Kawaiahao Church and Mission Houses, Honolulu
Kawaiahao Church and the Mission Houses in Honolulu are significant historical and cultural landmarks that reflect the early establishment of Christianity in Hawaii. The church, often referred to as the Westminster Abbey of Hawaii, was founded in the early 19th century with the support of Hawaiian royalty, notably King Kamehameha II, who provided land and labor for its construction. Completed in 1842, the church features simple Puritan architectural lines, enhanced by locally sourced coral blocks, and can accommodate up to 1,500 people. It has served various roles over the years, including as a political center and meeting place, where key figures like King Kamehameha III spoke about the sovereignty of Hawaii.
The adjacent Mission Houses Museum consists of three restored buildings dating back to the early 1800s, including the oldest wooden house in Hawaii, which served as a rectory for the church. The museum showcases the life and work of early missionaries, as well as their impact on Hawaiian society, including the development of the Hawaiian language and early education initiatives. The site is also home to cemeteries where both missionaries and Native Hawaiians are interred, adding to its historical significance. Collectively, Kawaiahao Church and the Mission Houses offer valuable insights into the religious, cultural, and social dynamics of early Hawaii.
Kawaiahao Church and Mission Houses, Honolulu
Date Church completed in 1842; three adjoining mission houses built in 1821, 1831, and 1841
Significance: Kawaiahao Church, still active in the Hawaiian community and offering Sunday worship in the Hawaiian language, is the first permanent house of worship in the Hawaiian Islands. The mission houses, preserved as a museum, reflect the daily life and work of the early Puritan missionaries and their successors.
Locale: Central Honolulu, the island of Oahu
The first ship of Puritan missionaries arrived in Hawaii from Boston in 1820 at an opportune time, when the established Hawaiian religion had lost power among the ruling class after the death of King Kamehameha I. King Kamehameha II accepted Christianity and donated land and labor to construct a church and a home for the Reverend Hiram Bingham and his family. The monarchs and their families were baptized, married, coronated, and laid in state in the church. The acceptance and sponsorship of this Congregationalist church by Hawaiian royalty gave it a reputation as the Westminster Abbey of Hawaii. The adjoining mission buildings housed missionaries and a printing center.
Establishment of Christianity in Hawaii
Reverend Bingham led the Congregationalist missionaries sent out on the brig Thaddeus from the Park Street Church in Boston. King Kamehameha I, who had united the Hawaiian Islands and started a ruling dynasty, had just died, and his favorite wife, Kaahumanu, had led the overthrow of the kapu system of forbidden practices that held together the traditional Hawaiian religion.
In this religious vacuum, Bingham was popular and influential with the alii (ruling class). Kamehameha II gave him land in 1820 and workers to build the first of four thatched churches at the site in 1821. He also allowed Bingham to ship a precut New England-style clapboard home as a rectory. In addition, an adobe schoolhouse, Likeke Hale, was built in 1835 to teach palapala (the Bible) and paper learning in general. Built of mud, limestone, and coral fragments, it is the only surviving adobe structure built in Hawaii in the early 1800’s. It is still used for Sunday school classes and smaller church meetings.
Bingham worked with Elisha Loomis to develop the printing trade in Hawaii. He wrote down the oral Hawaiian language, establishing the seventeen-letter alphabet (which was later changed to eleven letters). The first edition of the New Testament in Hawaiian was completed in 1832, and the entire Bible in 1839. Bingham had five hundred adult students from the upper class of Hawaii; the education of children came later.
Kawaiahao Church
Construction of the existing building began in 1837 and took five years to complete. Bingham designed the church from memories of churches in his native New England. The severe Puritan lines are softened by the use of coral blocks as building material. King Kamehameha III formally deeded the land in 1840 and supervised the construction, ordering more than a thousand of his people to work on it. They quarried fourteen thousand one thousand-pound coral blocks from underwater offshore reefs cut with blunt axes by men diving ten to twenty feet. Logs cut from the forest on the windward side of the island were brought by canoe and hauled over the pali (cliffs). The church was dedicated in 1842, two years after the Binghams and their seven children returned to New England due to the failing health of Mrs. Sybil Bingham.
The interior of the church has simple Puritan lines and can accommodate fifteen hundred people. From the choir loft with its large pipe organ extend two long upper galleries displaying twenty-one portraits of Hawaiian monarchs and their families.
In Puritan fashion, the church has served as a meeting place and political center. King Kamehameha III spoke in 1843 after the restoration of the Hawaiian sovereignty following a brief British takeover of the island, intoning what is now the motto of the state of Hawaii: Ua mau ke ea o ka aina i ka pono (the life of the land is preserved in righteousness). It holds Hawaiian-language services on Sundays at 10:30 a.m.
The grounds include two cemeteries. The missionaries and their descendants are buried at the back of the church. Native Hawaiians are buried on the harbor side, an estimated two thousand in the 1800’s, many victims of diseases introduced by early sailors and settlers. King William Lunalilo is buried to the right of the churchyard’s main entrance in a Gothic mausoleum.
The name Ka-wai-a-Hao means “the water used by Hao,” a chief who was carried frequently from her home in Moiliili for ceremonial bathing and purification in a spring located perhaps near the present News Building on King Street. A stone was moved from the spring to the churchyard and set in the present artificial pool supplied by piped water.
The Mission Houses
The three restored and refurnished early nineteenth century buildings comprise the Mission Houses Museum. Frame House, built in 1821, a rectory for Kawaiahao Church, is the oldest wooden house in Hawaii. The precut timber for this two-story white frame house was shipped around Cape Horn from Boston. Chamberlain House, completed in 1831, is a more elegant, large coral house that initially served as the residence for the family of Levi Chamberlain, the mission’s purchasing agent. Coral House, built in 1841, was used as a printing office and storehouse.
Bibliography
Damon, Ethel M. The Stone Church at Kawaiahao. Honolulu: Honolulu Star-Bulletin Press, 1945. Offers photographs, drawings, documents, and excerpts from missionaries’ diaries.
Gowans, Alan, and Daina Penkiunas. Fruitful Fields: American Missionary Churches in Hawaii. Honolulu: Department of Land and Natural Resources, 1993. Gives historical and architectural contexts of Hawaiian churches.
Scott, Edward B. The Saga of the Sandwich Islands. Lake Tahoe, Nev.: Sierra-Tahoe, 1968. Traces the development of Honolulu and Oahu. Many old photographs.