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Vol. 27, NoOctober 20

Mission and the Margins

Amargin is the blank border of a printed page. To bemarginal is to be of the edge, neither central nor signifi-cant. Some 150 million human beings officially qualified asmigrants, of which an estimated 20 million were refugees,according to United Nations figures for 2002. Such ciphers maskthe angst of social dislocationwith its attendant miseries, hu-miliations, and dangersendured by specific individuals, eachwith a name, a story, and modest hopes. Refugees are on themargins of the marginalized, significant only to the extent thatthey constitute an inconvenience or a security threat to theircomfortably incumbent host populations.

In his lead article, Jehu Hanciles explores the impact ofmigration on church and mission, arguing that the Christian faithdepends for its survival upon cross-cultural diffusionone ofthe inevitable side effects of population dislocation. LalsangkimaPachuaus wonderfully informative study takes a close look atsome of the most vital churches in the world, whose combinedmembership represents nearly a quarter of Indias Christianpopulation. Inhabiting the disdained edges of mainstream Hindu

society, the peoples of Northeast India have affirmed andgrounded their indigenous identities by embracing an extraordi-narily missional Christianity.

In Great Britain, as elsewhere in Christendoms traditionalheartlands, a once confident establishment church, having atro-phied into a spiritually enfeebled, demographically decimated,and missiologically tentative vestige of its former self, nowstruggles to survive. Although it has paid scant official attentionto its missionary fringes in the past, its renewalif there isrenewalmay spring from these now vital margins, accordingto Kenneth Ross in his article Blessed Reflex.

The essays in this issue remind us that the universe is not likea two-dimensional sheet of paper. Seeing merely the surface ofthings, we humans necessarily invent and employ terms that

reflect this limitation. But the mysterious verity embedded in ourmoral universe is that those on the outer edges of human cogni-tive maps are at the center of Gods modus operandi. Godsmultidimensional perspective places human marginseven re-ligious ones, as Jacques Dupuis suggestsat the center of divinesignificance. The One whose memory Christianity evokes was

himself profoundly dispossessed. Born into the ethnic fringes a powerful empire, he found himself on itsmargins. He annoyeprovoked, and was finally dispatched by custodians of the statuquo. His coterie comprised mostly people with neither pedigrnor the capacity to make a mark on human history. The humblhis mother had sung, would be exalted; the meek, he had claimewould inherit the earth.

And truly, it was and is such men and women who, acuteconscious that here we have no lasting city, have turned thworld upside down. This issue of theIBMR reflects that realit

On Page146 Mission and Migration: Some Implications fo

the Twenty-first-Century ChurchJehu J. Hanciles

154 Church-Mission Dynamics in Northeast Indi

Lalsangkima Pachuau

162 Blessed Reflex: Mission as Gods Spiral ofRenewalKenneth R. Ross

164 Noteworthy

168 My Pilgrimage in MissionJacques Dupuis, S.J.

171 The Legacy of Henry Robert CodringtonAllan K. Davidson

177 Book Reviews

187 Dissertation Notices

188 Index, 2003

192 Book Notes


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In the preface to his book The Melanesians: Studies in their Anthropology and Folk-Lore (1891), Robert Codringtonwrote, One of the first duties of a missionary is to try tounderstand the people among whom he works. He himselfreflected a deep commitment to this value. Over his many years

with the Melanesian people, he gained a deep knowledge of theirsociety, languages, and customs through a close association withthem. Codrington was careful, however, in making claims abouthis understanding, quoting with approval the words of theMethodist missionary Lorimer Fison: When a European has

been living for two or three years among savages he is sure to befully convinced that he knows all about them; when he has beenten years or so amongst them, if he be an observant man, he findsthat he knows very little about them, and so begins to learn.1

Codrington and the Melanesian Mission

Codrington was born in 1830 in Wroughton, Wiltshire, England; both his father and his paternal grandfather were Anglican

clergymen.2 Codrington attended Charterhouse from 1845 to1848 and then Wadham College, Oxford, graduating with a B.A.in 1852 and an M.A. in 1856. He was elected to a fellowship atWadham, which he held from 1855 to 1893. Ordained a deacon in

