Kawaiahao Church and Its Hawaiian Services

February 22, 2003

Source: The New York Times

On February 22, 2003 The New York Times reported that "on a bright, tropical Sunday, the pews at Kawaiahao Church are filled with the faithful: locals in suits or flowered muumuus, tourists in shorts, conspicuous with their name tags and camera bags... The Hawaiian rendering of the Lord's Prayer, with the soft, round vowels of the native language, tumble over the crowd like a wave coming in to shore. 'E ko makou makua iloko o ka lani...' But the tourists, many reading along from a program, are not the only ones who do not understand much of what is spoken in unison... Unlike churches that offer services in Spanish or Polish or Portuguese because their congregants are most comfortable in those languages, Kawaiahao, of the United Church of Christ, has among its flock many Hawaiians who do not speak the language they come to hear. But they consider the ritual an expression of their culture."