The Fijian government has banned all Methodist Church meetings except for Sunday worship. This includes house groups, women’s prayer fellowships, choir practices, mid-week communion services and youth fellowships, as well as the Church’s governance meetings. Having withdrawn the permit for the Church’s annual Conference the evening before the event was due to start, the interim government has now notified the Church in a letter from the Fiji Military Council that all other meetings of the Methodist Church are forbidden. All Methodist ministers are also forbidden from leaving the country for any meeting.
These are the latest moves in a long-running feud between the government and the Methodist Church. The government was installed after a military coup d’état in 2006, and the Methodists are the largest Christian denomination in Fiji; indeed, the largest faith group there.
The Methodist Church has long formed a key part of Fiji’s social power structure and I have a personal memory of their influence on society there. While crossing the Pacific from Panama to Sydney in December 1969 our ship called at the capital Suva on a Sunday. We found that strict Sabbath observance there meant that all the shops were closed, preventing us from stocking up on family items for our travels to New Guinea.
“We are gravely concerned about how this situation is developing,” said Michael King, World Church Relationships team leader for the Methodist Church in Britain. “Our brothers and sisters in Fiji are asking us to keep them in our prayers and to tell the world their story. We are worried for Fiji. We are not only worried about religious freedom, but also about what the loss of other freedoms might mean for all Fijians in this traditionally democratic island nation.”