The Legacy of Robert Henry Codrington

Allan K. Davidson

1855 and priest in 1857, he served as a curate to Edmund Hobhouin Oxford. Hobhouse became the first bishop of Nelson (NeZealand), and Codrington followed him out to New Zealanserving at Collingwood for eighteen months from 1860 to 186and then at Waimea. Codrington was a moderate High Churc

man. He was not impressed with colonial society and founhimself very much at home working in the Melanesian MissioCodrington was not an ambitious man, declining both the post first bishop of Dunedin and the missionary bishopric of Melanesafter Pattesons death.

The Melanesian Mission, inaugurated in 1849 by the Angcan bishop of New Zealand, George Augustus Selwyn, wunique in its missionary approach. The mission was a mixtuof pragmatism, given . . . [Selwyns] inadequate financial anhuman resources, and romantic idealism associated with hvision, which was to make my diocese the great missionacentre of the Southern Ocean.3 Working in the Solomon Islandand the northern islands of what is now know as VanuatSelwyn recruited young men and later young women to com

back to New Zealand for training, with the hope that when thereturned home, they would become evangelists among theown people. From the outset the mission took a positive aproach to Melanesians and their society. Selwyn rejected thevangelical language and attitude of his age, which condemnepeople as vile, poor heathen, or perishing savages.4 JohColeridge Patteson, who was consecrated as the first missiona

bishop of Melanesia in 1861, built on this approach, writing thevery single man, because he is a man, is a partaker of th

Allan K. Davidson teaches church history and is Director of PostgraduateStudies in the School of Theology in the University of Auckland, New Zealand.

He taught in Papua New Guinea (197781) and specializes in New Zealand andPacific religious history.


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necessary to do any more translation into Mota, preferring tobegin work in one of the Solomon Island languages.23 In 1898,while he was translating the Prophets, he complained, I am notaltogether in favor of translating obscure passages & parts of thescripture until a fair number of natives can make something outof them. . . . In a mission with a great number of tongues, I shdthink it better to get the New Test. complete in ten of them, beforegetting the Old Test. complete in one.24

While Mota was the common language, students were

grouped with missionaries, who were encouraged to learn lan-guages from different areas in Melanesia. Codrington endorsedPattesons approach, believing that Melanesians must teachtheir countrymen in their own tongue, and by their own tonguethey must be taught. In the same way the layperson must bepreached to in his own language, and in his own language heought to pray.25

Patteson gained a reputation as a prodigious linguist andshared some of his early work on Melanesian languages withFriedrich Max Mller, the noted Oxford Sanskrit scholar andlinguist. In 1865 Mller encouraged Patteson to make a system-atic study of Melanesian languages, arguing that savage lan-guages alone can show how far languages can change. He sentto Patteson, via Codrington, who was visiting England, EdwardTylors recently published Researches into the early history ofmankind and the development of civilization (1865), along with hisown review of it. Mller suggested, It will show you howvaluable accurate, trustworthy observations of the habits ofsavages are for many important inquiries.26

Patteson, who was too preoccupied with the demands ofoverseeing the mission to undertake detailed philological stud-ies, encouraged Codrington to engage in linguistic work.

language groups, the Melanesian tongues, which were marked by considerable differentiation but with a general unity olanguage at bottom, and the Polynesian languages, which wercharacterized by unchangeableness or similarity.28 The recognition of two major language families in Melanesiawhat arenow called the Austronesian (the Polynesian languages) and thnon-Austronesian (or the older Melanesian languages)fits inwell with later philological understanding.29

George W. Stocking has indicated that although Codrington

was in touch with evolutionary anthropology through hicontacts with Edward Tylor, whose lectures he attended inOxford in 1883, Codrington never really became a convert toevolutionism.30Codrington was no armchair theorist like MllerTylor, and Gerland, with whom he corresponded. Before field

based anthropology and its development as a professional academic discipline, missionaries were among the best informantregarding other peoples, their cultures, and their languagesMissionaries long-term residence and their commitment to learning peoples languages made them participant-observers in societies and cultures that they were seeking to modify. Codringtonwas among the most accomplished of the nineteenth-centurymissionary scholars who contributed significantly to the earlygrowth of anthropology through their ethnographic and philological researches.31

