The historian Andrew Thornley describes Fijian Methodist worship as marked by the typical Fijian personal free prayers, Fijian hymns, the chanting of the Apostles’ Creed, the reciting of the Wesleyan Catechism, and long sermons with illustrative biblical preaching.51 The villages competed no longer in wars but in expensive church buildings, choir competitions, and displays of food.52 However, there were already warnings about the lack of individual growth in faith. Missionaries such as the long-serving Lorimer Fison noted the nominalism of many converts.53
The time of the great early revivals had passed and the church structure had developed.54 A report of a commission of the Methodist Church of Australasia from 1907 shows that there were monthly congregational meetings of native ministers, catechists, teachers, and local church workers.55 The pledge against the consumption of kava and tobacco was raised at this level. Quarterly meetings of the circuit led by the missionary, with native ministers and catechists, discussed appointments, education, building, and other practical matters. Quarterly meetings of preachers were concerned with church discipline and appointments of local preachers and students. Annual circuit meetings enquired into the character and work of the native ministers and recommended candidates for ministry. Finally, the District Synod was the ruling body of the church. Ministers or pastors were paid by the people of their congregation and the funds of the society (£8 to £18 according to years of service in 1907, comparable to a “middle class chief”). Village teachers and preachers relied on their people for support. At Davuilevu the commission also visited the mission of the Indian indentured laborers in Fiji who converted to Christianity and recommended the creation of a separate Indian Synod within the Methodist Church, which was established in 1922.
The church structures provided the means for developing local ministry and faith. In 1857 the first theological training institution for native ministers opened with twenty-eight students in the Rewa circuit, only twenty-two years after the beginnings of the mission.56 The strength of the native ministry was revealed when in 1875 all eighty-three students at Navuloa Theological College volunteered to become missionaries in the newly established Methodist mission in New Britain (PNG).57 The vision of an independent Fijian church was however rejected by the now Australian missionaries, who kept a strong and paternalistic hold of all important decisions.58 The District Synod of 1903 ruled against recommendations of the Australian Mission Board for lay representatives to participate in the Synod: it is “impossible to govern our native Church upon the same principles that are applicable to races which have advanced so much further in civilization” and explained that “the Fijian has little or no genius for financial administration.”59
Fiji had become a Methodist country and the missionaries had assumed powerful positions in the society. According to the Methodist tradition they tried to separate politics and church affairs, but this attitude strengthened the position of the chiefs in communal affairs. In consequence many conflicts occurred between ministers and chiefs. The chiefs were sanctified in their authority by the church. They claimed the right to determine the affairs of the people and, in continuity with pre-Christian tradition, they were not willing to differentiate between religious and nonreligious affairs, even if they had no deeper Christian experience themselves. Tippett speaks of a clash between a democratic fellowship provided in the Methodist representative synodal system and the chiefly authority.60 This served as an argument for the missionaries to resist the independence of the church, arguing that the chiefs would manipulate the native ministers.61 However, the missionaries did little to reform the chiefly system. Any newly appointed minister needed the permission of the chief to work in his village and had to be adopted in the chiefly family, a practice persisting until today.62
In many looming problems caused by the infringement of colonialism the missionaries intervened when Christian principles were openly broken. They voted in favor of the cession to the British government which was enacted in 1874, but they also criticized the indentured labor trade of Pacific Islanders and defended the land rights of the Fijians against European encroachments on land, which led finally to a guarantee of Fijian land ownership by the colonial government.63
The shift from a Christian minority into a powerful majority church and the social changes during the colonial period influenced the theological emphases. The second and third generations of missionaries did not keep the focus of Hunt, but turned sanctification more and more into moralism. After the decline of the population through measles epidemics and the establishment of the British colony in 1874 the missionaries became more paternalistic, rigid, and moralistic in their teachings.64 This attitude matched with the native taboo-oriented perception of religion. Sermons about eternal punishment increased. For instance, the measles epidemics were interpreted as divine punishment by Fijian preachers. “Fear of a wrathful Christian God dominated the minds of many Fijian converts.”65 Missionaries warned against the rising immorality and replied to it with hundreds of expulsions from membership.66
Sin, which according to Hunt was the feeling of total loss before God, became mainly connected to sexuality. Everything was done to suppress the “animal nature,” from the wearing of flowers to dancing, hair cutting, and swimming games.67 Sexual sins loomed in the mind of the missionaries because not long before, many Fijian men had lived in polygamy. Forced to send their wives away at conversion many kept contact nevertheless. Childbirth outside of marriage became a problem because the mothers lost their church membership. Some missionaries even refused to baptize these children.68 To many missionaries the fight against sexual sins seemed to be more important than confronting the ongoing belief in the old religion.
Following the abolitionist movement many missionaries spent a lot of their energy in fighting against kava and alcohol consumption as well as smoking. The campaign against kava proved to be difficult, because kava was and still is regarded as an important part of social custom.69 Disciplinary actions ranging from fines to suspension of membership for a certain period of time were so widespread that often half of the members were expelled. Class meetings were turned into checks of conformity to the moral standards rather than uplifting the spiritual development of the attendants.70 The results of all these campaigns were a drop of membership from 44 percent to 23 percent and of church attendance from 98 percent to 91 percent of native Fijians in 1910.71 According to critical observers these campaigns for sanctification through purification could only encourage hypocrisy.72
During the decades after World War II Fiji experienced many social changes. The greatest change had already begun in 1879 with the introduction of indentured laborers from India under the British government. By 1900 there were 60,500 Indians in Fiji, of which 60 percent remained in Fiji after their term of indenture was served. In the 1920s more Indians arrived as free settlers and became shopkeepers, tailors, or jewelers. At the end of World War II there were more Indians (130,000) than Fijians (119,000) in Fiji. Efforts to evangelize the Indian workers, who were Hindus and Muslims, began with Hannah Dudley in 1897, but only a small minority converted to Christianity.
Tensions between the Fijian and Indian populations increased. When the colonial rule came to its end, Fijian leaders expected that the control over the country would be theirs, while the Indians began to ask for their place in a future Fiji. The Fijian, Indian, and European Synods of the Methodist Church united in 1943. According to John Garrett, the two different concepts of a Fijian Methodist Church for Fijians or a United Methodist Church linked to worldwide Methodism existed within the church.73 After independence in 1964 the Indian Methodists formed a separate division within the Methodist Church, which was however very small compared to the Fijian divisions, because most Indo-Fijians did not convert to Christianity.
Furthermore, problems like the consumption of liquor, extensive kava drinking, and urban migration with its effects on unemployment and squatter settlements in the capital area changed the traditional