FROM THE ARCHIVES: Soldiers and Servants - metaphors for a 21st century Pacific Christianity: Opinio

This paper was originally presented by the author at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion and Religious Research Association, St Louis, Missouri, 1995. An edited version appeared in the FDP ten years ago (2005) [Pictured is the author (left) in 1985 assisting Australian university students understand the indigenus Yuin Nation's dreaming at their Noah's Ark rock-altar on the summit Mt Gulaga, Wallaga Lake]:

Introduction

Pacific Christian mission ideology, and more specifically, Christianity's relationship to native Pacific islanders, may be understood through two Biblical metaphors. One is of soldiers of the cross[1] who are engaged in a battle against principalities and powers on the battlefield of the heart. Here, Pacific Christians wear the uniform of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, boots of peace, the helmet of salvation, carry the shield of faith, wield the two-edged sword of the Spirit, and they fight the good fight. Another picture is of suffering servants[2] who love their enemies by suffering for them, who do good to them by supplying the bread and water of life, who clothe their nakedness in robes of righteousness, who visit them in the prisons of their particular circumstances and who consider self-sacrifice for their sake, a duty.

Where soldiers of the cross are engaged in a holy war, believing in the rightness of their views and seeking to impose them on others, suffering servants suspend judgements about cultural and ideological correctness for the sake of building bridges of understanding between themselves and those whom they seek to save. Where soldiers of the cross count victories in terms of souls won over to a set of doctrines, suffering servants count all principles as worthless if the people are themselves dispossessed of their cultural soul, their distinctive humanity. In the Fijian context, soldiers of the cross have hitherto produced a `Christian-Fijian', a Christianised native whose core of being remains indigenous while the exterior is a veneer, a Christian `varnish' (as missionaries are wont to describe it). In short, Christian Fiji (or Christianity Fiji-style) has a deep tension in its soul between being soldiers of a universal army, and being servants of a particular people.

My argument here is that where relevant, Pacific Christians should adopt the posture of suffering servants in relation to indigenous peoples - that we should be ideologically open and organisationally responsive to producing not merely a Christianised native (ie. an indigenous consciousness informed by Biblical Christian values and norms), but to developing a nativised Christianity. That is, one which is responsive to forms of worship and practice which allow for, or better still, assimilate, appropriate indigenous traditions. I intend to make this argument through a case-study of Christianity's impact on Fijians[3].

1. Soldiers of the cross and the formation of the Christian-Fijian

The Christianity that originally took hold of Fijian minds and changed Fijian lifestyles was of a Wesleyan variety marked more by a soldiers of the cross universalism than the spirit of suffering servant particularity[4] As soldiers of the cross, Pacific Christian missionaries saw Fijians and Fijian culture as the `enemy' - an enemy whose values had to be defeated, whose character had to be subdued and transformed, and whose practices had to be fumigated with the manners of civilisation and desiccated of their time-honoured meanings.[5] The South-Central Pacific is a long way - both geographically and in consciousness - from the Judeo-Palestinian concerns of the Biblical era and the religions of Christian Europe, yet the salvation which Catholicism, Methodism, Adventism and other churches brought to Fijians was (and still is) an imposition of Jewish, Christian, Catholic, and Protestant religious traditions. These traditions were imposed on the indigenous mind and culture without any reflection on the question of how God had sovereignly acted in the lives and times of pre-Christian Fijians, or that some adaptation of Christian beliefs and modes of conduct was required on the missionary’s part. Rather than incarnating themselves by the acquisition of Fijian `infirmities' and `weaknesses',[6] the first Christians in Fiji generally imposed their ideas imperiously and militantly and resorted to a number of familiar strategies to transform and assimilate the `heathen' into Christ's kingdom. These may be summarised as follows:

(I) `From the Top-Down’ Conversions

Soldiers of the cross used local, social and political hierarchies to their advantage - they commenced their conversion campaigns at the top and worked down the social order.[7] Converting a chief showed respect to indigenous polities but more, it could, by example or force, effect a train of conversions throughout the entire social structure.[8]. It is important to note that, as a methodology, this `top-down' mode of evangelism contrasts with the New Testament line of `bottom-up' evangelism. Jesus was labelled among the social deviants and political riff-raff of his day and, together with the apostles and their immediate converts, generally commenced advancing his truth among `commoners' rather than `chiefs'. The evidence is that early mission-Christianity was generally unsuccessful with political elites.[9]

