SECULAR STATE OR A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRATIC STATE? The argument
This document was researched and prepared by FDP editor, Dr Robert Wolfgramm, for Ambassador Sir James Ah Koy (pictured). It formed the centrepiece of his "Submission to the 2012 Fiji Constitution Commission" - the commission which was chaired by Professor Yash Ghai. In the end, both the Ah Koy submission and the Yash Ghai draft constitution were rejected by the Fiji regime which came up with a secular constitution of its own that is now law. The key appendix to the failed Ah Koy submission is as follows (in edited and abbreviated form):
It is argued here, both - that the notion of ‘separation of religion and state’, and the proposal that Fiji be nominally a ‘secular state’ - are misconceived.
It is proposed, rather, that if Fiji is to be constitutionally named, then it be named for what it should be by practice and conviction: a Christian democratic state rather than any new-fangled secular state. If the choice is to be between secular and Christian, then by virtue of heritage and practice, a Christian democratic state is the proper appellation for Fiji.
In our first 1970 Constitution, Fiji was given the status of being a ‘sovereign democratic State’ and the preamble twice acknowledged our ‘reverence to God’ in the context of ‘unshakeable human rights and freedoms’ for all. In our second 1990 Constitution, we were accorded the status of being a ‘sovereign democratic republic’ and Christianity was accorded affirmation and ‘respect’ as the historic and dominant religion of the itaukei Fijian people along with guarantees for freedom of religion, freedom of conscience, and freedom of expression to all.
These clauses were explicitly provisioned in the rights contained in that 1970 document. In the 1997 Constitution, reference to Christianity was removed and the statement that ‘religion and the state are separate’ was contained in a clause that further acknowledged ‘worship and reverence for God’ as the ‘source of good government and leadership’.
It is submitted here that the time for a more explicit declaration of our national status as a Christian democratic state is called for and that the relevant preamble to the proposed constitution should read:
Fiji is to be sovereign Christian democratic republic
The reasons for this conclusion are discussed in full below the accompanying summary Chart. Suffice to summarise here, that a ‘Christian democratic state’ or republic does not require or oblige the nation to eat Christian cakes from Christian cups at Christian tables while they breathe Christian air and listen to Christian radio. Rather, such a nomenclature fits with honouring our heritage, expresses the character of the principles of rights, liberties and ethics derived from the Christian religion and which already underlie our national ethos, and summarises the predominant religious orientation of the majority of our people.
Moreover, it augurs well shutting down temptations to engage further in what has been termed ‘coup culture’. Fiji’s post-Independence history of flirting with political secularism has been an unmitigated disaster. Our constitutional status as a quasi-secular state during this time has seen us dogged with four coups. Since 1970, a generation of our people has grown up knowing nothing but political instability, military takeover, economic decline, international sanctions, and international pariah status. We have seen and experienced social and moral decay, and crime and corruption, on an unprecedented scale[1].
One of the key objectives of the Peoples Charter is to rid Fiji forever of ‘coup culture’ (see pages 11, 12, 15, 38). That is laudable and what the nation needs. This submission to the Commission argues that in order to achieve the goal of the Peoples Charter (in relation to ridding the nation of ‘coup culture’), we need to secure Fiji’s future by re-designating our national constitutional status as a ‘Christian democratic state’.
The underlying assumptions are Biblically-based and developed from the ancient but common view of prophets and writers, as well as of Jesus himself, who saw the entire human project in cosmic terms. That is, that we are caught up in a spiritual struggle for the planet and for the souls of humanity. That our first understanding must be to see things in spiritual rather than temporal terms. Moreover,
The view put here is not exceptional in this regard and the viewpoint on the Christian democratic state in particular is not one unique to itaukei Christian Fijians. Rather, the idea has an ancient history and is still subscribed to in one form or other by contemporary scholars, politicians and citizens alike.
EVALUATING THE IDEA OF A SECULAR STATE
The word ‘secular’ derives from the Latin saeculum or saecularis and promotes the vision of a state whose focus and orientation is to this present world, a state which finds itself unbound by any authority above and beyond this present world, and a state, which is thereby unaccountable to God[2].
This is unacceptable for Biblically-informed Christians[3] and has never been true of the way in which government by the state has been justified in Fiji[4].
The Bible asserts the world and all that is in it, is his, God’s[5]. That means there is no sacred-secular distinction with respect to the God-given human task of exercising political governance[6]. The world may be corrupted by sin, but it still belongs to God. It is God’s by right of creation, and by redemption (salvation), and is under his dominion and providence. The state is under the authority of God as his arrangement in this world and is appointed by him for this world, for the purpose of enforcing order and justice among humanity[7]. Under the providence of God, the state has its place for administration of justice and civil order in relation to how we exercise our many responsibilities in the present world[8]. But the authority which the state and its functionaries exercise is not supreme, it is given by God[9]. Individuals exercising the powers of the state are ultimately responsible to God for the decisions they make[10].
Similarly, when the state itself moves beyond its sphere, exceeding the authority which divine providence has accorded it, demanding the ultimate allegiance of its subjects and imposing on them its own religion or system of values (such as secularism), the state, like individuals, may become ‘a demonic power in this world’ forgetting that in this temporal age, the state, as well as individuals, and religion itself, is also subject to the lordship of Christ for he is Lord of all[11]. 1 Peter 3:22: ‘In him all things were created … whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities’[12]. Indeed, the final limits of the state and its powers were set by Christ himself when he was raised from the dead and made to sit in heavenly places ‘far above all rule and authority and power and dominion’[13].
In sum: the state is, in this Christian view, always religious, not secular. It is of course, of this world, but not secular and can never be, because it is a divinely ordained institution, not a law unto itself[14]. God’s primary assignment to the state, to all states, everywhere, in all epochs, is to provide law, order, justice and the opportunity for their citizens to pursue individual happiness within their geographically delineated segment of the planet[15]. State administration of justice, law, and civil order, is therefore always subject to God’s administration of his justice[16]. Thus, to paraphrase the Lord’s words (from Mark 2:27): The state was made for man, not man for the state[17]. Man was made for God. For Christians, God rules, politicians merely serve[18].
From a Christian perspective, a ‘secular state’ is therefore problematic on a number of related fronts and these are summarized here.
Because advocates of the secular state are naïve about the premises of their own foundations, secular states are inherently unstable with risky, even devastating, consequences.
