Overview
Christian missionaries arrived in the Pacific around 1800 to spread their ‘Word of God’. The missionaries encouraged the local people to abandon their ‘false’ ancestral gods for the one ‘true’ god who would bring salvation.
Some locals distrusted the missionaries, but many welcomed them. Indigenous converts were soon preaching the gospel in their own languages. Largely through their work, Christianity spread rapidly around the region, as did literacy. The island peoples took on not only Christian ideas but also the forms in which those ideas arrived, especially printed texts and cotton cloth.
But another sort of conversion was also occurring. Pacific peoples reshaped Christianity in ways that were meaningful to them. They adapted its forms, including its styles of dress, incorporating indigenous motifs and their own artistic flair. In a sense, they revised ‘the Word’ to suit their island setting.