(II) Converts as Colonial Capital

In the Pacific, soldiers of the cross were not averse to fitting converts into colonial policy. The ideologies of conversion-to-the-faith and stable-government were congruent in colonial policy and missionary consciousness.[10] Eventually, lotu and matanitu were seen as reciprocating sides of the same coin - rendering unto Caesar was tantamount to rendering unto God.[11]

If Christianity was threatened with syncretic heresy or indigenous revivalism, the force of the state could be brought to bear and often in a manner more reminiscent of the enemies of Christ than his followers - heretics could be redefined as seditionist enemies of the state.[12] Christianity came to be seen as a yardstick of civility, the extent to which the Fijian had submitted to European order and regime.[13]

On the other hand, if a dispute arose with clear political implications, the native parties to the dispute could be talked down or pacified by being called to obedience to their new-found Christian nature or beliefs. In a familiar re-run of its impact elsewhere and in other times, such Constantinian Christianity was robed with a supreme confidence that it could and should diffuse the revolutionary ire of a lower social order.[14]

(III) `Bible-bashing'

Because of widespread and deeply felt reticence to embrace the new religion, soldiers of the cross were not averse to entering new fields of work under the protection of superior military might.[15] One of the most overtly successful in this regard was the Tongan convert, Joeli Bulu who served as the missionary arm in the Tongan warlord, Enele Ma'afu's campaign to capture, Tonganise and Christianise most of eastern Fiji. In 1865, for example, while Bulu was stationed at the Waikava mission on Vanua Levu some 100 villages in the region (estimated to be approximately 10,000 Fijians) were won over to the new faith.[16] Given the fact of previous reluctance to entertain the new ideology, it must remain an open question as to whether these conversions were chiefly effected by the Holy Spirit or fear of Ma'afu's clubs and rifle-butts.[17]

(IV) `Neck-to-Knee Repentance'

Soldiers of the cross interpreted outward signs of cultural change and social distance as the indicators of conversion.[18] In the early Christianisation of Fiji, pioneer European missionary, David Cargill, represented this pious or ascetic strain of Christianity with its emphasis on a changed life accompanied by social disdain for the unconverted.[19] For him, Christianity was to be an outward, cultural `conversion’ as much as an inner reworking of beliefs and affections. Once converted, a Christian was to be in the world but not of it; believers were called to be separate to be `sinners' no more. In this tradition, the doctrine of Christian sanctification doubled as social theory and political platform - being unequally yoked to unbelievers meant an obligation to social segregation and political passivity.[20]

(V) Conversion as redefinition of identity

Regardless of how they related to Fijians on a personal individual level, soldiers of the cross missionaries and their disciples could not help but (implicitly if not explicitly) stereotype Fijians as generally inferior to Europeans. As they gradually converted Fijians of status, and began to exercise influence under their patronage, the new Christian priesthood found themselves in a position to redefine and mediate the image of the Fijian abroad, and perhaps more critically, the image of the Fijian to him/herself. Like most colonial subordinates of the time, Fijians learned what they `really were' and what they could become through the eyes of their ideological conquerors, through the sermons they were subjected to, through the schooling they received, and through everyday interactions with their missionary guests.[21]

The written portraits of Fijians set down by pioneer missionaries such as Thomas Williams (1858/1982), Joseph Waterhouse (1866) and Wallace Deane (1921)[22] were typical of characterisations which helped set the tone for Western and Pacific Christian relationships with their potential indigenous converts, and regrettably, continue to do so.[23]

2. `Christian Varnish’ - Former Things Have Not Passed Away

Despite, and perhaps even because of these evaluations, Christian ideology has unquestionably gained a genuine, individual and social acceptance among Fijians. Soldiers of the cross have formally displaced bete [traditional priests] in `respectable’, official Christianity. Evangelical forms of Christianity have met with official (ie. chiefly) approval, and are encouraged to be open (if not mandatory) for acceptance by all. As in other Christianised societies, the ancestral, traditional religion (which is gnostic, nature-based and sometimes gynocentric)[24], is negatively contrasted with a transcendent (and usually penicentric) Christianity.