Because they naively ignore their own religious basis and because they try to suppress the natural religious disposition, as well as the historical heritage of their citizens, such secularised states have inevitably dissolved into being religious ones[19]. Post-Enlightenment France declared itself secular and revolutionists tried to enforce their ‘religion of humanity’ – the basis of secular-humanism – on citizens, but outward compliance brought inner resistance[20]. This too was the situation in the Soviet Union when it tried to dethrone the various religions of the people and in its place, put a common secular-atheism as the officially sanctioned state belief-system. It never worked. Adolf Hitler attempted to replace German religions with a common secular-Nazism as the official religious ideology of the state. It failed miserably. Elsewhere, secular-communism was trumpeted as the ‘answer’ to democracy and as the real solution to giving power to the people – in China, for example, the growth of Islam and the re-growth of suppressed Christianity give lie to the intentions of this ideological mammoth. In Yugoslavia, a post WW2 secular-nationalism was tried by General Tito to remove the peculiar ethno-religious differences among his population – it crumbled into a genocidal mess because the natural instinct of people was/and always will be to define their own conceptions of the state according to their historical heritage, cultures and traditions. These would not and cannot be denied. Secular states have never lasted, and cannot last. The lessons of history show them to be unstable socially engineered experiments with potentially devastating consequences[21].
The idea of a secular state has had no place in Fiji’s original heritage
Fiji’s religious and deeper political heritage is one of conversion and appropriation. Original Fijians gave up their heathen and pagan practices such as cannibalism, child sacrifice, and bride-strangling, to become civilised by Biblically-informed Christian values, principles, ethics, morals and practices. These were conveyed to them by Christian traders, missionaries and colonial administrators[22]. They were taught to them through church establishments, and colonial administration, and schools[23]. They were displayed before them by example. Original Fijians volunteered their pre-state tribalism to the welfare of their trading, mission and colonial benefactors because they perceived a superior system of life which they desired[24]. They converted to Christianity and appropriated British administration for themselves for the very purposes of Christianising their culture and organising their state[25]. They were not interested in secularizing their state, in replacing one form of idolatry or devil-worship for another. The heritage of Fiji is, therefore, of a people thoroughly committed to Christianity and for a Christianised, even explicitly, Christian democratic state (after the British model)[26].
Thus, the better option for Fiji’s future is to honour its heritage, reject alien notions of secularism, and to constitutionally define ourselves as the ‘Christian democratic state’ that we potentially are.
MAKING SENSE OF A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRATIC STATE
A Christian democratic state – as could be the case in Fiji – would not mean compulsory state-enforced adherence to the Christian religion, neither would it mean superior rights and privileges accruing to Christian adherents, nor would it deprive or deny the right to freedom of worship by any group, individual, or institution. Rather, as the great Irish Jesuit educator, Cahill, rightly and succinctly defined it, the Christian democratic state is ‘one in which the laws and administration as well as the organized activities and general outlook of the citizens are in accordance with Christian principles’. As Cahill assessed it, ‘These principles in so far as they are applicable to social and public life, are practically identical with the dictates of the natural law’[27].
This is as good a prescription for Fiji’s future as can be found.
It is worth noting here that the term ‘secular’ and the very idea of separating church from state are themselves theories and realities proclaimed by Christian democratic states! They grew out of nations where the dominant culture was one of a state-ethos in which the Christian religion was already established[28].
In the 16th century this was clarified well by the German Protestant reformer, Martin Luther, who proclaimed the doctrine of two [conceptual] kingdoms – civil and spiritual, or temporal and eternal – but that ‘the temporal government is a divine order’ too, like the church[29].
His Swiss colleague, John Calvin, similarly differentiated between ‘the civil polity’ and ‘the spiritual polity’ and similarly argued that ‘civil government’ has the duty of ‘rightly establishing [the Christian] religion’ and that its ‘appointed end’ is to ‘cherish and protect the outward worship of God’[30].
Catholic, Cardinal William Allen, similarly conceded that church and state are ‘joined though not confounded’ but this distinction is ‘no argument that the church and the Commonwealth are always separate and independent the one from the other’[31].
In the 18th century, British Anglican scholar, Hadrian a Saravia (a translator of the King James Version of the Bible), argued that both church and state are ‘derived from both one and the same Author’ and again, that ‘the authority of both are drawn from the same Head’[32].
These then are the roots of the idea of ‘secular’ and of ‘separation’[33].
Given this differentiation, what then is to be the proper mode of distinction, collaboration, alliance and establishment between Christianity and the state?
To repeat again in this regard, that establishment of a Christian democratic state would not mean the imposed or forced establishment of a particular church/denomination as it has in centuries past in the religious wars of Europe, the supposed ‘divine right’ of kings and queens, the Spanish Inquisition, the reign of Bloody Mary, and the like[34]. Rather, it will refer to the establishment of the values and principles of the Christian religion per se in the fabric and business of the state - and nothing more[35].
It cannot be intrusive or coercive because Christians over the past 1700 years of their own experience of attempting and then resisting coercive religion, have come to the Lockean conclusion that the politics of Jesus does not seek to control people’s responses. The politics of Jesus works by consent, by the persuasive osmosis of the Holy Spirit - or it cannot work at all[36]. Indeed, at the very outset of the Christianisation of the world, the first Christian Roman emperor, Constantine, and General Licinius, formulated the Edict of Milan (in 313CE) guaranteeing, among other things, that:
Christians and non-Christians alike should be allowed to keep the faith of their own religious beliefs and worship … that we have also conceded to other religions the right of open and free observance of their worship … that each one may have the free opportunity to worship as he pleases; this regulation is made that we may not seem to detract from any dignity or any religion [emphasis mine].
To repeat, while we presently differentiate between civil and ecclesiastical jurisdictions, the two are practically interwoven, for in every society, religion serves civil objectives and has civil benefits – government relies upon ethics and morality for public order, the public obtains its ethics and morality from religion[37].
This particularly true of the United States – which is often alleged as the bastion of separation of religion and state and which has mistakenly been called a ‘secular state’[38]. Distinction, but not separation, has been well acknowledged ever since the idea of ‘separating church and state’ was first mooted there in the 16th century, was subsequently formulated by Thomas Jefferson and his heirs the 18th century, and espoused by separationists subsequently[39].
So that we are not ignorant of how this so-called doctrine of ‘separation of church and state’ was conceived in the United States, the following examples of sentiments from some leading American churchmen and Presidents of the past should dispel the mistake of it being understood in contemporary secularist terms as if rooted in the disestablishment of Christianity itself. It was not – even separationists conceded that[40].
