When I was a teenager living in Seisia in the Northern Peninsula Area Region, I often asked my father and older priest brother about the Coming of The Light – the coming of the Gospel in 1871. I didn’t understand why it was called this – I thought that our people had always been in the light. Their response was, “Yes. That is true. We were always in the light. When the missionaries brought us the light of scripture, the light of the Gospel unified with ours.” Every year on 1 July, Torres Strait Islander peoples celebrate the Coming of the Light to commemorate the Gospel coming to us and giving us a name for the Creator. The Coming of the Light made this connection, but we had already received God before the arrival of the English missionaries and Melanesian Christian leaders – because God was already with us. It’s important for all Christians to appreciate that Jesus was present in my people before the Bible – before the Gospel – came to the Torres Strait Islands on that special day in 1871. We often say, “God was on both sides of the beach.” As the custodians of the boeradhar (land), malu (sea) and dapar (sky), we had already conceived that there was a Creator God. However, this is not the message that children’s Bibles published in the English language told me when I was a child. When I was at My experience navigating the Anglican Church 76
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