But, as is often the case where Christianity has been imposed, wholesale rather than organically reshaped by its host, the old religious order has not been exorcised.[25] While traditional Fijian beliefs and their practitioners have been officially repudiated,[26] or actively forgotten[27], evidence suggests that some important pre-Christian rituals survive, albeit in transubstantiated forms[28] and with a marginalised adherence. Gods such as Degei and Dakuwaqa, for example, are still widely worshipped or relied upon for either blessing or cursing others. One hundred and fifty years may have passed since the arrival of the first soldiers of the cross in Fiji, but it is clear neither they, nor their contemporary Christian `descendants’, have achieved exclusivity of control over former `principalities and powers' - chiefs and commoners alike continue to consult traditional gods and their priests.[29] Despite Christian-Fijian dependence on legislation banning traditional religion as `witchcraft', Veramu Tora observes 'there are still many Christian Fijians, residing in both rural areas and urban centres who are members of secret societies, where ancestral gods are worshipped. Moreover, although health services in the country have been upgraded tremendously, many people still visit diviners, traditional healers and sorcerers’ (1986: 34, 35).

While Fijians have listened to the new priesthood, donned Western manners, and enthusiastically adopted the new religious format for worshipping the new deity, recent indigenous appraisals of this acculturation have not been uncritical. Tevita Nawadra for example, has interpreted this process as a new slavery encasing Fijians in a Western paradigm.[30] Veramu Tora has similarly noted that:

'Viewing [our] transition to Christianity from a present day perspective ... it would seem that, although it was smooth it remained somewhat superficial. The gospel presented to us was like a tree brought from the west and planted in our soil, but in actual fact the tree was brought together with its own soil rather than Fijian soil being used to grow it in' (1986: 34).

In this regard, anthropologist, James Clifford made the general observation that, `outward agreement and inward resistance’ are hallmarks of colonised peoples (Clifford 1988: 303)[31]. This is clearly the case in Fijian Christianity. It may have succeeded in becoming a political force, but in Fijian consciousness - where it ostensibly matters - it is more a metaphysical farce. Like other Christianised and colonised societies, Christianised Fiji has found, and continues to find, ways of maintaining two sets of gods (or two faces of the one God?) – one, imported and Christian, and the other, organically nurtured and pre-Christian. Where the imported, Judeo-Christian divinity is respected and loved from out of the Bible - need it be said that this is a book about circumstances which are both historically and geographically removed from Fiji? - the indigenous face of God is a presence felt in symbols, myth and occurrences which relate to the tangibles of culture and lifestyle[32]. Religion has therefore not proved a zero-sum equation in Fijian consciousness.

3. Suffering servants - An Incarnational model for a Nativised-Christianity

The failure of the soldiers of the cross to eradicate the indigenous faith is not due to the intractable nature of evil in the form of a putative paganism or heathenism, but due rather to the failure of traditional mission-Christians to allow for their own God, who is already known by various names - EL, YHWH, Logos, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit etc - to be known by a few more. It is due to a failure to distinguish Christian law from the Christian gospel (as Martin Luther might have put it) or demarcate its sociology from its soteriology (as I prefer) and to decide which is the more important - `the tree' of Calvary, or the `soil' of culture it was planted in (as Tora eloquently expresses it).

In short, Christianity’s failure in Fiji is arguably due to its failure to reconcile itself with local perspectives and local truths. Lessons from others and their past may be learned and future paths corrected if Christians come to an adequate appreciation of the gospel of the incarnate Jesus Christ as a suffering servant. This representation of the Incarnation has always, and everywhere, been a truth with radical implications for Christian mission ideology.

The incarnation informs us that God set off from a `far country' for a destination called humanity. The Word divested Himself of His exclusively divine attributes and status and condescended to become something like us - weak, limited and ordinary. The incarnation is about a migration with a mission, a one-way sacrifice, a divine devolution - Darwinism in reverse - the spirit or essence of God journeying to earth to assume a real, material, mud form. Thus, at its root, the incarnation of God is, fundamentally, a story of a God-human relationship which is best represented in the motif of a suffering servant rather than that of an all-conquering soldier of the cross. The incarnation does not speak of a God who risked or sacrificed nothing to accomplish the salvation of humans. Rather, it is the truth of a God who put elevated status aside and who lay his privileges on the line. He threw divine safety away and left the heavenly city of his glorious commonwealth in order to become one of us.

