Living Water: Christian Theologies and Interethnic Relations in Fiji

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This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published as:

Living Water: Christian theologies and interethnic relations in Fiji. The Asia Pacific

Journal of Anthropology 15:1, 65-‐84 (2014)

© Taylor & Francis, 6th February 2014

available online at:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14442213.2013.872697

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Living Water: Christian theologies and interethnic relations in Fiji

Rachel Morgain, School of Culture, History and Language, College of Asia and the Pacific,

Australian National University

Abstract

In multi-‐ethnic Fiji, where ethnic relations are often seen as fraught and potentially charged

with conflict, and where religion closely follows lines of ethnicity, attempts by Christian

churches to mediate interethnic relations and build multiethnic congregations can face

difficult challenges. In this article, two contrasting Christian theologies are explored, both of

which draw on theologies of water as a means of mediating interethnic engagements. In these

examples, processes of forging interethnic relationships are seen as variously harmonious and

dissonant, unifying and separating. Drawing connections between the layered imagery of

water employed in these Christian contexts with wider Pacific imaginaries of water in

baptism and in the ocean, I explore these shifting processes of forging interethnic

relationships in the contested context of contemporary Fiji.

I understand that we are islands

because of the ocean

I understand that the ocean

has the power to separate and unite us

I want to be an ocean !

Teresia Kieuea Teaiwa, No One is an Island—for Georgie

When rain splashed red on keyboards…

I chose not to speak to rain again that day

and listened to poems on war on a radio.

Mohit Prasad, Rain and War

Introduction

At a church in urban Fiji, on the first shining Sunday morning after a long string of overcast,

sultry days, I was privileged to witness an elaborate worship service of the Assemblies of God.

Ensconced in a small, but breezy, plain white building for two and a half hours, children were

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dedicated, returning family members welcomed, and communion taken to murmured prayers.

Up front on the stage, an amplified band led us in singing and praise. To their right, a large tub

was laid out, with plastic sheeting all around. This was an absolutely welcome highlight for me

on visiting this church, for the service opened with a baptism.

The worship began with the well-‐known praise song I have decided to follow Jesus.1 As

the tub was prepared for a woman’s immersion, the pastor spoke about the theology of

baptism, about how the Greek word signifies immersion, about how the Bible tells Christians

they must be baptised in water, like being buried under the earth. He talked about how

baptism represents Jesus’s burial, how Paul taught that in baptism, the Christian is ‘buried

with him’ (Romans 6:4).2 The pastors prayed over the woman, who spoke very briefly, in a

quiet, solemn manner, saying she was pleased to be baptised. After this, she was fully

immersed, emerging a member of the Assemblies of God church and the Christian community.

Before this, as we had been settling down at the start of the service, I chatted with the

woman next to me, Meena, explaining about my research and my interest in their church. She

told me of her family’s connection with Assemblies of God in Fiji, and about the baptism about

to take place. With my Anglican upbringing, it took me a little time to realise we were talking

not about an infant, but about an adult deciding to be accepted into the church. Meena

explained to me that the recipient was a Gujarati woman, commenting what a rarity this was.

In a moment characteristic of the racialised landscape of Fijian everyday life, she elaborated,

‘We don’t get many Gujaratis. They don’t want to give up their own gods that they follow.’

Expecting her to make reference to Hinduism as she leaned towards me, I was doubly struck

when her words were: ‘The god they follow is money.’3

Meena’s explanation was intended I believe as both a testament to the significance of the

event for this church, and as a reflection of the courage of the woman choosing baptism.

Certainly, there is a sense among many Pentecostal Christians that conversion to Christianity

is an extremely difficult choice for Gujaratis, who are seen to risk losing connections to their

family, even being ostracised, in choosing to become Christians. Several church members

made such observations to me on this occasion. Indeed, the song that opened the worship was

originally written as a testament to the depth of decision around becoming a Christian, and

the cost involved in making such a commitment (Johnson 2013).

But the comments also echo common stereotypes regarding Gujarati immigrants and

their descendants in Fiji. In the fraught landscape of Fiji’s ethnic relations, it is fairly

commonplace to hear the idea expressed that Fiji’s Gujaratis are wealthy, caste-‐conscious,

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committed Hindus, and in a more negative sense, are individualistic and money-‐oriented. The

reflections of church members on this baptism can be seen to have emerged from the

troubling, fertile space that opens up in negotiating interethnic relations in Fiji: the space that

exists between the celebration of this significant event in a woman’s life and the coming

together of a community on the one hand, and a wider social landscape heavily laden with

interethnic differences, often understood in terms of division and sometimes conflict.

