How India’s religious violence is becoming a problem for American politicians

US politicians are under increasing pressure to account for their courtship of Indian Prime Minister Modi, the leader of a strategically important ally and the world's largest democracy.

FILE- Dozens of houses lay in ruins after being vandalized and burned during ethnic clashes and rioting in Sugnu, in Manipur, India, June 21, 2023. For three months, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been largely silent on ethnic violence that has killed over 150 people in the remote state in India’s northeast. (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri, File)

August 9, 2023

By 

Richa Karmarkar

From President Joe Biden to Indian American congressmembers like Khanna, American politicians are under increasing pressure to account for their courtship of Modi, the leader of a strategically important ally and the world’s largest democracy, while ignoring the Indian regime’s oppression of religious minorities.

Pieter Friedrich holds a sign during his recent hunger strike. Courtesy photo

Modi’s recent visit to Washington, where he met with President Biden, attended a state dinner and addressed Congress, fully rehabilitated a figure who, in 2005, was refused a visa by the U.S. State Department. At the time, Modi, then chief minister of the state of Gujurat, held a precarious position on the international stage after 1,000 of his constituents, mostly Muslims, died in religious riots. Since being elected prime minister in 2014, his record has improved, but marginalization of minority groups has continued. 

In its 2023 Annual Report, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom cited India for its “systematic, ongoing and egregious violations of religious freedom.”

In May of this year, violence erupted in the Imphal Valley of Manipur, in Northern India, after members of the mostly Christian Kuki tribe protested a court order extending benefits to the Meiteis, an ethnic group many Kukis believe the government already favors. After the protest, Kuki were subjected to egregious violence and sexual crimes by Meitei mobs. 

Friedrich, a human rights advocate whose Twitter account has been banned twice in India for putting pressure on the Modi regime, has also urged American politicians of Indian heritage to speak out against rights violations in India. 

“I feel like I’ve been called to be doing what I’m doing,” said Friedrich in an interview with Religion News Service. “These are people from my community, and I believe in the teaching that we are all one body in Christ. And whatever does harm to that body does harm to the whole.”

FILE – Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., speaks at a hearing Oct. 28, 2021, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)

On July 30, midway through his hunger strike, Friedrich attended a Khanna town hall to confront him. A Kuki-Zomi Christian woman also spoke about her family, who has been victim to the violent clashes.

“I believe that there should be absolutely no violence against any place of worship,” Khanna told the town hall audience. “I will be co-leading a bipartisan delegation in coordination with the State Department that will build on President Biden’s relationship with India, which is critical to American foreign policy interests.”

The co-chair of the Congressional Caucus on India and Indian Americans, Khanna has been working on U.S.-India relations since his election in 2017. He has condemned Hindu nationalism, which many accuse Modi’s government of promoting, but in June, Khanna invited Modi to address the India caucus. Modi’s opponents say the invitation was a public affirmation. Khanna’s tepid official response to the violence in Manipur was considered another strike against him.

The state of Manipur, red, in Northeastern India. Map courtesy Wikipedia/Creative Commons

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RELATED: If India and the US really share values, Biden must call out Modi

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“A lot of people in D.C. have made this calculation that for the sake of a deeper U.S.–India relationship, they need to be nice to Prime Minister Modi,” said Ria Chakrabarty, policy director of Hindus for Human Rights.

On Aug. 7, Hindus for Human Rights, along with the Indian American Muslim Council and India Civil Watch International, met with Khanna ahead of a planned trip to India to discuss their concerns, especially regarding the role of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party “in eroding democracy and rights.”

In response, Khanna “expressed his unwavering commitment to upholding democratic values and human rights both within India and the United States,” according to a Hindus for Human Rights press release. 

Florence Lowe. Photo courtesy NAMTA

Modi’s U.S. visit did prompt some politicians to speak out. U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington led more than 70 legislators in sending a letter urging President Biden to bring up human rights and democratic values in India.

