Spokane Marshallese celebrate ‘Gospel Day’ to commemorate when faith brought them together

Spokane’s Marshallese community came together in a celebratory church service at the Salvation Army on Sunday to remember a time more than 100 years ago when the power of faith brought them together.

“When the Holy Spirit came to the island, it changed the way people treat each other. How they see each other,” said Franlee Frank, the Salvation Army’s Marshallese coordinator, who migrated from the Marshall Islands in the early 2000s. “Some of us here may still live in darkness. But this morning, we will change your life for the good.”

The Marshallese sang and danced in white clothing and white flower crowns in their native language on Sunday to celebrate “Gospel Day” as the non-Marshallese people clapped and looked on. Gospel Day is a day Marshallese people celebrate on the first Friday of December.

It commemorates the day 167 years ago when missionaries introduced the islands’ people, who had lived there for thousands of years since the Micronesians arrived, to Christianity.

The Christian sailors aboard the Morning Star vessel in 1857 were the first to make inroads with the islands’ people.

“It’s the equivalent to the American Easter,” said Capt. David Cain, the executive director of the Salvation Army.

Before the missionaries arrived, the Marshallese people had frequent and often hostile contact with American and European sailors. The island’s people were angry with the sailors for their brutal treatment of the Marshallese women, according to a publication by the U.S. Hydrographic Office, and most of those sailors would be killed in conflict.

Spokane’s Marshallese cited the brutality and hostility between former sailors and the island’s people during Sunday’s service as an example of what Christianity had fixed – the word of the Gospel, Frank said, eventually brought people on the island together. Violence and hostility became love, acceptance and peace.

“The main reason for (Gospel Day) is to remind us where we were,” Frank said. “When the gospel came, it changed everyone. It brings family together and we come together and sing together. It is very important.”

The Marshallese people’s way of life was not completely spared. Before the end of World War II, the U.S. military turned the Kwajalein and Enewetak atolls into military bases, with a proposed plan to test powerful nuclear weapons on the islands.

In 1946, the U.S. Navy relocated the Marshallese to a different island to conduct nuclear tests, according to the Atomic Heritage Foundation. The U.S . eventually conducted 67 nuclear tests on the islands between 1946 and 1958.

The islands’ people were told they could return and resettle in 1969, but evacuated again after the nuclear levels were determined to be too high and unsafe for inhabitants. Many residents suffered from medical diseases due to the nuclear fallout, the foundation states. Radiation-related cancer and birth defects are still an issue today.

The Marshallese eventually voted to establish a new relationship with the U.S. The Marshallese and the American government signed the Compact of Free Association in 1989, which allowed Marshallese people to live and receive an education in the U.S. Marshallese first migrated to Arkansas, which has the highest number of Marshallese in the nation.

Frank, who moved to the U.S. in the early 2000s, was one of them. He began attending Salvation Army sermons in 2008, and came to Spokane in 2012.

“In times like this, we remind ourselves how important our culture is,” he said.

Cain says Spokane is one of the cities with a high Marshallese population as well, like Hawaii. Many of the Marshallese are familiar with the Salvation Army because the organization has established multiple churches on the islands.

Support from the Salvation Army also allows them to adjust to the American way of life, Cain said. Some of them reside in the church’s provided transitional living facilities. On days like Gospel Day, their presence is rewarded, celebrated and welcomed in ceremonies and songs.

Adults and children also took part in a musical-like re-enactment Sunday of the very day the Marshallese people were introduced to Christianity. They lined up in the church’s lobby, stomping and clapping and singing as they danced past the church pews to their native music.

Over across the ocean, the people on the Marshall Islands celebrate the day with large parades and feasts, according to a report by the Marshall Islands Journal.

“… Participants from well-known Christian churches paraded around Majuro, throwing candy and honking their horns,” the journal reported in 2023. “They emerged with cars decked out with posters and Christmas decorations.”

Roseanais Annam, a 19-year-old who migrated from the islands with her family to the U.S. when she was 5, said they came to America in search of a better life. Gospel Day brings her family together with other Marshallese people, which is “the most important part of the culture,” she said Sunday.

“We find joy and peace with the gospel. It brings everyone together,” Annam said. “It’s a day of celebration, a reminder. Family is the most important. Family is everything to us.”