Some reflections on a visit to Papua New Guinea after 48 years
In 1970, as a newly married couple, my wife and I
visited New Guinea, as it was then known. The island was divided into three
parts: the western half was known as Irian Jaya, now West Papua and the eastern
half was divided into New Guinea in the north and Papua in the South. With
independence from Australia and self-government in the mid-70s, these two
eastern parts were united to form Papua New Guinea. West Papua is part of
Indonesia. We went sometime around Easter 1970. After arriving in Port Moresby
we flew to Mt Hagen via Goroka by DC3, stayed with a young John and Anne
Hitchen. John was Dean of the Christian Leaders’ Training College (CLTC, https://www.cltc.ac.pg/). This was before
they went to Aberdeen for John’s PhD Studies. We travelled by truck down the
Highlands Highway to Lae with Norman Bartlett, and after a few days there we
flew back to Port Moresby (again by DC3) and home again.
The road between CLTC and Lae was unsealed and very
rough – the 433 km journey took about 12 hours. Google Maps tells me that it
would take about 8.5 hours today. My abiding memories are the people. We would
stop the truck in the middle of nowhere and almost immediately 20-30 people
would appear out of the bush. They wore primitive clothing, a sort of belt
around the waist with a narrow apron hanging down the front and a small branch
of a tree with leaves (“arse-grass”) tucked in the back. The women were all
bare breasted, like the pictures I had looked at in the National Geographic
as a boy. The people would let you take a photo for 10 cents (Australian currency),
but, alas, all the photos are long since gone. Lae was the hottest and most
humid place I had ever experienced, and the ceiling fans were totally ineffective.
The only other thing I remember about Lae was the swimming pool at the Hotel
Cecil, known locally as the “Cesspool”.
Yu
Christianity has had a big influence in PNG. The
most recent census (2011) indicated that 95.6% of the population identified as
Christian, although this is hard to square with the lack of law and order. I
learn from Daimoi’s thesis that every village in PNG has a church in a
prominent place, and that Christian principles are enshrined in the PNG
Constitution (pp. 6-7). Nevertheless, many people seem to be Christian in name
only.
I went to one of those village churches one Sunday
and it was filled, probably with everybody from the village in attendance. Some
were sitting outside until the pastor went out and compelled them to come in. I
understand that many were there because “that is what you do on Sunday.” On the
other Sunday I was taken on a 5 hour drive in the bush to visit several other
village churches. In one village there were three churches within 100 metres.
Factionalism is endemic and when somebody is unhappy with the status quo it is
easy just to start another church.
Ancestors are a significant part of life in PNG. I
ought to have recognised this, living as I do in Aotearoa New Zealand, where
one’s whakapapa includes mention of one’s ancestors. Several times I noticed
graves in a prominent place in a village, sometimes under a shelter and often elaborately
decorated. The need to honour the
ancestors and maintain relationships with them is central, and they are
consulted when important decisions need to be taken. Daimoi discusses this
aspect of his culture on pp. 13-14 of this thesis and I am looking forward to
learning more as I continue to read.
I was invited to work with the two cohorts of MTh
students at CLTC. There were five students in the first year cohort and seven
in the second year cohort. I taught research methods to the first year cohort
and helped the second year cohort with their thesis proposals. I was ignorant of theological education in
1970 so I can’t say what was happening at CLTC then. But it does seem to have
come a long way from its small beginnings in 1965. I don’t need to repeat what
has been written elsewhere, rather I refer to two essays by my Laidlaw College
colleague, Dr John Hitchen.
His essay “Evangelicals Equipping Melanesian Men
and Women: An Interpretation of the Training Ministries of the Christian
Leaders’ Training College of Papua New Guinea, 1965–2010” chronicles the
development of the academic side of the College from offering a four year
Certificate level qualification in 1965 to the present day, with the College
accredited by the PNG Government to offer bachelor’s and master’s degrees in
theology. Two statistics stand out to me. First, over 1,500 graduates of the
College are working throughout Melanesia and other parts of the Pacific. Some
have served as members of the PNG House of Assembly (Parliament). Secondly, I
have a list of almost 200 BTh and MTh theses written at the College from 1979
to 2017 This is no small achievement from a College that has operated for just
over fifty years, in a majority world country that only really emerged from the
stone age in the twentieth century. I note too that CLTC has only one full-time
faculty member from a Western country; the remainder are Melanesian scholars,
most of whom have MTh qualifications and some with doctoral level
qualifications.
