Saw Missions in Action in New Guinea
By CHAPLAIN ARNOLD M. MAAHS
Chaplain Maahs, now Director of Foreign Mission Reconstruction and Development of the American Lutheran Church, delivered the following address on 27 March 1946 at the Foreign Missions Conference of North America, Buck Hills Falls, Pennsylvania. Surely the foreign mission work of all denominations will benefit from the firsthand acquaintance of missions at work by Army, Navy and Marine personnel acquired during the progress of the recent war.
HAVE been in the Christian Ministry for over twelve tian so they could get something out of it. Their ChristianL years but I never would have believed that the Christian ity was that of conviction. Gospel works as well as it does except that I saw it suc- The war brought hardships and difficulties to the Luthceed in New Guinea. All of us who are Christians know eran Church of New Guinea. It is not necessary to state about the power of the Christian Gospel but all too often that Japanese were not good enemies. There are many our knowledge is purely academic. The very fact that we instances where the Christian natives died rather than are Christians and that we have Christian churches is a repudiate their faith. living testimony to the power of the Christian Gospel. In any evaluation of Foreign Mission Work there is apt But our knowledge is academic in that we lack contrast to be a confusion between Christianity and culture. The here in America between those people who are ethically important thing in evaluating a Foreign Mission Program good and those who are of the Christian communion. is the distance that the native Christians have come. There In New Guinea that contrast between Christian and is bound to be a culture lag. But the point is that these non-Christian is a striking one. There is such a tremendous people have come a long way from their heathendom and gulf between the natives of New Guinea and those of us their faces are turned in the direction of God. I looked who live in this aspect of western civilization which we over many Christian congregations in New Guinea and know as America. The New Guinea native lives in a saw men who had been cannibals. I saw fathers who had primitive community; ours is highly mechanized. There been cannibals worshipping God in the service of common was one thing which was able to bridge the great gulf be- worship with their Christian sons beside them. Less than tween the Christian natives of New Guinea and myself. It twenty years ago cannibals were still roaming the seacoast was the cross on my collar. areas of the Mandated Territory of New Guinea where Whenever a Christian native in New Guinea saw the this war was fought. American soldiers landed among a cross on my collar he immediately said that I was a "Mis- kindly, Christian people. The cannibals had become Chrissionary belong America." He recognized at once the com- tian. mon bond of all those who belong to the fellowship of It seems to me that the strength of the Lutheran Church Jesus Christ regardless of race or color, or degree of culture in New Guinea was apparent in three areas because: and civilization. The cross on my collar made us brethren 1. The natives were practicing Christians. Heathen re in spite of the fact that we lived in entirely different worlds. ligion is a part of the everyday life of the heathen native. In the interior of New Guinea I saw the heathen natives He now uses his Christianity in the same practical way. He still living in their filth, fear, and superstition. I realized begins his day with morning devotions and ends the day more than ever before that if the lot of these people were the same way. He uses his Christian faith. to be improved at all it would be up to God and the power 2. The native Christians are separatists. Entire comof His Gospel to do it. I knew man had no ethical concepts munities are Christian in New Guinea and a high degree adequate to the task. I also began to appreciate the prob- of spirituality is developed in a complex of likemindedlems which confronted those first missionaries sixty years ness. Here in America it is possible to be a practicing ago when they began the Lutheran work in New Guinea. Christian but separatism in the New Guinea sense is imThe Mission is now only sixty years old, as we count time possible unless we return to an agricultural economy. two generations. And yet in this short space of time, actu- However, it is possible for every Christian to be a sepaally only the years which belong to a father and his son, ratist in that he will not ally himself with those non60,000 heathen natives have been converted to Christianity. Christian elements-and influences in his own community. The war made a battlefield of Lutheran Mission terri- 3. Christian natives are mission minded. Since Christory in New Guinea. Missionaries were removed from the tia ity is a tremendous value in their own lives, they want field, taken prisoner by the enemy or killed. The Christian to share it with those who do not have it. Communities natives, left to their own devices, maintained their spiritual send out their young men to carry the Gospel of Jesus integrity and their faith. The reason for the faithfulness Christ to those natives beyond the next range of mountains of the Lutheran native is not hard to find. He had actually who do not have this message. The individual Christian been converted to Christianity. I saw no rice Christianity congregation sends the missionaries and supports them. in New Guinea. I saw no natives who had become Chris- r(Continied on page 10) April -May, 1946