The Solomon Islands, formerly a British protectorate, became independent in 1978. In 1902 John F. Goldie, an Australian missionary, was sent by the Australian Meth Overseas Mission Board to the archipelago’s Western Solomons Province. The Meth mission expanded within the major western islands from its base at Munda Point, New Georgia, helped by Islander missionaries from Fiji and Samoa. From 1913 onward the church extended northwestward into the large island of Bougainville, which had been administered by Germany, then by Australia, and under League of Nations and United Nations trusteeship, finally becoming part of independent Papua New Guinea. New Zealand Meth were major partners in the mission from 1913. Meanwhile, after World War II, the church of the London Missionary Society in Papua became the independent Papua Ekalesia in 1962, which in 1968 united with Meth churches in Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands to form the United Church of Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands. The Bougainville area of the Solomon Islands straddled the political divide. In the Western Solomons, from 1955 onward, British relocation of a substantial group of Gilbert Islander Prot of LMS background on the Western Solomons island of Wagina led to their integration, by agreement between Meth and the LMS, into the Solomon Islands Meth Church. The United Church, which in this way acquired people of Ref backgrounds, included 15% of the population on Bougainville. The Solomon Islands attained political independence in 1978. A movement on Bougainville seeking secession from Papua New Guinea led, in the 1980s, to fighting against the Papua New Guinea government and disrupted communication within the church, which it unsuccessfully sought to mediate. The Solomons half of the church and the Papua New Guinea half separated (by mutual agreement) in 1996. Wider connections for the Solomon Islands church continue through the membership of both churches in the Pacific Conference of Churches (PCC), the ecumenical Solomon Islands Christian Association (SICA), and the World Council of Churches. Leslie Boseto of the Solomon Islands, a former bishop and presiding moderator in the previously undivided church, was elected as a president of the WCC in 1992. The United Church in Solomon Islands was inaugurated in 1996 and the present moderator is Rev. Philemon Riti.
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