If God steps down to become human, then so must Christians. To `become human' is in this sense to take on the ways and foibles of the ethno-cultural specificities that define persons beyond being mere abstractions. That is to say, wherever we seek to make ourselves known and accepted, we must, as Christians of the late 20th century, step down from our `high’ (or Westernised) cultural vantage point and adopt the ethnos (ie. ways of doing and being) but not necessarily the ethos (ie. the values and norms which may be narrow, xenophobic, anti-Christian etc) of those whom we seek. Rather than calling that which is indigenous up to so-called Christian standards (by putting natives through a Jacob's ladder of social and cultural `salvation’), Christians must begin to take Paul's advice seriously:

'Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus: who being in the form of God thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but made himself of no reputation and took upon him the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of men' (Philippians 2: 5-7).

If the outcome of the soldiers of the cross approach has been a Christianised native - an indigenous core mantled with Christian beliefs and forms - my argument is for a nativised Christianity - a Christianity which takes, in this case, Fijian beliefs (along with their relevant social and cultural implications) seriously (though selectively). In arguing this I expect a cultural and theological reluctance to do so on the part of many mainstream Christian apologists. But my view is that such a `syncretism’ is not only technically possible, it is morally desirable as we enter the 21st century. A suffering servant approach to Christian missions and evangelism not only allows it, it mandates it.

The past and present contain cases of outstanding Fijian individuals and rituals who could be better accommodated in our understanding by such a model. Until we revise our approach, they will continue to represent unnecessarily dissonant episodes in an already bifurcated consciousness. In brief:

(i) Navosavakadua - whose mixture of imported Christian ideology and indigenous faith could have been welcomed as a natural development or sign of indigenous assimilation of Christian truths. It was not. At the beginning of this century he was labelled a `dangerous' and `disaffected native' and by a policy we can call `tribocide’, the colonial government hoped to biologically as well as socially demolish his people, his message and his memory.

(ii) Apolosi Nawai - the spiritual leader who, during the 20th century Depression, lobbied for an independent Fiji with policies and promises of an end to taxation, the end to colonial rule, and control of the vanua as the promised land of Fijians. Fijians were to become strong, independent and united not only through their own holy spirits, but through the spirit of capitalism and while many Fijians supported him with cultic enthusiasm, European planters, missionaries and chiefs plotted against him, each for their own reason. The church reviled him as one claiming supernatural powers, chiefs objected to his chiefly claims, and colonial authorities alleged that his claims were treasonous. Colonial authorities had him arrested and imprisoned on charges which were religious, economic, social, political and moral in nature.

(iii) Tuinagauna - a former Fijian boxer, Joe Malemale, claimed the title, Tuinagauna [King of Time].[33] If the prophetic faith of Nawai and Navosavakadua lives on among Fijians, it may be in persons such as this. Malemale is of the view that God, through his own Fijian spirits, taught Fijian ancestors truths which arrived subsequently in the form of 19th century, mission-Christianity. Malemale has also predicted a decline of Methodism in Fiji – partly for its refusal to recognise him (and his spiritual predecessors' truths).[34] For this, they declared him heretical.[35]

(iv) Uli Drano - on the island of Vanua Balavu, a ritual fishing expedition called the uli drano is intermittently practised by the clans-people of Mavana village.[36] It is only practised when they decide to and is derived from an Oceanic dreamtime legend.[37] As in the Biblical religious traditions, required outcomes are predicated on causal obedience and administrating the correct ritual process. By this ancient ritual, these Fijians place their traditional identity at the centre of their social and cultural life for but a short time, every few years. That it is still practiced is a testament to the commitment of Mavana villagers who hitherto have resisted pressures which threaten its future - pressures coming from enthusiastic, evangelical Christians. These contemporary soldiers of the cross have branded the uli drano a waste of time and some in the wider church call it `devil-worship’.[38]

Conclusion

Pacific Christians need to rethink the oppositional strategies hitherto invoked in responding to traditional religious phenomena such as I have described. Christian cosmology should be adapted to fit with indigenous understandings and Christian demonology should be entirely revoked as a paradigm for understanding native religious phenomena.[39] Rather than entering new worlds like soldiers of the cross bent on cutting a swathe through the ethno-cultural values and practices of those who are `lost' in terms of privilege, knowledge and power, Christianity must present itself in the likeness of indigenous culture. Instead of putting an end to the ethno-cultural practices (ie. the very things which define the indigeneity) of traditional peoples, Christian theology must itself `go native'. Pacific Christians must, where appropriate, adopt the `native' point of view and meld their ideologies with such viewpoints looking for convergence rather than conflict. Pacific Christians especially have to rethink much of what they have traditionally called `sanctification' but which in fact is nothing more than Euro-American, cultural baggage whose `use-by’ date has long been superseded.