Indeed, as these sentiments exemplify, there are various direct and indirect ways by which the institutions of the Christian religion are recognized in the Constitutions and laws of the United States thus giving lie to any claim that in relation to that country, ‘there is made by the nation the entire separation of religion from the state’[41]. A procession of American presidents since George Washington has reinforced their common belief in the religious underpinnings of the state[42]. Which is not to suggest that the United States has behaved or conforms in a perfect manner corresponding to particular standards of Christianity. Far from it. Rather, while seeking to establish the separation of church and state in the public realm, the United States has nevertheless oriented itself to meeting the ideals of Christianity itself in that very same sphere[43].
CONCEIVING FIJI AS A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRATIC STATE
In our case, Christianity is similarly woven into the being of the itaukei people of Fiji[44]. It is the majority religion of these Fijian people by their consent, not by coercion. It is secularism, not Christianity, which imposes itself by coercion. When self-defined secular states require their population to be ‘secular’ or non-religious in their politics, they are often blind to the fact that they are requiring their citizens to adopt a state-enforced belief about politics which arises from a religious – albeit non-Christian - commitment[45]. As in France and the United States recently, secularism and its secular-state proponents seek to privilege itself by prohibiting the free expression of one’s religious symbols in public spaces. Christian crosses, Islamic moons, Jewish stars and the like are all banned in public areas[46]. In Germany, ritual infant circumcision – dating back to God’s instruction to Abraham – is now being prohibited among Jews and Muslims and other practitioners. They are being regulated by the state as if it, the state, is beyond the authority of God.
While secular states impose secularism on people, a future Christian democratic state (as noted in the foregoing) could never impose the Christian religion on others. Apart from the state bearing in nominal constitutional terms, their shared name, it would not, in practical and substantive terms, seek special rights or privileges for Christians over others. To do so would be un-Christian – as John Locke and Soren Kierkegaard have variously pointed out[47]. That would deny their very definition as a Christian democratic state would not tolerate religious intolerance[48]. It would not advance the gospel by means and resources of the state, but rather advances the cause, institutions, and processes of the state through the principles of the gospel. The ‘gentle politics of Jesus’ is not ‘jammed upon us’ either as individuals or in groups. Because God rules, no human institution, constitution or authority can claim totality of domination over us[49]. Unforced consent, freedom of expression, freedom of worship, were all established by Christians in various epochs and circumstances[50]. We have every reason to be proud of this heritage[51].
In fact, far from presently considering the adoption of secular status, Fiji should be named for the Christian democratic state that inheres it[52]. With respect to other religions and ethno-cultural minorities, nothing will change in practical terms from the system as it already is. Rights and liberties accorded over time to our various minorities will be guaranteed - as they are and have been - not merely by international covenants and obligations, but by our Christianity which predates, and foreshadowed these international agreements and concords.
That is to say, Fijian people did not come to respect the religious rights and liberties of others because they were made to by signing off on secular international accords, but because they were long converted to the Christian ethic which already respected the rights and liberties of others. Neither will the itaukei people need to be persuaded to respect the religious rights and ethno-cultural liberties of others because they will be ‘secular’. That is naïve and ill-conceived. Because they are Christians, the itaukei respect the rights of liberties of others since they recognize that it is God, not the state, and certainly not any ‘secular’ state, which give life in its entirety its meaning and purpose[53].
Finally, the desire to define Fiji as a Christian democratic state is not new. As recently as the last constitution review process of 1995, the proposal for a Christian democratic state was tabled by many representative groups and individuals from across the nation[54]. Committing to it now will not simply recognize and honour that long-held conviction in the nation, but be a faithful confession to the reality behind it. It will bring consistency and alignment between what is in our hearts, and how we are to be publicly defined.
END-NOTES:
[1] See Ambassador Sir James Ah Koy KBE, ‘Timeline’, Supplement to the New Fijian Translation Bible, Suva: Ah Koy Christian Trust, 2012.
[2] Contemporary Christian political scientist, David Koyzis, puts it more strongly: ‘Secularism may be described as an idolatry which as its name indicates, worships some created thing, or more than one thing, within the saeculum – the present age’ (2003:32). Koyzis argues further ‘secularism’ is a ‘religion, whose principal tenet is a belief in human autonomy’ (2003:33). Calvinist scholar, R. J. Rushdoony [1916-2001], asserts that: ‘The secular state insists on the priority of the temporal as against the eternal’ (in Dooyeweerd 1968:xi). He points out that originally the state was ‘the religious ordering of society’ not a secular apparatus for governance as is often claimed. Moreover, it was to be both ‘the total order and the sovereign order’. In short, ‘the state as sovereign is simply the state as god’ and ‘this again is an ancient pagan political concept’ (in Dooyeweerd 1968:vii,ix). Rushdoony notes further: ‘For the secular state, the determination of time and history is from within history, not from the triune God and his eternal decree (Dooyeweerd 1968:xii). See also Alan Storkey, 2005:123, on this.
[3] The Christian apologist, Pascal, defended the Biblical and Christocentric basis of the religion against theism and deism and other related forms as follows: ‘All our happiness, our strength, our life, our light, our hope is in Jesus Christ. Outside of him there is nothing … but incomprehensibility and confusion’ (from Pensees cited in van Prinsterer 1975:20,21). This means, as European Parliamentarian, H.F.R. Catherwood, puts it, Christ is the ’ultimate authority’ first in the Bible, before church tradition or denominationalism: ‘for the last word we must always go back to what God himself has said in the Bible’ (1969:179).
[4] Rushdoony rightly concludes that because of the state’s appropriation to itself powers of religion, and of sovereignty over the secular order, ‘the conflict of the modern state with Biblical Christianity is inescapable’ (in Dooyeweerd 1968:xii).
[5] Koyzis: ‘Our world belongs to God … Christians believe that God is sovereign … this sovereignty has implications for the whole of our present life’ (2003:189).
[6] American evangelical scholars, Linder and Pierard say this: ‘The sacred-secular antithesis so popular among conservative Christians has no foundation in the Word of God’ (1973:35). Koyzis: ‘For the biblically astute Christian … there are no ‘sacred’ and ‘secular’ occupations, only obedient and disobedient ones. The obedient farmer or carpenter is as much in full-time Christian service as the pastor or missionary. The same can be said of the civil magistrate’ (2003:190).
[7] Justice among humanity is not reducible to the justice of humans. As the ancient Cicero put it, ‘the most foolish notion of all is the belief that everything is “just” which is decreed in the institutions and laws of nations’ (in van Prinsterer 1975:55). Rather, as contemporary British economic sociologist, Alan Storkey says, ‘Christianity asks of all rulers “Do you act in justice and truthfulness?”’(2005:121) He asserts: ‘Christianity seeks for the reform of state law in the light of Gospel principles’ (2005:180). See also Archie Penner, 1959:118.
