November 26, 2025

A Thanksgiving Message from the Bishop

My dear Siblings in Christ Jesus,

I write my Thanksgiving message from a Fiji Airlines flight to Tonga. This year I will spend my holiday with our extended Church family in Oceania.

With representatives from St. Andrew’s Schools and ‘Iolani School, I am representing our Diocese at the 120th anniversary celebration of the founding of St. Andrew School, Nuku’alofa. It was founded in 1905 by Bishop Alfred Willis (1836-1920). The motto of the School is “Love, Truth and Peace.”

It's truly a family visit. You’ll remember that Bishop Willis was the second Anglican Bishop in the Kingdom of Hawai‘i. He served in the Islands from 1872-1902. A staunch monarchist, he refused to recognize the illegal overthrow of Queen Lili‘uokalani’s government or the annexation by the United States. Once the annexation was a fact, Bishop Willis transferred ecclesiastical jurisdiction to the Episcopal Church. After thirty years in the Kingdom of Hawai‘i, he went on to serve God’s people in the Kingdom of Tonga for another eighteen years.

Bishop Willis was a person of his age. He was a Victorian English Oxford-educated clergyman. He had a particular dislike of Americans and their republican tendencies (which he considered hypocritical) and Protestants in general (especially Congregationalists). He was strong willed. There was conflict during his tenure as Bishop. He locked the “Second Congregation” (largely Americans) out of the Cathedral (the other congregation was called the “Bishop’s Congregation” — the precursor of the 8:00 a.m. liturgy in the Cathedral), and actually excommunicated the Rector and congregation of St. Clement’s Church because he considered it illegally formed while he was out of the Diocese. He could be self-righteous and unbinding. He was devoted to the Church, the schools (personally buying land for ‘Iolani College — as it was then known) and establishing ministries with funds he raised himself (including from notable English Victorians like the poet Alfred Lord Tennyson).

He offered the same vigor to the Church in Tonga. He arrived and entered into the work at the invitation of a select group in the Kingdom but not with the particular permission of any other Anglican Church authority. He established a decided “catholic” Anglican Church. He also established St. Andrew’s School (a name that connected the new ministry with his old Cathedral and the Sisters’ St. Andrew’s Priory School).

So, through a sometimes grumpy Victorian English Bishop with a long white beard, we have a family connection to the Anglican Church in the Kingdom of Tonga.

I can think of no better way to spend a Thanksgiving holiday with extended family. I take that back. It would be better if Bea was with me. I’m blessed she understands.