But activists have begun to organize to sway the debate and demand action. Two days after the crisis in Manipur began, Florence Lowe, a tech entrepreneur in Dallas, founded the North American Manipur Tribal Association with the goal of bringing justice to the victims. Her 77-year-old mother, her sister-in-law and young nieces and nephews live in Manipur.

“It’s just evil,” said Lowe. “I don’t recognize who these people are.”

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RELATED: How India’s Modi has extended Hindu nationalist sway over the country’s media

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In May, Lowe got a harrowing call from her sister telling Lowe that the family had been forced to flee from their home in the town of Paite Veng. (They were originally sheltered by a Hindu Meitei neighbor, and have since found refuge with family.)

In the continuing violence, houses have been burned and looted by mobs and churches destroyed. The Lowe’s neighborhood church was razed, and along with it the pulpit Lowe’s father had designed. Aside from the thousands of displaced Kukis, hundreds of others have been physically attacked, raped or killed. Lowe is worried that violence in Manipur will soon be forgotten and seen as “one of the many atrocities.” 

“Just trying to raise awareness is not working,” she told RNS. “We need the body of Christ to speak up.”

FILE- Members of Meira Paibis, a powerful vigilante group of Hindu majority Meitei women, block traffic as they check vehicles for the presence of members from the rival Christian tribal Kuki community, in Imphal, capital of the northeastern Indian state of Manipur, June 19, 2023. (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri, File)

N. Biren Singh, the Chief Minister of Manipur, a Meitei Hindu, is a member of the BJP. Singh has referred to the violence as “pre-planned,” adding that a “foreign hand” cannot be ruled out. 

The crisis only gained national attention in India when a video of Kuki Christian women being paraded naked in Manipur went viral. Modi called the video “the most shameful,” but many were disappointed that his response came more than two months into the conflict. 

Lowe is clear that the U.S. government has the responsibility to address ethnic cleansing of this nature, no matter what the deep-rooted cause of violence is.

“I’ve always been religious, but this has made me so much more of a believer,” said Lowe. “One thing I’ve realized is that for all my education and experience, I don’t know how to solve this problem. I’ve realized that God is the only one who can really do anything.”

RELATED: How America can stop India’s anti-Christian crusade in its tracks

HINDUTVA IS FASCISM

 Opinion

Why America’s secularization is good for American democracy

Belief has benefits for society. But American religion’s decline may nonetheless save the country.

The U.S. Capitol in the reflecting pool. Photo by Jeffrey Clayton/Unsplash/Creative Commons

August 2, 2023

By 

Phil Zuckerman

(RNS) — The decline of religion in America continues. 

Last week, Gallup released new data showing that standard Christian beliefs are at all-time lows. Back in 2001, 90% of Americans believed in God; that figure is now down to 74%. Belief in heaven has gone from 83% down to 67%; belief in hell from 71% down to 59%; belief in angels from 79% down to 69%; belief in the devil from 68% down to 58%.

These declines in personal belief are tracking with church attendance, which is at an all-time low (even when accounting for the pandemic’s social distancing). Religious wedding ceremonies are similarly at an all-time low, as the percentage of Americans claiming to have no religion has hit an all-time high.

Some readers will despair at this sweeping secularization. They know the value of strong congregational community, the meaningfulness of sacred rituals, the comfort of spiritual solace and the power of religiously inspired charitable works.

But even those who experience and treasure these benefits of belief should take solace in the fact that the decline of religion in American society is nonetheless good for our democracy.  of 

There are two basic types of secularization: The oppressive kind comes from the barrel of an atheist dictator’s gun. Think of the former U.S.S.R. or Khmer Rouge Cambodia, where the communist regime, seeking to stomp out any and all ideological rivals, repressed religion systematically and often violently. Such forced secularization is to be resisted and condemned.

