissioners, two
official members and 12 nominated representatives of the major ethnic groups: four British, four
French and four ni- Vanuatu.

In recognition of their role in the provision of health and education services, the major churches
held office: the Anglican and Catholic Churches were represented by Bishop (later Archbishop)
Rawcliffe and the Roman Catholic vicar general. In the early years, New Zealand missionary
Robert (Bob) Murray was the Presbyterian representative, chosen for his fluent French and his ease
with British and French settlers and administrators. In the mid-1960s, he demanded greater
Indigenous representation.

Thus, while Presbyterian political consciousness in relation to the colony seemed to be relatively
undeveloped in the early 1960s, ni-Vanuatu pastors were developing the administrative and
political skills necessary for managing an organisation that transcended village and island
boundaries, using a political form that translated readily to the standards of contemporary
democracy. As ni-Vanuatu Presbyterians gained experience in the sessions, presbyteries and
assemblies of the Presbyterian Church and met the strict protocols for meetings, they took their
expectations of government to the Advisory Council. Presbyterian Pastor Titus Path served on the
council as an Indigenous representative from 1963 to 1971, though he had a fundamental complaint
about its systemic failure as a representative body. He noted that while the
1968 reform increased the numbers of ni-Vanuatu from four to eight, or two more than the
European representatives, it was still an unfair proportion, given the size of the ‘native population’.

Church Regionalism

Prior to the 1960s, few ni-Vanuatu Presbyterians travelled beyond the borders of the colony. The
New Hebrides shared with other Pacific colonies the regional opportunities of the Fiji Medical
School, and occasionally students were sent to church boarding schools or to live with returned
missionary families.30 A few students undertook basic Christian education in Australia. While
most sending churches had more than one mission in the Pacific and moved staff between
them – the Methodists, for example, had at least six missions in the region and students and island
missionaries travelled across colonial borders – the New Hebrides church was the only Presbyterian
Church in the islands, though the Australian church had missions to Aboriginal communities. The
PCNH did form links with the Protestant churches of New Caledonia, and from the early 1950s ni-
Vanuatu pastors travelled to Noumea to minister to ni-Vanuatu students and workers.

In turn, the Eglise Évangélique offered trained pastors to work on the internal mission on
Malekula. The isolation of Presbyterian pastors and elders changed in the 1960s with the growth
of the ecumenical movement and a new church regionalism in the Pacific, led by Pacific pastors
and ministers. In 1961 the Congregational Theological College at Malua in Samoa hosted a large
meeting of protestant churches from around the Pacific: Anglican, Congregational, Lutheran,
Methodist and Presbyterian. The idea was the brainchild of Pacific clergymen Fijian Revd Setareki
Tuilivoni and Tongan Dr Sione Amanaki Havea, who had attended ecumenical conferences while
stranded in Australia in the 1940s, as the Pacific War precluded non-essential travel. From this
experience came the idea of a regional ecumenical Christian body to extend links within the Pacific.

The World Council of Churches was deeply involved in the meeting in Samoa and provided
international speakers and financial support to those attending and later published the findings. The
theme – Paul’s letter to the Galatians – was widely promulgated around Pacific congregations in
the lead-up to the conference. Galatians is generally interpreted as a call for Christian unity through
Christ’s promise of salvation. It is an attack on legalistic practices and efforts to gain God’s
approval through the observance of rites and rituals; in the early church, this was largely related to
the question of circumcision. In the spirit of the rising ecumenism of the 1950s and
1960s, the theme chipped away at the fine distinctions of worship and liturgy that divided the
sectarian Christian Pacific societies. The Fijian and Tongan church leaders sought a Pacific-style
conference: the Revd Ronald K. Orchard, London secretary of the International Missionary
Council, noted that the organisers specifically asked for the conference to include times of informal
discussion to allow consensus.
Lorine Tevi (later head of the Pacific Conference of Churches from 1976) claimed that this allowed
the inaugural meeting to be conducted according to ‘The Pacific Way’. The Malua conference
challenged the previous physical and denominational isolation of Pacific Islanders and churches
and spread further the new regionalism of the post-war Pacific that had been inaugurated by the
South Pacific Conference in 1950, when representatives of 14 Pacific Island territories gathered in
Suva. This earlier conference brought together the chiefly representatives of colonial advisory
councils or assemblies, such as Prince Tungi of Tonga and Ratu Edward Cakobau of Fiji, with the
emerging professionals and bureaucrats of Melanesia – Dr Kalsakau of the New Hebrides, later a
member of the Advisory Council, and Eluida Ahnon and Aosilf Salin, clerks in the New Guinea
Department of Education.