Moreover, Pacific Christianity could be better indigenised if it abandoned a scientific fact-basis for faith (ie. a letter-of-the-law theology which produces endless disharmony and sectarianism) and moved closer to a truth-meaning understanding of faith (ie. a spirit of transcendental idealism which permits unity without uniformity, plurality without punishment).[40] What is now required are suffering servants with a willingness to accommodate aspects of the indigenous world-view which enrich and broaden further, our understanding of God.[41]

I am not advancing this nativisation of Christianity as a mere ploy or a desperate `sales strategy’ in the face of an approaching post-modern 21st century. Rather, I see it as a belated gesture for Christian recognition of the dignity and cultural worth of the indigenous `fourth world' as God's creation. While Pacific Christians accept that God has revealed himself symbolically in the historical experience of Israel and actually in the person of a first century, Jewish charismatic named Jesus Christ, Pacific Christians must decide whether God is a Jew or a Christian or neither.[42] Pacific Christians must decide whether God has created human and ethno-cultural diversity and prefers it that way, or whether He plays ethno-cultural `favourites’.[43] Pacific Christians must decide whether the `pass the torch of truth’ conception of divine providence in history - where the presence of God began in the hands of `superior’ peoples and was eventually handed along and down to `inferior’ (usually brown, black and yellow) peoples - is an adequate mission theology, or whether it is in fact a quaint anthropology and vulgar evolutionary theory which has proven itself psychologically defeating for peoples such as Fijians (where it is pervasive). Pacific Christians must decide whether the Holy Spirit travels in missionaries’ baggage and whether the Spirit is captive to mission policy. On the face of it, many of these ideologies seem at odds with Bible methodology.[44]

A nativised Christianity such as I am proposing here, accepts that God's truth may be found, adapted and applied to all of the world's peoples and in all of their particular religious worlds.[45] Christianity represents an attempt to universalise a particular form of Judaism. As such it was Hellenised in the first century, Romanised in the second, Europeanised subsequently, and Americanised since the 18th century. It now still remains to be indigenised. This may be the final, but hardest station on Christianity’s journey toward global realisation. But it must be a part of that process if globalisation is to remain its raison detre.

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[1] See e.g. Ephesians 6: 14-17; 1 Timothy 6: 12.

[2] See e.g. Hebrews 2: 9, 10; Philippians 2: 5-8; Matthew 8: 17.

[3] I write as one who is Fiji-born and one for whom Fijian ancestry, family and social networks remain salient. I also continue to research issues relating to Fiji on behalf of interest groups located there.

[4] Although this paper spotlights Methodism in Fiji (because of its historical pre-eminence, pervasiveness, and accessibility), I do not mean to exclude other forms of Christianity. Sects which are American-born and based and which have entered Fiji and other parts of the Asia-Pacific basin are included in the scope of my remarks.

[5]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).

[6]Matthew 8: 17.

[7]The phrase `from the top-down’ is Reverend Thomas Williams’s (1858: 36). As Martha Kaplan (1988: 107) put it: `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 [king] 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).

[8]Despite initial failures with chiefs, mission work entered a new era when Cakobau converted in 1854. Due as much to an ultimatum from the Tongan regent, George I (who threatened an invasion if he did not) as from personal conviction coaxed through the successive ministries of William Cross, John Hunt, Thomas Jaggar, John Watsford and Tui Varani of Viwa, Cakobau became the catalyst for many other conversions particularly in the islands' central and western regions.

[9]With few exceptions, the Pharisees, Sadducees, the Herods, Pontius Pilate, Felix, Agrippa and a long line of Roman caesars were typically unresponsive if not openly hostile to Christianity - that is, until success with Emperor Constantine in the 4th century.

[10]For example, it was not until his conversion that Cakobau acquired British support for his claim to the title of Tui Viti - King of Fiji, and as such, served as a symbol of both de-facto `national' unity and indigenous authority - two preconditions for British colonisation and continuing mercantile-capitalist investments. Cakobau and other chiefs who ceded Fiji to Britain as a colony did so expressly for `the promotion of civilisation and Christianity' and for `increasing trade and industry' (Garrett 1982: 279). Fiji’s first resident governor, Sir Arthur Gordon later enthused that `the political significance’ of Wesleyanism in organising and subduing Fiji had not been `fully appreciated’ (Legge 1958: 25 cf. Kaplan 1988: 110).

