In chapter two of my newly released book Social Justice and the Deification of Man: What to Know When Talking with the Christian Left, I discuss the dangers of making God in our own image in order to make the gospel more appealing to oppressed people groups. Well-meaning Christians who have a heart for the poor and want to be respectful of other cultures often believe that we should forget our preconceived notions about God and, under the misguided notion that He chooses to appear to us in whatever form we personally need to have a more relational experience with Him. However, creating a man-centered gospel creates a gospel that teaches the divinity of man rather than the redemption of man by God. So how should Christians approach other faiths and cultures?

A Family History

Since the start of the Hawaiian cultural rejuvenation movement in the 1970s, there has been a growing interest in Hawaiian indigenous culture, as seen in the resurgence of the Hawaiian language, thriving hula and traditional practices, and the implementation of culturally sensitive tourism and educational programs that prioritize Native Hawaiian identity and sovereignty. This cultural renaissance is a direct result of Native Hawaiian activism and a collective effort to reclaim and preserve their heritage, combat historical trauma, and foster community health and resilience.

My paternal grandfather passed away in 1980, when I was only three. A few years later, Grandma met and married Martin Purdy, a Hawaiian paniolo (cowboy). Grandma loved the Hawaiian people and didn’t care that Martin spoke very little English—they spoke the language of love. It was clear that Grandma had been highly influenced by the Hawaiian cultural rejuvenation movement and wanted to become immersed in Hawaiian life.

Martin’s father, Ikua Purdy, was the great-grandson of John Palmer Parker, founder of the famed Parker Ranch, and Kipikane, granddaughter of King Kamehameha the Great. Ikua was inducted into the Rodeo Hall of Fame in 1999 for being one of the first paniolos to win at the Frontier Days rodeo competition in Cheyenne, Wyoming, in 1908.¹

Martin ended up playing the role of paternal grandfather in my life. He was a quiet man, but was always treated as royalty by the Hawaiian natives. However, you would never know it by his day-to-day demeanor. He rarely spoke of his family history, and neither did Grandma, for that matter. I didn’t even know about most of Martin’s fascinating family history until after he passed away in 2008.

Martin grew up Catholic but still seemed highly influenced by his native Hawaiian culture. He and Grandma sang and played the ukulele in a Hawaiian band, and Grandma also took up hula. I always loved watching Grandma perform hula. She was extremely graceful and had very delicate hands with long, slender fingers – perfect for the slow ocean motions of hula. She seemed to glow when performing and radiated a sense of happiness and joy that filled any room. I was so happy that she had found her niche in life and had a good man in Martin.

After Martin passed away, Grandma began attending a small Episcopal church that often met on the beach for Sunday morning services. This church liked to include native Hawaiian rituals into their worship of Yahweh, and Grandma was more than happy to offer her talents. Grandma was always a very agreeable person and not someone who would be overly concerned with politics or religious differences. She simply loved the Hawaiian people and wanted to honor them in her worship of God.

As Grandma’s health began to decline, she moved back to California to be closer to the family and lived in a nursing home so that she could have adequate medical care twenty-four hours a day. While there, she, as always, charmed the socks off the staff and residents and encouraged everyone to come and watch her and numerous other women perform hula at the home’s church services on Sunday. She was always a favorite wherever she went. Sadly, she passed away in March 2020. She will be greatly missed.

What is Hula?

I had always enjoyed watching Grandma perform hula, but it wasn’t until I began studying apologetics and Christian discernment that I realized hula does not belong in the church. Hula is performed with reference and supplication to the gods and goddesses of hula.² Hula was also used by Pele (the Hawaiian Goddess of Volcanoes and Fire) and her sister Hiʻiaka (the Hawaiian patron goddess of hula dancers, chant, sorcery, and medicine) to seduce Lohiʻau.³

In addition, two other goddesses, Kapo and her daughter Laka, are the spirits of hula. Kapo has dominion over fertility, childbirth, miscarriage, abortion, and death. She is also a spirit of witchcraft.⁴ Laka is the spirit of fertility, romance, and women’s empowerment.⁵ Understanding the nature of these spirits is important. Clay Jones –– Visiting Scholar of Christian Apologetics at Talbot Seminary –– points out: “whatever the Canaanite pagan gods did, the Canaanite people did as well.”⁶ This often applies to revered spirits in other cultures, including Hawaiian. As Clay Jones demonstrates, the people of God, Israel, were expressly forbidden from being involved in the practices of the Canaanites:

Israel was warned not to let the Canaanites live in their land, but to completely destroy them (Exod. 23:33; Deut.20:16–18), lest the Israelites learn the Canaanite ways (Exod. 34:15–16). If they did not destroy them, the land would “vomit” them out just as it had vomited out the Canaanites (Num. 33:56; Lev. 18:28; Deut 4:23–29, 8:19–20).⁷

Are we not called to make a clean break from our old ways? Paul wrote in his epistle to the Corinthians that. . . “what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be participants with demons” (1 Cor. 10:20). Paul warned the Corinthians to “flee from idolatry” (10:14), as those participating in biblical sacrificial meals are in spiritual communion with God and with one another (10:16–18).

