Samoan Congregationalist Church

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The Samoan Congregationalist Church has been an independent church organization for about one hundred years, making it the oldest indigenous Christian church of the South Pacific Islands. The origins of Congregationalism and Christianity in the Samoa Islands began with Polynesian missionaries from Rarotonga who made the first Christian converts in Samoa in the early 1800's in the Manu'a Islands of eastern Samoa, as well as in the western islands of Samoa. In 1835 John Williams (missionary) of the London Missionary Society arrived with a group of Western missionaries and the official beginning of Christianity and Congregationalism came to Samoa. His first major convert was paramount chief Malietoa Vainupo, whose influence is all important to the predominance of Congregationalism in the largest islands of Samoa, 'Upolu and Savai'i Islands. The sovereign chief of the Manu'a Islands of eastern Samoa, the Tui Manua, was also converted to Congregationalism, and subsequently banned all other forms of Christian religious practice in Manu'a, a ban that has some influence there even today. The London Missionary Society Congregationist ministers, working with prominent Samoan orators, translated the Christian Bible into the Samoan language, and this Bible translation, "'O le Tusi Pa'ia", is in use today, and provides an important grounding in the philosophical usage of the Samoan language. The London Missionary Society, or La Mo Sa (L.M.S.), or Lotu Taiti (because of its origin in Tahiti), established a printer and seminary at Malua on 'Upolu, where the Samoan Congregational Church is today. The American Samoa Congregational Church has its headquarters and religious training at Kanana Fou (New Canaan) on Tutuila Island in the US Territory of American Samoa, or eastern Samoa.