[8] Storkey on this point rightly speaks of ‘two essential moves in constitutionalism’ – no one rules above or beyond the reach of God; the second being that no one is above the law (2005:184ff)
[9] Catherwood (1969): ‘State and Church were instituted for different objects. The State has been ordained by God to promote and secure the outward order and good of human society. Without civil order or government in some shape or other human society could not exist at all. But the Church has been instituted by God to advance and uphold the work of God’s grace on the earth and to promote the spiritual interests of the Christian community. The one is meant primarily to serve the temporal good of man, the other to advance man’s spiritual well-being’.
[10] As Alan Storkey acutely points out, the structure of political offense to God is that of ‘asking rulers to submit to God rather than be self-referencing’ because ultimately ‘the gentle rule of God pulls down all kinds of existing powers and structures that glory in themselves’ (2005:117). This particularly pertinent to the role of law in the administration of justice. Storkey (2005:177ff ) has a helpful discussion of the secondary role of state law in relation to the primacy of God’s law. Ultimately, as the New Testament puts it, ‘we must obey God rather than man’.
[11] Describing the elevation of the state (in the place of monarchs and without reference to God) in revolutionary France as occurring ‘by the absoluteness of popular sovereignty’, Dutch politician and historian, van Prinsterer [1801-1876] notes that ‘general regularisation, centralisation and codification became the order of the day. Despotism, unlawful and odious when exercised in one’s own name, now masqueraded as duty and benevolence practised in the name of liberty and enlightenment for the sake of the common good’ (1973:34). See also Hershberger, 1958:389.
[12] See also Matthew 28 and Luke 4 in this regard.
[13] Ephesians 1. van Prinsterer’s incisive (1847) comment regarding revolutionary France has a universal bite that is still relevant to the present: ‘The common foundation of all rights and duties lies in the sovereignty of God. When that Sovereignty is lost, when God is denied or banished to heaven because his kingdom is not of this world, what then becomes of the fountain of authority, of law, of every sacred and dutiful relation in state, society and family?’ (1975:41). See also Guy Hershberger, 1958:392.
[14] Early American president, John Quincy Adams, was of the view that state sovereignty was a ‘grossly immoral and dishonest doctrine’ that had no place in the American republic (cited in Dooyeweerd 1968:ix,x).
[15] Linder and Pierard, 1973:22.
[16] Against this order, 18th century American revolutionary, Thomas Paine, promoted a universal deism that elevated reason above faith and which would lead inevitably he argued to what he called an ‘age of reason’ which would, free of religious superstitions, lead to ‘the pure unmixed and unadulterated belief of one God and no more’ (cited in Hamburger 2002:60,61).
[17] British Marxist sociologist, Ralph Miliband [1924-94] who is the father of the current British Labour Party leader, well makes the point of the ubiquitous character of the now dominating state: ‘More than ever before, men now live in the shadow of the state. What they want to achieve, individually or in groups, now mainly depends on the state’s sanction and support … they must ever more directly seek to influence and shape the state’s power and purpose or try and appropriate it altogether. It is for the state’s attention, or for its control, that men compete … This why, as social beings, they are also political animals, whether they know it or not. It is possible not to be interested in what the state does; but it is not possible to be unaffected by it’ (1973:3). In this, Miliband sounds like a faint echo of van Prinsterer’s (1847) comment on Rousseau’s prescription for revolutionary France: ‘What is the relationship between the citizen and the state? Utter subordination and passivity’ (1975:49). Van Prinsterer acutely observes that where Hobbes gave sovereignty to the ruler, Rousseau gave it to the people. Both are denials of the sovereignty of God. See also Storkey 2005:126; Linder and Pierard, 1973:22. In much of the 20th century, the spectre of an overarching secular super-state formed the stuff of apocalyptic fiction beginning with H.G. Wells’s The Sleeper Awakes (1900); Jack London’s The Iron Heel (1909); Hilaire Belloc’s The Servile State (1911); Yvgeny Zamyatin’s We (1923); Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1930); and George Orwell’s 1984 (1948). The genre has a Biblical primogenitor in the Book of Revelation’s cast of beasts. Hollywood has since taken on the genre.
[18] Storkey 2005:115.
[19] Dooyeweerd (1986): ‘It is a totalitarian fantasy … to assume that the state, like a modern Leviathan, can make all these power-types subservient to its political purposes, that it can absorb them within its own sphere of power, yet permit them to retain their distinctive character’.
[20] French Enlightenment ‘philosophes’ were not greatly excited or particularly absorbed by the idea of secularism, although de Condorcet (1784) did promote the idea of ‘separation’ thus: ‘the interests of princes was not to seek to regulate religion, but to separate religion from the state’ (cited in Hamburger 2002:59,60). As Dooyeweerd further points out: ‘Humanism secularised the message of Christian freedom and of creation’ (1968:22). For van Prinsterer, ‘The defining feature of the [French] Revolution is its hatred of the Gospel, its anti-Christian nature’ (1975:29).
[21] French priest and political writer, Lamennais [1782-1854] long ago cautioned that ‘one of the most dangerous follies of our age is the delusion that a state can be constituted, or a society formed, from one day to the next, in the same way that a factory is erected. Societies are not made; they are the work of nature and time acting in concert. Men want to create everything in an instant … When they began the overthrow … they doubted nothing because they knew nothing; afterwards they think they all’ (in van Prinsterer 1975:45).
[22] With Fiji, as with Europe, ‘the birth of a nation often coincided with the transition from paganism to Christianity’ (Mellor 2004:115). A.B. Brewster (1922: 67), a provincial government administrator at the end of the 19th century, regretted the fact that when the newly converted backslid from Christianity `they threw off the cloth’ and would revert to growing their hair. As Martha Kaplan observed: `Cutting their hair and putting on the clothes of Wesleyanism’ were the outward signs of Fijian conversion, implying, as Europeans believed, `the acceptance of European God and rule’ (Kaplan 1988: 111).
[23] Cakobau converted in 1854 – by all accounts, a genuine voluntary decision – and consequently acquired British support for his claim to the title of Tui Viti - King of Fiji. He thereby ensured Fiji’s future as a Christian and British state. Along with other chiefs and leaders who ceded Fiji to Britain as a colony in 1874, Cakobau did so expressly for `the promotion of civilisation and Christianity’ as well as for `increasing trade and industry’ (Garrett 1982: 279). Fiji’s first resident governor, Sir Arthur Gordon, consequently lamented that `the political significance’ of Wesleyanism in organising and subduing Fiji had not been `fully appreciated’ (Legge 1958: 25 cf. Kaplan 1988: 110).