However, New Apostolic Reformation leader Daniel Kikawa of Aloha Ke Akua Ministries nullifies the word of God with his claim that God “just dwells within the praises of his people. The anointing of God is there when these dances are used to worship God. And it immediately tells the Hawaiian people he’s Hawaiian who loves the Hawaiian people…”⁸ Does God really live in creation? Does He really live in our praises? While Psalm 22:3 does say that “God inhabits the praise of His people,” what Kikawa seems to be pointing to here is the Hawaiian indigenous belief that God lives within all of creation –i.e., panentheism. This is heresy, as panentheism teaches that the cosmos is God’s body. He is bigger than the cosmos but is in and through all that is in the cosmos. God also grows in knowledge and existence. Panentheism also teaches that man and God share the same essence.

What About Pagan Musical Instruments?

Many well-meaning Christians like Grandma believe that all forms of worship, including hula and musical instruments used in pagan worship, can be redeemed and used to worship Yahweh. But is this true? Where does scripture say this? The church fathers thought otherwise:

If people spend their time with auloi, psalteria, dancing and leaping, clapping hands like Egyptians, and in other similar dissolute activities, they become altogether immodest and unrestrained, senselessly beating on cymbals and drums, and making noise on all the instruments of deception. Obviously, it seems to me, such a banquet has become a theater of drunkenness (PG 8:440). –– Clement of Alexandria⁹

That immodesty of movement and dress which especially characterizes the theater is consecrated to Venus and Bacchus, both of whom are wanton, the one by her sex, the other by his robes. What is taking place in voice and song, and by instruments and lyres, is at the service of Apollos and Muses and Minervas and Mercuries. You must hate, O Christian, those objects whose authors you execrate (PL 1:717). –– Tertullian¹⁰

Auloi, syrinxes and cymbals, and drunken leaping, and the other contemporary disgraces were entirely absent then [at the wedding of Jacob and Rebecca]. But now among us they dance and sing this hymn to Aphrodite. . .and hymns full of obscenity on the very wedding day (PG 51:210). –– Chrysostom¹¹

The church fathers did not forbid musical instruments in worship simply because they were musical instruments, but rather because of their use in pagan worship practices. Instruments used in pagan worship should not be included in the worship of Yahweh for the same reason that yoga does not belong in the church. Both pagan musical instruments and yoga were used to connect with the divine. They were both deification tools used by man to help them be reabsorbed back into what they believed was their original divine state. This ideology is in direct violation of Genesis 3 and Romans 1. God does not redeem cultures, so how can a musical instrument that was explicitly used to violate God’s law (Ex 20:3) ever be glorifying to Him?

Conclusion

According to Kumu Glen Kila and George Williams, authors of “Hawaiian Indigenous Faith and Practice: Kanenuiakea”:

Hawaiian religions. . . were and are panentheistic [everything is within the divine], non-dogmatic, inclusive allowing participation in other religions and practices, naturalistic, immanent [the divine manifests in nature, in the world, and in culture] and is language specific (wipe out our language and culture, you wipe out our religion) and experienced through the senses. Our religion is known, experienced, felt. It is compatible with all other religions and philosophies of peace and caring.¹²

This sounds a lot like Grandma and Martin’s Christianity. They may have been religious and exuberant but were they truly walking with the Lord before they passed? Only God knows.

Can the pagan practices of the Hawaiians be redeemed? Sandy Simpson of Deception in the Church Ministries points out, “if Paul considered the Jewish culture and its activities ‘dung’ in view of the cause of Christ [Phil 3:8], how much more should we as Gentiles consider our cultures double ‘dung’”?¹³ The fact is that what Kikawa and other well-meaning Christians are promoting is the direct 180-degree opposite of what Paul believed, lived, and taught with regard to how we as believers are to interact with culture.Ω

Stephanie Potts is the author of, Social Justice and the Deification of Man: What to Know When Talking with the Christian Left. She and her husband, Jim live in Dayton, Ohio, and have been married for 24 years. She worked with the federal government for 15 years as an intelligence analyst and then entered full-time Christian service in 2015. She first joined Haven Ministries in Denver, Colorado, in 2015 and then transferred to Midwest Christian Outreach, Inc in 2021. She received her Bachelor’s degree from Florida State University in Political Science and International Relations and received her Master’s degree in Geographic Information Systems from Penn State University. She is currently working towards her master’s degree in Christian Apologetics through Southern Evangelical Seminary. She has special interests in indigenous religions – especially Native American spirituality – and in responding to Catholicism, and the social justice movement. Stephanie’s personal website: rainbowapologetics.com

2 Comments

Bill on October 31, 2025 at 9:34 pm

Some people believe that indigenous cultures should be respected, preserved, and celebrated. The Waorani (Auca) Indians of South America were a violent and hostile people with a warlike culture. They made headlines in 1956 when they killed five missionaries who tried to make contact with them. Largely through the efforts of Jim Elliot’s widow and Nate Saint’s sister, many of them later came to faith in Christ. Just ask the older Aucas whether they think their old culture should have been respected, preserved, and celebrated. There was certainly nothing about it even remotely worthy of being incorporated into Christian worship.

There are still several people groups and language groups who have never been reached with the Gospel. However, we know from Scripture that each group will be represented in heaven. Therefore, each group will be exposed to the Gospel at some point, and at least one from each group will come to faith in Christ, before He returns.
- Stephanie Potts on November 4, 2025 at 10:00 am
  
  Thank you for sharing this Bill. And thank you for sharing my viewpoint. I knew this would not be one of my more popular articles, but I thought it was important to write it.
  
  I have no problems with musical instruments in church. I played the flute in the church orchestra growing up. But what I don’t understand is why any Christian would want to have anything to do with an instrument of deification. God redeems individual people, not cultures, and certainly not musical instruments.

Pagan Worship Practices and the Deification of Man: Can Cultures Be Redeemed?

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