Pioneering Anthropological Insights

In The Melanesians, which was his major contribution to anthropology, Codrington indicated that his approach was as far apossible to give the natives account of themselves by givingwhat I took down from their lips and translating what they wrotthemselves.32 The adoption of an evolutionary framework anduse of social Darwinism by anthropologists led them to segradations among people from savagery to civilization, withinherently racist overtones. Codrington avoided these conclusions, retaining a positive approach to Melanesians. Referring toa book by Edward Tylor, Codrington noted that he gives credimost deservedly as most people dont, to savages for havingplenty of brains. He quite confirms what I always have said thasavages are wonderfully like other people.33 Following hireading of John Lubbocks Origin of Civilization and the PrimitivCondition of Man (1870), Codrington concluded that the savageof the scientific man receed [sic] farther and farther from myexperience, and my belief is that if you could get the evidence opeople who really know and live with those savages who areconsidered the lowest[,] you would find that the savages of thvery low type does not exist in the world.34

Codrington was critical of the armchair theorists, complaining that scientific men fit their evidence to preconceived ideaof what savages ought to be.35While he thought Julius Brenchley

general views are good in his travelogue about the PacificCodrington described it as one other example . . . of what I findeverywhere that a traveller puts his own notions into the actionor work of savages and then the philosophers at home quote himas an authority.36 Codrington was open to acknowledging hiown biases and was conscious of the difficulties an outsider hadin trying to understand a society and people different fromhimself, describing how every one, missionary and visitorcarries with him some preconceived ideas; he expects to see idolsand he sees them. . . . It is extremely difficult for any one to beginenquiries without some prepossessions, which, even if he cancommunicate with the natives in their own language, affect hiconception of the meaning of the answers he receives. Th

Conversion for Codringtoncould be seen in changes in

peoples way of life.Codringtons researches culminated inThe Melanesian Languages,published in 1885. In the same year he was awarded an honoraryD.D. from Oxford. Codrington included in his book a compara-tive examination of seventy words in forty Melanesian lan-guages and the study of the grammar of thirty-five differentlanguages. Most of his research was carried out among thestudents at Norfolk Island by the medium generally of the Motalanguage and reflected the contacts they provided him with thecentral Melanesia societies.27 It was a notable achievement, giventhe heavy demands placed on him

Codrington was faced with trying to understand both the

bewildering multiplicity of languages in Melanesia and thephysical and cultural diversity among the peoples. In a lengthyletter in 1874 to the German anthropologist Georg Gerland, heidentified what he called possibly [a] modern Polynesian ele-ment or pure Polynesians living at places like Bellona, Tikopia,and Nukapu within the Melanesian area. He noted considerabledifference between the Banks islanders and New Hebridespeople when compared with those living in the Solomon Is-lands. In distinguishing people, he referred to practices preva-lent in some areas such as head-hunting and native art andindustry. Codrington distinguished between Melanesians inthe Solomon and Santa Cruzs groups who chewed betel nut andthose to the east who drank kava. He identified two major


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questions he puts guide the native to the answer he thinks heought to give.37

The Melanesians was a considerable achievement of scholar-ship. Codrington describes in great detail, with multiple ex-amples from the different areas familiar to him, Melanesiansocial regulations and behavior, religious and spiritual dimen-sions, the stages of life and rites of passage, material aspects,dances, music, and games. The significance of Codringtonswork lay both in his descriptions and in his development of his

own theoretical framework.The most influential contribution Codrington made to an-

thropology was in his identifying the belief in a supernaturalpower or influence, called almost universally mana. In a foot-note Codrington refers to a quotation that Mller makes in his1878 Hibbert Lectures drawn from one of Codringtons letters, inwhich Codrington described mana: There is a belief in a forcealtogether distinct from physical power, which acts in all kindsof ways for good and evil, and which it is of the greatestadvantage to possess or control. This is Mana.38Mana forCodrington was that invisible power which is believed by thenatives to cause all such effects as transcend their conception ofthe regular course of nature, and to reside in spiritual beings.This power could be used negatively or positively, making rainor sunshine, wind or calm, to cause sickness or remove it, to knowwhat is far off in time and space, to bring good luck and prosper-ity, or to blast and curse.Mana is something a person has; it can