Ethnicity and Christianity in Fiji

These events and their interpretations are characteristic of a wider pattern in Fiji that

frequently attends attempts to come to grips with felt and lived separations between ethnic

communities. Such separations are not simply imagined prejudices, but are rooted in a long

social history, dating to colonial times. From the time of the British colonial rule in Fiji,

colonial authorities implemented a policy of separation, consciously assigning very different

economic, social and political roles to Fiji’s major ethnic communities. In particular, policies of

protectionism towards indigenous Fijians from the late nineteenth century, aimed at

preserving traditional Fijian ways of life, witnessed both an institutionalisation of Fijian

landholding and the reification of hierarchical relationships within Fijian vanua

(land/people/chiefdoms). As a result of these unique colonial policies, a large proportion of

Fiji’s land remained as inalienable, communal property within the descent groups of

indigenous Fijians (France 1969; Kaplan 1988; 2004; Jolly 1992). At the same time,

administrative provisions aimed at discouraging indigenous Fijians from working in the

wage-‐labour economy saw the implementation of a decades-‐long policy of importing

indentured labour, by which labourers known as girmitiyas were brought to Fiji, particularly

from India, to work the sugar cane plantations and related industries. Living arrangements for

these Indian immigrants and their descendants were generally separated from those of

indigenous Fijians (Lal 1992, 40; Norton 1993, 746–7). And this segmentation of Fiji by its

ethnic populations has been institutionally perpetuated in the post-‐colonial era, most notably

through inequalities in political representation and control of land (Kaplan 1988; 2004).

Such colonial and postcolonial policies have left an enduring mark on Fijian politics and

on broader cultural life in Fiji. While Fiji’s ethnic communities have long lived side-‐by-‐side

and interacted in workplaces, trade unions and to some extent in social life, particularly

within and around cities such as Lautoka near high sugar-‐growing areas, the identities of Fiji’s

two largest ethnic communities have been constructed around oppositional conceptions

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(Norton 1993, 746–9; Hermann and Kempf 2005). Indigenous Fijians, or i taukei (‘owners’),

are widely characterised as communally oriented, committed to Christianity and rooted in

their collective identities through their connections to vanua. Indo-‐Fijians, who are most often

Hindus or Muslims, are generally understood as more individualistic, more business-‐oriented

and more likely to achieve educational and economic success. While such understandings are

best viewed as ideological, they reflect an underlying reality of experience in Fiji’s ethnic

communities, as being rooted in strikingly separate and contrasting social histories. This

bifurcation of Fijian social life is mirrored not only in popular discourse, but in a great deal of

anthropological scholarship about Fiji, by which indigenous Fijian and Indo-‐Fijian

communities are frequently treated in isolation.

Nevertheless, this oppositional construction belies a much more complex ethnic

landscape, made up also of small minorities of people of Chinese, Korean and European

descent, along with immigrants from many other Pacific Islands. Among the latter are

Banabans who were relocated from their home on Ocean Island, Kiribati, to Rabi under the

pressure of war and of phosphate mining interests in 1945 (Kempf and Hermann 2005), and

the descendants of indentured labourers brought to Fiji from the Solomon Islands and

Vanuatu, who remain socially and politically marginalised in Fiji today (Halapua 2001).

Furthermore, significant divisions exist internally within Fiji’s major ethnic communities, not

only in a substantial cultural, linguistic and political diversity across indigenous Fijian

populations, but also between different waves of Indo-‐Fijian immigrants. In particular, the

descendants of indentured labourers, broadly divided between ‘South’ and ‘North’ Indo-‐

Fijians, view themselves, and are widely viewed, very differently from the descendants of

those who arrived as free immigrants, particularly from Gujarat and the Punjab. Where many

former indentured labourers became cane-‐growers, the more recent waves of Gujarati

immigrants, growing in number from around the 1920s, were more likely from early on to be

involved in small businesses such as tailoring, laundering or merchandising, laying the

foundations for a layer of prominent Gujarati-‐owned large enterprises in Fiji today (Lal 1992,

76). It is out of this very specific social history that contemporary stereotypes regarding

Gujaratis have been constructed.