“Americans’ Belief in Five Spiritual Entities, 2001-2023” Graphic courtesy Gallup

The other type of secularization is organic. It emerges naturally as societies become more modern, educated, prosperous and rational. Think of Scandinavia or Japan. When secularization occurs naturally within free societies and people simply stop being religious of their own volition, such a change comes with many positive correlates — not least healthier democratic values and institutions.

This is what we are seeing here in the United States: No one is being forced to become secular. Millions of Americans are simply choosing to do so. And this will be good for our republic, as the existing data shows.

A healthy democracy requires active participation in the very enterprise of self-governance. On that front, atheists and agnostics stand out. When it comes to attending political meetings, protests and marches, putting up political lawn signs, donating to candidates, working for candidates or contacting elected officials, the godless are among the most active and engaged. Americans who are affirmatively secular in their orientation — atheists, agnostics, humanists, freethinkers — are more likely to vote in elections than their religious peers. 

Another crucial pillar of democracy is tolerance, the acceptance of people who are different from us, or behave and believe differently. In a diverse and pluralistic nation such as ours, civic tolerance of difference is essential. In study after study, nonreligious people are found to be much more tolerant than religious people.

For example, when Americans are asked if they are willing to grant the same rights that they enjoy to political groups they personally oppose, secular people are much more likely than religious people to say yes. When it comes to supporting civil liberties for various stigmatized minority groups, the secular are, again, notably more tolerant than the religious.

Additionally, atheists have markedly lower levels of in-group bias than religious people, which actually makes them more accepting and tolerant of religious people than religious people are of them.

A third necessary component of a healthy democracy is for its citizens to be informed and knowledgeable about current events, to be critical thinkers and to be able to differentiate between fact and fiction. This is especially in our social-media-saturated world, in which we are bombarded with fake news. Research shows that secular people are on average more analytically adept than religious people. Religiosity, especially strong religiosity, is significantly correlated with greater acceptance of fake news. 

The very first sentence of the U.S. Constitution’s very First Amendment states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” This fundamental principle of our democracy, which bars the government from either promoting or persecuting religion, is essential in a society that contains millions of people with multiple religious faiths, and no religious faith at all. In recent years, the U.S. Supreme Court has shown a willingness to bulldoze this safeguard, threatening one of the founding premises of our nation.

Phil Zuckerman. Courtesy photo

The best hope for our democracy may be the growing number of secular Americans, who are by far the most supportive of repairing this principle.

(Phil Zuckerman is a professor of sociology and secular studies and associate dean of faculty at Pitzer College. He is the author of several books and, most recently, is a co-author of “Beyond Doubt: The Secularization of Society.” The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

Pëtr Kropotkin - Anarchist Morality (wordpress.com)

 Opinion

ReAwaken America is back. So is the right wing roadshow’s antisemitic rant.

The potential for violence might be ReAwaken America’s biggest threat.

Michael Flynn, a retired three-star general who served as Trump's national security adviser, speaks on stage during the ReAwaken America tour at Cornerstone Church, in Batavia, N.Y., Friday, Aug. 12, 2022. Thousands of people gathered to hear his message that the nation is facing an existential threat, and to save it, his supporters must act. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

August 25, 2023

By 

Nathan Empsall

(RNS) — Starting today (Aug. 25) in North Las Vegas, disgraced former General Michael Flynn and Eric Trump, son of the former president, will headline a lineup of MAGA celebrities for resumption, after a summer break, of the ReAwaken America Tour. A political rally in the form of an apostolic revival, the tour is a multi-day Christian nationalist event that includes appearances by “Pastors for Trump,” praise music and even baptisms combined with election denial, COVID-19 disinformation and QAnon conspiracy theories.

Like many Christian-nationalist events, ReAwaken America also brings a bitter side of antisemitism.

The tour’s previous stop, at Miami’s Trump Doral Resort in May, drew attention when MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow exposed the disgusting pro-Hitler sentiments expressed by two regular tour speakers, Scott McKay and Charlie Ward, after which both men were removed from the lineup.

