Tonga

Tonga is an island nation in the South Pacific between Fiji and Tahiti, north of New Zealand. [Page 1294]The only island nation in the Pacific still maintaining a continuous indigenous monarchy, Tonga is a predominantly Christian nation with Methodism as its state religion. The inhabitants of the archipelago reported as more than 90% Christian, with 37% belonging to the Free Wesleyan Church, a Methodist organization. The denomination has fallen in popularity in recent years and endured a schism that created the Free Church of Tonga, garnering 11% of the population, and the Church of Tonga (technically an offshoot of the Free Church of Tonga), which claims 8% of the population. Other faiths include Roman Catholic (16%), Church of the Latter-Day Saints (17%), Seventh-Day Adventist (2%), and Anglican (1%). The ethnicity of the country is almost entirely Polynesian, and Tonga remained fairly unaffected by immigration as of the beginning of the 21st century.

While the Tongan founding myth has the islands being fished from the sea by Maui, one of the three major gods, people first arrived on Tonga from Fiji around 1500 BCE. The island had a sacred monarchy seeing the Tu'i Tonga (king) as an embodiment of the islands' people, and it still remains a powerful symbol for the nation. By the time Europeans first had contact with the nation in the 17th century, the authority of the Tu'i Tonga had been greatly reduced to a mainly religious role. The infamous Captain Cook visited the island in 1773 to a welcome reception, earning the archipelago the nickname of “the Friendly Islands.” The first modern king, King George Tupou I, introduced a constitution in 1875; he was a convert to Christianity, and Wesleyan missionaries played a notable role in helping construct the governing document. Tonga never suffered official colonization, though in 1900 the British granted the nation's request for protectorate status in response to attempts by other colonial powers to overthrow the Tongan monarchy. The ties thereby created were peacefully dissolved in 1970, the same year Tonga joined the Commonwealth of Nations. It would become part of the United Nations in 1999.

Though abundantly Methodist today, the first Dutch missionaries made few inroads in Christianizing Tonga in the 18th century, but missionaries of other faiths had more success in the next hundred years. The nation's Christian character is evident in its constitution, which demands all businesses to be closed on Sunday and holds that day holy by law, forever. At the end of the 20th century, the sacred monarchical institution continued to face growing challenges to its legitimacy, mostly from Tongan students supporting a full democracy. Tonga still allows the Christianizing of its people, and many missionaries of different denominations are still active on the island.