Distance from God is expressed in phrases like “we little, unfortunate, miserable, evil people: we live on this miserable earth, but it is no longer our home; we want to go to our Father in heaven.” The immanent religion has turned transcendent and the new village is in heaven where they can find the land of peace.
In another article119 Vicedom supports Keysser’s claim that the new congregation must be organized as theocracy, because the convert does not encounter God outside of his group. When the tribe becomes God’s people, the law of the group is the law of God, and Christ is the Lord of the tribe. Lutheran Christians had found their place in the history of salvation. They accepted the Bible as the book of God’s history with humans; they viewed faith as a communal affair, feared the punishment of God, prayed for His intervention, and fought against temptation. Disobedience to the law or failure to follow it resulted in condemnation and placed the transgressor in the realm of evil forces. Sickness was regarded as punishment for evil and recovery after confession was to be expected.
The policy of the mission had been based on indigenous evangelists and teachers. Many missionaries had reservations against an indigenous clergy because they were afraid of a clerical hierarchy in conflict with the traditional village leadership. While the Methodist mission in Fiji started to train clergy in seminaries twenty years after the beginning of the mission, the Lutheran mission in PNG took seventy years before establishing the first seminary for the training of clergy in 1957. In 1944 there were 60,000 baptized Lutherans with 800 evangelists and 400 teachers, but no ordained minister.120
Mission based on evangelists had its limitations.121 After baptism the work of the evangelist should have finished. They did not have the education to become teachers and felt disadvantaged in comparison with government teachers. Their preaching was often legalistic because their theological training was basic. The Christian way of life became a school of behavior. Holy Communion could be celebrated only by the missionary, and used to happen around four times a year. In the 1940s many congregations did not have Holy Communion for up to seven years.
When the church finally started to train pastors, their role was often confined to Sunday services, sacraments, and marriages, while the oversight and control of the spiritual and church life resided with the local elders. However, their authority was no longer unchallenged. Dissidents could leave the village community which once again broke up into family units.122 Students returning from cities introduced new ideas with which the elders could not cope.
The missionary to the Mount Hagen tribes, Hermann Strauss, reported at the Mission conference of 1953 how the New Guinea Christians understood repentance.123 According to his observations the religious life was “thoroughly legalistic.” Sin was “understood in a very external way” as acting against the rules of the group. Law was the way of life of the group, but not internalized as God’s guidance. Shame took the place of conscience and “being ashamed” the place of repentance. Wrongdoing could be rectified by submitting to the punishment of the congregation. Confession was often “the child of fear, fear of the consequence of sin regarding health and outward prosperity.” Forgiveness was obtained not through inner repentance and faith, but through submission to the penalties of the congregation. Repentance was regarded as a kind of offering which deserves to be rewarded.
Strauss recommended two ways to deepen the understanding of repentance: the preaching of the Old Testament prophets and insistence on God’s holiness can help to view sin in relation to God. Sinful man must “be hammered with the Law until their pride and stubbornness of heart is crushed, only then can it be right to preach to them forgiveness and grace.”
On the other hand, Strauss admonished the missionaries to accept the spiritual realities and not impose their theology. The New Guinea Christian did not distinguish between inner attitudes and outward expression; attitudes must become visible acts. Repentance needs an outward demonstration of doing penance. The importance of church discipline is to help restore the relation of the sinner to the community. The Western individualistic approach is not applicable to the communal understanding of life in New Guinea. Reconciliation in a Melanesian context extends to God and the fellow Christian.
Strauss was an excellent expert whose deep understanding of the highland people is revealed in his anthropological studies. Remarkably, in this account Strauss does not opt for an approach following the New Testament proclamation of the gospel of forgiveness and justification by faith and grace alone, but recommends a stronger preaching of the prophetic law exposing sin and a tight Christian social order.
The report of missionary Hannemann from 1962 confirms this understanding of sin and law among the Lutherans.124 Adultery is regarded as the most serious sin, while indifference against God’s word is considered a minor wrong. The law is outward and not inward. The necessity of God’s forgiveness is not accepted. Many confessions are quite selective, or without a feeling of remorse.
The Lutheran Church experienced a phenomenal growth from 100,000 members in 1950 to 1,001,000 in 2000. However, after declaring autonomy in 1976 under Bishop Zurewe, signs of a crisis became more visible. The church had difficulties coping with many social changes, though Bishop Zurewe introduced new missions and established new districts. Urban migration destroyed village communities and their traditional discipline. New values were introduced through Western lifestyle, films, and videos. The Lutheran schools became more secularized. In the late 1950s and 1960s the Australian government enforced English-speaking schools which were controlled by the government, while the church maintained the tok ples (local vernacular) schools.
The time of mass conversion was over, but the second step of individual growth of faith did not always follow. We can note these changes for instance in the use of sacraments and rituals. According to a report of missionary Hans Flierl from 1968,125 14 percent of the baptized adults (208,000 at that time) were not confirmed. Reasons included the return of “animistic heathendom” and growing secularism. He also identified a lack of educational material, an outdated pedagogy, and a lack of post-confirmation instruction. Holy Communion could not replace the significance of baptism, because it was rare, and often linked with magical beliefs. Personal confession before Holy Communion had lost its seriousness, because serious sins were hidden.
What was regarded as the fruit of the gospel—peace, the new social order, the roads which connected the congregations, schools, and hospitals—could now be accessed apart from the church. The fear of the missionaries at Tatura had become true.
Most congregations had stopped supporting evangelists and church workers. This was handled by the districts. Only the youth and the women started their own mission work. “As more and more emphasis is now being placed on church structure and clericalism, congregations are becoming mere ‘observers of the show.’”126 The structures of the church—with its circuits, districts, and the National Church headquarters in Lae—reflected a conflict between a Western organization and the Melanesian way of doing things. The structures were regarded as having magic power to provide all necessary means.127
The crisis was further highlighted in the 1977 fact finding survey (FFS), in which 160 evangelists, pastors, elders, students, and church leaders were interviewed using questionnaires about six topics: worship and congregational activities; the work of congregations in towns; community involvement of the church; church financing; cooperation between congregations, circuits, districts, and the national head office; and church leadership. Editor Theodor Ahrens summarized the findings as follows:128
1. Elders, pastors and missionaries are facing far-reaching problems of role insecurity. Their roles are not clear to themselves nor to others. Hence they often have difficulties responding to the expectations which people have towards them.
2. The information provided about congregations indicates a crisis of motivation