This is one of those falsehoods that confirms the adolescent dislike of Christianity ["Organized religion" is one of the most idiotic labels ever developed. It's like saying something is an "organized system." Is there such a thing as an un-organized system?] that is often held by youth, adults whose spiritual thinking ended in childhood, and university instructors. It is a lie that has, through thoughtless repetition, taken on the veneer of truth.
In reality, as the Christian missionaries to the Sandwich Islands brought modern health treatments and medicine with them, they found an epidemic of venereal disease among the islanders. One of the reasons traditional societies emphasized marriage and fidelity, other than the most obvious of providing a solid psychological foundation for progeny, was to reduce the spread of disease. The "free love" practiced by the native population, while traditional and certainly popular with visiting sailors, also permitted the rampant spread of debilitating and fatal disease.
This had nothing to do with their prurience and had absolutely nothing to do with surfing. I satisfied my curiosity about this last year in a visit with the scholars at The Bishop Museum in Honolulu, who showed me letters from Hiram Bingham's fellow missionaries, as well as Bingham himself, where the missionaries spoke admiringly of the practice of surfing and even mentioned participating in it.
Anyway, here's a collection of quotations from writings contemporary to the missinoary age in what became Hawaii:
Did the Missionaries really stop Surfing in Hawaiʻi, as we are most often led to believe?Invariably there are definitive statements that the missionaries “banned” and/or “abolished” surfing, hula, even speaking the Hawaiian language.However, in taking a closer look into the matter, most would likely come to a different conclusion.