Their departure didn’t rid the tour of its antisemitism. Far from it. 

Flynn and other speakers, including Pastor Jackson Lahmeyer and the tour’s organizer, Clay Clark, regularly send out antisemitic dog whistles from the stage, referring to opponents as “godless globalists,” a term the American Jewish Committee notes has long been conspiracists’ code to refer to prominent Jews, particularly philanthropist George Soros.

Flynn has also argued that America only needs “one religion” — a sentiment he shared while standing in a church known for its antisemitic founding pastor — making it very clear what he thinks of anyone who is not his brand of Christian.

In North Las Vegas, the usual ReAwaken America lineup is expected to be joined by Alex Jones, the founder of the conspiracy-theory outlet Info Wars, who, in addition to questioning the facts about the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas, last year allowed the rapper Ye (formerly Kanye West) to air an extended antisemitic rant unchallenged. Also expected is controversial comedian Rosanne Barr, who, while Jewish herself, jokes about Holocaust-denial and “good Jew” jokes.

Flynn, Lahmeyer and Clark have identified themselves at ReAwaken events as “Christian nationalists” — adherents of a political ideology that says America should be a Christian nation where non-Christians receive fewer legal and political rights. Political scientists at Denison University in Granville, Ohio, have found that Christian nationalist sentiments are linked to agreement with antisemitic tropes.

This repugnant showcase of antisemitism, political violence, homophobia and reckless COVID-19 misinformation is not taking place in a vacuum. According to the ADL, one-fifth of Americans believe that “Jews are more willing than others to use shady practices to get what they want” and “Jews have too much power in the United States today.” Antisemitic incidents across the country have reached record levels. Antisemitism is like insidious white noise, so ingrained in the culture of the United States that many seldom notice it, even as it fuels white supremacy and Christian nationalism. 

In this sense, antisemitism is a cornerstone conspiracy theory for many other expressions of hate and extremism that erode trust and undermine democracy. The Southern Poverty Law Center notes that purveyors of hate try “to racialize Jewish people and vilify them as the manipulative puppet masters behind an economic, political and social scheme to undermine white people.” 

Nowhere is antisemitism more prevalent than in right wing spaces. In 2020, a major academic survey conducted by researchers at Tufts and Harvard found that “antisemitic attitudes are far more prevalent on the right, particularly on the young far right.”

Even beyond its embrace of conspiracist lies and antisemitic tropes, the possibility for violence might be ReAwaken’s biggest threat. Tour speakers rarely make explicit calls to arms, instead providing their audiences with implicit permission to overturn elections by defending Jan. 6, dehumanizing and demonizing their opponents with language like “Team Jesus vs. Team Satan,” and convincing listeners that anything is justifiable if it’s for Jesus by using rhetoric such as “armor of God” and “spiritual warfare.”

As a pastor, I find these efforts both blasphemous and an existential threat to the country and our churches. The threat isn’t just hypothetical: Christian nationalism has already led to immediate, real-world violence, as it did on Jan. 6, 2021, and in numerous less-reported incidents since.

Hate peddled in the hijacked name of Jesus is too great a threat to our neighbors, our churches and democracy itself for Christians to remain silent. We cannot shy away from taking a stand against antisemitism and Christofascism, whether found on the ReAwaken America Tour, national presidential campaigns, apostolic sermons or local government meetings. The fear that we might lose church members or friends is not a sufficient excuse for allowing Christ’s name to be used as a weapon. Hate is not why we are here.

(The Rev. Nathan Empsall is an Episcopal priest and the executive director of Faithful America. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

Disobedient women and #churchtoo stand up to sexual abuse in evangelicalism

A new book shines a light on sexual abuse in evangelical churches, from Bill Gothard and Josh Duggar to the purity culture underneath it all.