A number of the Polynesian delegates to Suva went on to become prime ministers or heads of state.
The Malua church conference similarly predicted forthcoming leaders of independent churches.
Methodist Saimon Gaius, then a minister on probation, led the United Church of Papua and New
Guinea to independence in 1966. Three years after the conference, Tuilivoni, charged with
maintaining the momentum of the first meeting, became leader of the Independent Methodist
Church of Fiji. The conference also foreshadowed the Pacific relationship between church and
state. One Samoan delegate, deacon and lay preacher in the Congregational Church, Kalapu
Luafatasaga, was also Speaker of the Western Samoan Legislative Assembly.

The conference spread the word about the International Missionary Council and the World Council
of Churches, the latter gave financial support to convene regular meetings of the ecumenical
continuation committee. Tuilivoni and Samoan Vavae Toma brought together youth leaders,
identified external funding and extended the ecumenical movement with visitations between the
island groups. For the colonised peoples of the Pacific this new church regionalism – and the
meetings that followed, which were spread around the Pacific – allowed participants to gain a vital
and previously denied comparative insight, not merely into the workings of the multiple churches
of the Pacific, but also into distinctive colonial administrations. The Malua conference laid the
groundwork for the formation of the Pacific Conference of Churches, which was established at the
subsequent meeting in Lifou, New Caledonia, in 1966, thus cementing the regionalism of the
churches of the Pacific.

While transnationalism and the crossing of cultural and political borders has become an important
historical method in the past decade, this paper considers specifically the crossing of colonial
borders and the reflexive perspective of the home colony engendered by this experience,
particularly in relation to the unique Anglo/French Condominium of the New
Hebrides.44 Increasingly in the 1960s, Presbyterians crossed colonial borders for education and
for church meetings. Representing the PCNH at the Malua conference were Titus Path – moderator
for 1961, pastor at Hog Harbour, Santo, and later representative on the Advisory Council – and
Pastor Jonathon Wimbong, then working with the Big Nambas on Malekula. The clerk of the
assembly, New Zealand missionary Graham Horwell, also attended. He was a keen promoter of
the international ecumenical movement; he led the move for the PCNH to join the World Council
of Churches in 1961 and to accept the invitation to send delegates to Malua. On their return to the
New Hebrides the delegates presented a report of their experiences to the Presbyterian Assembly
in 1962.

The assembly approved a subscription for the Pacific Journal of Theology. Both Jonathon
Wimbong and Titus Path went on to travel extensively within the Pacific and beyond. As a
representative of both church and colony, Titus Path attended the South Pacific Conference of
Governments in Lae, sponsored by the Condominium government, and then travelled to New
Caledonia to examine local and regional councils. The following year, the Billy Graham
organisation paid for his travel to Germany, followed by an extensive tour through the US. In 1969,
he travelled to New Zealand, and during the 1970s he visited PNG, Fiji and Canada.

Travel was a reflexive experience; it allowed a new perspective on the home colony and for
comparisons with other colonies. It also revealed the peculiar status of the colonial subjects of the
New Hebrides. Instead of passports, ni-Vanuatu travelled with documents and letters that almost
invariably failed the demands of customs officials.

While the Condominium managed to patch over the ambiguous political status of their colonial
subjects within the colony – neither French nor British and unable to be registered – the
administrations could not resolve the problems of presenting this undefined subject at the borders
of other colonies and nations. As a result, ni-Vanuatu were frequently stopped and harassed by
customs officials. This humiliating – and therefore politicising – experience was endured by
increasing numbers of ni-Vanuatu in the 1960s.

The oft-repeated phrase from the first meeting of the Pacific churches at Malua in 1961 was
that ‘the coconut curtain has lifted’.49 This call was prompted by the previous isolation of Pacific
churches, but the analogy is to the Cold War, and the comment was made in the weeks immediately
following the building of the Berlin Wall. Therefore, it was a claim for ecumenism with strong
political overtones. The Malua conference was held on the eve of Samoa’s independence from New
Zealand as the winds of post-war decolonisation reached the Pacific Islands. This combination of
church and political interaction throughout the 1960s, supported by the liberal World Council of
Churches, was one route to an increasing political consciousness for the Indigenous clergy of the
New Hebrides.

