The Coming of the Light Festival is celebrated in the Torres Strait Islands on 1 July each year. It commemorates the arrival of the London Missionary Society in Torres Strait at Erub (Darnley Island) on 1 July 1871, introducing Christianity to the region. The predominantly Christian Torres Strait Islanders hold religious and cultural ceremonies across Torres Strait and mainland Australia to celebrate the day.Celebrations and holidays; Torres Strait Island Regional CouncilTorres Strait Islands: Coming of the Light festival; Australian Geographic, July 21, 2015
Origins
In 1871 representatives of the London Missionary Society (LMS) arrived in the Torres Straits on the schooner Surprise, which had been chartered by the LMS, after the French Government had demanded their removal from the Loyalty Islands and New Caledonia in 1869. They decided to expand into the Torres Straits and New Guinea. Dated |20 January 2016. Retrieved 31 July 2021. Text may have been copied from this source, which is available under a Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence. They were represented by two Englishmen, Revs S. Macfarlane and Archibald Wright Murray, and eight Lifu (Loyalty Islander) evangelists: Tapeso, Elia, Mataika, Guchong, Kerisidui, Wauaded, Sevine and Josaia, and their wives.
The missionaries reached Erub (Darnley Island) on 1 July 1871, an event that came to be known as the "Coming of the Light". Dabad, one of the tribal elders of the island, met them at Kemus Beach. Dabad befriended the missionaries and introduced them to Amani, another tribal elder, and the rest of the Erub Islanders. His role in the bringing of Christianity to the Torres Straits is memorialised by Dabad's Monument at Badog.
Related
Christianity in Australia Indigenous Australians All Saints Anglican Church, Darnley Island
Footnotes
References