One of the first missionaries to reach Sāmoa, John Williams’ success opened the floodgates for every version of Christianity into the country. Today around 95% of Sāmoans are actively Christian “Sāmoa is founded on God”.
John Williams Memorial Marker
Beach Rd, opposite intersection with Ifiifi Street.
His remains are buried across the road within the Christian Congregational Church.
Sāmoans in small numbers, through contact with Christian sailors, started converting to Christianity from the late 18th Century. In 1830, John Williams an ironmonger turned lay missionary from the London Missionary Society (LMS) arrived to bring the gospel to Sāmoa. Having proselytised first in Tahiti and then Rarotonga, he was so determined to reach Sāmoa that he built his own boat. The Sāmoans had heard about the new religion, and when the LMS arrived they called their beliefs Lotu Ta’iti (lotu (noun) = church). By 1840 a large number of Sāmoans had converted. The first Sāmoan language dictionary was completed by 1835; newspaper published in 1839; and a school and theology college opened in 1842. Williams’ success lay in getting cooperation from high-ranking matai such as Malietoa and channelling energy into mentoring a few converts, who in turn went out as "teachers" to make converts of their own. Within two decades Sāmoan LMS missionaries were going out to other Pacific Islands
Sāmoans, unlike Tahitians and Rarotongans did not have temples to pull down or idols to burn to demonstrate to the missionaries when they were accepting Christianity. John Williams described in his journal of 1832 how the rejection of their old gods was symbolised by a large ceremony in which the village converts cooked and “ate their aitu”. Each person in Sāmoa was forbidden to eat certain species of birds, animals or fish because these represented the ancestral, village or district aitu. When a village decided to lotu ((verb) become Christian) this act so desecrated the spirit in each creature that it could never be worshipped again.
John Williams was dead before the end of the decade. Killed in Vanuatu (possibly in revenge for the acts of other white men who were capturing locals as slave labour) his body was eaten but his skull and some bones were recovered and brought back to Sāmoa and buried beneath the LMS Church in Apia.
Missionaries from other Christian denominations arrived just before and soon after John Williams and the LMS, but never caught up completely in terms of impact. The LMS created the first fully independent church in the South Pacific with a fully indigenous ministry and administration. Today it is called the Christian Congregational Church of Sāmoa (CCCS) and it is still the largest denomination with 35% of the Sāmoan population.
Christianity has blended into fa’a Sāmoa. Prior to the arrival of European missionaries, Sāmoa had a complex polytheistic religion with elements of ancestor worship. The large ships, with metal tools and papalagis (white people) arrived from the horizon, bringing perhaps also, a need for new explanations for Sāmoans to make sense of the world. It is said that the Sāmoan war goddess Nafanua had prophesied that a new religion would come and end the rule of the old. In any case patriarchal Christianity posed little challenge to the hierarchical Matai system - on titles or inheritance. Christian Sāmoans still held their ‘ava (kava) ceremony. The divine right of chiefs however was now transferred to the Christian god and their sacred power was now held by the village pastor. Another main impact was the lowering of the role of women in relation to men. Pastors took on much of the societal esteem formerly shown to Sāmoan women, and in their church schools transferred European gender relations and skills which cast females in a new subservient role.
Visits of missionaries to the colonies like Australia aroused public interest in missions and drew attention to trade with the Pacific islands. Williams, himself believed and spoke publically that the Christianisation of the islands in the Pacific would lead to the greater prosperity of Sydney's business houses. John Williams Jnr, the missionary’s son, was the first copra trader in Sāmoa exporting six tonnes in 1842.
VISITOR HIGHLIGHTS
- The Christian Congregational Church, known in Sāmoan as Ekalesia Fa'apotopototoga Kerisiano Sāmoa or EFKS, has a Museum and Fine Art Gallery about halfway between Apia and the international airport. Through beautiful woodcarvings, paintings and other artworks you can learn more about Samoan legends and Christianity.
