We visited the Kawaiaha’o Church in Honolulu and attended the Sunday morning worship service. We thoroughly enjoyed both the visit and the worship service.
The stone church at Kawaiaha’o, sometimes called Hawaii’s Westminster Abbey, was dedicated in 1842, after more than six years of effort by Kamehameha III, who gave the land and contributed generously to the building fund; Governor Kekanao’a, who, as head luna, supervised the project; and hundreds of other chiefs and people, who gave their Spanish dollars and their labor. Major tasks were digging down to bed rock for a firm foundation, quarrying slabs from the reef, and burning coral to obtain lime for mortar. The “Stone church,” as came to be known, was in fact not built of stone; it was constructed from giant slabs of coral hewn from ocean reefs. These slabs were not easily accessible; they had to be quarried from under water and each weighed more than 1,000 pounds. Natives dove 10 to 20 feet to hand-chisel these pieces from the reef, then raised them to the surface, loaded them into canoes, and ferried them to shore. The physically and spiritually strong hauled some 14,000 of the slabs to their final destination. Beneath the corner stone laid in 1839, was deposited a copy of the complete Bible in the Hawaiian language, just off the mission press. The first church building at the present site was a grass house, 54 by 22 feet, erected in 1821. Three other grass buildings in turn preceded the stone church. Other features of the interior are the royal pews, rarely occupied since the end of the monarchy; the gallery approved by Kamehameha III despite an ancient Kapu (taboo) which forbade commoners to sit or stand higher than the king, the magnificent pipe organ; and the dignified altar, where only ordained ministers ever mount the steps to the pulpit level. The Ali’i portraits remind members and visitors that from the earliest time Kawaiaha’o, though it had had members of all ranks and races, has been “the church of the chiefs.”
Included in this gallery are copies of pamphlets that were given to us as visitors and also the Sunday Worship Service bulletin for the service that we attended. Reading the pamphlets will give you a lot of information about the Kawaiaha'o Church. If you have the opportunity to visit this church for the Sunday morning worship service on your visit to Hawaii, you will be uplifted.