Siotame Drew Havea is board chairman of the Civil Society Forum of Tonga and a founding member of the Tonga National Youth Conference and the Tonga National Leadership Development Forum. This post is based on his remarks presented during the panel “Religion, Civil Society, and Human Dignity in Oceania” at the Oceanian Perspectives on Human Dignity Conference held at BYU–Hawaii in Laie, Oahu, Hawaii, 23–25 April 2024.

Human Dignity for All People

For many of us, human dignity from a religious perspective is grounded in our creation “in the image of God,” which motivates us with a liberating force to care for the sick, homeless, enslaved, and those who struggle for self-determination. We do not see God, but we are taught to have faith. Our understanding of God has been formulated from our family upbringing, our churches, and our cultural settings that connect us to the ecosystem of our society—our relationship to people and our relationship to our environment. We tend to interpret, in the glory of God, certain uniform characteristics of people whom we consider to be image bearers of God, and so we associate God’s image with people of power and status superior to us.

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Rev. James S. Bhagwan is an ordained minister of the Methodist Church and general secretary of the Pacific Conference of Churches. This post is based on his remarks presented during the panel “Human Dignity and Faith Traditions in Oceania” at the Oceanian Perspectives on Human Dignity Conference held at BYU–Hawaii in Laie, Oahu, Hawaii, 23–25 April 2024.

I begin by acknowledging that deep spirituality permeates the communities of Oceania and is at the heart of the Pacific peoples’ relationship with each other and with the world. Spirituality is integral to the way we interpret, understand, and interact with one another and with the natural world. And this spirituality is enhanced by the many faith traditions of this world, which have grown roots in our diverse Pacific communities. These faith traditions are shared with 85% of those who share this planet. The language of spirituality—the expression in metaphor, in image, in silence, in hymns of praise and cries for justice, in reflection and meditation, in ethical action, in confession and repentance, and in justice and compassion—is part of our way of life. That spirituality is not only experienced through faith communities but also through indigenous culture—that deep sense of vanua or fenua, of rootedness not only to land but also rootedness in respect and celebration of just relationships with all creation.

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