be gained, increased, or lost.39 The effect ofmana, Codringtonwrote, lay in peoples belief in the efficacy of the prayers, offer-ings, charms, and rituals used to convey and acquire it, shrewdlyobserving that it is not only in Melanesian islands that whateverconfirms a belief is accepted and whatever makes against it is notweighed.40

What Codrington does not explore is how far Christianitywas seen as offering access to a new form ofmana. Certainly theconfusion between the Christian Gospel (i.e., the message) andthe cultures brought by the missionaries (the medium, particu-larly their material possessions) created considerable confusionas Melanesians sought the mana of the new teaching in order toacquire the mana of the material goods that would give themincreased status in their own society. Melanesian cargo cultsmust be understood within the conceptual framework of theMelanesian world, which Codrington began in his work toreveal. Darrell Whiteman, making a crude paraphrase ofCodrington, indicated that without mana there is no salvation;salvation, of course, being an abundance and success in all thepossibilities of human life.41

The lasting value of Codringtons work was in drawing fromfirsthand informants and from his own experience in the islandsinsights into Melanesian life and customs and placing them in acoherent interpretative framework. As Whiteman observed,

however, Western scholars, including Codrington, have madefar more of it [mana] philosophically and intellectually thanwould Melanesians, to whom mana is related to results ob-tained, and not to an abstract concept upon which is hung aphilosophical argument.42

The Missionary Approach to Melanesia

Building on the foundations of Selwyn and Patteson, Codringtondeveloped an approach to Melanesian society and missionarywork that others were to extend. Walter Ivens and Charles Foxstood in the Codrington missionary/scholar tradition. Fox wroteof Codrington that he had a great reputation as a philologist and

anthropologist far beyond Melanesia. . . . In deep insight, sounjudgment and at the same time originality of ideas he stands verhigh.43 The Selwyn-Patteson-Codrington approach encouragea form of inculturation of Christianity in the MelanesiaMission before the word was coined, although that inculturatiohad distinctive Anglican characteristics.44 The missionary straegy of bringing young people to Norfolk Island, however, dnot result in the rapid evangelization of their home islands.45

Sara Sohmer has identified the intellectual background an

missionary approach of the Melanesian Mission that contriuted to its nonjudgmental approach to Melanesian society in thnineteenth century.46 Codrington can be identified as sharinthese factors. He was not only open to the new developmenin philology, ethnology and comparative mythology but egaged in the careful examination of sources, was willing utilize different types of evidence, and had an enlarged senof historical time and a strong preference for the comparativeFor Codrington, the universality of Christianity formed both igreatest innovation and the theological basis of mission.47

In 1887 Codrington retired from the mission, returning fa brief period in 1892, when he worked with John Palmer producing a Mota dictionary. He was a vicar of Wadhurst in thDiocese of Chichester from 1887 to 1893, a prebendary Chichester Cathedral from 1888 to 1895, and served for twentfive years as a lecturer at Chichester Theological College.48

1902 he delivered the Wittering Lectures at the cathedral on thpresentation of Christianity to savage peoples. His last majpublication was his entry Melanesians in HastingsEncyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics.49

Codrington was reluctant to write about his own life anwork. He was rather horrified to find that a journal of an islanvoyage he had sent to his brother was published.50 He objecteto the idea of writing an autobiography on the grounds that hhad no wish to obtrude himself on the public, that he would saso much about other people, including Melanesians, who counot read what he said, and because it would be always doubtfwhether what I was writing was true. He regarded his transltion work as decent but was aware that there are not tepeople in the world who know whether it is good or bad, not 10white men who know that it has been done. This knowledgdoes not puff one up much.51

