Minister urges isle
churches to speak out

Churches should tackle
drug abuse, violence and other
tough issues, he says

By Mary Adamski
Star-Bulletin

Hawaii's churches don't speak out enough about community issues of justice and ethics, says the man who has headed the United Church of Christ here for the past four years.

"We don't engage our faith in the public arena as much as we should," said the Rev. David Hansen, who stepped down last month as Hawaii conference minister for the denomination which has 125 congregations with about 20,000 members statewide.

Some local churches are key players in fighting efforts to legalize gambling here, he said, and that is the kind of involvement he urges on other fronts. "We could do more on issues of economic empowerment ... as we see the poor, the disenfranchised, the marginalized, left with less.

"We could do more in the area of healthy families and healthy communities," he said, such as initiatives against domestic violence and drug abuse.

"We have moved so far away from dealing with the tough issues of the day. I think the community is impoverished by it," said Hansen. "Now we pass resolutions that say we cannot bring motions to the floor unless they are congratulatory motions.

"It doesn't mean we have to be on the cutting edge of every issue that's out there ... just for the sake of being out there, avant garde, that's not the point. But the Gospel does have something to say about the quality of life in the human community."

The United Church of Christ, descendant of the Congregational missionaries who brought Christianity to Hawaii, made headlines a few years ago when it did step into the political arena.

The church nationwide issued an apology to the Hawaiian people for its role in the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy.

Hawaii members followed up in 1996 with a redress plan, putting $4.5 million in cash grants and property into a foundation to benefit its 45 Hawaiian churches and the wider Hawaiian community.

"We are at the beginning of the third part, reconciliation," he said. "The approach I agree with is to begin with the theological and biblical definition of reconciliation, then decide how are we going to follow that path."

Hansen said his contributions included work in facilitating the redress process, and in launching Kula Kahunapule, a spiritual leadership training project.

"The idea incubated for years, with leadership from older Hawaiian pastors. I helped get it out of the starting blocks; I was glad to have something to do with it." Taught locally by pastors and affiliated with the denomination's Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, it can be the path to ordination or a way to strengthen ministries here.

An area where the conference faced change during his watch has been the growing number of immigrants -- Samoan, Micronesian, Filipino -- swelling the ranks in the kamaaina church. "I think we want to keep the heritage, honor those traditions but not be divided by them."

Hansen, who was a pastor in Wisconsin, California and on Kauai, was always impressed by local people's respect for others' diversity.

But he is aware that there is "a tension with religious pluralism. In some circles of the church; the pluralism has created a strong push for some notion of purity (which) separates Christianity from everybody else, or makes one religion better than any other."