The rooftop steeple and clock tower on one of Hawaiʻiʻs most historic churches, located near the civic center in Wailuku, Maui, is leaking and at risk of collapse.

The site of a former heiau and the palace complex of fearsome Chief Kahekili, the Hawaiian-speaking Christian church was named at her request by powerful and imperious Queen Kaʻahumanu, who was born in Hāna, Maui. Widely recognized for its significance, the building is on the state and national registers of historic places.

Kaʻahumanu Church’s cemetery is also the resting place of two influential Native Hawaiian missionaries who risked their lives when they returned to Hawaiʻi and confronted Hawaiian priests who opposed their efforts.

Its decaying condition has worried historic preservationists for years. Now a Honolulu architecture firm, AHL, has stepped up and provided consultation design work for free, the building permits are secured and the repair work is ready to go forward.

“We saw it as a way to help this wonderful historic building,” said AHL historic architect Katie Stephens, who examined the structure and provided design guidance about what work was needed to make the repairs.

But the rescue work underway at Kaʻahumanu Church also places into stark relief the danger faced by Maui’s many other deteriorating churches and temples — Protestant, Catholic and Buddhist — as the island’s economy continues to be sluggish and its population dwindles since the August 2023 wildfires. These new troubles come as church attendance falls to historically low levels, leaving aging and sometimes impoverished congregations to cope with expensive renovation problems.

Human And Structural Challenges

Stephens, who formerly served on the Hawai‘i Historic Places Review Board, visited Maui, where many of these old buildings are stuck away in remote corners of the island. They served plantation communities that were shuttered and stand empty amid rural depopulation.

“I was overwhelmed by how many there were,” said Stephens, who recently shared images of some of these endangered churches in a presentation she gave the Historic Hawaiʻi Foundation.

The churches face wrenching human and structural challenges. The Covid pandemic lockdowns have had a lingering effect on church attendance, with some parishioners converting to virtual attendance and then dropping away entirely, causing consternation and soul-searching among church leaders.

“Who are we, what are we, after the pandemic?” asked Pastor Lauren Buck Medeiros, a former chaplain at Punahou School in Honolulu who recently took the helm as pastor of Iao United Church of Christ, a historically Japanese-American congregation that now also serves Maui’s Micronesian community. “We literally had to stop meeting during the pandemic. People dropped out of the routines of Sunday morning. It’s kind of like you don’t need to go anymore. We’ve become a watcher society. You just need to watch.”

She said the 2023 wildfires and subsequent economic decline have exacerbated that problem.

“On Maui we have the added awareness that we are post-traumatic, we are in recovery mode,” she said. “The whole island was affected, not just Kula and Lahaina, but everyone.”

Rev. Roxanne WhiteLight, treasurer of the Interfaith Alliance of Maui, called it a “perfect storm” of negative influences because church members are aging out and it has become difficult to organize fundraising efforts as they did in the past. Only some of the decaying older churches may be saved, she said.

“It’s reaching a crisis point,” she said. “Communities will need to decide which are the most ‘representational.’”

East Mauiʻs Declining Population

Though some experts are reporting signs of a religious resurgence in recent years, including among evangelical churches and conservative Catholic flocks, the number of people in Hawaiʻi who self-identify as religious Christians or Buddhists has fallen from 73% in 2014 to 69% in 2023-2024, according to the Pew Research Center. The slump has been particularly stark for Maui’s historic churches.

“Some of the buildings find it difficult to keep going,” Stephens said.

East Maui has been particularly hard-hit because of the steep population decline since the sugar plantations folded. Once densely populated, fewer than 1,000 people live in the Hāna area today.

“Everybody is trying to fix their temple or their church roof,” said Joanne Fanning, secretary at Wananalua Congregational Church in Hāna. “And if they aren’t, there’s something wrong.”

St. Paul’s Catholic Church in Kipahulu, for example, where mass is now offered only once a month, is showing visible signs of decay and needs extensive repairs.

“The termites have eaten it; it’s quite bad already,” said Father June, whose main base is St. Mary’s Church in Hāna but who oversees St. Paul’s as well. “If you have any way to help us, I would really appreciate it. We pray that God will move it to happen.”

The Hāna Hongwanji Gakuen Temple, which was built in 1926 by Japanese immigrants who worked for Hāna Plantation Co., was abandoned during World War II, when some of its leaders were imprisoned in internment camps. The sugar plantations also shut down. By the time the war was over, only 12 members remained in the area. Over the decades, it fell into the same kind of disrepair as St. Paul’s.

