TRANSCRIPT
(Choir singing)
The strength of a community reflected in song - as the Tongan Choir of the Uniting Church in Australia rehearses.
The choir will sing at the installation ceremony of the Uniting Church's new spiritual leader, Reverend Charissa Suli, later this month.
It's the first time they will see the role filled by a person from their Tongan community.
A second-generation migrant, Reverend Suli says she will bring the values of her culture to her leadership of Australia's third largest Christian denomination.
"Growing up as a young Tongan woman in a Pacific community, there was never a time when you would turn anyone away even if they turned up to your hours unexpected, uninvited. From a Pasifika heritage, we're always about being in community. We're always about what is the process where everyone can be involved."
The 41-year-old mother of four will be the youngest ever person to lead the Uniting Church in Australia, and the first person of colour, after being elected President of the church's National Assembly.
She says she wants to amplify the voices that often go unheard.
"The way that Jesus connected to people, he connected to the people on the margins, he connected to the women and the unnamed women. And so, there's something there about hearing the voices of those that often don't get to have the microphone. I believe there's a richness in what we can learn from each other. And then we discover actually there's a commonality that we have."
Choir member Taidsisi Sikua says it's an inspiring to see a woman in a leadership role.
"It brings down boundaries between men being leaders of the church. So, this is exciting for me because Carissa, being a woman, it highlights that whether you're a man or a woman, you can be a leader."
As a member of the church's Tongan National Conference youth body, Sione Hehepoto counts Reverend Suli as a friend and a mentor.
"It's incredibly inspiring. You don't see it often. You don't see it at all. But to have somebody that looks like me stand there in positions of great influence, but to see that there's a place that we can aspire to and somebody sits there that looks like me, can speak for me, and all the other people."
But Reverend Suli's journey to this point has been a winding road marked by challenges, including the stigma of teenage motherhood after she got pregnant at the age of 16.
"I saw the judgement, not only of the church, not only of the family, but of wider society. It was almost unbelievable to see a young person with a belly walking the streets. So, I felt the judgement immediately. I think too, when you're 16 and still developing and trying to work out how do I now do life and what do I do, it can be quite a dark and lonely place."
She says the support of her husband and mother helped her through the isolation, as her small family grew.
But the stigma returned years later when she felt her call to ministry.
"The story of me being a teenage mother came back. I would often get people say, you can't be a minister. That's your husband's job. You're a woman. It's almost like to the feeling the shame be rebirthed again. Yeah, I brought shame on family, shame on culture, falling pregnant out of wedlock and as a teenager, but it didn't stop me. But I do want to say it was a time of wrestling. And who was there again? My mum and my husband. And I had to find a way to work through letting go of the negative voices that I had experienced at that time and just stay focused on where I believe God was calling me."
Her eldest daughter, Susitina Suli, says she is proud of her mother's strength and humility.
"I see her as a role model for emerging young women. I see her as a role model for people of colour, see her as a role model for people who are afraid to speak their voice or speak their truth. And she kind of symbolises that in a way."
More than three hundred years after Christian missionaries settled in the South Pacific, more than 90 per cent of the region identifies as Christian.
Dr Brian Alofaituli is a senior lecturer in Pacific cultural heritage and religion at the National University of Samoa.
He says the embrace of Christianity has informed human rights and climate change movements in the Pacific, but has also, at times, excluded important cultural beliefs.
In recent decades, he says, there have been moves to allow room for those beliefs.
"One of the tensions with traditional knowledge, sometimes it becomes secondary, but we are seeing within the last 30 years the rise in the Renaissance of indigeneity and revaluing and valuing systems and knowledge systems that were devalued by mission missionaries and even indigenous peoples who became part of the clergymen and even chiefs, if you will."
For Reverend Suli, faith is a broad church that celebrates difference and community.
"We're a community that loves to eat, break bread together, and also bring joy, bring colour, colour in the sense of hearing that diversity as well and what we see in our young people, what we see in our children as well."
