Independence For Fiji's

Methodist Church

From a Suva Correspondent Rarely has Suva, outside of Hibiscus Week anyhow, seen such junketings as there were in Suva in the first week of July when the Methodist Church celebrated the establishment of its own Fiji Conference —that is, the arrival of independence for the Methodist Church of Fiji.

UNTIL now the church here has been part of the Methodist Con ference of NSW, and the new ar rangement is another important step in the moves of the Pacific churches everywhere towards South Seas unity.

The occasion was an especially im portant one for Fiji because about 95 per cent, of Fijians are Methodists, and between 20,000 and 30,000 of them almost took the roof off the city in celebrating the great day. For months the Fijian and Indian sections of the church had been making their preparations.

Casting a benevolent and fatherly eye over the whole proceedings— services, exhibitions, food and bazaar stalls, athletics, canoe races, and even fire walking—was the leading Methodist in the South Pacific area, the Rev. Dr. W. F. Hambly, President-General of the Methodist Church in Australasia.

Important Visitors

There were other important visi tors, Methodist ministers from every State in Australia, most of them former missionaries in Fiji or some other Pacific territory, and many of the High Chiefs of Fiji.

Outside of the church services, one of which began at 5.15 a.m., all the celebrations were centred on Albert Park, which was packed from early morning till the solemn epilogue at night with thousands of all races and not all of them Methodists.

All the main tribal divisions of Fijian society took the weight of the celebrations on their shoulders, each tribe being responsible for a day’s programme.

To the tourist and others knowing nothing about Fijian society and customs the programme was a little puzzling with its Kubuna Day, its Burebasaga Day and its Tovata Day, but the rest was crystal clear. There were Fijian singing with its sonorous cadences and its faultless rhythm, Fijian laughter and the colourful spear dances, singing dances and the rest.

Ratu George Cakobau, the Vuni valu and great-grandson of King Cakobau, whose conversion brought a flood of new adherents to the Methodist cause and firmly estab lished Christianity in this Colony, re ferred to the juxtaposition of Church and State.

It was perhaps mere coincidence, he said, that they were celebrating the independence of their Church only a few days after the start of the new Member system, or “Cabinet” system, in Fiji politics.

The Governor, Sir Derek Jake way, who formally opened the cele brations, was a little more concrete about the twin events.

“It could not fail to have been noticed that, a week after the intro duction of the Membership system of government in this Colony, the Methodist Church has taken the final step to self-government,” said Sir Derek.

“Church and State are separate; Religion is one thing; Government is another. There is no Established Church in this country, and it is un likely that there ever will be, but this realisation of autonomy in the Church which represents no less than a third of the people of Fiji is, by any standards, a significant fact.”

It was plain, therefore, that the Governor was thinking of another kind of self-government, and, bearing in mind the great assistance in cash and kind that Fiji gets from the Mother Country, maybe there was also some significance in another remark of Sir Derek’s, “God helps those who help them selves,” he said. “You Methodists have never been afraid of following that doctrine. It is one which all of us in Fiji might follow, too.”

How the two major races work to gether in an autonomous church may give some kind of clue to the future, although there is one important dif ference. In Fiji’s population Indians outnumber Fijians, but in the Methodist Church of Fiji, Fijians out number Indians by 80 to 1.