[24] For accounts of Christian missions in Fiji, see Scarr 1984; Garrett 1982; Gravelle 1981; Schutz 1977; Morrell 1960; Brewster 1922; Deane 1921; Thomson 1908/1968; Webb 1890; Williams 1858/1982; Hunt 1846; Lyth 1836-1842. As one mission tract put it: `Let the gospel enter this open door, and the scene shall be changed’ (in Calvert 1870: 246).
[25] This was accomplished ‘from the top-down’ as pioneer, Reverend Thomas Williams put it (1858: 36). Martha Kaplan (1988: 107) observed later that: `The European purpose in Fiji was to impose order from above ... Planters sought to put wild nature to economic use, missionaries to lead the heathen to God, and colonial administrators to raise savages to civilisation’. Pioneer missionary, William Cross, understood the hierarchical nature of the indigenous social structure and the value of converting Fiji from the top down - he spent his efforts trying to convert the Tui Nayau; Tanoa, the Tui Bau; his son Seru; and the Roko Tui Dreketi of Rewa. He failed with all of them. Cross then tried out his evangelism on Viwa chiefs but was no more effective among them than he had been among the chiefs of Rewa, Bau and Lau (see Garrett 1982). Cross’s fellow missionary and superior, David Cargill argued: `we are fully convinced that not many Fijians will embrace Christianity until some chief leads the way’ (in Schutz 1977: 94).
[26] In Fiji, as in Europe, not until Christianity arrived did people progress toward their rights, morality, enlightenment, and material prosperity - ‘Christian civilization’ as Cahill pit it, ‘is the only civilization suited to man’s nature’ (1932:1). As noted by historians and even in the confession of past American Presidents, it is difficult to oppose the verdict of Pope Pius X (in 1905): ‘The civilization of the world is Christian civilisation’ (cited in Cahill 1932:1). As the greatest missionary to Fiji, John Hunt, put it: `True civilisation cannot be separated from true conversion to Christianity’ (1846: 26; cf Calvert 1870: 556). Colonial secretary John Thurston similarly declared, that `worship of ancestral spirits’ was not only inconsistent with the ` worship of the true God’, it was `also inconsistent with the order and good government of the country established by the Queen’ (in Kaplan 1988: 114). R. Vernon was also of the opinion that `the civilisation of the nation without Christianity could never have been attained’ (1890: 5).
[27] Cahill: ‘A Christian State is one in which the laws and administration as well as the organized activities and general outlook of the citizens are in accordance with Christian principles. These principles in so far as they are applicable to social and public life, are practically identical with the dictates of the natural law’ (1932:xv).
[28] It was the 16th century Anglican scholar, Richard Hooker (in 1590), who first coined the term ‘walles [sic] of separation’ to describe the position held by Radical Protestant Dissenters (cited in Hamburger 2002:36).
[29] See contemporary American legal historian, Philip Hamburger (2002:22,23). This was the basis for the ‘sacred’ and ‘secular’ distinction, upon which Protestants later formulated their ‘separation of church and state’ thesis.
[30] Catherwood (1969) notes: ‘Luther, Zwingli and Calvin all maintained the necessity of a connection between Church and State. Those who did not were considered extremists, especially after the Peasants’ War in Germany. But in the seventeenth century the religious wars had done such damage that Christians began to feel for a less rigid identification of the interests of Church and State. In Britain it was Cromwell who, when he had defeated the Erastian party in England and the Presbyterian party in both England and Scotland, first introduced the concept of religious liberty. He not only gave liberty among Christians but also admitted Jews to England for the first time for many centuries. His message to the Scottish Presbyterians is a classic. He said “I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.” After Cromwell’s death, Charles II and his brother James II attempted to turn the clock back but they were not successful and James II lost his crown in the revolution of 1688 to the Protestant champion William of Orange’.
[31] Hamburger, 2002:37,38.
[32] Since the Middle Ages, the distinction between the ‘temporal’ and the ‘spiritual’ were, in Mellor’s judgement, understood to have a ‘productively interactive relationship’ (2004:116).
[33] Differentiation never meant separation originally, but eventually, in the American experience, it came to this. Radical Protestant dissenters first stressed separation of ‘the elect’ from ‘the remnant’; then separation of themselves from mainstream Protestantism (e.g. Congregationalists); then separation of themselves from the world at large (as argued by Roger Williams, 1644). Separationism was championed in the American colonies in the mid-17th century by Roger Williams who himself was not only habitually separating (as habitual schismatics do) from established congregations, but, Williams argued, the elect, true Christians, are not bound to rules made by the non-elect. Curiously, he has become the most quoted source for the uncritically received ‘wall of separation’ argument. But his thesis was purely separation for the purpose of religious purity: that is, by separation of church and state he meant to get the state - which is worldly and corrupt - out of the church and to stop it dictating to the church (see Hamburger 2002).
[34] In this regard, the insertion of the American First Amendment – ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion’ – was aimed at keeping denominationalism in its place; i.e. that no single denomination should enjoy a civil-supported advantage over any other (see Hamburger 2002). John Locke (1689), was the philosopher of rights, equality, democracy, liberty of conscience, toleration, and the ‘pursuit of happiness’. His words were plagiarized almost verbatim into the American Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights. Locke insisted on the conceptual distinction between church and state, and the need for a conceptual wall of separation, but that every civil society must at times restrict ‘opinions contrary to human society or to those morals which are necessary to the preservation of civil society’ (cited in Hamburger 2002:53,54).
[35] As Dooyeweerd argues, properly understood, ‘Christianity does not place a temporal church/institute above the state’ (1968:10). As Dooyeweerd shows, past conceptions of the Christian state were corrupted by Aristotelian notions of state-religions as absolutist powers in place of God. Denominational establishments as state-churches suffer from the same heretical misconception (1968).
[36] Storkey, 2005:115; 164ff.