Thus Fiji’s ethnic landscape, while it is deeply shaped by the kinds of racialised

stereotypes like that which I heard at the baptism, is not simply a projection of these

stereotypes, but is configured in ways that reflect strong contrasts of lived experience

between Fiji’s populations: in sociality, religious commitments, legal and political status, and

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access to land. Furthermore, these divisions have been widened in the post-‐independence era

in periods of political upheaval that have surrounded the military coups, particularly those of

1987 and 2000. Waged in the name of indigenous Fijians, the two coups in 1987 and the coup

in 2000 brought to the fore a politics of ethno-‐nationalism, which impacted the political

landscape enormously. Indo-‐Fijians were politically and socially marginalised through these

processes, resulting in significant emigration. While the political basis of each of these coups

was in practice far more complicated than a simple characterisation in terms of ethnic

divisions suggests, in particular reflecting divisions as much within ethnic communities as

between them, the rhetoric and ethnically-‐shaped political policies engendered through these

coups have fed perceptions of ethnic differences and their importance across Fiji (e.g. Lal

1992, 316–7; Emde 2005; Tomlinson 2009, 163–183). The regime brought to power by the

2006 coup, on the other hand, while seen by many as favouring Indo-‐Fijians, is also

characterised by a rhetoric of ‘multiculturalism’ (Norton 2010; Ratuva 2011). The current

military rulers of Fiji have worked to paint themselves as champions of ethnic and religious

pluralism, an image they have reflected in institutional changes such as the elimination of

racial categories from government forms, and the promise to hold elections on the basis of

one person, one vote, eliminating the communally-‐based voting of earlier constitutions.4 On

the other hand, they have suppressed institutions by which indigenous chiefly authority had

long been recognised, most particularly in abolishing the Great Council of Chiefs (Tuiwavu

2012).

The role of Christian denominations in this shifting political terrain is varied. The

leadership of the Methodist Church, Fiji’s largest Christian denomination, strongly favoured

the earlier coups, aligning itself with the politics of ethno-‐nationalism. Having done so, they

unequivocally condemned Bainimarama’s 2006 coup as ungodly, as did the leaders of the

Christian Mission Fellowship and other Pentecostal churches under the auspices of the

Association of Christian Churches of Fiji (Newland 2009). Seen as closely tied to the interests

of the chiefly system, Methodist church meetings and institutional freedoms have been

suppressed under the military regime. Other churches, most prominently the Catholic Church,

which in the past had distanced themselves from both the undemocratic and disruptive

effects of the earlier coups and the politics of ethno-‐nationalism that they promoted, have

been generally more circumspect in their approach to the current regime. Early on, several

prominent Catholic leaders showed themselves willing to work within some of the

institutions of established by the regime, such as the constitutional committee, which was

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later disbanded (Newland 2009). Other church leaders, such as those in the Assemblies of God

and the much smaller Anglican Church, have remained relatively quiet, focusing on their own

institutional life rather than speaking out publicly.5

While the military regime is playing some role in mediating changes in Fiji’s ethnic

landscape, these are largely reflective of much deeper shifts taking place. The changes that

seem to be emerging in Fiji’s ‘multiculturalism’ stem more broadly from substantial social

shifts, particularly a growing urbanisation, and changes in economic production over recent

decades, away from rural industries. Along with this is a decline in the proportion of Indo-‐

Fijians in the wider population as a result of emigrations following earlier coups, which has

lessened some of the perceived urgency around ethno-‐nationalist politics. While Fiji’s ethnic

communities have long lived proximate to one another, particularly in the major cities,

recently many more spaces are opening up – from evangelical churches, to movie theatres, to

squatter settlements – in which ethnic difference no longer appears as the most salient social

division.

In this context, several scholars have begun to highlight the emergence of new forms of

social connection and relationships. Katerina Teaiwa, for example, has drawn attention to

what she calls ‘popular kinship’ within popular culture in Fiji and in diasporic contexts,

contrasting this to the ‘divisive ethnic discourses that have shaped Fijian and Indian relations

for over a century’ (K. M. Teaiwa 2007, 193). In another context, Nicole George writes of the

integration of indigenous and Indo-‐Fijian women in organising for women’s rights (George

2012, 65–7, cf. Riles 2001, 29–31, 58–9). As Hermann and Kempf observed in 2005:

Socio-‐political life in the post-‐colonial state that is the Fiji Islands has often been

imaged in the media…as marked by tensions and divisions between (and within) the

ethnic groups living there. Yet it is possible to see tensions and divisions as processes

and politics of (partial) dis-‐connections and (new) connections, provided, that is, the

focus is put systematically on relations (Hermann and Kempf 2005, 309).

