COMMENTARY: By Aisake Casimira
The Pacific Conference of Churches (PCC) has been and will always be for justice, peace and integrity of creation, going back to the early 1960s when it was established.
Its statement follows a well-established prophetic witness tradition that goes back to the biblical narrative and to the times of Moses, the prophets and Jesus.
PCC has worked on decolonisation since the 1960s, on West Papua, East Timor, Kanaky (New Caledonia), Māohi Nui (French Polynesia), Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, etc. It continues to this day with West Papua, Māohi Nui and Kanaky.
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The consistency in PCC’s prophetic witness over the years inspired past leaders and continues today with emerging leaders. It takes an enormous amount of courage and a reservoir of humility (to think less of oneself and more of others) to say the things needed to be said about violence, injustice and hypocrisy.
The recent “against” vote by the Israeli state at the United Nations for the decolonisation of Māohi Nui, Kanaky, etc., then the announcement that it has joined the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) as a second-tier partner is not only hypocritically despicable but casts our Pacific leaders as stupid and incompetent (which they probably are anyway, given their recent actions).
So, thank you PCC and Reverend James Bhagwan for your prophetic consistency and inspiration to many of us.
The profound hypocrisy of the Gaza and the West Papua genocides, and Māohi Nui and Kanaky decolonisation crisis lie in the fact that all primary actors justify their positions through frameworks derived from the Abrahamic traditions.
Betrayal of core prophetic mandate
Yet each tradition has systematically betrayed its core prophetic mandate to protect the weak and the vulnerable. Christian Zionism here in the Pacific constructed twisted theological narratives to grant unconditional moral immunity to violence, which in recent times saw their blind support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza and their tacit silent support for Indonesia’s murderous occupation of West Papua.
The suffering of the West Papua people since the 1960s until today (an estimated 500,000 people have been murdered and 175,000 displaced) and the Palestinians (many of whom belong to the oldest Christian communities in the world) is rendered invisible or dismissed as necessary collateral damage in a grander geopolitical or Christian Zionism eschatological drama that will soon end with the second coming.
By prioritising imperial dominance and regional political convenience over human dignity, Christian Zionism in the Pacific has, in Andrew Tuley’s words “… decoupled its theology from the cross and hitched it to the chariot of empire”.
Aisake Casimira is a distinguished Rotuman theologian, author, and thought leader whose work has profoundly shaped contemporary understandings of Pasifika identity. This commentary was originally a FB post and is republished with the author’s permission.