Theological Training
The Tangoa Teachers Training Institute opened in the New Hebrides in 1895 to provide teacher
catechists and eventually pastors with Christian training. This was the only education offered to ni-
Vanuatu Presbyterians until the 1950s, and throughout this period there was a perpetual struggle to
raise the standard.50 The church recognised the importance of a broader education, and in the
1950s and early 1960s promising students such as Titus Path, Jonathon Wimbong, Kami Shing,
Timhu, Vula Vutilolo and Charlie Nimoho were sent to the interdenominational evangelical
Sydney Missionary and Bible Training Institute. From the early 1960s, students were sent for
theological training around the Pacific: to the Methodist College of Davuilevu in Fiji, to the
Congregational College of Malua in Samoa, to the United Church Colleges of Malmaluan and
Rarongo in East New Britain and eventually to the Pacific Theological College in Suva. Here young
ordinands experienced the decolonisation of churches and nations in the region. Those engaged in
pastor training were exposed to the theologians of political action such as Bonhoeffer and the
Niebuhr brothers. For many ni-Vanuatu Presbyterians, therefore, the stirrings of political
consciousness occurred outside the colony, as new opportunities for travel combined with the
increasingly political theologies of the 1960s.

As ni-Vanuatu church scholars were moving beyond the horizons of the New Hebrides, a new
cohort of students was being educated in the new Presbyterian schools developed as part of Victor
Coombes’s ten-year plan. While some Australasian missionaries may have been conservative in
their views of Indigenous leadership, scholars of Onesua High School, such as Allen Nafuki
(subsequently pastor and member of parliament), recalled learning of Presbyterian support for ni-
Vanuatu against external exploiters, beginning with the sandalwood traders and continuing with
the colonial administrations and the alienation of land:

And then when I went to Onesua Presbyterian Church College…we had a lot of teachers from NZ
and all the missionaries were telling us about the struggle that we were facing by the French and
the British government…I came to know that the missionaries were fighting for our freedom.

Concerned that the Presbyterian schools would produce an anglophone elite, the French
administration greatly expanded their education programme throughout the 1960s, not merely to
increase the French-speaking proportion of the population but, more crucially, to extend French
influence into the village and beyond the traditional anglophone/francophone divide of the
Protestant and Catholic churches.

Allen Nafuki’s family was split by the competing education policies of the Condominium. His
family could just afford the fees for his education, but financial circumstances dictated that his
younger brothers were sent to French schools. Standards at the new Presbyterian schools were
relatively high, but the theological training at Tangoa Training Institute remained at the level of a
basic Christian education, and students were sent for higher training to theological colleges around
the Pacific. The first was Fred Timakata; born on Emae to a chiefly family, he enrolled at Davuilevu
Methodist Theological College in Fiji in 1962. Here he gained experience of the ecumenical
movement, led by Fijian Methodists, and the accelerated independence of the Pacific Churches.
Timakata was present when the Methodist Church of Fiji and Rotuma separated from the circuits
of Australasia to become independent in 1964.

Sethy Regenvanu attended youth leadership training at Malmaluan on the Gazelle Peninsula in East
New Britain in 1966, where he met young men and women from throughout the Pacific. The
Gazelle Peninsula was a revelation to him. Observing Tolai engagement in the economy and
politics was a profoundly politicising experience that revealed the failures of the Condominium.
He was also frustrated that the PCNH did not do more to challenge colonial mores either within
the church or the colony:

My relationship with white people was that we were second class and I accepted that as the way it
should be. But then when I went to PNG it opened my eyes. How the people in PNG, particularly
Tolai [in East New Britain] because I was at Malmaluan, how they handled themselves, political
leaders, also how they were involved in the economy, because Tolai were involved in cocoa
production and cocoa marketing and so on and transport [business] in the way that I had never seen
before. And they in turn were giving employment to other Papua New Guineans from the
Highlands. And so this is what impressed me black people were doing things that were in the
exclusive domain of whites in the New Hebrides. Melanesian like us. And I watched them and I
read Michael Somare’s book … I hadn’t thought that a black man could write a book. And I read
it and I thought this is all possible. I saw possibilities beyond limits.