[37] Jesus said his kingdom is not of this world (in John 18:36) and while his kingdom comprises people who are to be separate from the world, they are to nevertheless live in and participate in the conduct of the affairs of the world – this has been the majority view of the Christian church from its inception. In the case of nation-states with Christian heritages, there can be no censure against the engagement of Christians and pastors in politics. Deriving from Dutch economist and parliamentarian, Bob Goudzwaard (1972:27), Christians should not use the state to impose the gospel on others – even if that were possible – but rather from our understanding of the gospel, we seek to perfect the state. Following contemporary historian, John Bossy, it is certain that: ‘Historically, the highest Christian calling has been the nurturing of the ‘social miracle’ where salvation and social solidarity are inseparably linked’ (Bossy 1985; see also Mellor 2005:115). Third century CE Christian philosopher, Origen, was one of the first to see this: ‘men of God are assuredly the salt of the earth; they preserve the order of the world’ (Hamburger:394). Linder and Pierard note: ‘The world may be tainted by sin, but it still belongs to God. It is his by right of creation and is under his dominion and providence … Christians have been placed in the world to minister to it … they like salt preserve the world from the decay which is the result of evil’ (1973:33,34). Catherwood, argued ‘to try to improve society is not worldliness, but love’ and ‘to wash your hands of the world is not love but worldliness’ (cited in Linder and Pierard 1973:34). Koyzis similarly argues: ‘Every time a believer says that religion and politics do not mix or that we should concentrate on saving souls and leave the affairs of the world alone, she is implicitly denying the cosmic scope of Christ’s redemption and thereby diminishing God’s sovereignty’ (2003:190). Linder and Pierard righty observe that: ‘If Christians refuse to become politically involved, the state will be deprived of the services of a large body of citizens whose personal relationship with the Creator gives them a profound sense of concern for the needs of their fellow men’ (1973:23). These authors assert that: ‘Applying Christian principles to the contemporary world will make it a better place for all people to live, and we encourage young Christians to devote themselves to this task’ (1973:24). Caesar can serve in the church and church members may serve in Caesar’s palace, as it were – as Joseph and Daniel did in Old Testament times. One may be both a servant of Christ and a subject of the Commonwealth – as many soldiers were in the New Testament epoch. In the 18th century, the Virginian Baptist dissenter, John Leland (1792) made the good argument that ‘to declare (clergymen) ineligible (to hold state office) when their neighbours prefer them to any others, is depriving them of the liberty of free citizens, and those who prefer them, the freedom of choice’ (in Hamburger 2002:84,85). More specifically, about four hundred years ago, Anglican scholar, Hadrian a Saravia [1532-1612] argued that church ministers had as much right as anyone else in the society to participate in politics (Hamburger 2002:33). More recently, American senator and educator, Mark Hatfield [1922-2011], commented that ‘for the Christian man to reason that God does not want him in politics because there are too many evil men in government is as insensitive as for a Christian doctor to turn his back on an epidemic because there are too many germs there’ (cited in Linder and Pierard 1973:39).
[38] More generally, H.F.R. Catherwood makes the salient point: ‘Secular states of western society at least are still drawing very heavily and deeply on the moral capital of Christianity. All seems well while this goes on. But as soon as someone calls the bluff, there will be trouble. It would be a bold man indeed to say that western society had any ideology as strong and positive as Christianity from which it was replenishing its moral capital. It would be an even bolder man who would confidently predict that western society will hold together without any replenishment’ (1969).
[39] Virginia’s General Association of Separate Baptists (1783) was possibly the first organized group (and Christians) to go on record and vote for separation (Hamburger 2002:58). Separationism was thereby taken up by anti-cleric liberals (like Jefferson and Madison), and anti-Catholic Protestants (like Seventh-day Adventists, Nativist American movements, Jewish lobbies, and Freemasons). Separationism was also championed by Unitarian theistic humanists organizing themselves as the ‘Free Religion Association’ (1866), under Francis Abbot’s ‘Index’ magazine (1870) and eventually as the ‘National Liberal League’ (1876). Their particular target was the National Reform Association (1863) which aimed at insertion of a pro-Christianity establishment clause in the Constitution. The Liberals (as Abbot’s group was nicknamed) countered with their own ‘secular’ amendment clause into the Constitution to forever dis-privilege the Christian religion and eventually abolish organized religion altogether (Hamburger 2002:290-92). The NLL eventually split into spiritualists, freethinkers, atheists and others with some forming the American Secular Union (1885). Then began the rewriting American history and American church history as if the separation of church and state was an original Founding Pilgrim Father’s obsession – it wasn’t of course (see Hamburger 2002:342ff). Baptists particularly gave themselves credit for separation as if it was their idea. SDAs too reinterpreted American history this way, by blurring the various orientations and fine distinctions of the past ‘into a single uniform idea’ of separation (Hamburger 2002:358).
[40] For example, Boston’s Reverend William Balch (1749) put it this way: ‘Without religion, ‘tis hard to say what foundation there could be for any mutual trust and confidence among men as is necessary to the support of government, the very being of society. Without supposing each other under the influence of this principle, everyman might too justly be in perpetual fear of every other, who should be stronger or more subtle than himself … But when we take into account our general acknowledgement of God … the face of the moral world is changed: society becomes practicable, and government a blessing. Where religious principles prevail, rulers may govern with security to themselves, and benefit to the people’. Connecticut’s Reverend Timothy Stone (1792): ‘Religion and civil government are not one and the same thing and the church hath right rights with which the latter may not intermeddle [yet] there are many ways in which civil government may give countenance, encouragement, and even support to religion, without invading the prerogatives of the Most High … or the sacred rights of conscience: and in doing of which, it ay not only show its friendly regard to Christianity, but derive important advantages to itself. Lutheran scholar, Philip Schaff (1854): ‘It is by no means to be thought that the separation of church and state there is a separation of Christianity by the nation … The nation therefore is still Christian, though it refuse to be governed in this deepest concern of the mind, by the temporal power’. Congregationalist, Rev. Richard Gleason (1874): ‘Every civil government must unavoidably have a religion of some kind … the question is not what governments ought to do, but what they cannot avoid doing – and that is avoid their foundations upon some embodiment of ethical relations, some ground of moral principles, their spiritual basis. Hence, if you thrust forth Christianity from its recognized administration in your government, then what religion will you put in its place?’ Congregationalist scholar, Jeremiah Diman (1876): ‘The mere government may be secular, but the state is built on everlasting moral foundations … we can never emancipate ourselves from the restraints and obligations of Christian civilization; they are a part of our history, they are inwrought into our being, we cannot destroy them without destroying our identity as a people!’
[41] These are the words of American Presbyterian writer and preacher and past president of Miami University, Rev. Erasmus MacMaster (1856) (cited in Hamburger 2002:270).
