8 - Hawaii: The High Path to Conversion, 1821–1830

Summary

Chapter 8 explains why the most powerful chiefs in Hawaii decided to be baptised a few years after dispensing with their old cult. The most important of these factors revolved around immanent power: The ability of the new god to deliver victory in battle in the immediate aftermath of the abolition, and to Christian forces at the battle of Waimea in 1824, made a great impression, while healing was, as always, also a matter of concern. The impotence of the old gods was confirmed by deliberate challenges to the volcano goddess Pele and the female prophets who spoke for her and by the iconoclastic tours of Ka‘ahumanu, who was now taking centre stage. Meanwhile, the high chiefs also felt the need to repair the sacral basis to their authority, if now in a more righteous mode, while the strict form of Protestantism provided a way of ‘restoring the tabus’, disciplining both their subjects and the Euro-American inhabitants of Honolulu.