In many cases, these sites of inter-‐cultural relations are also touched by dissonance.

Thus Jennifer Cattermole, examining a DVD production of the song We Are Fiji, written to

celebrate Fiji’s victory at the 2005 Rugby World Cup Sevens, explores how the song, and in

particular its associated visual imagery, is used to construct a vision of Fijian nationhood that

celebrates Fiji’s multiculturalism and simultaneously serves to reify existing power disparities

between Fiji’s ethnic communities (Cattermole 2008). In a similar vein, Schieder writes of the

potential of Fijian Rugby to both unite and divide Fiji’s ethnic communities, as fans draw

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together around victories in this sport so deeply rooted in indigenous Fijian identity (Schieder

2012). At once integrative and separating, these examples reveal the contradictions at work in

shifting experiences of ethnicity and interethnic connection in Fiji.

Entering the conversation opened up by these authors, this article is an attempt to

engage with such often under-‐recognised spaces of interethnic exchange in Fiji, in this case in

the context of two contrasting approaches to Christian theology. In particular, I focus on

imagery of water that in both of these theologies can be seen to express ideas of mediation,

transformation and interrelationship. Both of these Christian traditions engage with issues of

relations across cultural and ethnic lines, albeit in markedly different ways. By exploring the

resonances and dissonances of relationship within these contexts, I hope to elucidate the

ways in which possibilities are opened up in such spaces for different kinds of configurations

and connections between people, beyond those typified by such reified categories as ‘Fijian’

and ‘Indian’, or ‘Gujarati’ and ‘girmitiya’. In both cases, these theologies of water

simultaneously inflect and attempt to move beyond the divisions of ethnicity that tend to

dominate public discourse in Fiji. Thus I hope to show through these two examples how a

focus on spaces of interethnic encounter can help shift the terrain through which sociality is

understood in Fiji.

Imaging water in Fiji

The two theologies of water discussed in this article speak to intercultural dynamics and

interethnic relations in the fraught polity of Fiji. In one, the water of baptism as understood in

the Assemblies of God (AG) church is explored in terms of the social and theological views of

one of the church’s pastors, and in terms of the history of Assemblies of God in Fiji, and

Pentecostalism more broadly. In Pentecostal Christianity, baptism of believers by water is

often seen as a forerunner to the ‘living water’ of baptism in the Holy Spirit, also referred to

with metaphors of fire. These two baptisms illustrate a capacity to unite-‐while-‐separating,

especially in the context of contemporary Fiji. Despite sometimes being strongly inflected

with ethnic overtones, as attested in the opening example, these baptisms also speak to ideas

of ethnic integration within the Pentecostal imaginary. Alongside this, I look at the theology

known as theomoana, created by the Anglican Archbishop of Polynesia based in Fiji, Winston

Halapua. Halapua’s theology of the ocean, inspired in part by Epeli Hau’ofa’s vision of Oceania,

is socially and historically contextual rather than universalist and doctrinally Bible-‐based as

AG theology tends to be. Furthermore, Halapua’s social intent is interreligious rather than

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Christian-‐focused. Nevertheless, these two contrasting approaches also display convergences

in practice, in terms of navigating the complexity of the social and political landscape in Fiji,

whereby allegiances do not always follow expected political or ideational divisions. And just

as strikingly, in both cases, the mediating properties perceived in water are seen to speak to

the transformations of ethnic relationships with which both theologies engage.

Hau’ofa’s re-‐envisioning of Oceania as ‘Our Sea of Islands’ is perhaps one of the most

influential conceptions of the importance of the ocean as a mediator and a place of cross-‐

connection in scholarship from this region. With fierce wit, Hau’ofa deconstructed the

dominant academic discourses that have tended to depict the Pacific as tiny islands isolated

from each other and far from the influential, powerful places of world (Hau’ofa 2008a).

Focusing on the ocean-‐faring people who explored, traversed and populated the sea of islands,

his vision of Oceania emphasised networks, crossings, and relationships between land and sea.