Aerial view of CLTC campus. |
The academic programme is only part of the work of
the College. John presented a paper at the “Woven Together” Conference on
Christianity and Development in the Pacific at Victoria University, Wellington,
New Zealand in June 2016. The paper is entitled “The Christian Leaders’
Training College of PNG – A Case Study of a Christian Contribution to Economic
Development and to Theological Change at
Worldview and Social Imaginary Levels for Sustainable Development in Melanesia.”
CLTC has attempted to be self-sustaining over that time. At present there is a
farm with beef cattle and a small abattoir, a poultry business, formerly
operated by the College, but now operated by a third party in premises leased from
the College, and rice production. Prior to that there was a trucking business
and a timber mill, and at other times there has been pig production, supplying
pigs to the local communities, an agricultural training programme and technical
and trade training programmes. A name that comes to mind in connection with all
these initiatives is Garth Morgan, who has been involved with the College since
the very beginning, and who was visiting when I was there, working on ongoing
issues with the poultry production. Always self-effacing, Garth will deny it,
but to my mind he has had a massive influence on these aspects of the College’s
work.
So what did I learn? Two things come to mind.
First, God has been at work in PNG over the past half-century. The development
of this College and the work of the graduates is ample testimony to that.
Secondly, I learned things about contextualisation in theological studies. Two
examples stand out. I have photographs that come up on my computer as a screen
saver. At one point a photograph of a house I had formerly owned came up and I
explained that I had sold it. The students were incredulous that I should sell
my land. They have a connection to land like the Māori and like the OT people
of God. Like Naboth they would say, “The LORD forbid that I should give you my
ancestral inheritance” (1 Kings 21:3). The other example is connected with a
thesis that one of the students is writing. He told me of the belief in his
culture (PNG has over 800 languages, and therefore over 800 cultures) of a
supreme God called Ngin-ndreii
art papu su,
which translates to the “God of my ancestors.” He will argue in his thesis that
God had revealed himself to his ancestors as this supreme God to prepare their
hearts to receive the gospel of Jesus Christ.
After spending some time with this student I
bought two Kindle books by former Canadian missionary Don Richardson. The first
was Eternity in Their Hearts (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 2005 [1981])
and the other was Peace Child (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 2005 [1974]).
In Eternity in their Hearts Richardson starts with Gen 14 where the
Canaanite priest Melchizedek is identified as priest of El Elyon, the Most High
God. When Abraham responds to Melchizedek he identifies El Elyon as YHWH (Gen
14:22). Then Richardson turns to Acts 17, where Paul identifies the “unknown
God” of Athens as “the God who made the world and everything in it … [the] Lord
of heaven and earth” (Acts 17:24). Richardson argues that these two texts
indicate that God had revealed himself to these two cultures (Canaan and
Athens) in such a way as to prepare them for the coming of the gospel of Jesus
Christ. I didn’t find the rest of the book very well-written, but Richardson does
go through numerous cultures around the world demonstrating the same ideas.
None of this had ever occurred to me before, but I think he is right.
Peace Child is much better written. It is a
biographical account of Richardson’s work with the Sawi tribe of West Papua
between 1962 and 1972, work that was going in when I was in New Guinea in 1970.
The book’s title refers to a tribal custom of exchanging two children between
warring tribes to make peace, peace that would endure as long as the children
lived. Richardson sees an analogy here of God in Christ reconciling the world
to himself. It was this custom, which Richardson observed, that enabled him to
explain the gospel to the tribespeople in a way that led to the first members
becoming followers of Jesus.
God has been at work in PNG (and West Papua) to be
sure. But not only in the twentieth century. God was there millennia ago
preparing the hearts of these wonderful people for the arrival of the gospel among
their many cultures.
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