Codrington died on September 11, 1922, a few days short his ninety-second birthday. The Times in its obituary said of hithat his name will be remembered as the Apostle of the Pacifsoundest of scholars, kindliest of teachers, most practical friends. There was among us no better theologian, no profoundphilologist. A truly wonderful personality, a great man, a saiand a gentleman. . . . Never was master more loved, venerateand obeyed. Sons of chiefs thronged his school, and he was likthe venerable Bede in his power of teaching and learning.52

An anonymous manuscript containing a tribute Codrington says of him that it was his personality which madhim wonderful, far more than his mastery of theology and eveother branch of knowledge. . . . He was one of that great aninspiring community the Society of great people[,] adoptinfrom choice an active career, as a missionary, a universal scholand a philanthropist, he was distinguished for his place amonthese unselfish apostles of civilization and Christianity. . . . Hwas the most remarkable man I ever saw.53

In his description of Robert Henry Codrington, missionascholar Fox said, If Patteson was the Apostle of MelanesiCodrington was its Teacher. Saint and Doctor are titles thrightly belong to him.54


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Select BibliographyCodringtons papers are at Rhodes House Library, University of Oxford.A collection of his letters is in the Melanesian Mission Papers at theSchool of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

Works by Robert Henry Codrington1885 The Melanesian Languages. Oxford: Clarendon Press.1891 The Melanesians: Studies in their Anthropology and Folk-Lore.

Oxford: Clarendon Press.

1896 (with J. Palmer)A Dictionary of the Language of Mota, SugarloaIsland, Banks Islands: With a short grammar and index. LondonSociety for Promoting Christian Knowledge.

1906 (trans.) Story of a Melanesian deacon: Clement Marau, written bhimself. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge

1915 Melanesians. Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics. Ed. JameHastings. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 8:52938.

Notes1. R. H. Codrington, The Melanesians: Studies in their Anthropology and

Folk-Lore (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1891), p. vii. I am grateful toDavid Hilliard for his comments and suggestions on this article.

2. Michael Blain, comp., Clergy in the Diocese of Auckland, 18141869(Auckland: Diocese of Auckland, 1999), p. 31.

3. Allan K. Davidson, An Interesting Experimentthe Founding ofthe Melanesian Mission, in The Church of Melanesia, 18491999, ed.Allan K. Davidson (Auckland: College of St John the Evangelist,2000), p. 21.

4. Ibid., pp. 3738.5. [J. C. Patteson], Lecture on the Melanesian Mission, Delivered at Sydney

by the Right Reverend Bishop Patteson, Together with the Reports andAccounts of the Mission, from July 1, 1862, to December 31, 1863 (n.p,n.d.), p. 7.

6. Davidson, An Interesting Experiment, pp. 3839.7. Ibid., pp. 3940.8. Codrington to his aunt, Norfolk Island (NI), May 9, 1867, Univ. of

Oxford, Rhodes House, Codrington Papers (hereafter RHCP), MSSPac. s. 4, fol. 5.

9. Ibid., August 1867, RHCP, fol. 12.10. Ibid., December 1, 1869, RHCP, fols. 42, 43.11. Ibid., NI, February 12, 1875, RHCP, fol. 145.12. Codrington to T. Codrington, September 1, 1879, London School of

Oriental and African Studies, Melanesian Mission Papers (hereafterMMP), l. 95

13. Codrington to his aunt, NI, November 29, 1870, RHCP, fol. 57;January 17, 1873, fol. 107.

14. Ibid., Southern Cross, October 1, 1872, RHCP, fol. 102.15. Codrington to T. Codrington, NI, May 8, 1878, MMP, l. 82.16. Codrington to his aunt, NI, July 24, 1875, RHCP, fol. 160.17. Codrington to his aunt, at sea, October 27, 1870, RHCP, fol. 53.18. Ibid.19. Codrington to T. Codrington, NI, August 7, 1871, MMP, l. 31.20. Ibid., NI, November 8, 1871, MMP, l. 33.21. David Hilliard, Gods Gentlemen: A History of the Melanesian Mission,

18491942 (St Lucia: Univ. of Queensland Press, 1978), pp. 6275;David Hilliard, The Making of an Anglican Martyr: Bishop JohnColeridge Patteson of Melanesia, inMartyrs and Martyrologies, ed.Diana Wood (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), pp. 33345.