“Disobedient Women: How a Small Group of Faithful Women Exposed Abuse, Brought Down Powerful Pastors, and Ignited an Evangelical Reckoning” and author Sarah Stankorb. Photo by Helen McCormick Photography

August 17, 2023

By 

Jana Riess

(RNS) — When girls and women are taught that submitting to men without question is what God designed them to do, men have few checks on their power. Too often, evangelical pastors and other powerful men took advantage of that, abusing women sexually and emotionally — and then either blaming the survivors or castigating their credibility when survivors sounded the alarm.

Sarah Stankorb’s powerful new book, “Disobedient Women: How a Small Group of Faithful Women Exposed Abuse, Brought Down Powerful Pastors, and Ignited an Evangelical Reckoning,” tells the stories of those survivors and the advocates who spoke up for them. Years before #churchtoo became a hashtag, Stankorb was researching and writing about sexual abuse for publications like Washington Post Magazine, Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How did you start on this quest?

Beginning the research and discovering Christian patriarchy started with one story. Many years ago, someone pointed me to a really interesting crowdfunding effort. That was Vyckie Garrison, who had been in a Quiverfull environment, and she had many children. She was leaving both her husband and her church, she didn’t have the funds she needed to support such a large family, and she was just about to be named 2014 Atheist of the Year. I didn’t know what the word Quiverfull even meant, but I looked it up and read her blog. That opened the door.

In case readers don’t know what Quiverfull is, could you explain its teachings and its popularity?

It’s a philosophy of reproduction that treats the womb and what the womb can produce as God’s blessing. So if you use birth control or your husband has a vasectomy, you’re blocking God’s blessing. So the more children you have, the more blessings you have. It comes with a lot of assurances that you’ll be able to support all of these children.

Underlying a lot of it is this idea that Christians need to reproduce as much as possible to keep the Christian population large and overtake other populations of believers. Also baked in, which was very important in Vyckie’s case, was this idea of martyrdom — that as a woman, your way of creating Christians in the world is through procreation. And even if you die in the process, then that’s a way of becoming a martyr.

You also talk about the idea of the stay-at-home daughter, which was a movement I had not heard of before.

Sarah Stankorb, author of “Disobedient Women.” Photo by Helen McCormick Photography

It’s encouraging girls to stay home within their family, under the authority of their father, training to be a mother. It also resulted in girls helping their very overwhelmed mothers with homemaking and raising younger siblings. In these families you really shouldn’t go off to college; college and universities are where you learn feminism and Marxism.

So having a stay-at-home daughter is a way of keeping these young adult women in an authoritative situation until they enter a courtship that’s parent-approved, where they can marry a young man and move under that man’s authority. It was a stopgap to discourage young women from learning any other worldview than what they were raised with. But it also really just reinforced that idea of male authority.

Many Americans were introduced to this idea of courtship through the Duggar family. You spend some time on them in the book. In what way did the Duggar children’s upbringing facilitate the abuse that Josh perpetrated on his sisters, and then how that abuse was handled?

One of the ways is that once the family knew about the abuse, instead of doing what many families would do, which is to seek someone licensed in therapy to walk those young women through a difficult process, Josh was sent to a training center run by Bill Gothard and the IBLP (Institute for Basic Life Principles). That’s where Gothard’s ministry took in many young people for misbehavior and bucking authority. But here we’re talking about sexual assault; we’re talking about a crime. And it was not treated that way.

But the Duggars served as the poster children for Bill Gothard’s ministry, for this whole way of life. And like you saw in the documentary “Shiny Happy People,” shiny people have a few flaws, and it was not all as pleasant as it was shown on reality TV. Many of these families, including not just the Duggars but others who were not as well known, had to maintain a certain credibility within their religious subculture, which meant trying their best not to show the ugly side of life. If you show anything negative, you’ll lose status within the ministry. I think that was also likely a part of why the Duggars didn’t come forward about the abuse, because they didn’t go public until forced to.

