The Coming of the Light Festival is celebrated in the

Torres Strait Islands The Torres Strait Islands are a group of at least 274 small islands in the Torres Strait, a waterway separating far northern continental Australia's Cape York Peninsula and the island of New Guinea. They span an area of , but their total land ...

on 1 July each year. It commemorates the arrival of 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 in outlook, with Congregational miss ...

in Torres Strait at

Erub Darnley Island or ''Erub'' in the native Papuan language, Meriam Mir, is an island formed by volcanic action and situated in the eastern section of the Torres Strait, Queensland, Australia. It is one of the Torres Strait Islands and is locat ...

(Darnley Island) on 1 July 1871, introducing Christianity to the region. The predominantly Christian Torres Strait Islanders hold religious and cultural ceremonies across Torres Strait and mainland Australia to celebrate the day.

Origins

In 1871 representatives of the

(LMS) arrived in the

Torres Strait The Torres Strait (), also known as Zenadh Kes, is a strait between Australia and the Melanesian island of New Guinea. It is wide at its narrowest extent. To the south is Cape York Peninsula, the northernmost extremity of the Australian mai ...

s on the

schooner A schooner () is a type of sailing vessel defined by its rig: fore-and-aft rigged on all of two or more masts and, in the case of a two-masted schooner, the foremast generally being shorter than the mainmast. A common variant, the topsail schoon ...

''Surprise'', which had been chartered by the LMS, after the

French Government The Government of France ( French: ''Gouvernement français''), officially the Government of the French Republic (''Gouvernement de la République française'' ), exercises executive power in France. It is composed of the Prime Minister, who ...

had demanded their removal from the

Loyalty Islands The Loyalty Islands Province ( French ''Province des îles Loyauté'') is one of three administrative subdivisions of New Caledonia encompassing the Loyalty Island (french: Îles Loyauté) archipelago in the Pacific, which are located northeast of ...

and

New Caledonia ) , anthem = "" , image_map = New Caledonia on the globe (small islands magnified) (Polynesia centered).svg , map_alt = Location of New Caledonia , map_caption = Location of New Caledonia , mapsize = 290px , subdivision_type = Sovereign st ...

in 1869. They decided to expand into the Torres Straits and

New Guinea New Guinea (; Hiri Motu Hiri Motu, also known as Police Motu, Pidgin Motu, or just Hiri, is a language of Papua New Guinea, which is spoken in surrounding areas of Port Moresby (Capital of Papua New Guinea). It is a simplified version of ...

. Dated , 20 January 2016. Retrieved 31 July 2021. CC-BY icon

Text may have been copied from this source, which is available under
Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
licence. They were represented by two Englishmen, Revs S. Macfarlane and Archibald Wright Murray, and eight

Lifu Lifou Island, historically spelt Lifu or Lefu in English, and known as Drehu in the local language, is the largest, most populous and most important island of the Loyalty Islands, in the archipelago of New Caledonia, an overseas territory of F ...

(Loyalty Islander) evangelists: Tapeso, Elia, Mataika, Guchong, Kerisidui, Wauaded, Sevine and Josaia, and their wives. The missionaries reached Erub (

Darnley Island Darnley Island or ''Erub'' in the native Papuan language, Meriam Mir, is an island formed by volcanic action and situated in the eastern section of the Torres Strait, Queensland, Australia. It is one of the Torres Strait Islands and is loc ...

) on 1 July 1871, an event that came to be known as the "Coming of the Light". Dabad, one of the tribal elders of the island, met them at Kemus Beach. Dabad befriended the missionaries and introduced them to Amani, another tribal elder, and the rest of the Erub Islanders. His role in the bringing of

Christianity Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. It is the world's largest and most widespread religion with roughly 2.38 billion followers representing one-third of the global pop ...

to the Torres Straits is memorialised by Dabad's Monument at Badog.

Christianity in Australia Christianity is the largest religion in Australia, with a total of 43.9% of the nation-wide population identifying with a Christian denomination. The presence of Christianity in Australia coincided with the foundation of the first British colon ...

Indigenous Australians Indigenous Australians or Australian First Nations are people with familial heritage from, and membership in, the ethnic groups that lived in Australia before British colonisation. They consist of two distinct groups: the Aboriginal peoples ...

All Saints Anglican Church, Darnley Island All Saints Anglican Church is a heritage-listed church at Darnley Island, Torres Strait Island Region, Queensland, Australia. It was built from 1919 to 1938. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 21 October 1992. History Comi ...

Footnotes

References

{{Christianity in Australia

Culture of the Torres Strait Islands Annual events in Australia

Origins

Related

Footnotes

References