Returning to the New Hebrides in 1967, Regenvanu was bitterly disillusioned by the standard of
Bible education at the Tangoa Theological Training Institute. But the church was aware of the
problems and Dorothy Rutter was recruited to prepare students for the new Pacific Theological
College planned for Suva, the first degree-conferring institute in the South Pacific.56 Trained in
anthropology at the University of Queensland and in theology at the ecumenical United Faculty of
Theology in Melbourne, Rutter combined a liberal education with the social activism of the Student
Christian Movement and recalled of her time in Melbourne that ‘there was a strong feeling there
of the need to get involved in government, politics’. In her assessment of the Student Christian
Movement of the 1960s and the vigorous debates on radical ‘secular’ Christianity in Australia,
Renate Howe described the excitement generated by the theologies of Tillich and Bonhoeffer, the
radical calls from within the SCM for the ‘death of religion’ and the religious institutions of
Christianity, and the demand that Christ be experienced through day-to-day life.58 Rutter took her
experiences and theological training to the New Hebrides and was disappointed that the
Presbyterian Church was not supportive of the Nagriamel land movement of Jimmy Stevens or of
those who sought improved wages and conditions for copra cutters.
Her marriage to Sethy Regenvanu, unthinkable a generation earlier, was questioned by some on
the Presbyterian mission – though many were less concerned by an interracial marriage than by
the influence of Rutter’s radical theological ideas – but the union was supported by the college
principal, the Revd Paddy Jensen.

Fred Timakata was the first ni-Vanuatu to graduate from the Pacific Theological College. He was
exposed to a challenging Pacific-based theological training, with the standards set at Western
theological schools and a curriculum based on London University, though there was increasing
criticism of the hegemony of European theology and a concomitant demand that the gospel be
interpreted in Pacific settings.61 Therefore students were urged to develop critical thinking and a
high level of reflexivity on church and village, culture and the universal reception of the gospel.
The following is an example of an exam question from 1967: ‘Discuss the acquisition and use of
power by Either the chief in a “family-state” OR a council of elders in a gerontocratic society.

Critically examine the system described in the light of the teaching of the Gospel’. After completing
his studies, Timakata was appointed to Noumea to minister to the Presbyterians at the nickel mine,
then to Malekula. He returned to Port Vila in 1974 to become the first ni-Vanuatu clerk of the
Presbyterian Assembly. As with Regenvanu, his experiences broke the village expectations of
marriage: while studying in Suva he married a Tongan woman Keasi Leisei, daughter of a
Methodist pastor.

Dorothy and Sethy Regenvanu followed Timakata to the Pacific Theological College in 1970 in
time for Fiji’s independence celebrations. Sethy Regenvanu represented the Pacific Theological
College at the Pacific Conference of Churches meeting held in Suva in 1971 and met the Revd Dr
Philip Potter, West Indian general secretary of the World Council of Churches, who ‘left a
permanent and inspiring impression on me as a black man leading this world ecumenical
organization’.

As with the African and Asian student associations in post-war Britain, the Regenvanus were
involved in the New Hebridean Association and met frequently with increasingly radical fellow ni-
Vanuatu students attending the University of the South Pacific such as Barak Sope, Grace Molisa
and Kalkot Matas Kele Kele, all of whom went on to become leaders in the independence
movement.

What Regenvanu could not experience in Suva was an independence movement against an empire
resistant to decolonisation. The French were covertly seeking to maintain the New Hebrides as a
French settler colony and challenged British efforts to encourage an educated Indigenous elite to
take the reins of self-government and forge a viable nation from the divided Condominium. As
Van Trease notes, during the 1960s the French sought to entrench the divide between French and
British services and anglophone and francophone ni-Vanuatu. In 1969 French Resident
Commissioner Mouradian reflected that during his tenure he had refused all British efforts to
integrate laws and legal procedures or to extend local councils. He rejected plans for a joint hospital
and ‘applied the brakes’ to further democratisation of the Advisory Council beyond the minimal
changes in the late 1960s.

In 1969, Pastor Jack Taritonga – then moderator of the northern islands – travelled to Port Moresby
with Pastor Philip Shing, convenor of the Ministry Committee, for the inaugural meeting of the
Melanesian Association of Theological Schools.

They also visited East New Britain to consider a joint theological college with the United Church
of New Guinea and the Solomon Islands in the years following the merging of the Congregational
and Methodist Churches. The decision was made to send students from the New Hebrides to East
New Britain, home to both the Malmaluan Christian Education Centre and the Rarongo Theological
Centre.

Those Presbyterian students who travelled to New Britain for theological training encountered the
anti-colonial movement of the Matanguan Association and the complexities of Australia’s
decolonisation process on the Gazelle Peninsula. For Allen Nafuki, who studied with the brother
of Tolai political leader John Kaputin in 1970–71, the extracurricular opportunities were deeply
politicising. He regularly visited the Kaputin home, attended Matanguan Association meetings and
recalled that ‘I could see very clearly that John Kaputin was doing something right for his people’.

