page_title: Henry Hodges Parker
section_title: Ministry
hierarchical_section_title: Henry Hodges Parker / Ministry
caption_attribution_description: English: Reverend Henry Hodges Parker (1834–1927) was Pastor of Kawaiahaʻo Church from 1863 to 1917.
context_page_description: Henry Hodges Parker was the fourth Kahu of Kawaiahaʻo Church in Honolulu. He served in that position 54 years, the longest of any Kahu in its history. Fluent in the Hawaiian language, he was a friend and pastor to Native Hawaiians, which included several decades of the Hawaiian monarchy.
context_section_description: The current Kawaiahaʻo Church was constructed between 1836 and 1842. The church as a congregation had existed since Hiram Bingham arrived in 1820, and began meetings adjacent to his thatched hut. Other replacement structures were built in the same location before the stone church was erected, and had been a church home for royalty since Queen Kaʻahumanu accepted Christianity in 1824. Various names for the church have included "the Stone Church", "First Native Hawaiian church", "the Mission Church", "the Native Church" and "the First Native Church at Kawaihao in Honolulu".
  Known to Hawaiians as "Paleka opio" (the younger Parker), he grew up fluent in the Hawaiian language. Parker was trained in the ministry as an associate pastor at Kawaiahaʻo Church under Rev. Ephraim Weston Clark, who was working on an updated version of the Hawaiian Bible. When Clark resigned from the pulpit to pursue that goal, Parker was ordained as Kahu (pastor) of Kawaiahaʻo Church on June 28, 1863. The Pacific Commercial Advertiser commented on his ordination, "His perfect acquisition of the native language, and the rare faculty he possesses of rendering foreign ideas and sentiments clear, attractive and intelligible to the native mind, has made him a popular speaker with them, and we hope he may prove equally useful as a pastor." Kamehameha V, the last Aliʻi to reign under that name, looked favorably upon missionaries, and his viewpoint was that Parker's motivations were towards the well- being of the Hawaiian people.
  King Lunalilo's 1873 coronation took place in Kawaiahaʻo Church, with Parker offering the opening prayer at the ceremony. When Lunalilo died in 1874, Parker officiated in the Hawaiian language at the funeral service in ʻIolani Palace. Although Queen Emma had helped establish the Church of Hawaii, upon her 1885 death, King Kalākaua requested Parker deliver the Hawaiian language eulogy at her funeral. Kalākaua was also a member of the Church of Hawaii; and while Parker did not deliver his eulogy, he was among the members of the official clergy representation at the funeral. When Hawaii's last monarch Liliʻuokalani died in 1917, Parker and Leopold Kroll of the Cathedral Church of Saint Andrew were notified so church bells could toll 79 times, her age at death. Her body lay in state at Kawaiahaʻo Church. Parker delivered the Hawaiian language eulogy at her funeral.
  A celebration of his ministerial role was held at Kawaiahaʻo on the 40th anniversary of his ordination. Very little mention was made of the royalty he had ministered to, but it was rather a recognition of his labors to hundreds of congregants who received his services over the decades.
caption: Parker in 1876
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