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Originally published in 1978, God's Gentlemen remains the only detached and detailed historical analysis of the work of the Melanesian Mission, which grew out of the personal vision of George Selwyn, the first bishop of the Church of England in New Zealand. Starting with its New Zealand beginnings and its Norfolk Island years from 1867 to 1920, the book follows the Mission's shift of headquarters to the Solomon Islands and beyond through the beginning of World War II. Based on a wide range of sources, God's Gentlemen is the inner history of the slow growth of an important and genuinely Melanesian church.

In this autobiographical account of life in the capital of the Solomon Islands, Michael Kwa'ioloa reflects on the challenges of raising a family in town and sustaining ties with a distant rural homeland on Malaita island. Continuing the long tradition of Kwara'ae community leaders participating in political activism, he discusses how the roles of these leaders were severely tested by the violent conflict between Malaitans and the indigenous Guadalcanal people at the turn of the century. Kwa'ioloa provides a local perspective on the causes and course of this unhappy episode in his country's history and describes a need for a way of life founded upon ancestral values, giving chiefs a role in the governance of Solomon Islands.