Archbishop Hand launches autobiography

Hand of God

 

By Patrick Matbob

Oro and parts of Milne Bay provinces are known as the home of Anglican Church in PNG. While the church first set roots in the provinces at the turn of the last century, it later pioneered the faith into other parts of PNG as well.

Today there are many Anglicans in the provinces of Madang, Eastern Highlands, Western Highlands and West New Britain as there are in Oro and Milne Bay.

Early this year retired Anglican Bishop Sir David Hand launched his autobiography titled Modawa Papua New Guinea and Me in Madang. It was significant that the book, which had already been launched in the ‘Papuan’ side of the country, should also be launched in ‘New Guinea’. For the author had been responsible for sowing and strengthening the seeds of Anglican faith in New Guinea.

Modawa is the Wedau (Milne Bay) language name for PNG rosewood. The pioneering Anglican missionaries had used posts from the tree to build their first temporary chapel at Wedau. One of the posts had taken roots a year later and still stands today. It is regarded as a symbol of the spread of the Anglican Church of PNG.

The cover picture on the book comes from Simbai in Madang.

The picture shows Bishop Hand and a Simbai man named Winston walking along with their arms around each other while conversing. The picture is significant to the 85-year-old bishop.

He said in Madang that the picture was symbolic of how the church has developed its relationship with the people of PNG. The relationship is equal and not ‘white man telling black man what to do, or black man telling white man what to do.”

He said the book is not only an autobiography. It is a study of relations between Anglicans and other churches. It covers the role of the church in education and health and has chapters on ecumenism, enculturation and censorship whose founding board the bishop has headed.

In the early 1900s much of the church work was centered in Oro, Milne Bay and parts of West New Britain. After World War II the church suffered heavy losses of personal and resources and was in the process of recovering. There was pressure from the colonial government for the church to spread into New Guinea motivated by anti-German feeling, and by a desire to keep out the sects.

In 1952 Bishop Hand was looking around the Highlands and Momase area to expand the church. In Madang he heard about an expedition to find out more about ‘the little men from the mountains’. He joined Madang’s Assistant District Commissioner Tom Ellis on a day trip to Aiom in Ramu. God was no doubt at work for Bishop Hand when at the airstrip in Aiom, he met a policeman, Bigumai.

“Bigumai had not only been to the coast, but during the war he had somehow got himself on an Australian Army small ship from Madang to Port Moresby. He happened to be there when the war finished, and found employment at a rubber plantation at Sogeri, in the hills behind Port Moresby. There, bless their hearts, Papuan people had been kind to him,” Bishop writes.

So it was through Bigumai that Bishop Hand was able to sow the seeds of the Anglican faith on New Guinea mainland by sending teacher-evangelist Edric Wekina, his wife and 18-year old nephew, Peter John Rautamara to work in Aiom. The mission then extended into the Simbai, the home of the ‘little men from the mountains’.

Today Simbai and Aiom areas are success stories for the mission with establishment of education and health services and the ordination of local clergymen.

Bishop Hand also established the Anglican Church in Madang at its present location near the saltwater lagoon in the centre of the town. In those years, the site was part of an over grown Burns Philp copra plantation bought by the Government for the town site and was the border between Madang and the bush!

Born on May 11, 1918 in England, bishop Hand was ordained a priest in 1943. Coming from a family of missionaries, he was interested in mission work overseas and was thinking about going to Africa. This was until he read about the work of another Anglican priest, Fr Vivian Redcliff, who was killed by the Japanese in Popondota (the correct of pronouncing and spelling Popondetta) during the war. He decided to come to PNG and arrived in Port Moresby on November 29, 1946. His first mission in Oro Province was at Sefoa and after nine months he became the parish priest at Sangara.

In 1950, at the age of 32, he was consecrated Bishop at Dogura. His first task as bishop was to resurrect the old New Britain mission then to work in the Highlands.

However, when Mt Lamington erupted the following year, Archbishop Philip Strong asked him to return to Sangara to resurrect and reconstruct the church there.

In 1963, he was appointed bishop of New Guinea and concentrated his efforts on creating the five dioceses in PNG to come under an archdiocese.

At Independence, Bishop Hand was one of the first expatriates to become a citizen of PNG. In 1977, he was installed as the first archbishop of the Anglican Church of PNG, which had severed ties from the province of Queensland.

He retired in 1982 when he reached the retirement age of 65 and Archbishop George Ambo took over from him. In 1985, he was knighted and today lives with his granddaughter (from his adopted son) in Port Moresby.

A man of deep faith, Bishop Hand speaks in his book about how God has directed his life and helped with the growth of the church despite many difficulties. For instance, while being the parish priest at Sangara near Mt Lamington his superiors decided that he should become a bishop. He left for Australia and while he was away Mt Lamington erupted with little warning killing more than 3000 people including everyone at his Sangara station.

“I would have died too, if I was there at Sangara,” he said in an interview in 2001 during the 50^th anniversary of the eruption. Instead his was the painful task of restoring and rebuilding the mission amongst the people he had come to love as his own. There are however, unfortunate drawbacks to being a faithful apostle of God. He has found himself being falsely blamed for asking God to blow up the mountain to kill the people for ‘disobeying God.’

“I ought to say that this interpretation of events of forty-five years ago has hurt me more than anything else I have ever experienced,” he wrote recently.

Of course, those who accuse him seem to forget that amongst those killed by the blast were many of Bishop’s closest friends including Margaret de Bibra and their God son Ross Taylor.

Bishop Hand says about de Bibra: “I have often said that, if I had ever married, it could have been to someone like Peggy, or even Peggy herself. The occasion never arose and even the possibility was erased by Mt Lamington when God called her back to himself . . .”

Modawa Papua New Guinea and Me is a remarkable book about Bishop Hand’s life and mission in this country. The chapters of events and anecdotes add a personal touch to what is really the history of the growth of the Anglican Church and the nation. Throughout the pages, one can see the deep devotion and love he has for God and his country of adoption.

Aged 85, the once strong and influential figure who travest the breadth and length of our rugged nation, bringing the Gospel and development to the some of the remotest areas of the nation, can only move around with the aid of a stick. Since independence, he has chosen PNG, particularly Oro province, as his home where he wants to spend the rest his life

“Oro is home to me. I want to be buried at the church of Resurrection here in Popondota, my asples,” he said in 2001.

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