But the structure was rescued and rehabilitated through the efforts of a community group, the Hāna Buddhist Temple Preservation Association. Work there was recently completed at a cost of $400,000 and converted the building into a community gathering place.

“I am so grateful the temple has been restored so beautifully,” said Kerry Kiyohara, resident minister at Makawao Hongwanji Buddhist Temple.

A Church Atop A Battlefield

Problems are particularly severe at Hāna’s grand edifice Wananalua, built in 1842, another Maui property on the National Register of Historic Places. It was built by New England missionaries on the site of a major battle between invading warrior King Kamehameha and Maui forces. Its services are conducted jointly in Hawaiian and English.

Stephens said the church’s foundation is starting to sink and it has serious drainage issues. In some places, she said in her presentation to the Historic Hawaiʻi Foundation, sunlight shines through holes in the roof.

Kahu Sid Hall serves as a temporary pastor at Wananalua. He said that parishioners have told him that in the old days, the church, which has capacity for hundreds of people, was so popular that congregants brought chairs and sat on the lawn, peering in through the windows to participate in services. Now about 40 people come to worship there on Sundays, he said.

“What’s happening on Maui is not unique,” he said. “It’s part of the pattern of rural America.”

He said many members of the congregation are poor and survive “by piecing together different jobs to make ends meet.”

The church supports itself today by leasing out an adjacent lot that houses six to eight food trucks and keeps its personnel costs low by employing retired pastors from the mainland, including Hall, who have pensions from other jobs. Four come to Maui each year on a seasonal rotation. Local people lead much of the worship service, conducting portions in Hawaiian.

Hall said that although the cost will be high, the congregation is committed to trying to raise the money to restore the property.

“This church is so loved,” he said. “The Native Hawaiians’ ancestors are in the cemetery. They really feel a lot on their shoulders to carry it forward.”

Reconstruction In Wailuku

The same fundraising effort is starting to get underway at Kaʻahumanu Church in Wailuku, according to Pastor Kahu Wayne Higa. Though it once drew thousands of worshipers, adherents have fallen away. It will be difficult to pull off, with a congregation that averages only about 25 each Sunday, with a core group of about 10 congregants.

Kaʻahumanu is one of the two most historic churches on Maui, in addition to Lahaina’s Waiola Church, which burned down in the 2023 wildfire.

Kaʻahumanu was built on the site that formed the palace compound for Chief Kahekili, the famous Maui chief whose warriors tattooed half their bodies black to increase their appearance of ferocity. Having just conquered Oʻahu in a series of bloody battles, he was the most powerful chief in the Hawaiian Islands when British Captain James Cook arrived in 1778. Today two highways, one on north Maui and another in Windward Oʻahu, are named for him.

The stones in the church’s wall facing High Street are believed to have come from a heiau that once stood on the site, Higa said.

Kahekili’s son, Kalanikupule, was left to reign over Maui when Kahekili moved his headquarters to Waikiki. But in 1790, they were overwhelmed by Kamehamaha at the nearby battle of Iao Needle, or Kepaniwai, and eventually forced out of their ancestral lands. Kamehameha later invaded Oʻahu and wiped out the last of the survivors who had once formed Maui’s elite.

So Kamehameha’s widow, Kaʻahumanu, who had converted to Christianity, was making a statement when she showed up in Maui in 1832 and declared the newly started church should bear her name. In this way, she planted her imprimateur on the place where she and her husband had achieved victory over Maui. It became an important church on Maui, attended by thousands of people.

Two particularly significant missionaries who are believed to have been buried on its grounds are Thomas Hopu and John Honolii. Classmates with famous convert Henry Opukahaia in Cornwall, Connecticut, Hopu and Honolii accompanied the first band of New England missionaries to Hawaii in 1820. The missionaries could not speak Hawaiian and so Hopu and Honolii were the voices that explained the tenets of Christianity to Hawaiians in the islands, much to the displeasure of Hawaiian priests who practiced the traditional religion and opposed the entry of these unorthodox new ideas.

After Kamehameha’s two primary widows, Keopuolani and Kaʻahumanu, converted to Christianity, the bulk of the population did so as well.

The church itself, a replacement for earlier thatched hale-style structures, was built in 1876.

The reconstruction work is expected to cost $2.7 million, Higa said. They are looking to grants and charitable contributions to raise the money.

“Plate lunches and laulaus and rummage sales won’t be enough,” he said.

He said he is writing a letter to circulate to explain what is needed and to help gain support for the effort.

“Our belief is that God doesn’t want us to fail,” he said. “That has kept us going many years. Now we need to trust. We are confident it will happen.”

Civil Beat’s coverage of Maui County is supported in part by a grant from the Nuestro Futuro Foundation.