Anyone who has visited the Church of Melanesia in the Solomon Islands cannot fail to have noticed that religious life is flourishing. Today, when many religious communities are finding it hard to attract young vocations, the contrast one finds in Melanesia is remarkable.

There are four Anglican religious communities working in the Solomon Islands: the Melanesian Brotherhood, the Sisters of Melanesia, the Society of St. Francis and the Sisters of the Church. All these communities live under vows of poverty, chastity and obedience and all these communities are full of young people with far more applications than they are able to accept. It is true that this is partly because the religious communities provide education and opportunities which will take young people outside their home village or island and but there is more to it than that. Those who seek to join one of the religious communities know that it is not an easy option: it will involve discipline, motivation and self-sacrifice This is a serious commitment both to prayer and service.

The fact is that many have been inspired by the life of other brothers and sisters and the stories they have heard about these communities. Each village will talk with pride about any relation who has joined. These young people have a grace, which is unmistakable. They are greatly respected and yet have a simplicity and humility that reaches the hearts of all age groups. Their life has a spontaneity and joy very close to the song of the beatitudes. People sense that this is what the Christian church should be like.

These are the real evangelists: the good news people. This is not paper evangelism; this is not about lists, aims and procedures, budgets, modules, offices, committees and endless administration or 'super' evangelists and experts flown in from overseas. This is real evangelism that goes on largely unsung, unfinanced, undocumented. These evangelists walk the roads with bare feet and no money. These are evangelists whom people can welcome in their homes like returning sons or daughters, who will share whatever food there is and who will sleep on a mat and help hoe the garden, catch the fish or repair the roof. These are the evangelists who will come whenever they are called to pray for the sick, solve a village dispute, calm down a husband who is drunk. And when they visit, they bring a sense of goodness, the sense that something better is possible.

The Melanesian Brotherhood was founded by a remarkable man named Ini Kopuria, a Solomon Islander on the Island of Guadalcanal in 1900. After being educated at the Anglican church schools of Pamua and later in Norfolk Island he joined the British Protectorate's native armed police force. But in 1924, when he was recovering in hospital from a leg injury, he received an experience of Christ, which was to change his life. He believed that Christ spoke to him and told him that he was not doing the work that Christ wanted him to do. He began, with the encouragement of Bishop John Manwaring Steward, to realize God was calling him to start a community of native Solomon Island men who would take the Gospel of Christ to all who had not received it.

Much of the population of the Solomon Islands lived on remote islands, villages high up in the hills and bush or coastal villages with no easy access either by sea or land. Ini Kopuria believed the Gospel was for all people and just as he had visited remote villages as a policeman, now he would visit as a missionary. On St. Simon and St. Jude's day, October 28, 1925, he made his promises renouncing possessions, marriage and freedom of action. He gave away all his property and a large area of his family's land to the Brotherhood. The following year the first six brothers joined him.

The purpose of the Brotherhood was evangelistic: "To declare the way of Jesus Christ among the heathen." But as a Melanesian, Kopuria would evangelize in a Melanesian way. He sought not to draw the people away from their villages and communities but to take Christ to them. It was a community approach. The coming of Christ should not go hand in hand with the invasion of a foreign culture and individualistic concept of personal salvation without consideration for ones people. This was the kind of mission the first bishop and martyr of Melanesia, John Coleridge Patteson, had envisioned when, 50 years before, he had written that his aim was not to make English Christians in white men's clothes but Melanesian Christians.

The Melanesian Brotherhood did and continues to do just that. Arriving in often-hostile villages, they aimed to share the life of people in all things. There would be no forced conversion. It was not long before their reputation began to grow. These brothers were prepared to come and stay. They were not frightened of devils and ancestral spirits. Their prayers could drive away fear. People began to speak of their miracles of healing and signs they had witnessed and to say that the brothers, or Tasiu, as they became known in Mota language, had mana and spiritual power. The brothers converted many villages, but there were not always priests available to follow up this work of primary evangelism.