As he explained, ‘the sea is our pathway to each other and to everyone else, the sea is our

endless saga, the sea is our most powerful metaphor, the ocean is in us’ (Hau’ofa 2008b, 58).

Other authors have written of the significance of oceanic metaphors for Pacific Island

social life, particularly in expressing connections. In an exploration of the relationships

between dance and flow in Oceania, Katerina Teaiwa writes of the ‘concepts of fluidity and

kinship that permeate Islander cultures’ (K. M. Teaiwa 2008, 111). She explains how for many

island contexts, land and sea are inseparable parts of belonging: ‘In the Kiribati context, then,

bai n abara, “a thing of our land”, is inevitably a thing of the sea and it is the body that

provides the link between spiritual and material realms’ (K. M. Teaiwa 2008, 111). And yet,

she suggests too that the ocean must not simply be understood as a place of integration. She

writes of her own troubled experience of ocean swimming, an experience of being stung by a

jelly fish in Palau, across an area of her skin which she had recently had tattooed by a very

famous Samoan family of tatau masters. This incident reminded her of the awe of the ocean,

of the need to be cautious, and ‘to pay attention to my relationship with the sea, marine life

and our peoples’ historical and contemporary relationships with the peoples and islands of

Palau and Samoa’ (K. M. Teaiwa 2008, 123). Drawing on the writings of Samoan scholar Albert

Wendt, she explains how Wendt ‘reminds us that the ocean in Samoan is vasa, broken down as

va, space, and sa, sacred or forbidden…The taboo aspect of the ocean, then, reminds us that

the outcome of ‘unity’ is not necessarily integration but sometimes tension’ (K. M. Teaiwa

2008, 108; cf. Wendt 1999, 403).

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Teaiwa suggests that the unifying power of the ocean, so important to islanders and

ocean-‐dwellers, also shapes the lives those living inland on larger islands. Drawing attention

to movements of water – from the saltwater of the ocean to the inland waterways – she draws

together coastal and inland experience while recognising the differences across these

experiences:

If this blue watery space is understood to shape fluid cultures, on larger volcanic

islands such as those in Fiji and Papua New Guinea with inland, mountain or highland

peoples, the concept of fluidity well-‐known to coastal dwellers still shapes the spiritual,

political and cultural relationships and practices through regular interactions with

seasonal rains and river networks (K. M. Teaiwa 2008, 111).

Yet the interrelationships between rainfall, rivers and oceans should not alter our awareness

that not all water is the same. While Fijian cosmologies frequently emphasise the integration

of land (including inland water) and sea, as Martha Kaplan’s recent explorations of Fiji Water

have shown, for the people of Vatukaloko in the nineteenth century, water sourced from their

lands was significant in assertions of their autochthony in anti-‐colonial struggles. As wai ni

tuka (‘water of immortality’), it was connected to the power of the interior lands and the gods

of the Kauvadra mountain range, as opposed to the water of the sea, associated with coastal

chiefs and foreign powers (Kaplan 2007; Kaplan 2011).

Today, water sourced from these same Vatukaloko lands is a commodity with a global

reach, as part of the F$25 million export industry of Fiji Water (Kaplan 2007, 687). This serves

as a reminder that Oceanic discourses of flows of water, oceans and currents resonate with

broadly salient images of ‘flows’ in globalisation, themselves originally rooted in watery

metaphors (cf. Rockefeller 2011), while also highlighting the limitations of such metaphors in

practice. As Kaplan states: ‘Water in use, as I have encountered it, does not always flow or

circulate’ (Kaplan 2010). She points to the dissonances in meaning of local Vatukaloko claims

to their ancestral lands and its waters based on indigeneity, both in comparison with the

abstracting discourses of the marketing of this water in the US, which emphasises ‘pristine

nature’ devoid of humans, and also within Fiji, given that these Vatukaloko claims of

indigenous land rights have been made against a backdrop of ethno-‐nationalist politics that

marginalises Indo-‐Fijians (Kaplan 2011, 229).

Many Pacific cosmologies make distinctions between fresh and salt water, different

kinds of fresh water, and indeed between the deep ocean and the calm sea inside the reef (K.