He returned to the New Hebrides in 1972 when the new educated elite, principally pastors and
British-trained teachers and civil servants, began organising and agitating for political change. The
New Hebridean Cultural Association had been formed the year before by Onesua-educated
Presbyterian teachers Peter Taurakoto and Donald Kalpokas.69 Initially focused on land alienation
on the island of Lelepa, within a few weeks the association transformed into a fully-fledged
political party led by the young Anglican priests Walter Lini and John Bani and lay Anglican Aiden
Garae, though the three men were dispersed throughout the colony and struggled to maintain the
original momentum.70 Lini drew on his previous experience in small political publications to
spread the word: he organised the Western Pacific students while a student in Auckland and
published Onetalk, and he observed the publishing of the Kakamora Reporter at his first posting in
the Solomon Islands.

After the formation of the National Party, he established the New Hebridean Viewpoints as a
mouthpiece for the new movement. Nafuki attended an early meeting on Iririki Island, where
Walter Lini exhorted pastors, chiefs and landowners to support the movement and pledge five
Australian dollars. Nafuki returned to East New Britain for theological training at Rarongo in 1973.
Here, in the lead-up to the independence of Papua New Guinea, at the most political site of the
Australian colony, he encountered the radical theologies of the period:

And we got the announcement that they would get independence in 1975 and I was in Rarongo
then … all our teachers would come and instead of running theological studies or subjects we
would talk about the situation. And that’s when I started to really get deep when I went to Rarongo.
Malmaluan I only got involved because of my relationship.
But Rarongo I began to really study … the political situation in PNG.
He also considered explicitly the question of the relationship between church and state and how
his increasing interest in decolonisation could be viewed through a theological lens:

But when I was there I thought this is theological training I need to really get down to this and get
to know the difference between church and politics and church and state. What roles can the church
play? If we want people to get free what can we do? So this kind of very radical Christians began
to creep into my mind.

On his return to the New Hebrides in 1976, Nafuki combined his duties as a pastor with his political
work for the National Party on the politically sensitive island of Santo, where his parish extended
to the Nagriamel base of Tanafo. Back in Suva, Regenvanu and his fellow ni-Vanuatu students
sought ways to support the National Party and raise national and anticolonial consciousness beyond
the Nagriamel movement in Santo. The opportunity to influence the Presbyterian Church came
with the South Pacific Action for Development Strategy Conference (SPADES) in January 1973.
The conference was led by Fijian activist and Methodist Pastor Sitiveni Ratuvili, who was
employed by the Pacific Conference of Churches to lead the committee of activists from the
Student Christian Movement and students from the Pacific Theological College representing Fiji,
Western Samoa, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand and the New Hebrides.74 Support was also
provided by the World Council of Churches and the Melanesian Council of Churches. Thirty
delegates met for a week in one of three locations: Apia, Suva or Tanna, then joined for a final
week in Port Vila. While pastors or theological students dominated the proceedings, the delegation
also included social workers, teachers and students from a range of faculties.

The four advisers – Roxanne (Roxy) and Bill Coop, Rex Davis and Appolinarius Macha – revealed
the political flavour of the conference. American Presbyterians Roxy and Bill Coop had offered
themselves for work in Christian education in the New Hebrides in 1970. The Vila church
cautioned them with a note that, in matters of doctrine and ethics, they were generally
conservative. The note was ignored, for the young Americans were aggressive missionaries for the
radical political theologies of the 1970s. Roxy Coop was active in the civil rights movement and
in second-wave feminism in the US, and she held a postgraduate degree in Christian education.
The Coops were profoundly anticolonial and expressed their politics through the nexus of theology
and education advocated by liberation theologians, who were increasingly turning their focus on
the Pacific: radical Catholic philosopher Ivan Illich spoke in Suva in 1972 – Regenvanu
attended – and Catholic Marxist educationalist Paulo Freire attended the Waigani Seminar in Papua
New Guinea in 1974; his call to action, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970), was taught at the Pacific
Theological College.

Rex Davis had been involved in a similar development conference in Papua New Guinea in 1970
and represented the World Council of Churches, which provided financial support to
SPADES.80 Representing the Christian activist search for alternative models of state and nation
was Appolinarius Macha of Tanzania, who held a diploma in social leadership from St Francis
Xavier University in Canada and was an administrative officer in development in the Tanzanian
administration. Tanzania’s model of Christian socialism was admired by Christian activists around
the Pacific; representatives of Tanzania received invitations to development conferences
throughout the region and influenced leaders such as Ebia Olewale in Papua New Guinea as well
as Walter Lini. The conference concluded at Port Vila with a series of public meetings held in the
British Paddock with the permission of the British administration, which was tacitly supporting the
ni-Vanuatu civil servants who had founded the National Party.

