Kawaiahao Church

The walls are pale and rough beneath your hand. They are made of coral, lifted long ago from the sea. Inside, the air is cool and very still. Sunlight falls through clear glass windows onto rows of dark wooden pews. Your voice drops to a whisper without your meaning it to. This is Kawaiahao Church, one of the oldest churches in Hawaii.

The church stands on ground that was sacred long before it was built. Here once lay a spring of fresh water that belonged to a high chiefess of old. Her name was given to the spring, and later to the church itself. People came to this water for many generations. In time they came to this same place to pray.

The first Christian missionaries reached Hawaii in 1820. They had sailed from New England, far across the cold Atlantic and around the world. They brought their faith, their printing press, and their books. At first they preached in simple shelters of grass and wood. But in time they wanted a true and lasting church of stone.

The building you see was raised between 1836 and 1842. The work took years of hard and patient labor. The builders needed strong material for the walls, and they found it under the surface of the ocean. They cut great blocks of coral from the living reef that lay just offshore from the church.

Stop and think about that labor for a moment. Divers went down into the water again and again with simple hand tools. They cut heavy slabs from the living reef below the waves. Each slab was rough, sharp, and very heavy to lift. In all, the workers raised about 14,000 of these coral blocks from the sea to the shore.

The design came from Reverend Hiram Bingham, a leader of the mission. He shaped the church after the plain meeting houses he had known in New England. It has a clean white front, tall windows, and a square tower above. Yet the body of the church is built of Hawaiian coral, not of the cold gray stone of the north.

This church soon became the church of the kingdom itself. Hawaiian kings and queens came here to worship on holy days. The building stood at the very heart of the young nation, close to the palace and the seat of power. It was a place where the crown and the Christian faith met and stood together as one.

Within these walls, rulers were crowned, married, and mourned. Royal weddings filled the pews with color and with song. State funerals brought the whole grieving nation through these doors. For many years the church marked the greatest moments of the kingdom, both its brightest joys and its very deepest sorrows.

Look up now toward the gallery above you. Portraits of Hawaiian royalty look down quietly upon the room below. The feeling here is solemn and grand at the same time. For this reason, some have called Kawaiahao the church of the Hawaiian kings, a place much like a great national cathedral for the islands.

Behind the church lies a quiet, shaded graveyard. Many of the early missionaries rest here beneath worn and simple stones. So do members of the families who shaped the life of these islands. Walk slowly among the graves, and read the old names. The stones tell a long story of the people of the nineteenth century.

Nearby stands a small tomb that sits apart from the rest. It holds the remains of King Lunalilo, a ruler much loved by his people. He asked to be buried here, close to ordinary Hawaiians, rather than with the other kings in the royal mausoleum across the city. His quiet resting place sits near the church door.

Step inside once more, if you can, and sit for a while in a pew. Listen to how the thick coral walls hold out the noise of the modern city beyond them. The light moves slowly across the worn floor. In this deep stillness it is easy to feel how long this church has stood, and how much it has seen.

Run your hand along the coral wall one last time before you leave. Feel how the sea itself was built into this place, block by heavy block. The people who raised these walls believed they were making something to last. More than a century and a half later, it still stands. Sit a moment in the cool quiet, and listen to the silence of stone that was once a living reef.