Church of the Province of Melanesia

In 1854, at the recommendation of Bishop George Augustus Selwyn, Melanesia was created as a separate "See" which Bishop Selwyn toured in 1857 in the mission ship Southern Cross, visiting sixty-six of the islands. John Coleridge Patteson was consecrated Bishop of Melanesia in 1861. Patteson and several of his companions were killed on 20 September 1871 on the island of Nakapu, in the Santa Cruz group, after slave-raiders had visited the area. In 1867, the Mission college at Mission Bay, Auckland, moved to Norfolk Island. In 1919 it moved to Siota, Gela Island, and in 1970 to Guadalcanal where in became known as Bishop Patteson Theological Centre (later college), Kohimarama. The first Melanesian to be an ordained priest was George Sarawia from Mota Island, New Hebrides (Vanuatu) in 1873. Charles Elliot Fox joined the staff of the Anglican Melanesian Mission in 1903. During more than seventy years of service as a missionary and teacher, Fox lived and worked in most of the islands of the Solomon chain, on the Banks, and in the New Hebrides. Ini Kopuria formed the Melanesian Brotherhood in 1925. The first two Melanesian bishops were Dudley Tuti from Ysabel and Leonard Alufurai from Malaita. They were consecrated in Honiara in 1963. The Church of Melanesia was inaugurated in 1975.