The British were forced to withdraw support when the fierce debates and overtly political demands
of the delegates threatened to expose their hand in the development of anticolonial sentiment. At
the time, however, delegates were scathing in their assessment of the British attack on free
speech. While the ‘development’ focus of the conference came under the banners of education,
tourism and urbanisation, the resolutions revealed the expressly anticolonial demands of the
delegation:

We the delegates of SPADES Conference – concerned for human life, the free development of all
people, and the conservation of our environment.
Assert that all people under colonial government in the Pacific are oppressed and exploited. We
therefore condemn colonialism in all its forms.
Assert that in countries where indigenous people are not heard, we support moves to bring about
political freedom.
Assert that culture identifies people and their environment and that it should not at any cost be
exploited.
Urge that the Church review its place and mission in society.
The New Hebrides delegates embodied the nexus between political activism and radical theology.
All were leaders or members of the National Party and included Walter Lini and Sethy Regenvanu.

By now the National Party had growing Religion (Berkeley 1986), support in Port Vila with
approximately 40 subcommittees established around the islands. The March Viewpoints was
devoted almost entirely to the conference with a press statement by Roxana Coop on the findings
and resolutions. Sethy Regenvanu returned to his studies in Suva, while civil servant George
Kalkoa – member of the Advisory Council, National Party member and later, under the chiefly title
of George Sokomanu, the first President of Vanuatu – took the SPADES report and resolutions to
the next Presbyterian Assembly at Lenakel on Tanna, led by moderator Jack Taritonga. For
delegates, Kalkoa’s report, written with the assistance of Anglican priest John Bani, ‘helped the
Church to find its voice and speak its mind on the political and economic side of New Hebridean
life’.

The church was to be central to this new vision: ‘The moral power of the Church can be our greatest
friend as we move from colonialism toward a new life of freedom’.Kalkoa’s report was printed
verbatim in Viewpoints and was a blueprint of activist Christianity viewed through the sociological
lens that was increasingly linked with the theology of the period. As theologically all ‘men are
created in the image of God, [and] are equal before him’, it was the task of the Church to tend to
both the spiritual and material wellbeing of parishioners and to ‘denounce colonial ideas and
principles’. Inspiration and an argument against those who argued for the separation of church and
state came from Africa, where the son of the Church of Scotland minister Kenneth Kaunda had led
Zambia to independence in 1964, stating that ‘Christians will be active in every part of the life of
the nation’. So, noted Kalkoa, ‘it should be in the New Hebrides’. The call to political independence
combined the theological hope for continuing revelation with the political hope for freedom from
oppression: ‘Jesus Christ will have to become flesh once again here and now’.

New Zealand minister Ken Calvert recalled that the bedtime reading for delegates was Franz
Fanon’s anticolonial tract, Wretched of the Earth, which analysed French colonialism in Algeria
and the strategies of divide and rule through which the French administration sought to retain
control of their North African colonies.

At the following Presbyterian Assembly at Lenakal on Tanna, Bill Coop introduced a motion
condemning the French nuclear testing on Moruroa. Around the Pacific the churches, led by the
regional church associations, were taking a strong stand against the tests. The motion was referred
to a subcommittee and quickly expanded its brief to a broader response on colonialism. Lawyer-
cum-missionary Graham Miller drafted a motion on the church’s view of the independence of the
New Hebrides:

The Presbyterian Church of the New Hebrides, representing more than half of the population of
the New Hebrides, in this its 25th General Assembly as a self-governing Church,

DECLARES that it confidently looks towards the goal of responsible self-government of the New
Hebrides people as a nation.
We see the British, French and Condominium administration as partners with us as together we
move towards this goal.
We now bring this conviction to the notice of our administrations and to the attention of the South
Pacific Commission and the United Nations Organization with the urgent request that they co-
operate with our New Hebrides administrations in achieving self-government without delay,
without violence, and with due preparation of our people for the duties, functions, rights and
responsibilities of independent government.

Following the procedures of the Presbyterian Assembly, the motion was put to the vote and passed.
In view of French opposition to independence, Taritonga’s text from Hebrews was apposite: ‘For
faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen’ (Hebrews 11:1 KJV).
Also present at the assembly was Setareki Tuilivoni, the Fijian leader of the Methodist Church and
founding member of the Pacific Conference of Churches. The following Viewpoints, titled ‘The
church and development’, was devoted almost entirely to the conference and the assembly.95
Two other important initiatives came from the Lenakel assembly. The first was the establishment
of a Church and Society Committee, which was overtly focused on political issues and the spread
of national consciousness; these committees were being developed around the Pacific and reflected
the increasing church engagement in Pacific politics. Unlike all other Presbyterian Church
committees, the Church and Society group included lay people and clergy of other denominations
who were the key figures in the National Party: Anglican priests Walter Lini and John Bani; Peter
Taurakoto, one of the founders of the National Party; and George Kalkoa.

