Hiram Bingham I
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- This article is about the Hawaiian missionary.
For other uses, see Bingham.
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Hiram Bingham (1789 - 1869), born in Bennington, Vermont, was in the first group of Protestant missionaries to introduce Christianity to the Hawaiian islands. Bingham is descended from Deacon Thomas Bingham who had come to the American colonies in 1650 and settled in Connecticut. He attended Middlebury College and the Andover Theological Seminary. [1] He broke off an engagement and found a new bride, Sybil Mosley, in order to become a missionary. He was sent as a missionary by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions.
Bingham and his wife arrived in Honolulu in 1820 aboard the brig Thaddeus. In 1823, King Ka'ahumanu and six high chiefs requested baptism. Soon after, the king banned prostitution and drunkenness, which resulted in the shipping industry and the foreign community resenting Bingham's spiritual impact (Fortune 2000:188). Bingham was involved in the creation of the spelling system for Hawai'an and also translated some books of the Bible into the language (Stowe 1998).
The board grew concerned that he was interfering too often in Hawaiian politics. The Binghams returned to New England in the 1840s for what was intended to be a sabbatical due to Sybil's poor health, but the board refused to reappoint him as a missionary even after Sybil's death in 1848. He published a memoir, A Residence of Twenty-One Years in the Sandwich Islands in 1847. He remained in New England as the pastor of an African American church. He remarried in 1851, running a seminary. He is buried at Grove Street Cemetery, in New Haven, Connecticut.
Bingham designed the Kawaiahaʻo Church, on the Hawaiian Island of Oʻahu. The church which was constructed between 1836 and 1842, was in the New England style of the Hawaiian missionaries and is one of the oldest standing Christian places of worship in Hawaiʻi.
Bingham's son, Hiram Bingham II, was also a missionary to the Kingdom of Hawai'i; his grandson Hiram Bingham III was an explorer who discoverd Machu Pichu and became a US Senator and Governor of Connecticut, and his great-grandson Hiram Bingham IV was the US Vice Consul in Marseille, France during World War II who rescued Jews from the Holocaust.
In World War II the United States liberty ship SS Hiram Bingham was named in his honor., hull no. 1726.
[edit] References
| Part of a series on Protestant missions to Pacific Islands |
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| Missionary ship Duff | |
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- Fortune, Kate. 2000. Hiram Bingham. The Pacific Islands: An Encyclopedia, ed. by Brij V. Lala and Kate Fortune, p. 188. University of Hawai'i Press.
- Sarah Johnson and Eileen Moffett (Spring 2006). "Lord, Send Us". Christian History & Biography 90: 37-38.
- Miller, Char, ed. 1988. Selected writings of Hiram Bingham, Missionary to the Hawaiian Islands - To Raise the Lord's Banner. Lewiston, NY: E. Mellen Press.
- Stowe, David. 1998. Bingham, Hiram. Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions, ed. by Gerald H. Anderson, p. 63, 64. New York: Simon & Schuster MacMillan.
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ Sarah Johnson and Eileen Moffett (Spring 2006). "Lord, Send Us". Christian History & Biography 90: 37-38.