[42] The first president of the United States of America (1789-1797), George Washington, declared: ‘It is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits and humbly implore his protection and favour’. Washington went further, noting that: ‘of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports’, and that ‘It is impossible to govern the world without God and the Bible’. The second president of the United States (1797-1801), John Adams, advised Americans of the newly liberated republic to observe a national ‘day of solemn humiliation, fasting and prayer’ – forerunner to the American Thanksgiving – ‘that the citizens on that day abstain as far as may be from their secular occupations, devote the time to the sacred duties of religion in public and private; that call to mind our numerous offenses against the Most High God, confess them before Him with sincerest penitence, implore his pardoning mercy, through the Great Mediator and Redeemer, for our past transgressions, and that through the grace of His Holy Spirit we may be disposed and enabled to yield a more suitable obedience to His righteous requisitions in time to come’. The third president of the United States (1801-1809), Thomas Jefferson, made this assessment of the status and role of the Bible for politics: ‘The studious perusal of the Sacred Volume will make better citizens, better fathers, better husbands … The Bible makes the best people in the world’. Jefferson’s verdict of Christian morality was this: ‘Of all systems of morality, ancient or modern … none appear so pure as that of Jesus’. Moreover, Jefferson argued that ‘The reason that Christianity is the best friend of government is because Christianity is the only religion that changes the heart’. The fourth president of the United States (1809-1817), James Madison, like John Adams before him, proclaimed a national (Thanksgiving) day of ‘public humiliation and prayer’ was to be ‘set apart for the devout purposes of rendering the Sovereign of the Universe and Benefactor of Mankind, the public homage due to His holy attributes’. The sixth president of the United States (1825-29), John Quincy Adams – the son of the second American president, John Adams – had this to say about the impact of Christianity on the world: ‘It is not slight testimonial both to the merit and worth of Christianity that in all ages since its promulgation the great mass of those who have risen to eminence by their profound wisdom and integrity have recognized and reverenced Jesus of Nazareth as the Son of the living God’. The seventh president of the United States (1829-1837), Andrew Jackson, affirmed: ‘The Bible is the Rock on which this Republic rests’. In words that were later echoed by Andrew Johnson, America’s 17th president, Jackson declared: ‘Let us look forward to the time when we can take the flag of our country and nail below the Cross and there let it wave as it waved in olden times, and let us gather around it and inscribe for our motto ‘Liberty and Union, one and inseparable now and forever’ and exclaim: ‘Christ first, our country next!’ John Tyler, the 10th president of the United States (1841-1845), wrote: ‘When a Christian people feel themselves to be overtaken by a great public calamity, it becomes them to humble themselves under the dispensation of Divine Providence to recognize His righteous government over the children of men to acknowledge His goodness in time past, as well as their own unworthiness and to supplicate His merciful protection for the future’. Zachary Taylor, the 12th president of the Unites States (1849-1850) reminded his nation to ‘invoke a continuance of the same protecting care which has led us from small beginnings to the eminence we this day occupy’. Millard Fillmore, 13th president of the United States (1850-1853), confessed as follows: ‘I rely upon Him who holds in His hands the destinies of nations to endow me with the requisite strength for the task’ of government and gave his praise and ‘devout thanks to the Great Ruler of nations for his multiplied blessings’. Franklin Pierce, 14th president of the United States (1853-1857), advised that he did not ‘not let the foundation of our hope rest upon man’s wisdom’ but that he could ‘express no better hope for [his] country than that the kind Providence which smiled upon our fathers may enable their children to preserve the blessings they have inherited’. The 16th president of the American republic (1861-1865), Abraham Lincoln, proclaimed: ‘Today I leave you; I go to assume a task more difficult than that which devolved upon General Washington. Unless the great God who assisted him shall be with and aid me, I must fail. But if the same omniscient mind and the same Almighty arm that directed and protected him shall guide and support me, I shall not fail I shall succeed’. In words reminiscent of Washington, Lincoln also declared: ‘It is the duty of nations as well as of men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God; to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history that those nations only are blessed, whose God is the Lord’. Ulysses Grant, the 18th president of the United Sates (1869-1877), was open about his faith announcing: ‘I believe in the Holy Scriptures and whoso lives by them will be benefited thereby. Men may differ as to the interpretation, which is human, but the Scriptures are man’s best guide’. Rutherford Hayes, the 19th president of the American republic (1877-1881) similarly announced his faith, but in even more explicit terms: ‘I am a firm believer in the Divine teachings, perfect example, and atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ’. ‘James Garfield, the 20th president of the American republic (1881), announced to his nation: ‘Fellow citizens, God reigns and the government at Washington still lives’. Grover Cleveland, who was both the 22nd (1885-1889) and 24th president (1893-1897) of the republic, declared that it was ‘Almighty God who presides over the destiny of nations’, and that when it came to Christianity: ‘All must admit that the reception of the teachings of Christ results in the purest patriotism, in the most scrupulous fidelity to public trust, and in the best type of citizenship’. Cleveland reminded his people of the connection between God and government in terms of accountability: ‘Those who manage the affairs of government are … reminded that the law of God demands that they should be courageously true to the interests of the people, and that the Ruler of the Universe will require of them a strict account of their stewardship’. Further, President Cleveland concluded: ‘The teachings of both human and Divine law thus merging into one word, duty, form the only union of church and state that a civil and religious government can recognise’. Benjamin Harrison, the 23rd president of the United States (1889-1893) declared that since: ‘God has placed upon our [nation’s] head a diadem and has laid at our feet power and wealth beyond definition and calculation … we must not forget that we take these gifts upon the condition that justice and mercy shall hold the reins of power’. William McKinley, the 25th president of the United States ((1897-1901), observed that: ‘There is no currency in this world that passes at such a premium anywhere as good Christian character. The time has gone by when the young man or the young woman in the United States has to apologise for being a follower of Christ. No cause but one could have brought together so many people, and that is the cause of our Master’. Theodore Roosevelt, America’s 26th president (1901-1909) noted: ‘A great democracy like ours, a democracy based upon the principles of orderly liberty can be perpetuated only if in the heart of ordinary citizens there dwells a keen sense of righteousness and justice. We should earnestly pray that this spirit … may grow in the heart of all of us’. William Taft, the 27th president of the United States (1909-1913) declared: ‘No man can study the movement of modern civilization from an impartial standpoint and not realize that Christianity and the spread of Christianity