Under the second initiative, the role of assembly clerk was handed from the Australasian
missionaries to Fred Timakata. Thus the last vestige of colonialism within the church finally
crumbled. While ni-Vanuatu had been moderators of the PCNH since the late 1950s, the post of
assembly clerk had been held by four Australasian missionaries from 1948. The last, Neal Whimp,
only accepted the position on the understanding he would hand the post to a ni-Vanuatu as soon as
possible.

Fred Timakata accepted the positions of clerk of the Presbyterian Assembly and vice-president of
the National Party almost simultaneously. The following year Father Walter Lini became the
leader. The party, which had begun as a movement led by members of the British National Service,
was now led by clergy. Timakata was galvanised into politics by his inability to register his son’s
birth in 1970. As a pastor and National Party member on Malekula, he became involved in the land
struggles against French planters.

In the seven turbulent years between the Lenakel assembly and the independence of Vanuatu in
1980, those in the upper echelons of the church and the pastors in the field combined their church
and political work. Sethy Regenvanu returned from Suva after completing his thesis on adult
Christian education in the New Hebrides in 1973.
He took over the post of Christian education officer from Bill and Roxy Coop and began applying
the blueprint of his thesis to spread the message of the National Party. The thesis essentially
tied Paulo Freire’s theories of adult education to the structure of the Presbyterian Church. What I
did was I had decided through my thesis that the structure I would use was the church structure:
assembly, presbytery, sessions, congregations. If I followed that system and built my programme
I would be able to reach everyone. That was my thesis.

He appointed Christian education workers to all the presbyteries to ensure regular sessions on
political issues. He then ran workshops with this ‘network of agents’ to discuss leadership,
disseminate National Party information and in the process develop political and national
consciousness. Regenvanu was quietly assisted by the British administration as a church
representative for formal education. Under this role, he travelled extensively throughout the new
Hebrides and would piggyback his political activities onto his administration tasks, holding
concurrent political meetings with presbyteries and sessions while representing the administration
and church at district education committees.

On Santo, Allen Nafuki organised as a National Party member and pastor. The French had drawn
the Nagriamel movement into the Francophone sphere with the promise to return alienated land.
French influence was greatly enhanced in those islands north of Efate, and Nagriamal members
supported the Francophone parties formed in opposition to the National Party. As his parish spread
to the Nagriamel base at Vanuafoe, Nafuki was careful to tailor his message to his audience. To
Nagriamel members he spread the gospel of liberation:

I made sure – because I was their pastor – I made sure that I would only teach from the Bible. It
would not be seen as me talking. I would hide behind the word of God and present the liberation
[theology], and that’s how they got to know me, and they began to see not only is Pastor Allen
talking but the word of God is talking to them.

With Presbyterians unaffiliated with the Nagriamel movement, however, he organised for the
National Party. The declaration for independence at the Lenakel assembly bound the Presbyterian
clergy to the cause:

All of us – the chief, the pastors, the elders – we have a committee meeting together, and I would
tell them about why don’t we form a committee to fund-raise to assist us in the National movement.
And then the chief would get up and say okay; we would get a date, and everybody would raise
money and give to our local subcommittee, who were the national party. All the pastors in our
Presbyterian Church [worked for the National Party] because of the decision made at Lenakel in
1973.
Following the declaration at Lenakel, church leaders travelled extensively for political purposes.
Moderator Jack Taritonga met with members of the Australian Council of Churches to discuss
political independence for the New Hebrides. As part of the team led by Walter Lini, he spent five
weeks in Paris and England negotiating self-government and finance. As clerk of the assembly and
vice-president of the National Party, Fred Timakata combined church and political duties. He was
delegate to both the Pacific Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches and served
on the executive of the former. He sought New Zealand and Australian support for independence
in the mid 1970s. On visits to London and Paris, he spoke to the World Council of Churches as
well as with the British and French governments. With Lini and Barak Sope – a key figure in the
National Party – he represented the New Hebrides to the Committee of 24 at the United Nations in
1978.

