The Kiribati Protestant Church (KPC) and earlier, the Gilbert Islands Protestant Church, is a

Protestant Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that emphasizes Justification (theology), justification of sinners Sola fide, through faith alone, the teaching that Salvation in Christianity, salvation comes by unmerited Grace in Christianity, divin ...

Christian denomination A Christian denomination is a distinct Religion, religious body within Christianity that comprises all Church (congregation), church congregations of the same kind, identifiable by traits such as a name, particular history, organization, leadersh ...

Kiribati Kiribati, officially the Republic of Kiribati, is an island country in the Micronesia subregion of Oceania in the central Pacific Ocean. Its permanent population is over 119,000 as of the 2020 census, and more than half live on Tarawa. The st ...

. With approximately 10,000 members,World Council of Churches: Kiribati Uniting Church
oikoumene.org, accessed 2015-10-07. and 136 congregations, the KPC was the second-largest religious group in Kiribati before creation of the new Kiribati Uniting Church and accounts now for approximately 8 percent of the population of the country. Because of their remoteness and the few European presence, the

Gilbert and Ellice Islands The Gilbert and Ellice Islands (GEIC as a colony) in the Pacific Ocean was part of the British Empire from 1892 to 1976. It was a British protectorate, protectorate from 1892 to 12 January 1916, and then a crown colony, colony until 1 January 1 ...

were ignored by Christian missions until the latter half of the 19th century. Protestant

missionaries A missionary is a member of a religious group who is sent into an area in order to promote its faith or provide services to people, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development.Thomas Hale 'On Being a Miss ...

(e.g., Hiram Bingham) sent by the

American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) was among the first American Christian mission, Christian missionary organizations. It was created in 1810 by recent graduates of Williams College. In the 19th century it was the l ...

first arrived in the current Kiribati in 1857, and missionaries from the

London Missionary Society The London Missionary Society was an interdenominational evangelical missionary society formed in England in 1795 at the instigation of Welsh Congregationalist minister Edward Williams. It was largely Reformed tradition, Reformed in outlook, with ...

arrived in 1870. The missions relied heavily upon Pacific islanders as teachers and pastors: the Protestant converts were served mainly by pastors from

Hawaii Hawaii ( ; ) is an island U.S. state, state of the United States, in the Pacific Ocean about southwest of the U.S. mainland. One of the two Non-contiguous United States, non-contiguous U.S. states (along with Alaska), it is the only sta ...

Samoa Samoa, officially the Independent State of Samoa and known until 1997 as Western Samoa, is an island country in Polynesia, part of Oceania, in the South Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main islands (Savai'i and Upolu), two smaller, inhabited ...

and

Tuvalu Tuvalu ( ) is an island country in the Polynesian subregion of Oceania in the Pacific Ocean, about midway between Hawaii and Australia. It lies east-northeast of the Santa Cruz Islands (which belong to the Solomon Islands), northeast of Van ...

until the early 20th century, after which Ellicean and Gilbertese, trained at

Rongorongo Rongorongo ( or ; Rapa Nui: ) is a system of glyphs discovered in the 19th century on Easter Island that has the appearance of writing or proto-writing. Numerous attempts at decipherment have been made, but none have been successful. Although ...

, on Beru, took on this role. In 1968, the first general assembly of the

Gilbert Islands The Gilbert Islands (;Reilly Ridgell. ''Pacific Nations and Territories: The Islands of Micronesia, Melanesia, and Polynesia.'' 3rd. Ed. Honolulu: Bess Press, 1995. p. 95. formerly Kingsmill or King's-Mill IslandsVery often, this name applied o ...

Protestant Church (GIPC) met to organise an autonomous church. In 1979, when the Gilbert Islands were renamed Kiribati after independence, the church changed its name to the Kiribati Protestant Church. The church was originally established as a Congregationalist denomination. In 2014, after a Church Bi-annual Assembly (''Maungatabu''), which was held on the island of

Arorae Arorae (spelling variants: Arorai, Arurai; also known as Hope Island or Hurd Island“Captain Patterson, commanding the brig ''Elizabeth'', called it Hope Island: “Hope Island, in 2° 43′ S and 176° 56′ 25″ E, was the first discovery, t ...

, the initial Kiribati Protestant Church changed its name to Kiribati Uniting Church. The word " uniting" should reflect that the church would like to become now a union of several Protestant denominations in Kiribati, including Congregationalists,

Evangelicals Evangelicalism (), also called evangelical Christianity or evangelical Protestantism, is a worldwide, interdenominational movement within Protestant Christianity that emphasizes evangelism, or the preaching and spreading of the Christian g ...

Anglicans Anglicanism, also known as Episcopalianism in some countries, is a Western Christianity, Western Christian tradition which developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the ...

, and

Presbyterians Presbyterianism is a historically Reformed Protestant tradition named for its form of church government by representative assemblies of elders, known as "presbyters". Though other Reformed churches are structurally similar, the word ''Pr ...

, but this move provoked an immediate scission and the following recreation of the original KPC. The current head of KPC is Baranite Kirata (PI).

References

External links

*Thomas Scarborough, {{usurped,
Kiribati Protestant Church (K.P.C.)
}: 2003 report on the church from a South African missionary from the London Missionary Society Congregationalist denominations Christian organizations established in 1968 Calvinist denominations established in the 20th century Churches in Kiribati 1968 establishments in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Reformed denominations in Oceania

References

Further reading

External links