Today this community of the Melanesian Brotherhood is still very much loved and respected by the people. In a very real sense it belongs to them, to Melanesia. Ini Kopuria was a Melanesian of whom Melanesians are proud and in many of the villages throughout the Solomons you will find men who have been brothers in their youth and whose children have now become brothers. They receive three years training as novices before they are selected by the brothers for admission. While in the Brotherhood, they must make a promise of poverty, chastity and obedience, but these are temporary vows, which can be renewed.

Kopuria believed that after five years of service a man should be free to return to his community and start a family if that was his calling. Release from the community, after a valuable period of service, was not a thing of shame but to be celebrated at the feast day. Groups were set up within each village called the Companions whose work it was to help the Brotherhood through prayer and material support and follow up their ministry after the brothers had moved on to the next village. Again this has made people feel that this community is theirs and depends on their support.

The Melanesian Brotherhood has established 27 households in all five provinces of the Solomon Islands. Most of these are small, leaf-roofed working households built in the more remote missionary areas, which will become the base for about four to six brothers for mission and touring. A lot of the brothers' work now involves secondary evangelism: helping to encourage and build up the faith of many who are still Christian but only in a very nominal way These bare-footed evangelists tour the remotest villages, lead Sunday Schools, youth groups and adult teaching, lead worship, and act dramas in the villages. Their households aim to become a parable of community life.

The Melanesian Brotherhood is the oldest and largest community within the Church of Melanesia. Yet each of the other religious communities shares in much of the same ministry while having its own charisma and gifts. The Sisters of Melanesia were founded by a woman from Guadalcanal, Nesta Tiboe, in 1979.

In 1967 Nesta received a vision in which she realized that Melanesian women were also called to serve God "without fear, shame and doubt." Nesta was a brave and determined woman and though facing much male opposition at first, established a community of women on the same lines as the Melanesian Brotherhood.

There are now 30 sisters, with no lack of vocations. The sisters' community is marked by its joy and simplicity of lifestyle. Although it has been more difficult for young women to tour the villages, they now have an active outreach program, a disciplined and devout prayer life and a deserved reputation for help and hospitality.

The ministry of the Sisters of the Church was extended to Melanesia in 1970. Mother Emily the founder born in England, 1836, was a woman of tireless energy whose vision combined both adoration and action: Both are very much in evidence in the Solomons today. Their households have become sanctuaries for mothers and their children escaping domestic violence and the sisters are frequently called upon to protect women and children from drunk and violent partners.

Recently the sisters addressed the problem of street children in Honiara, at one point providing accommodation for nine under 10-year-olds whom they had found living on the streets and fending for themselves.

The sisters have opened the eyes of many people and, by their example, have encouraged the church to become more socially aware. They have also won the respect of many people by showing the wonderful potential and gifts women have to offer within the church.

The Society of St. Francis Pacific Island Province is also growing more quickly than any other. It is an ecologically aware community, as one would expect, and, in a country where the rain forests are being devastated, their friary at Hautabu and Little Portion is a refreshing alternative with its tree planting, chickens, organic farm and cattle. Many of the Franciscan households are to be found in the towns.

The urban problems are growing and all the religious communities are increasingly called upon to minister to these needs. Modern "heathens" are often more difficult to convert for their world is no longer related to the world of the spirit but the modern gods of materialism.

At their best the religious communities are living the Gospel in a very direct way and that is their major contribution to the church. By living such a radical alternative to the values to which modern society has become addicted they open up to others the hope and the possibilities of the kingdom of which Christ spoke.

This article is adapted from A resource Book for the Training and Mission of the Melanesian Brotherhood, by Mr. Carter

In traditions in which scientific theology has been cultivated (e.g., pagan, Jewish, Christian, Muslim), it has always been recognized that theology is grounded in and illuminated by divine revelation. As Aristotle says, we have this knowledge “because the gods are not jealous.” Thus, for Christians, theology begins with God’s Word revealed (in Creation, in the Incarnation, in the Holy Scriptures and the Sacred Tradition which links us to that Word), and the progress of theology is a matter of “faith seeking understanding” (St. Anselm).