The London talks of November 1974 on the political future of the New Hebrides were held between
Britain, France and their respective colonial officials, though ni-Vanuatu were not represented. In
recognition of the damage caused by travel documents, the London meeting announced that, as
well as granting the New Hebrides a Representative Assembly and a new system of local
government, ni-Vanuatu were to gain a new status:

We understand that, whilst stopping short of giving New Hebrideans double nationality it will give
them, when outside the New Hebrides, a choice of the same rights of protection by Britain and
France as those enjoyed respectively by British and French nationals. New Hebrideans will be
issued with a proper passport in place of the travel documents which they now carry and this would
be fully backed by both Britain and France. But the changes did not come soon enough to provide
protection to travelling pastors.

In a final irony, during a visit to Nairobi for the World Council of Churches meeting in 1975 and
while leader of the Presbyterian Church and vice-president of the most widespread of the political
parties in the colony, Timakata was detained in Madras for several days as Indian customs officials
struggled with his travel documents.

Despite French efforts to split the vote between the ‘moderate’ French parties and the National
Party, the first elections for the Representative Assembly delivered the National Party 59% of the
ni-Vanuatu vote and a majority of two in the universal suffrage seats. But the party was unable to
form a government, owing to the large number of seats allocated to the Chamber of Commerce.
The National Party boycotted the assembly, and as the stalemate could not be resolved, the
party – now renamed the Vanua’aku Pati – declared that they would recognise neither the assembly
nor the British and French governments and formed a People’s Provisional Government with flag
raisings around the country and at Port Vila. Fred Timakata was charged with explaining the
Vanua’aku Pati decision to the Australian foreign minister in the Fraser government, Andrew
Peacock.
The stalemate forced Britain and France to find a political solution. The resultant Dijoud Plan set
the blueprint for decolonisation, including the drafting of a new constitution with representatives
from the political parties, the chiefs, the churches and Nagiramel. The proposed cabinet for a
Government of National Unity to rule until elections could be held included five Vanua’aku Pati
ministers. The chief minister in this transitional government was Catholic priest and activist Gérard
Lemang.

Regenvanu and Apostolic lay activist Madeline Kalchichi were the representatives of the New
Hebrides Christian Council on the committee for the constitution. They hired as their legal adviser
a devout Catholic lawyer from Papua New Guinea, Bernard Narokobi, who had worked on the
PNG constitution with Catholic priest John Momis and was at the time engaged in the writing
of The Melanesian Way. Regenvanu recalled that, with the assistance of Narokobi, the well-
organised Vanua’aku Pati and church representatives were able to make submissions to the
committee before any others. As a result their submissions formed the basis of the final version
that was taken around the colony by members of the constitutional committee for discussion at
village-level meetings.

The elections preceding independence in November 1979 voted the Vanua’aku Pati into power
with over 60% of the popular vote and a significant majority of the assembly of 39 seats. The
platform was the return of alienated land, the development of Vanuatu and respect for kastom. At
the independence of the nation in 1980 the first government, formed by the Vanua’aku Pati,
included five Presbyterian pastors and was led by Anglican priest Father Walter Lini as prime
minister. Pastor Fred Timakata was deputy prime minister and minister of home affairs. Pastor
Sethy Regenvanu was the minister of agriculture, forestry and fisheries. Pastor Willie Korisa was
the minister for health. Pastor Jack Taritonga, moderator of the Presbyterian Assembly at the call
for independence on Tanna in 1973, was also elected. Those Presbyterian members of parliament
who were not pastors, such as Donald Kalpokas, were almost exclusively elders, also an ordained
position and a very significant post in church and village life in Vanuatu.

While all the churches were involved in the decolonisation of Vanuatu, the Presbyterian Church
was active as an institution; the church worked openly to raise national consciousness and spread
the word of independence around the colony. The independence of the Presbyterian Church gave
ni-Vanuatu the experience of church leadership and organisation which was put into practice in the
1970s. Pastors developed both theological knowledge and political skills through their engagement
in the spiritual and temporal elements of the Presbyterian Church. These political skills – necessary
prerequisites for independence from the Condominium – were readily translated to the early forms
of political representation in the colony and then the representative assembly of the nation. As
pastors gained their education in other decolonising nations of the South Pacific, such as Papua
New Guinea and Fiji, they interacted with the emerging educated elite of the South Pacific and
were exposed to the radical theological ideas of the 1960s and 1970s. They returned to the New
Hebrides determined to fight for political change and used Presbyterian committees and the
structures of the church as arteries for the raising and promotion of anticolonial sentiments. Thus,
the Presbyterian Church worked to develop a nationalist movement that was acceptable to the
British and provided many members of the first government of Vanuatu.