and growth of faith were no longer seen as priorities by the leaders, contrary to the expectations of many members.
According to the government census of 1996, the Methodist Church had lost many members to other churches, especially the growing Pentecostal churches.82 At the same time the statistics of the church indicate that the number of confirmed members has risen sharply, from 23.5 percent in 1984 to nearly 50 percent in 2005 (105,423 out of 212,860),83 with 3,659 confirmation classes and 1,562 Bible study groups. This rise was the result of a policy in the time of the presidency of Manasa Lasaro in the early 1990s to introduce regular confirmation classes for twelve-year-old members.84 The rise in membership can be interpreted as an attempt to counter the impact of Pentecostal evangelism. The last available census in 2007 confirms the trend: the Methodist Church has decreased to 34.7 percent of the population (36.2% in 1996), while the Pentecostal and Evangelical churches have gained around 10 percent.85
Since the 1990s the Methodist Church has shown a mixed image. On one side there is the lively preaching, prayers, Fijian hymns, and meetings which continue the spirit of the mission days with its classes and love feasts. The annual conferences with their choir competitions and collections are attended by thousands from far and near.
On the other hand the leadership of the church has been dragged into political conflicts indicated by the coups d’etat since 1987. The steep increase of Pentecostal churches has led to a decrease in Methodist membership. Fiji is no longer a Methodist but a pluralist country, though the Methodist Church continues to be the strongest church in rural areas.
In 1975 the Methodist lay preacher Sakeasi Butadroka formed the Fijian Nationalist Party under the slogan “Fiji for the Fijians” and advocated the expulsion of Indians. The i-taukei movement of native landowners became a political force. Its close link to parts of the Methodist Church was expressed in the call for Fiji to be declared a Christian state. When the Methodist lay preacher Lieutenant-Colonel Sitiveni Rabuka launched a military coup in April 1987 the tensions within the Methodist Church surfaced. The president of the church, Josetaki Koroi, who called for a return to the constitutional order was overthrown by other groups under the leadership of Manasa Lasaro, who was later elected church president. The support of many Methodists for both coups was achieved through the advocacy of the Sunday ban. Keeping the Sabbath was a legacy of the evangelical British Sabbatarianism of the early missionaries, who had preached that the blessings of God would return when the Sunday was kept holy.86
John Garrett concludes that “much critical analysis of what was done suggested the church had been in collusion with militarist and racist behaviour.”87 The call for a Christian state would make non-Christians citizens of second class. The ecumenically minded minority under leaders such as Paula Niukula or Sevati Tuwere persisted in their opposition. However, major parts of the Methodist Church continued to be associated with those who supported the “Fiji for Fijians” politics. While the 1997 constitution subscribed to principles of multiculturalism and sharing of power between Fijians and Indo-Fijians, the first government elected under this constitution was overthrown by the second coup in 2000. The Methodist Church supported the following government of Laisena Qarase, another lay preacher of the church. In 2001 the Assembly of Christian Churches in Fiji (ACCF) was formed, when the Pentecostal churches joined forces with the Methodist Church. In opposition to the ecumenical Fiji Council of Churches, the ACCF advocated for Fiji to become a Christian state and supported the government in the 2005 elections.
When the military under Commander Bainimarama overthrew the Qarase government in December 2006, the Methodist Church leadership took sides for the ousted government. The so-called People’s Charter, which was supported by Archbishop Mataca from the Roman Catholic Church—to rebuild Fiji into a nonracial, pluralist democracy—was rejected by the leadership of the Methodist Church. This positioned the Methodist Church at the side of the political opposition in a time when other political parties and the Great Council of Chiefs were suspended. This course created a lot of tensions with the government which reacted by suspending Methodist regional church gatherings, including their annual conferences. These conferences played an indispensable role in appointing ministers and strengthening Methodist unity and also their financial power. Recent figures indicate that the loss of membership continued, for instance in the year before the conference of 2012 a loss of 4,656 members or almost 5 percent was recorded, attributed mainly to the youth who were attracted by Pentecostal services.88 Whether this drop in membership is also the result of the tensions between the government and the church cannot be asserted, but it seems likely that this conflict and its negative repercussions had at least some impact on the membership.
Conversion in the Lutheran Mission in New Guinea
The Lutheran mission in PNG began with missionary Johann Flierl from the Bavarian town of Neuendettelsau. He landed in Simbang at the Huon Peninsula in 1886, while the United Rhenish Mission set up a station in Bogadjim (Astrolabe Bay) in the area of the colonial German New Guinea Company in 1887. The beginnings proved to be difficult because of tropical diseases and unrest against the colonial administration in the area of the Rhenish Mission. The missionaries were not prepared to understand the animistic religion and the society of the people they wished to convert.89 Their attitude was marked by the firm conviction that the “heathen” had to be saved through the proclamation of salvation and the slow advancement of civilization. The Lutheran missionaries shared the same belief as the Methodists about the “heathen” living in darkness or being like children who had to be reprimanded and educated, because they seemed to lack conscience and the sense of right and wrong. The missionaries were convinced that not force but only the love of Christ motivated conversion, and they were devoted to suffer whatever God would put on them in order to achieve this aim.
As an example for this approach we can take the Rhenish missionary Georg Kunze on Karkar (at that time Dampier) Islands on the north coast of New Guinea from 1890 to 1894. He reports in his German mission memorial about the many difficulties of the early mission. The point of contact with the locals was the exchange of goods (for instance fruits) and work for iron, pearls, and tobacco. Thefts were common and provided the opportunity for evangelism.
Kunze tried to instill two basic messages into the people. First, “Jesus” people are loved by Jesus and do not steal. Second, Jesus sees everything and writes everything into his book, even if no other human has seen it. When you die, you will meet Jesus and he will read from his book what you have done in your life. Many will perish in the fire, but the friends of Jesus will be saved.90 Other Rhenish missionaries confirmed this approach: the law is the preparation for the gospel. First, the conscience must be awakened, and then the gospel can offer forgiveness.
We told the people that Jesus will return and raise the dead. This is the point of departure for our proclamation of repentance. We have to tell the people that only the good ones will receive the resurrection to life, while the evil ones will suffer pain and punishment. Thus we have to explain to them the difference between good and evil, going over the commandments time and again. . . . Once they get to know their true being in this mirror of their heart, they will understand why Christ died.91
Due to lack of staff and resources, the unfavorable proximity to competing ways of “new life” in the Catholic Mission and land alienations through the commercial New Guinea Company, the Rhenish mission was less successful than the mission from Neuendettelsau further south. Neither mission succeeded in their early attempts of individual conversion for several reasons: the Christian way contradicted the Melanesian way of life. Individuals could not be convinced that they were sinners and needed to change their lives. They had no need to become friends of Jesus because they were satisfied with the religion of their ancestors. The Christian God had no status in the community.
Only the change advocated by the Neuendettelsau missionary Christian Keysser from 1903 onwards proved to be successful. Keysser learnt to know the customs, myths, and stories of the local Kate people
