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

Protestant Protestantism is a Christian denomination, branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Reformation, Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century agai ...

Christian denomination A Christian denomination is a distinct religious body within Christianity that comprises all church congregations of the same kind, identifiable by traits such as a name, particular history, organization, leadership, theological doctrine, worsh ...

Kiribati Kiribati (), officially the Republic of Kiribati ( gil, ibaberikiKiribati),Kiribati
''The Wor ...

. 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 The Kiribati Uniting Church (KUC) (until 2014 the Kiribati Protestant Church and earlier, the Gilbert Islands Protestant Church) is a united Protestant Christian denomination in Kiribati. With approximately 25,000 members,

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 were part of the British Empire from 1892 to 1976. They were a protectorate from 1892 to 12 January 1916, and then a colony until 1 January 1976. The history of the colony w ...

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

missionaries A missionary is a member of a religious group which 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 Mi ...

(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 missionary organizations. It was created in 1810 by recent graduates of Williams College. In the 19th century it was the largest and most imp ...

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 in outlook, with Congregational miss ...

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 ( ; haw, Hawaii or ) is a state in the Western United States, located in the Pacific Ocean about from the U.S. mainland. It is the only U.S. state outside North America, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only stat ...

Samoa Samoa, officially the Independent State of Samoa; sm, Sāmoa, and until 1997 known as Western Samoa, is a Polynesian island country consisting of two main islands (Savai'i and Upolu); two smaller, inhabited islands (Manono Island, Manono an ...

and

Tuvalu Tuvalu ( or ; formerly known as the Ellice Islands) is an island country and microstate in the Polynesian subregion of Oceania in the Pacific Ocean. Its islands are situated about midway between Hawaii and Australia. They lie east-northeast ...

until the early 20th century, after which Ellicean and

Gilbertese Gilbertese or taetae ni Kiribati, also Kiribati (sometimes ''Kiribatese''), is an Austronesian language spoken mainly in Kiribati. It belongs to the Micronesian branch of the Oceanic languages. The word ''Kiribati'', the current name of the i ...

, trained at

Rongorongo Rongorongo (Rapa Nui: ) is a system of glyphs discovered in the 19th century on Rapa Nui (Easter Island) that appears to be writing or proto-writing. Numerous attempts at decipherment have been made, with none being successful. Although some c ...

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

Gilbert Islands The Gilbert Islands ( gil, Tungaru;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 n ...

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

. 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 Interdenominationalism, interdenominational movement within Protestantism, Protestant Christianity that affirms the centrality of being "bor ...

Anglicans Anglicanism is a Western Christian tradition that has developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the context of the Protestant Reformation in Europe. It is one of the l ...

, and

Presbyterians Presbyterianism is a part of the Reformed tradition within Protestantism that broke from the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland by John Knox, who was a priest at St. Giles Cathedral (Church of Scotland). Presbyterian churches derive their nam ...

, 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

{{Reflist

External links

*Thomas Scarborough
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