M. Teaiwa 2008, 110). Likewise, Biblical distinctions between types of water are also

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sometimes significant, as when James in his epistle asks, ‘Can both fresh water and salt water

flow from the same spring?’ (James 3:11-‐18). Less tends to be made of such distinctions in

evangelical Christian conceptions of baptism. While Assemblies of God baptisms in Fiji take

place in a bath or pool filled for the purpose, other Christian churches baptise in bays or the

ocean, including regularly in Suva’s Laucala Bay. What is most central in these churches is that

baptism take place by full immersion, of those old enough to commit themselves as believers.

In his Masters thesis at the Pacific Theological College in Suva written in 1994, Fijian

Methodist Etuate Kuru has explored the meanings of baptism in a Fijian context, in order to

invite the church to ‘rediscover what baptism means in the light of current social and political

issues’ (Kuru 1994, ii). Kuru links the water of baptism to the ceremonial sharing of kava, and

also to the ceremonial sili, or bathing, of a chief at installation, which he suggests ‘creates’ the

chief (Kuru 1994, 54–6). The act of baptism, he proposes, both separates the receiver from

his or her community of origin, and reintegrates him or her into a sacred covenant community

in the body of Christ. The community created embraces the individualism of believers,

including in their ethnic, gender and socio-‐economic specificity, within a unity in which all

members of the created community are equal (Kuru 1994, 76–90). Thus the water of baptism,

like the water of the ocean, is imagined here as a mediator, building relations between distinct

persons as it transforms them.

Assemblies of God: baptism by water and fire

In Assemblies of God churches, water baptism of believers is seen as essential for signalling

acceptance of Christ and for membership and participation in church life. The AG statement of

fundamental truths states that through baptism, ‘they declare to the world that they have died

with Christ and that they also have been raised with Him to walk in newness of life’

(Assemblies of God of Fiji 2011). As Kuru suggests, baptism then functions as the basis for

transforming the individual conviction of believers into a community, unified around AG’s

purposes of mission and worship.

In the AG churches I have attended in Fiji, this community is explicitly valued as

multiethnic. This is strikingly the case in an AG church in Suva that I have visited regularly,

whose head pastor, Pastor Ralph, has been very generous, welcoming, and engaged with my

research. Discussing issues of baptism, conversion, politics and building their congregation,

Pastor Ralph spoke to me of the importance of ethnic inclusiveness, both in his own

congregation and in the church as a whole. This particular church’s main service is given in

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English, but the church also holds services in Tongan and among the marginalised Banaban

community. Nearby churches have services in Fijian, Hindi and Korean. The separation of

congregations by language, and the administrative distinctions between them, can lead to

divisions that sharpen in times of social stress. Nevertheless, when I asked him how well he

felt Assemblies of God was doing in terms of ethnic inclusiveness, Pastor Ralph volunteered

that he rated their success at around seven or seven and a half out of ten.

The pastor spoke of what he described as ‘the fall of the mat-‐sari curtain’, the barriers

that have historically divided Fiji’s two main ethnic communities, seeing this as vitally

important to the church’s work. With respect to politics, he mentioned the recent removal of

racial categorisations in official government documents such as immigration and travel forms.

Speaking of Commodore Bainimarama, Fiji’s military ruler, he said, ‘Frank has taken the forms

and burned them. It should have been the churches, but it took Frank to do it.’

Later he added, ‘In his own way, I do think God has a hand in Frank.’

Pastor Ralph sees this emphasis on a social context of multiethnic inclusion as very

central to the evangelising mission of the church. He told me a story of an Indian shop owner

whom he had tried to engage around converting to Christianity. Despite having a relationship

with this man, he explained that it was not easy for him, a Fijian, to start that conversation,

that he would find the businessman less than willing to listen to him: ‘It is hard, because the

Methodist coup means Christianity is [perceived as] Fijian.’ He explained how two young

American missionaries from Youth With a Mission visited this man in his store, and were

welcomed rather than turned away, spending many hours speaking with him and being

invited to dinner with him.

While there are many barriers to reaching non-‐Christian converts in Fiji, the question of

ethnicity is seen as particularly potent. At one point when I visited his church, Pastor Ralph

opened his sermon on mission work, saying: we are a ‘multiracial, multicultural, local church

with a worldwide vision.’ The rite of baptism plays a central part in the construction of such a

multiethnic church community. Speaking at a prayer meeting later that night about winning

Hindu converts, he said:

With Hindus, we have learnt that it is very important to get them to be baptized, as

soon as possible. Hindus have many gods, and they see Jesus as just one of them... But

with baptism, it seems to stick.