[11]Matthew 22: 21

[12]See for example, the Battle of Nakorowaiwai (in Kaplan 1988) and the Tuka phenomenon - discussed later.

[13]As the missionary, 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).

[14] Note for example, the Lutheran impact on the German peasant revolt of the 16th century and Methodism's effect on the English working class of the late 18th century (see Warner 1930: 56ff, 78ff; Tawney 1938: 102ff; Wearmouth 1945: 14; Grimm 1954: 174-176; Yinger 1961: 32ff; Thompson 1968: 390; Norman 1976: 32ff).

[15] Pioneer missionary, David Cargill suggested, `Human legislation ... may be productive of much good to Fiji by showing the natives that the shield of British protection is extended over the persons of the missionaries and their families’ (in Schutz 1977: 175). Pioneer missionary, Joesph Waterhouse’s (1866: 69) `invading mission army’ of `prayer and pains’ were not entirely without munitions.

[16]See Garrett 1982: 281ff.

[17]Mission historian, John Garrett, is of the opinion that despite chiefly example or coercion, Wesleyan conversions were eventually genuine (1982: 114). It is interesting however that Wesleyan rather than Roman Catholic Christianity met with success among us - the opinion of some (e.g. Joseph Blanc cited in Garrett 1982: 286, 287) is that this was due to Catholic reluctance to use Wesleyan methodology - the Bible backed by gun or club - in their mission work. If this is true, one can only suppose that the methods of Catholic missions in the Americas and elsewhere had been abandoned in respect to the Pacific. Perhaps, because Fiji was a late colony in the history of the British Empire, earlier lessons had been learned.

[18]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). Indeed, the Tui Ba ordered men under his regimen to shoot on sight any Fijian caught without a suluvataga or sprouting Afro-styled hair (see McNaught 1971: 7).

[19] See Hunt 1846; Schutz 1977; and Garrett 1982, for similar conclusions regarding Cargill.

[20]To be fair, not all of Fiji’s early missionaries were soldiers of the cross were as pietistic as Cargill. His co-worker, William Cross, (and later, John Hunt) represented more a welfarist, `Good Samaritan' ethos of this tradition. Cross consequently won more favour among the people than the reserved Cargill. John Hunt similarly found respect among Fijians because of his appreciation and understanding of their customs. Garrett's assessment of Hunt is significant: `He understood them, listened to them, loved them ... They liked him; his dealings with them were frank, never obsequious ... he never `went native' remaining himself English and a Methodist; but he talked of Christ rather than of European furnishings, clothing to the neck-line and punctual hard work' (1982: 106).

[21] The effect of this was such that indigenous constructions of reality were dismissed and displaced by European ones. This consciousness-transplant has been carried out with such surgical-cultural precision that many of Fijians continue to express deference to European reconstructions of their history, European definitions of their cultural significance and European political values for the organisation of their polity (see on-going debates in newspaper columns, letters and editorials in The Fiji Times, and The Daily Post since 1987).

