Similar to the Lutheran Church in New Guinea, the success of the mission work was due to the native evangelists or teacher-preachers. In the beginning they came from Tonga and were therefore familiar with Fijian customs. Many of them showed great perseverance and sincerity in their work and succeeded in parts of Fiji—for instance in Kadavu, where white missionaries arrived much later—while others suffered persecution and death. These native evangelists had a strong conviction of being the instruments of God.
The background of the Wesleyan missionaries was the evangelical awakening and the Methodist theology of sanctification. For the Methodists, salvation meant deliverance and preservation from the wrath of God, healing from sin, and preservation from evil to eternal life.11 They were convinced that the customs of the Fijians had enraged the wrath of God and that there was no salvation for them unless they would convert. This was not a racist or colonial position, because they applied a similar stance to the Europeans living in Fiji who risked their salvation through their unacceptable behavior.12 This implied a dualistic worldview of Satan sending his raging armies against man. Hell preaching occurred as a warning to change sides,13 but it seems not to have been central in this early time.
It is important to understand that the conversion from sin to salvation was taught according to the Methodist pattern. “Unless God has received you and made you his children, you are yet in a far country. If you die in it you will go to one still further from God, to one from which you cannot return to him.”14 Conversion, repentance, and regeneration were the steps to salvation which could be experienced as the peace and rest of the soul, the overcoming of sin and eternal life.15
Conversion in the Methodist understanding consisted of two necessary steps. The first step was leaving the old gods (heathenism) and attending Christian worship. This conversion could happen for nonreligious reasons, as in the case of High Chief Cakobau who sought an alliance with the king of Tonga. Another reason was war: when the Christian party won against the pagan party and—unlike former times—the life of the defeated party was saved by the victorious Christian party.16 The defeat proved that the power of the victorious Christian God was greater than their gods.
This conversion meant giving up practices such as cannibalism, stopping warfare, and attending to instruction and church services. According to Tippett this did not involve “any serious culture clash, except that he was subjecting himself to a different set of tabus (taboos). . . . The only serious adjustment they had to make was to accept a greater value for human life.”17 The traditional religious values of agricultural prosperity and the people’s reverence for the chiefs were retained. Sickness and healings were attributed to the gods, be it the former Fijian deity, who had to be appeased or, if this did not help, the new Christian God. Missionaries like Hunt were critical of conversions which happened because of outward impressions such as healings, because this made proselytes instead of true converts.18 Nevertheless the healings made a great impression on people who were used to abandoning the sick.
Those who accepted Christianity did not necessarily have an inner conversion, and customs such as polygamy were continued. Nevertheless, they followed the instructions of the missionaries and local teachers, who aimed at awakening the spiritual changes of the second conversion. For the Methodist missionaries this second step was the conversion from sin to sanctification.19 Hunt wrote:
In most instances those who have renounced their former superstition have felt little of the power of Divine grace, until they have been a length of time under religious instruction. In these cases a twofold conversion has been necessary—the first from heathenism to Christianity as a system, and the second from the mere form of godliness to its power.20
Baptism with water was only the beginning, which had to be complemented by baptism of the spirit (rebirth).21 Although the link between the Old Testament and Fijian hero stories and a warrior God could have been exploited, the preaching centered on salvation and the need to be born again and become a new person in Christ. In a sermon from May 11, 1842 on John 3:3, Hunt preached that
renouncing the gods and practices of heathenism is not being born again, though this is necessary to it. Being baptized is not being born again, though baptism is a sign of it. . . . Meeting in class is not being born again, though an important means of grace. Nor is repentance the new birth, though many are much affected by it and much changed by it. Those who are born again truly repent of all sin, so as to abandon all sin. They truly believe in Christ so as to obtain the forgiveness of sin, and it is a consciousness of their acceptance with God given them by the witness of the Spirit which produces in them love to God in return. . . . This change is a change of soul . . . and a change from sin to holiness . . . seen and known by its fruits. We must have this change 1. In order to enjoy the blessings of the Kingdom of God in this world. 2. In order to enter heaven. It will avail nothing to be able to say at the bar of God, I have renounced idolatry, theft, adultery, fornication, murder etc. I have met in class, been baptized, have cried for my sins, read the bible, heard preaching etc. unless these means have led to a change of heart and mind.22
Hunt not only preached and practiced this, he also wrote a well-received book for the Methodist audience in England on Entire Sanctification.23 His fellow missionary James Calvert acknowledged in the preface that “entire salvation in experience and practice . . . was the moving cause behind all his thoughts and actions.”24 Renunciation of “heathen” practices and attending church services was not a sufficient sign of a Christian. The experience of rebirth required a deeper emotional commitment or change of heart by showing the fruits of the Spirit. In his work on Entire Sanctification Hunt explained: Christians have to purify others through their conduct and prayers. If you are afraid to put the standards too high you limit the divine grace. You should be more afraid of imperfection than perfection. What does it mean to become a Christian? First, it means repentance, the conviction of sin and the feeling of shame, sorrow as well as the fear of punishment resulting in the sense of inability to save ourselves; second, it means faith in Christ’s atonement, which implies trusting in him alone; third, it means the justification or pardon of sin as God’s work; fourth, the assurance that we are accepted by God in the Spirit; and fifth, the regeneration through the Spirit.25
Entire sanctification is attainable as entire purity of heart; maturity of Christian character; practical holiness; attending to every duty in the right spirit, with the right motives, and to the full extent of our capacity. This requires crucifying the flesh, resisting the remaining desires of the flesh, being delivered from pride, destructive envy, anger, love of the world; and loving God and others with full heart and mind so that a life without sin is possible.26
For the Fijian converts, entire sanctification was a remote aim. Conversion and renewal were an everyday challenge. One must question whether the rigorous pressure for holiness created a gap between expectation and reality, so that the goal was sacrificed to shortcuts and some experiences were singled out to prove the truth of sanctification. This happened in several emotional revivals.
In practice, the necessary change of heart was tested according to the moral standards of the church, and membership was granted only if this adherence was testified. In the Methodist system not everyone who attends church becomes a church member. Members are admitted only on proof of their pursuit of a Christian life. The admission of members was rather restrictive in the beginning. For instance in the circuit which saw mass conversions following Chief Cakobau’s conversion in 1854, only 17 percent or 2,744 of 15,461 people were admitted as church members in 1860.27 In addition, the missionaries often expelled members in order to cleanse Christianity from a syncretism with “Fijian mythology and heathen ethic.”28
Such expulsions concurred with the traditional Fijian religion, where loss of status was the consequence of lacking discipline. The traditional Fijian system was organized around the observation of taboos:
The classification of people into groups according to office and responsibility,