Everyone was masked, every other pew was blocked, and the offering plate placed at the entrance was not taken to the altar during the Offertory section of the service. The lady minister brought the wafers to each communicant, and everyone waited to consume them at the same time.
Today the Episcopal Church in Hawaii remembered Queen Liliuokalani, who became a church member in 1896 after the Kingdom was overthrown. The dethronement of the Queen in 1893 and her imprisonment was such a naked power-grab by American sugar growers that the U.S. Senate and President Grover Cleveland refused to recognize the newly created Republic of Hawaii until the exigencies of the Spanish-American War made annexation inevitable in 1898.
Queen Liliuokalani and the Hawaiian people were not uncivilized savages, a characterization that was often used to justify colonialism. She was highly educated, fluent in English and led a government that followed the Western model. Moreover, she was Christian, and her faith was sorely tested by those who abandoned the teachings of their missionary fathers for the sake of wealth and power. Though she resisted annexation, she finally relented because of the destruction an armed rebellion would bring down on her people.
It's safe to say that Liliuokalani's nobility of character in the face of vastly superior power is an important reason why the Hawaiian sovereignty movement has such resonance.
She was also a gifted composer who wrote some of the most well-known numbers in the Hawaiian songbook. Below is the Queen's Prayer:
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