French Polynesia

In the South Pacific island territory of French Polynesia, the two large historic churches, the Ma'ohi Protestant Church (Église protestante ma'ohi, or EPM) and the Roman Catholic Church, claim more than three quarters of the population as members. But the 1980s marked the beginning of a new religious era, with faster and deeper diversification in relation to social and economic changes. Following the establishment in 1963 of the Pacific Test Center (Centre d'expérimentation du Pacifique), French Polynesia moved to an economy combining massive imports, consumption, and rapid growth of the public administration. Migratory movements from the rural islands toward the capital island led to an increasing concentration of population in the urban zones of Tahiti. This mobility underlines the decline of a traditional way of life that closely linked membership to a territory and to bonds of family solidarity and community religious identity. It has contributed to the diversification of the population, leading to a great decrease of religious homogeneity in couples and families.

The census of 1951 listed only five religious organizations. A quarter of the population was then Catholic, and half was Protestant. The remaining churches were the Seventh-Day Adventist, Sanito (the local name of Community of Christ, formerly known as the Reorganized Mormon Church), and the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints, which together constituted only 6.41% of the inhabitants. Today, one French Polynesian in five belongs to neither the Catholic nor the historic Protestant Church, and within these two churches, the level of religious practice [Page 413]is decreasing. New churches have developed strong communities in French Polynesia, especially Jehovah's Witnesses (officially established since 1960) and Pentecostalism, which first appeared in 1962 in the Chinese community and reached a larger audience in the 1980s, with the expansion of the Assemblies of God. Above all, two older churches have progressed significantly since the 1980s: The Church of Latter-Day Saints, whose first missionaries arrived in 1844, now constitutes 6.5% of the population; the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, established in 1890, has gained a similar influence (5.8%). Their progress, mainly due to converts from the EPM Church, testifies to a new religious mobility (intergenerational and individual) and a trend toward greater individual autonomy with respect to inherited religious identity.

The Catholic Church would probably have lost many more members to newer religious movements had it not been for the spectacular revitalization brought to it during the 1980s by the Charismatic renewal. About 40% of French Polynesians today identify themselves as Catholics, but the commitment of the Charismatics (approximately a quarter of the membership of Catholics) contrasts with the great mass of the nonpracticing. Despite its relative decline, the EPM still constitutes about 40% of the population and remains a strong identity reference. The EPM remains strong partly because of its long history in French Polynesia; it is the heir of the first Protestant missionaries who disembarked in 1797 from the ship Duff chartered by the London Missionary Society and established the first Christian church in Tahiti. Also, the EPM has retained much of its membership and has continued to attract new adherents due to its committed stance against nuclear testing and its consequences, in favor of political independence, and in defense of indigenous culture and language (re'o ma'ohi).

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