It might seem obvious that Canadian Anglicans should seek to understand their faith, yet the opportunities for doing so are meagre. Our universities have pretty much abandoned “the queen of the sciences”; theological colleges, with very crowded curriculum, have tended to sacrifice the study of theology to make room for professional training; and bishops have often discouraged the advanced study of theology as irrelevant to parish ministry.

But our neglect of the critical, scientific study of theology leaves us vulnerable to all the passing fads and preoccupations of our particular time and place, and leads us to form policies on the basis of (often ill-informed) majority opinion, or majority “feeling.” In the absence of critical study, opposed views become opposed dogmatisms (whether liberal or conservative), and debate becomes the unprofitable argument of a screech against a scream.

The issues that now divide Anglicans, in Canada and throughout the world (liturgical, moral, etc.), are essentially theological issues, and the creative resolution of our conflicts will depend very much upon a renewed commitment to the science and critical study of theology.

The value of theological study, however, goes far beyond such practical consideration. The Christian life is fundamentally a matter of knowing and loving God, and all else in that perspective. Our loving is the final moment, but our loving proceeds from our knowing. It is thus, indeed, that we are “saved by faith.” Our theology is our endeavour to understand that faith, and, by grace, to be made perfect in the love of God who reveals himself in that faith. In the end, we shall know as we are known and love as we are loved. That is theology’s completion.

It might seem obvious that Canadian Anglicans should seek to understand their faith, yet the opportunities for doing so are meagre.… Theological colleges, with very crowded curriculum, have tended to sacrifice the study of theology to make room for professional training.

There is a story that Beethoven once played a newly composed sonata for a friend. When he had finished, the friend asked, What does it mean? Beethoven sat down at the piano and played the sonata all over again.

I feel something of Beethoven's implied disapproval as I stand here trying to talk about hymns. Talking implies reason, logic, thinking—everything we associate with the left side of the brain. Although they include words, hymns are firmly anchored by music to the affective and intuitive dimensions of experience, to the realm of the pre-rational. I don't mean that they are necessarily irrational, although some of them certainly are, but pre-rational, belonging to that shadowy but vital realm of thought that stands behind our logical constructions. Hymns cannot exist without music—can you imagine a liturgy in which we solemnly recited five hymn texts in spoken voice? Nor do they succeed without metaphor, alliteration, rhythm and all the apparatus of language we call poetry. As constructs of music and poetry, whether profoundly simple or highly exalted, they defy the kind of analysis we imply by the question: What does it mean?

Hymns are actually ritual events. They do not really exist in hymn books. They do not consist of paper and ink. Hymn books are only containers for the tradition. Hymns exist when people sing, whether a congregation on Sunday morning, a solitary performer in a Sikh Gurdwara, or myself alone in the shower. A hymn is there for as long as the singing goes on, providing like all rituals do, a bridge of passage from one moment to another, a bridge of passage that is illuminated by the combination of words and poetry to give expression to the significance of the moment. The passage of the moment may be only from one part of the liturgy to another, but it may also be from one state of mind to another—from cynicism to rejoicing, from indifference to repentance, from forgetting to remembering (as on Remembrance Day) from raw grief to healing lament. Hymns grasp the moment and open the way to opportunity beyond it.

Some of the oldest collections of hymns are from the Indian subcontinent. They are called the Vedas. Some of them are hymns of praise, but others are actually ritual formulas to be recited by a priest who is offering sacrifice. Some of the psalms of our tradition are not dissimilar. The earliest description of Christian worship by a non-Christian, the letter of Pliny the Younger to the Emperor Trajan, may imply a parallel understanding of the Eucharist prayer. He said it was the custom of Christians to gather before dawn on a fixed day and to sing a hymn, a carmen, to Christ, as if to a god. Whatever Pliny had been able to discover about the fabric of our worship, the ritual nature of hymns was secured at an early date in our history. Phos hilaron, the hymn to Christ at light, was sung to mark the passage from day to night, and even some of the hymns in the New Testament may have a similar use.