Your book does an excellent job of trying to understand this subculture in a deep way rather than just critiquing it. What might women find attractive about this lifestyle that is fairly closed, with clearly defined gender roles? What’s in it for the women who stay?

That’s a great question. Many families enter this worldview through home schooling. Sometimes they start home schooling for a religious reason, but maybe they just want to teach their kids themselves. They go to a conference and learn that keeping children at home is best if they want to be godly, whatever that means to them. There’s plenty of material that infuses these ideas in their curriculum. It requires a heck of a lot of sacrifice, but they’re willing to do it because they want it to be good in the eyes of God.

I’ll also say I’ve heard from more than a few sources that the gendered power dynamics within their particular families were not as clear-cut as you would think on paper. Sometimes, it’s the women who are pushing the whole Christian patriarchy thing, when the mother is the one bringing the ideas home and almost forcing the father into it. And maybe those men are not naturally people who want that kind of absolute authority. When they feel like, “Well, I have to, this is what this minister I trust tells me I’m supposed to do,” it often becomes extreme. It’s almost as if they’re trying on personality traits that don’t belong to them. You have a woman trying to be submissive, but also trying to force her family members into these roles, and you have a man who feels obligated to be a certain kind of Christian leader. It becomes a mess of people trying to be things they’re not.

Many of these cases of abuse are situated in the rise of “purity culture” from roughly the 1970s to the early 2000s. Did purity culture contribute to abuse in evangelicalism?

“Disobedient Women: How a Small Group of Faithful Women Exposed Abuse, Brought Down Powerful Pastors, and Ignited an Evangelical Reckoning” by Sarah Stankorb. Courtesy image

I think purity culture definitely plays a role. There’s pressure for girls and boys both to avoid any sort of sexual contact, even front-to-front hugs, and to avoid kissing until marriage in the more extreme cases. But the responsibility falls primarily on the women and girls, not only to shield themselves from sin, but also to keep men or boys from even thinking about anything sexual.

Many of these girls haven’t had any information about sex. They don’t know what’s normal; they don’t know what’s healthy; they don’t know what consent is. That’s just not explained. Then when the abuse does happen, they feel so guilty because they feel like it’s their responsibility.

After that amount of guilt, you don’t typically step forward to say, “This is what happened to me.” Often, even if they do step forward within their churches, their pastors blame them. I’m thinking of someone like Jules Woodson, whose youth pastor assaulted her. He was also the person who taught her True Love Waits class. So when he got her alone and asked her to perform sex acts, she assumed that meant he wanted to marry her. That was the only context she had. The following day she reported to her church and was asked, “Did you participate?” Very clearly the blame fell to her. He was eventually sent off to another church. They had a wonderful going-away reception for him. The way Jules was treated was so awful that it almost destroyed her. There are so many stories.

Some of those stories were the multiple victims who came forward with accusations about Bill Gothard himself.

Yes. They thought they were alone until they saw another story on the internet from someone else who had been plucked out of the ministry and brought to work for Bill Gothard. These women describe being brought in alone with Bill Gothard, him putting his hands on them, him rubbing his feet on them, things that should not happen in a workplace or anywhere without permission. But most had no context for any of this. They felt uncomfortable, but he was such an important figure. He was as close to God as anyone they knew, and because of that, they could not fathom that he was being predatory. It wasn’t until they saw another person’s story online and then started to come forward one by one that they began to recognize it was a pattern.

It must have been difficult to spend so many years hearing story after story of abuse.  Toward the end of the book you offer a useful distinction of being trauma-informed, but not trauma-absorptive. Can you explain that?

It’s vital for me to go into an interview reminding myself of what my role is. I’m to be a listener. I have to pay close attention to every moment they’ve described. I need to keep my mind a step outside. That way I can fact-check, I can say, “When exactly did that happen? Do you remember what time of day it was? What were you looking at?” If they mentioned something financial, I need to be thinking about whether they have paperwork to back up what they’ve told me. So, I focus on who else I might need to talk to and how best to verify their story.

