Like we have done as a nation for the past 200 years, we gather together in prayer and we offer up our faith in return for the safety, security and prosperity promised to us by Our Saviour the Lord Jesus Christ. But is our faith alone enough? Prime Minister Mark Brown writes.

Kia Orana,

On Sunday I attended our annual prayer service, our pure ta’aka’aka at the National Auditorium. This is an annual combined service organised by our Religious Advisory Council where we come together to pray for God’s protection over us as we enter cyclone season.

The theme this year referred to our recent bicentennial anniversary of the arrival of Christianity to the Cook Islands, with a view to celebrating the positive outcomes 200 years of Christianity has brought to our nation, as well as looking towards what the future might hold.

In my address, I also thought it fitting to acknowledge the conclusion this past weekend of COP26, the United Nations Climate Change Conference.

As many of our people gathered in Aitutaki last month for the bicentennial, so too did national leaders from around the globe begin to gather two weeks ago in Glasgow, Scotland – a place half a world away and far removed from the tropical paradise which we call home, but where decisions were made that will nevertheless impact our lives – and the lives of our future generations – in very real and immediate ways.

I would like to be able to tell you that real progress was made there, that the leaders of those countries whose fossil fuel emissions contribute most to our rapidly warming world stepped up and vowed to do whatever they could, whatever is necessary to halt that global warming.

Unfortunately, the reality is that the outcomes and commitments coming out of COP26 appear to be nowhere near as decisive or concrete, despite past pledges to the contrary.

While there were some positive steps taken – most notably a plan to reduce worldwide coal usage while also increasing financial support for developing countries, as part of an agreement now known as the Glasgow Climate Pact – the sad truth is that this is the absolute bare minimum required.

What does this mean for us here in the Cook Islands?

Well, it means we pray.

Like we have done as a nation for the past 200 years, we gather together in prayer and we offer up our faith in return for the safety, security and prosperity promised to us by Our Saviour the Lord Jesus Christ.

But is our faith alone enough?

As the Epistle of James chapter two tells us – what good is it for someone to say that they have faith if their actions do not prove it? Can that faith save them?

Faith without works is dead. As the body without the spirit is dead, so also is faith without action.

The Lord helps those who help themselves – while our faith and prayer sustains us, it is also up to us to do what we can to make a real difference in our own lives, in the lives of those close to us, in the lives of our community and our nation.

Do what is possible and let God do the impossible.

And so we do what is possible – we raise the banks of our streams to protect our homes from floodwaters, we make our infrastructure more resilient to withstand climate effects, we increase water storage capacity in the Pa Enua to prepare against drought, we build cyclone shelters so that people may take refuge – and we do this by coming together to get the job done.

Because one of the things that is special about us here in the Cook Islands is that we are not just a country, we are a community.

This fact is one of our great strengths. We pull together in times of need, as a community that has already faced so much and yet continues to hold strong, to persevere and endure.

Come what may, we face all things together.

This, I think, is perhaps the most powerful change the coming of Christianity 200 years ago wrought upon us as a nation – it truly brought us together, as one people united under God.

Christianity helped bring about a new way of life in the Cook Islands, reducing conflict and fostering peace and harmony from anau to anau, vaka to vaka, enua to enua.

It has built up our sense of togetherness, our sense of oneness, our sense of a truly national community – a community now world-renowned for the friendly smiles and open arms of our people, for our strong and vibrant cultural identity and for our Christian values.

So where to next? What will the next 200 years of Christianity in the Cook Islands bring us?

These are turbulent times, whether its climate or Covid-19. Our daily realities can and often have been altered at not much more than a moment’s notice.

None of us have remained unaffected by the Covid events of the past 20 months, and certainly some have felt the effects more keenly than others. Lives and livelihoods have been disrupted and in many cases forever changed, as we struggle and strive to come to grips with each ‘new normal’.

At the same time we should also acknowledge that further challenges, both Covid and climate change-related, likely still lie ahead – challenges that will need to be faced and dealt with.

And yet, I look around and I know that there is no better place in the world to be right now.

Nowhere else that has escaped the ravages of Covid-19 so fully; nowhere else that has continued to enjoy so many of the daily freedoms that we all take for granted, freedoms that millions or even billions around the world have all had to sacrifice at some point or another; nowhere else that has gained its people the breathing space necessary to vaccinate ourselves against Covid without having to suffer a single active case. We now have our number of eligible population vaccinated at 98 per cent. I am pleased to report that we are now getting those who were hesitant coming forward to be vaccinated. Faith in God’s protection and us doing our works and getting vaccinated will literally avoid that death from Covid. 

I have no doubt that our enduring Christian faith – coupled with the actions we ourselves have taken – has had a hand in this, guiding and protecting our nation throughout this period of turmoil, just as we trust in that same guidance and protection throughout this coming cyclone season.

And now as we prepare to reopen our borders, our economy and our community to New Zealand, and eventually and incrementally the wider world, I also have no doubt that that same Christian faith will continue to guide and protect us.

That is the continuing legacy of these past 200 years of Christianity in the Cook Islands, the pathway that will lead us on into an ever brighter and more prosperous future for our nation, for our communities and for each and every one of us.

Kia Manuia.