Of course our oldest hymn book is the psalter, which came to us with the rest of the Jewish Bible. If one sifts out some of the wisdom and history psalms, the rest of the collection is about two-thirds praise and one-third lament. I haven't done a detailed count in Common Praise, but I suspect our collection is similar, that roughly two-thirds of our hymns are praise and thanksgiving and one-third are expressions of longing and lament. I think this is a healthy pattern. We are most ourselves, most open to grace when we go beyond ourselves in praise and thanksgiving. This is fundamental to our faith tradition. Our primary act of worship is called Thanksgiving albeit in Greek. On the other hand, there is much to lament—our personal failures, our social hardness of heart, our destruction of the environment, the homelessness of people in our streets and parks. It is appropriate that our hymns capture this dark side of our human condition as well. However, it is also appropriate that, like the psalms of lament, they bend back to praise. The purpose of lament is not self-flagellation but repentance and conversion, and the purpose of conversion is transfiguration. This is one of the passages our hymns invoke.

One of the greatest strengths of hymns as we know them is that they are popular—they belong to the people. When Guru Nanak wanted to promote a religious synthesis beyond the conflicts of Hinduism and Islam and beyond the isolating violence of caste, he led people out into the forest to sit in a circle and sing hymns.

Singing hymns on the eve of the Sabbath is an important feature of Hasidic spirituality. Hymns mobilized the Wesleyan revival, providing people with gut-level access to theology. This popular dimension of hymnody has a dynamic two-way aspect. Hymns are not just an instrument to put ideas into the heads of the unsophisticated. They are a way in which the church as a living community can try out new ideas, new trends and at a popular level.

For example, prayer for the dead almost vanished among Anglicans after the Reformation because of the excesses and superstition of medieval piety. However, after the First World War many people felt a need to express in prayer their continuing love for those they had lost. Long before it would have been possible to insert prayers for those who had died in any Prayer Book, they were tried out, almost experimentally, in hymn collections. I believe it was the presence of such hymns in our 1938 Hymn Book that made it possible to include modest prayers for the dead in our 1962 Prayer Book.

Similarly, Canadian Anglicans were content to sing And now, O Father, mindful of the love, with its setting forth of the sacrifice of Christ, long before they could have contemplated similar words, what we call amamnesis in their Eucharist prayer. It is in this spirit that Common Praise reflects a broader and more inclusive use of images of God, a sharpened sense of justice and responsibility, a deeper commitment to the equality of the human family, a recognition that the kingdom is truly already even if not yet.

It is when we mention justice and responsibility that we have to remember that hymns, however sensitive, are not ends in themselves. The warning of the prophet Amos must not be forgotten. Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harp. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an overflowing stream.

Paul said much the same thing when he told the Corinthians that the tongues of mortals and angels without love are only noisy gongs and clanging cymbals—whatever the marks of good hymnody. Hymnody that masks our vocation to kindness, compassion and responsibility is an abomination, or what the liberation theologians would call an ideology. We may, if we are careful, take Amos' stern words as hyperbole, so long as we take them seriously.

In this vein, I note that probably the most poignant reference to a hymn in the whole Bible is a little verse that appears almost unnoticed in Matthew's and Mark's account of the last supper. When they had sung the hymn, it reads, they went out to the Mount of Olives. The hymn in question is presumably the Hallel, Psalms 113–118, which still concludes the Passover meal. It is deeply moving to realize that we probably have the text of the hymn that Jesus and his disciples sang immediately before he went out to the desperation of the garden, to betrayal, to Jim Crow trial and to death. That hymn is full of praise, and trust and blessing.

The dead do not praise the Lord, nor all those who go down into silence; but we will bless the Lord, from this time forth and for evermore.... The Lord watches over the innocent; I was brought very low and he helped me.... How shall I repay the Lord for all the good things he has done for me? I will lift up the cup of salvation and call upon the name of the Lord.... I will give thanks to you, for you answered me and have become my salvation.... Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord; we bless you from the house of the Lord.... Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his mercy endures forever.

Between the fellowship of that last meal, itself an activity so characteristic of Jesus and his ministry, and his final engagement with the oppressive powers of religion and state, there is this final gesture and ritual of passage, this pause between resolution and action, which gives focus and definition to all that stands before and after. Ultimately, that is why we sing hymns and, to maintain the living tradition, why we publish hymn books.