are the basis of hope of modern civilization in the growth of popular self-government’. Taft was forthright, asserting further: ‘Christianity is pure democracy. It is equality of man before God – the equality of man before the law, which is, as I understand it, the most God-like manifestation that man has been able to make’. The 29th president of the United States (1913-1921), Woodrow Wilson, had this to say about the political importance of one’s national heritage: ‘A nation which does not remember what it was yesterday, does know what it is today, nor what it is trying to do. We are trying to do a futile thing if we do not know where we came from or what we have been’. And in this regard, President Wilson, concluded: ‘America was born a Christian nation’. Moreover, ‘America was born’ he declared, ‘to exemplify the devotion to the elements of righteousness which are derived from the revelations of Holy Scripture’. Calvin Coolidge – America’s 30th president (1923-1929), declared in his inaugural address that: ‘The higher state to which she [the United States] seeks the allegiance of all mankind is not of human, but of divine origin’ and that ‘she cherishes no purpose save to merit the favour of Almighty God’. As President Coolidge put it, ‘God rules and from Bethlehem and the Springfields, He sends them forth, His own, to do His work’. Against the rising tide of global secularism and communism, the 31st president of the United States (1929-1933), Herbert Hoover, declared that: ‘Democracy is the outgrowth of the religious conviction of the sacredness of every human life. On its religious side its highest embodiment is the Bible, on the political side, the Constitution’. Franklin D. Roosevelt, the 32nd president of the United States (1933-1945), observed that: ‘We cannot read the history of our rise and development as a nation without reckoning with the place the Bible has occupied in shaping the advances of the Republic. Where we have been the truest and most consistent in obeying its precepts, we have attained the greatest measure of contentment and prosperity’. Harry Truman, America’s 33rd president (1945-1953), took this view of Biblical morality: ‘The fundamental basis of this nation’[s laws was given to Moses on the Mount. The fundamental basis of our Bill of Rights comes from the teachings we get from Exodus and Saint Matthew, from Isaiah and Saint Paul’. Truman went on to assert that ‘I don’t think we emphasise that enough these days’. Moreover, he was convinced that: ‘If we don’t have a proper fundamental moral background, we will finally end up with a totalitarian government which does not believe in rights for anybody except the State!’ The 34th American president (1953-1961), Dwight Eisenhower, said this about the Bible: ‘The Bible is endorsed by the ages. Our civilization is built upon its words’. Finally, Gerald Ford, America’s 38th president (1974-1977), noted that: ‘Without God there could be no American form of government, nor an American way of life. Recognition of the Supreme Being is the first – the most basic – expression of Americanism. Thus the Founding Fathers of America saw it and thus with God’s help, it will continue to be’.
[43] Republicanism, following Jefferson, adopted the view that official religion would not interfere with official politics, but politics would be religious – and, as Philip Hamburger insightfully concludes, ‘by separating clerical religion from politics, Republicans made American politics more directly religious’ (Hamburger 2002:143).
[44] Influential American 19th century minister, Jeremiah Diman, may well have referred to Fiji as much as his own people, when he said: ‘The life of a nation, like the life of an individual, forms an indivisible whole … we cannot at moment be spiritual beings and at the next released from spiritual restraints’ (cited in Hamburger 2002:274). The 19th century French historian, Fustel de Coulanges, rightly observed that: ‘the past never completely dies for man’ and that ‘take him at any epoch, and he is the product, the epitome of all epochs’ (1956:14). Following both Fustel and his greatest pupil, the French sociologist, Emile Durkheim (1912/2001), Mellor rightly concludes that: ‘We cannot even begin to understand the present if we sever its connection to the past’ (Mellor 2004:111). German social theorist, Max Weber’s reference to ‘the ghost of dead religious beliefs’ that ‘prowl about in our lives’ is apt too (1958:181,182).
[45] Catherwood makes the point that: ‘Christian’s liberty is limited by the divine law. Conscience, although it is the supreme law to the individual man, is still under the law of God. Conscience must also be limited under God’s law by the need to maintain civil order in society. Faced with a wave of disruptive protest on grounds of conscience, the secular State has no general principles on which it can base an argument with the protestors. If the protests become too disruptive, it can only resort, in the end, to force, and the toleration it grants in theory comes to an abrupt end in practice’ (1969).
[46] The claim of secular states ‘to tolerate all religions while having no religion itself’ is thus a hollow one. Van Prinsterer long ago pointed out the logical absurdity of this position in that by claiming to do this, ‘the state shall command reverence for its own moral precepts for politics and morality and ban any religion which refuses to bow before the ideal’ (1975:59).
[47] Storkey (2005:164ff) reminds us: ‘Faith cannot be coerced. If it is, it is not faith’ (166). For Locke, see Raphael (1976); Popkin and Stroll (1969). For Kierkegaard, see Roubiczek (1964: 55ff) and Ellman and Feidelson (1965) particularly pp.685-944 sections on ‘Self-realisation’, ‘Existence’ and ‘Faith’.
[48] Catherwood (1969) rightly reminds us that: ‘Toleration is an issue upon which Christians must always be alert. It does not come naturally to man. It comes with difficulty even to Christians. Protestants had to wait for a century after the Reformation before the principle became established and even then they had to fight continually to see that it was maintained. This fight is still on. It may be that an Ecumenical movement will be tolerant of all who remain outside it but my guess is that if it is accorded an official position then there will be official pressure for conformity to it and the battle for toleration may have to be fought all over again. For this we need Christians in the State as well as Christians in the Church’.
[49] Storkey 2005:115.
[50] Storkey 2005:164ff.
[51] One may concur with the sentiment of the American, Reverend Ezra Gannett who in 1842 confessed ‘it is not a national Christianity, but a Christian nation which I desire to see’ (in Hamburger 2002:270).
[52] One must keep in mind that Christianity was fundamental to the history of the formation of the concept of ‘the nation’ per se. (Mellor 2004:115).
[53] As Storkey puts it, Jesus ‘refuses the state or ruler the possibility of defining the meaning of life’ (2005:125). Jesus said render to Caesar things that are his and to God, things that are his. We are to give Caesar not only our taxes, but surrender even our lives if that is want he wants; we give God our allegiance, never Caesar. God rules, politicians serve (see Koyzis 2003).
[54] Many Fijians from all walks of life felt a strong duty to institutionalise Christianity as Fiji’s constitutional status in the submissions to the 1995 Commission (whose final report led to the 1997 Constitution). Major and minor submissions came from: the Viti Civil Servants Association; Adi Samanunu; SVT Women’s Caucus; Kalabu Christian Women’s Group; Mrs Aliti Ufiamorat; the Taukei Movement; Simione Celua; the Nausori Provincial Council; Isikeli Naiova; the Macuata Provincial Council; Vueti Logayau; Emosi Lawelevu; Viliame Seitoro; the Nationalist Party; Ratu Josaia Tunaosara; Apaitia Seru and Ah Koy joint submission; Methodist Church; the SVT; Lautoka Handicraft Sellers; the Rewa Provincial Council; Tovata Women’s Group; Serua Provincial Council; Josaia Vakalala; and, Christian Women’s Power of Prayer.