[22]For example, Deane's Fijian Society was published in 1921 and is subtitled `The Sociology and Psychology of the Fijians'. For Deane, Fijians: are simple in character `yet owing to their natural reserve ... difficult to understand'; are `complete masters of their emotions when occasion requires self-control' and `will reveal their minds only to those whom they know well, or who, by some means have ingratiated themselves into their favour'; are incapable of `deeper' emotions. Furthermore, Fijians: are dominated by fear - `fear is inseparable from the Fijian nature'; have `a decided objection to haste, especially in decision'; are psychologically `largely under the domination of his emotions' preferring to `let the feelings and impressions of his mind come to the bursting point before he could be persuaded to action'; lack the individualist ethos that typifies advanced peoples - rather, `like all barbarous nations they are ardent conservatives ... He is what his father was'; are dominated by the group mentality - `clan life is the Fijian's chief joy' and because `the Fijian clan is a single cell ... the most difficult thing in the world for [the Fijian] is to separate himself from his own people and live as an exile from them'; have `a predilection for working in numbers', and `an interdependent spirit' such that by doing anything alone, one `ceases to be Fijian ... [and] any attempt on the part of a single individual to be different from the other members of the tribe meets with universal disfavour'; are `implicitly submissive to the will of his chief'; have an `absolute dependence upon those above him', to the point where `self-reliance', is `a very evanescent quality'. Deane further noted that, `in the training of preachers, the greatest difficulty is found in bestirring them to think for themselves' and felt that these latter `problems' were best resolved through the intervention of modernity. He applauded the breaking up of the clan or group-mind by Western, rational-liberal, individualist ideologies and institutions. The consequence, he argued, was that, `some very good types of manly character have been developed...a proof that the Fijians would probably survive the dangers of a complete transition from their present social system to one more in keeping with a scientific conception of what is needed to produce a strong individuality’. Deane also concluded that Fijians: have little respect for private property - `all the members of the clan have a certain lien upon the goods belonging to any one of their number'; easily `learn the art of lying'; have a native incapacity to think abstractly and that a propensity to concretisation was indicative of the Fijians immaturity - `In mental calibre he is but a child'; are apparently over-sexed; are redeemable - while cannibalism had been `a hideous excrescence upon the true nature of the Fijian, a pestiferous, cancer-like growth', a new character is being formed - `He is in a stage of transition and is extremely liable to be overcome by the temptations and dangers of the period...they will probably survive in the long run. If they eventually die away, the Fijians will not have lived wholly in vain’ (Deane 1921: 2-148).

[23]In 1991, a well-seasoned and widely respected Fijian journalist gave me his 1982 facsimile copy of Williams (1858/1982) in response to my question, `What is the best book on Fijians you know of?' Williams’s appraisal is no better than Deane’s (cited above) - perhaps the journalist was joking!

[24] See for example, Eliade 1977.

[25] In relation to the Fijian situation, one can see the relevance of Kaplan’s (1988: 201) typology of: displacement (the new god replaced traditional ones), adhesion (the new god was added and fitted into an already existing paradigm or pantheon), marginalisation (taking the form of secretive practices of the old religion) and transubstantiation (where the new or old god transmuted into the other). Unfortunately, Kaplan does not develop these ideas.

[26] A major `lost’ or repudiated pre-Christian deity (who according to the first Christian missionary, William Cross, was the most widely known at the time of his arrival in Fiji), was Ove - the Creator of all who resides in the heavens (Hunt 1846: 120, 121). Ove is linguistically and functionally similar to the Old Testamental Jehovah and it is possible that he has been `lost’ from contemporary consciousness by being transubstantiated into Jehovah through transliteration, merging of imagery and the cross-imputation of characteristics. If this is what happened to Ove, it would be consistent with his disappearance from oral tradition and account for why mission-Christians have retained the name and function of Degei (see below). That is: he suitably serves as a potent symbol of opposition to the Christian - an evil, devilish/Satanic, heathen-pagan god used in witch-craft and the `enemy other’ par excellence for soldiers of the cross to battle against.

[27] Contemporary Christian-Fijians also deny knowledge of the goddess, Buinikauvadra [grandmother of all gods] who was like Ove, extant at the time of earliest mission contact. Buinikauvadra’s existence was expressed in the symbolic form of a matakau [doll carving] and her title suggests a particular importance to the tribes of the Kauvadra - the sacred mountains where our other traditional and mythical deities reside.

[28] For example, the Christian democratisation of access to the traditional narcotic, yaqona [kava], and its reorientation toward honouring turaga [chiefly] rather than bete [priestly] leadership. As clerics representing a new doctrine of `the priesthood of all believers', missionaries understandably worked to demote the bete as the official spiritual adviser to the chiefly caste and to elevate the chief-missionary nexus as the one of paramount importance. (On the traditional interdependent relationship between bete and turaga, see Thomson 1908/1968).

[29] The indigenous Fijian organisation, Kudru Na Vanua is evidence of this.

[30]Ratu Isikeli Caucau similarly declared his belief that, `it would have been more meaningful to the people if the early missionaries who brought this true God to them had told them to serve Him in their old traditional way and in their same bure-kalou or temples. Nowadays it is often found that the Lotu or Church has some difficulties in its relationship with the Fijian communal ways of life. This is, I believe, because some of the things which are a real part of the life of the people have been overlooked by the Church’ (in Tora 1986: 35).

[31] The missionary perspective is somewhat different - Joseph Waterhouse described Fijians as `thoroughly two-faced’ (1866: 299). He deplored a Fijian who orally translated a missionary’s urgings to his fellows to convert to Christianity but concluded with the sentiment `Having told you what the teacher says, I will give you my advice: do not become Christians’ (ibid).