That kind of dual mindfulness does keep me a layer out, but there are times when I’ll get to the end of the day and it’ll hit me that I’ve just talked to someone who’s been 

 

Native Hawaiian sacred sites have been damaged in the Lahaina wildfires – but, as an Indigenous scholar writes, their stories will live on

The region of Maui has been revered by its Indigenous peoples as a sacred place for generations. It is believed to be the home of Kihawahine, a woman who transformed into a goddess.

A view of the devastation in Lahaina, Hawaii, following the wildfires in August 2023. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

August 14, 2023

By 

Rosalyn R. LaPier

T

(The Conversation) — Native Hawaiians are devastated by the recent wildfires that swept through Lahaina, Maui, killing dozens of residents and destroying hundreds of homes, buildings, Christian churches and Buddhist temples.

It is not just the historic buildings and landmarks that are important to Native Hawaiians. This region of Maui has a longer history.

It has been revered by its Indigenous peoples as a sacred place for generations. In the 19th century, it served as the home and burial place of the Hawaiian royal family and became the first capital of the Hawaiian Kingdom. Carmen Lindsey, chairwoman of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, said in a statement that “Lahaina holds some of the most historically significant cultural properties and highest-ranking sacred remains of our ancestors.”

As an Indigenous scholar who studies the environment and religion of Indigenous peoples, I am interested in how environmental change such as the catastrophic wildfire at Lahaina impacts sacred sites.

Ancient connections

Lahaina is revered by Native Hawaiians because it has long been the home of Kihawahine, a woman who transformed into a moʻo goddess, or a supernatural shapeshifting lizard in Hawaiian religion. Her primary home was in a fishpond at Mokuʻula, a small island in Lahaina that was considered a “piko,” or center of traditional religious and political activity. Native Hawaiian royalty lived nearby to be near Kihawahine and her supernatural power.

The history of the region is also connected to King Kamehameha. After Kamehameha, the “aliʻi ʻai moku” or lead chief of the Island of Hawaii, succeeded in unifying all the Hawaiian islands in 1810, he made Lahaina on Maui his royal residence.

Portrait of King Kamehameha III of Hawaii, age 11.
Robert Dampier via Wikimedia Commons. Honolulu Museum of Art.

He selected this place to be near Kihawahine, the guardian spirit of his wife Keōpūolani. He then venerated Kihawahine, which assured that his lineage would continue to serve as leaders.

In the ensuing years, Lahaina became the capital of the newly unified Kingdom of Hawaii under Kamehameha and his descendants’ rule. The capital remained in Lahaina until 1845, when King Kamehameha III relocated it to Honolulu, Oahu.

The earthly home of Kihawahine changed dramatically with the coming of American colonization and capitalism to the Island of Maui in the 19th century. Sugarcane companies diverted the waters that fed the fishpond and freshwater springs at Mokuʻula for irrigation, which caused the fishpond to dry up. Subsequently, the U.S. Territory of Hawaii filled what was left of the pond with soil in the early 20th century for a public park.

Efforts have been underway to restore Mokuʻula in Lahaina and revitalize its history as a Native Hawaiian sacred place. These efforts, however, will be dramatically impacted by the devastation of the Lahaina fire.

Restoration efforts at Mokuʻula.

What does the future hold?

According to scientists, destructive wildfires like the one in Lahaina are becoming more common and more intense due to climate change.

Chairwoman Lindsey of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs also sees other influences. “The fires of today are in part due to the climate crisis, a history of colonialism in our islands, and the loss of our right to steward our ‘aina and wai’ [land and water],” she said.

The historic buildings and cultural properties of this place will be forever lost. That sense of loss is summed up in Lindsey’s words: “We have watched our precious cultural assets, our physical connection to our ancestors, our places of remembering — all go up in smoke.”

But the stories of Kihawahine and Hawaiian sacred places will live on.

(Rosalyn R. LaPier, Professor of History, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)