There were strong continuities between the old and the new systems, such as the importance of ethnicity; the place of hero worship; the composition of poems and chants in the Fijian manner of traditional sitting dance (meke) with biblical texts; the borrowing of pagan terminologies, for instance in describing biblical sacrifices; the differentiation between intense devotees and adherents; the way of presenting the annual offering to the community with public proclamation of the gift. Tippett concludes that the Wesleyan system of worship was “eminently suited for the evangelisation of Fiji,” and no clash of culture occurred. “It certainly cannot be said that they were deprived of their culture and lived in a white man’s culture.”30 The question then must be put how far the Methodist system was indigenized. If there were so many continuities, was one system of moral codes simply replaced by another?
The success of the Methodist mission was due to their adaptation and integration of the cultural system and at the same time the provision of religious development and growth which would transcend the old system step by step. The mission must be viewed as a gradual process of transformation rather than a radical breach between two worldviews. There were two main instruments provided in the Methodist tradition to achieve this growth. One was the ongoing instruction and mutual encouragement in class meetings and the second comprised emotional revivals. Hunt describes in his journal his own experience with the class or “band” meetings in England:
After we were all seated the leader gave out a hymn and prayed, and then gave an account of his experience; and after him another rose and spoke. I trembled exceedingly, expecting that as I had been admitted I must speak, and also more particularly with a desire to speak the state of my mind, and with fear and timidity. . . . The good people understood my case much better than I did and encouraged me much, inviting me to meet in class. . . . These meetings among the Methodists entirely altered my views of my own duty . . . as that I ought to give my heart to God.31
The classes provided for Hunt and for other Methodist missionaries the place of mutual comfort, encouragement, and reinforcement of their experimental religious experiences.32 This system was imported into Fiji and proved to be successful.33 The classes created opportunities for promotion as class leaders and evangelists. The Holy Communion was celebrated with seriousness and tickets submitted by the missionaries ensured that “no unworthy” would partake. Love feasts, prayer, and thanksgiving meetings of the converts provided opportunities to testify. A report by missionary A. J. Webb from a love feast in 1885 states:
They got up quickly, sometimes eight or ten at once and told how they were converted. . . . They often ascribe their conversion to texts of the scripture. . . . Others were converted while reading their Bible, or while on their canoes skimming over the waves some words seemed to leap out of the Bible and strike them, or, to use the expression I have heard used by them, “it hit me.” Many, again, have been converted during a storm at sea, or in a season of great peril and trial. God seemed at that time often to work by terror.34
The question may be posed whether God really worked by terror or whether these testimonies just linked the old and the new religion. The accounts of individual Fijians convey the conviction that God had revealed himself in their lives and that his providence guided them through all peril, such as shipwreck or shark attacks.35 Everything what happened to them was interpreted as the providence of God.
The Methodist Church was built on a system of qualifications which supported renewal and spiritual growth. The different positions such as class leader, local preacher, catechist, and native assistant missionaries expressed this growth of faith in increased responsibility. Fine Fijian evangelists and preachers were produced by Christian education begun by Hunt in Viwa in 1842 with a school and training for teacher-preachers, starting with three students. Already in 1855 the church had a clear scheme of promotion from local preacher to native assistant minister within six years.36
The second instrument to produce growth in faith was the emotional revival. Missionaries like John Hunt had experienced it themselves: “Immediately a most overwhelming influence came upon me, so that I cried aloud for mercy for the sake of Christ, while I was in a minute so completely bathed with tears and perspiration as if I had been thrown into a river.”37 Not only the missionaries but also the Fijians were familiar with emotional and ecstatic religious experiences.38 Religion was to them emotional seeking of divine power. This is acknowledged in Hunt’s translation of the catechism, where instead of giving a definition of repentance, he described the feelings of someone who repents.39
This emphasis on emotions resulted in some impressive revivals, such as the one at Viwa in October 1845. People “were praying all over the chapel with all their might”; they “cried in agonies of prayer for mercy”; some “would be seized all at once and thrown into the most extraordinary distress”; women fainted “overcome by the power of their emotions”; men became violent in sorrow and joy, they exhorted others about repentance “with amazing power”; “the Te Deum was chanted with amazing triumph” and “the name of Jesus has indeed a particular charm such as they never felt before.” Some had dreams, others visions; others got out of their mind and completely lost their self-control.40
These emotional experiences were evidence for Hunt that the people were saved, because it “appeared to us as the most consistent thing we had ever seen.” “True repentance consists in having a proper knowledge of our sins, and corresponding feelings.” The emotions were regarded as signs of the Spirit, to be expected when a murderer and cannibal was convinced of his “desperate wickedness,” and “the horrid deed they had committed.” These experiences destroyed arrogance and pride, which Hunt realized were obstacles to Fijians’ conversion.41
From a distance of 175 years, observers are more skeptical about this kind of evidence, which was certainly triggered by the expectations of the missionaries and the converts.42 Such emotions are not evidence in themselves. They occurred also in pre-Christian religion and continue to occur today in non-Christian cults as well as in Pentecostal revivals.43 Certainly, the people who had committed cannibalism and were exposed as horrible criminals needed to get rid of their feelings of guilt and shame. But such emotional outbreaks are open to various interpretations. The missionaries instigated them and the Fijians followed them in their own manner. In contrast, the Lutheran missionaries in Papua New Guinea (PNG) did not instigate such revivals and they happened only occasionally. For the Methodist missionaries the revivals provided evidence that Fijians having a similar experience to English Methodists were saved by God. Hunt claims that some of the converts had attained entire sanctification indicated in a “clear sense of acceptance with God,” “remarkable manifestations of the love of God to him,” and the entire destruction of sin.44 Many native missionaries and ministers came from these revivals.45 The desire for emotional experiences of God’s power has remained central to South Pacific Christianity. The Pentecostal revival reenacts the beginning of the Methodist mission.46
Which image of God was proclaimed by the early missionaries? Hunt viewed God as pure love pardoning sin and renewing Christians, and he tried to instill an affectionate love for God.47 He noticed however that some of the native preachers preferred legalistic exhortations: “But a plain statement of the plan of salvation seems to be far from their ideas of good preaching. . . . The result of their preaching is rather to make the people sour than affectionate, for they are always driving them to duty. . . . [There is] no active effort to bring others to experience the blessedness they feel.”48
After the primary aim of conversion was accomplished and Fiji had become a Methodist country, the zeal for spiritual conversion turned in a more puritanical direction. For Fijians who were born into a Christian society, the need for a second spiritual conversion was no longer obvious after the control of the mission had been transferred by the British Methodists to Australia in 1855. Church growth had been impressive. Before the measles epidemics which reduced the population by 25 percent in 1875 there were 10 missionaries, 56 Fijian ministers, 869 catechists, 804 local preachers, 2,866 class leaders,