22. Codrington to his aunt, at sea, October 27, 1870, RHCP, fol. 52.23. Ibid., fol. 166.24. Codrington to ?, November, 27, 1898, RHCP, MSS. Pac. s. 28, fol. 10.25. Codrington to C. H. Brooke, Chichester, October 12, 1917, RHCP,

MSS Pac. s. 28, fols. 65, 66.26. Max Mller to J. C. Patteson, Oxford, April 16, 1865, RHCP, MSS Pac.

s. 29, fol. 3.27. R. H. Codrington, The Melanesian Languages (Oxford: Clarendon

Press, 1885), pp. v, vi.28. Codrington to Dr. Gerland, NI, December 31, 1874, RHCP, fols. 134

44.29. Peter Bellwood,Mans Conquest of the Pacific: The Prehistory of Southeast

Asia and Oceania (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1979), pp. 11634.30. George W. Stocking,After Tylor: British Social Anthropology, 1888

1951 (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1995), p. 39.31. John M. Hitchen, Relations Between Missiology and Anthropolog

Then and NowInsights from the Contribution to Ethnographyand Anthropology by Nineteenth-Century Missionaries,Missiology

An International Review 30 (October 2002): 45578.32. Codrington,Melanesians, p. vii.33. Codrington to T. Codrington, Southern Cross, September 30, 1872

MMP, l. 40. The book by Edward Tylor is not identified but is eitheResearches into the early history of mankind and the development ocivilization(London: J. Murray, 1865; 2d ed., 1870) or Primitive cultureResearches into the development of mythology, philosophy, religionlanguage, art, and custom, 2 vols. (London: J. Murray, 1871; 2d ed1873).

34. Codrington to T. Codrington, off Torres Islands, August 20, 1873MMP, l. 48. See John Lubbock, The origin of civilisation and the primitivcondition of man: Mental and social conditions of savages, 2d ed. (LondonLongman, Green, 1870).

35. Codrington to T. Codrington, off Torres Islands, August 20, 1873MMP, l. 48.

36. Ibid., Southern Cross, October 21, 1874, MMP, l. 56. See Julius LBrenchley,Jottings during the cruise of HMS Curaoa among the SouthSea Islands in 1865 (London: Longmans, Green, 1873).

37. Codrington,Melanesians, p. 118.38. Ibid., pp. 11819.

39. Ibid., p. 191.40. Ibid., p. 193.41. Darrell Whiteman,Melanesians and Missionaries: An Ethnohistorica

Study of Social and Religious Change in the Southwest Pacific (PasadenaCalif.: William Carey Library, 1983), p. 74.

42. Ibid.43. Charles Elliot Fox, Lord of the Southern Isles: Being the Story of th

Anglican Mission in Melanesia, 18491949 (London: Mowbray, 1958p. 220.

44. See the discussion in Whiteman,Melanesians and Missionaries, pp171451.

45. See Hilliard, Gods Gentlemen, pp. 79120.46. Sara Harrison Sohmer, A Selection of Fundamentals: Th

Intellectual Background of the Melanesian Mission of the Church oEngland, 18501914" (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Hawaii, 1998); Sohmer

Christianity Without Civilization: Anglican Sources for aAlternative Nineteenth-Century Mission Methodology,Journal oReligious History 18 (December 1994): 17497.

47. Sohmer, Christianity Without Civilization, pp. 180, 182.48. Blain, Clergy in the Diocese of Auckland, p. 31.49. R. H. Codrington, Melanesians, in Encyclopaedia of Religion an

Ethics, ed. James Hastings (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1915), 8:5293850. Codrington to T. Codrington, NI, August 7, 1871, MMP, l. 31.51. Codrington to Appleton, Chichester, June 18, 1903, RHCP, MSS. Pac

s. 28, fol. 30.52. R. H. Codrington, Times, n.d., RHCP, MSS. Pac. s. 33, fol. 21.53. Anonymous manuscript, RHCP, MSS. Pac. s. 7.54. Fox, Lord of the Southern Isles, p. 220.

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