[32] These gods are sought for whenever circumstances demand. At such times, we incur a rationalisation of our experiences of them as being due to some combination of the will of the Biblical God, as punishment by our Fijian gods, as an unavoidable `natural' cause and effect - or as some combination of these. Thus, Christianity may have given us newer ways of curing and interpreting social and personal illnesses (other than draunikau and other malignant forms of magic) and better ways of expressing love (other than bride strangling, orgies and cannibalism) but the older ways persist.

[33]Based on our interview, 1995.

[34] He appears to have been accurate in this prediction/curse - see e.g. The Enquirer, March/April 1996 for a report of the critical collapse and corruption of Fijian Methodism in 1996.

[35] In retaliation, the King of Time ordered the local church closed and asked his numerous adherents in surrounding villages to withdraw from worshipping with Methodist congregations. His Methodist critics call him `punch-drunk' but his charisma, as symbolised in his many tabua [sacred whales tooth], his other inherited sacred objects, and the respect paid him by Fijians (including Prime Minister Rabuka) is undoubted among the vanua.

[36]Based on my own participant-observation, December 1994, and interviews with Mesake Koroi of the executive bete [priestly], Vatulami clan.

[37](As told to me by Mesake Koroi): An ancestral god called Volavanua, whose off-spring formed the mataqali of Valevono, was working in his vegetable garden at Mawai in the heat of the day. He was thirsty but without a water supply. He suddenly noticed the hot sun blocked by two ancestral female gods flying overhead and bearing a leafy basket containing mud, water and fish. Upon his inquiries he was told that they had come from Tonga and were en-route to the nearby island of Laucala to pay homage to the ancestral god there. They were taking the goods contained in their via leaf basket as a presentation. Realising that this was a way to quench his thirst, Volavanua took a branch of a qai tree and hurled it skyward. The basket was pierced and yawa fish and water contents emptied down to fill a lake. As Mesake Koroi declared, `if you go to Laucala today you will find a swampy lake without water or fish; the water and fish are in Vanua Balavu'. Fijians in Laucala and Qamea acknowledge this account (cf. Thomson 1908/1968: 16).

[38]Many of our Christian-Fijians conveniently draw a distinction between rituals relating to the vanua [traditional polity] and rituals which are designed to effect `magic’ of some kind. Chiefly rituals are said to relate to the vanua and are therefore designated `legitimate’. Rituals (such as the uli drano) which elevate the traditional, spiritual order over the colonially-constructed chiefly order are consonantly regarded as evil (non-chiefly and therefore illegitimate) in origin. After the 1994 uli drano, a visiting preacher conducted a service where he berated the Mavana villagers for debasing their Methodist faith by continuing the `devilish’ ritual. Villagers I spoke to after that meeting were annoyed but felt he was simply doing what was expected of him.

[39]The Kudru Na Vanua has alerted contemporary Fijians to the fact that our ancestors had no words for `devil' or `evil spirits' prior to the arrival of the Christian ideology which encouraged (and continues to encourage) regard for our spirits as evil. The word tevoro is an example of a religio-political category `generated in the missionary and contact period of the nineteenth-century’ (Kaplan 1988: 205).

[40] See KNV - Notes for Consideration `On the difference between facts and truths', January 1992.

[41]See John Soqeta, Tuinagauna, Viliame Savu for other contemporary versions of Fijian cosmology. Jovesa Bavou (1917) is the oldest, written, genesis account I know of by an indigenous Fijian.

[42]As Christians, we are definitively flawed humans who practise faith in Jesus Christ and obedience to His teachings - these are not things which apply to God. Descriptively speaking, God is not required to go to church dressed in his Sabbath or Sunday best, sing hymns or pay offerings. These are things designed for humans and as such represent an ethno-specific and culturally rooted set of traditions which mission-Christianity has been slow in owning up to.

[43]Galatians 3: 28.

[44] See John 3: 8-21 for example.

[45] As one letter to a newspaper recently admonished Fijians: `God does not live overseas; the address of the Holy Spirit is not care of the Vatican or some American TV-evangelist’s studio. He is right here `in your heart and mouth’ (Deuteronomy 30: 14; Romans 10:9) where he has always been if only we’d listened’ (The Daily Post, 20 May 1996).