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Encouraging those at the prayer meeting not to be shy about being explicit about their

purposes in mission work, he urged:

They have to want to be baptised, to accept Christ. As soon as they want to be baptised,

get them to go under the water. The physical experience of that is very meaningful to

Hindus. They understand it. It is like puja, as when they walk around the fire. They

understand that it transforms them, and they do not go back.

However fraught such generalisations might be, it is clear that baptism is seen as a significant

medium through which a multiethnic, multicultural church might be built.

This focus on multiethnic conversion has roots in the origins of the AG church in Fiji, and

indeed further in the revivals in the early twentieth century United States upon which

Pentecostalism is founded. Unlike the Methodist church in Fiji, which won large numbers

converts among indigenous Fijians in the nineteenth century by converting whole vanua, in

particular through winning chiefly converts, by the third decade of the following century,

when Assemblies of God missionaries arrived, the social landscape among indigenous Fijians

was already saturated with other Christian denominations. The incoming missionaries, by

necessity as well as intent, thus focused on individual conversions, and on reaching all comers.

This involved strategies of winning converts among the largely Hindu and Muslim populations

of former indentured labourers and their families, and focusing on Christian revival among

indigenous Fijians and among the Europeans, ‘part Europeans’ and other Pacific Islanders.

This conscious focus on ethnic inclusiveness reflected principles seen as embodied in

the Azusa Street mission in Los Angeles, which is widely viewed among Pentecostals

(including in Fiji) as the origin point of their movement. Robbins describes the ethos of Azusa

Street as one of racial pluralism and egalitarianism:

Led by an African American preacher and attended by many whites, Asians, and

Latinos the Azusa Street mission was, at its outset, strikingly integrated, and on the

assumption that all are equal when used by the Spirit it was notable for its openness to

letting African Americans and women speak at services…[Converts in contemporary

mission work] are encouraged to see their most important identity not as one of class,

race, gender, or ethnicity, but as children of God (Robbins 2004, 125).

While it is likely, as Creech has pointed out, that Pentecostalism arose from multiple sites of

revival across the US and beyond, many of which did not share the egalitarian ethos of Azusa

Street, nevertheless this vision of egalitarianism in Azusa Street, and the idea of

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Pentecostalism as reaching people of all social standings, ethnicities and genders on an equal

basis, is a keystone in a wider Pentecostal imaginary that engages in mission work in a very

large array of nations across social contexts (Creech 1996).

This idea of inclusive diversity has been central to such work in Fiji. In 1932, Adrian

Heetebry, a key figure in the early mission work of Assemblies of God in Fiji, wrote in The

Pentecostal Evangel, the weekly newsletter of the US Assemblies of God:

These last few months, some precious half-‐caste people have found the Lord as their

Saviour, and also some young Indian men from Hindu and Arya Samaj homes have

taken a definite stand for the Lord…

We had the joy of seeing a chief come forward and give his heart to the Lord in one of

our services (cited in Larson 1997, 39).

In a later report, he wrote:

Among the Mohammedans God was moving so blessedly that the parents of the

Mohammedan young people got together to decide what they could do to stop the

work. The boys now have to steal away secretly to read their Bibles, and slip into the

meetings when they get a chance (cited in Larson 1997, 39).

This celebration of winning souls inflects both the self-‐conscious pluralism of the missionaries’

work and the racialised consciousness of the wider Fijian social landscape, internalised in the

perceptions Heetebry conveys of the missionaries’ work.

Closely related to water baptism in AG theology is baptism in the Holy Spirit, and its

outward sign of speaking in tongues. Once one has become a member of AG through

commitment to God in the rite of baptism, Holy Spirit baptism is encouraged and sought after

as something which, ‘all believers are entitled to and should ardently expect and earnestly

seek’ (Assemblies of God of Fiji 2011), although in reality a significant proportion of AG

members have never had this experience. In 1939, Heetebry would write:

I have written before of the beginnings of this revival, but now we can start to count

the victories won. At least eighteen have been baptized with the Holy Spirit recently.

We do praise God for having poured out His blessings upon all races represented in our

Assembly (cited in Larson 1997, 40).

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This experience is often described as ‘Baptism in the Holy Spirit and fire’, but also as

baptism in the ‘living water’ of God. The Assemblies of God Fundamental Truths cite the

Biblical passage John 7:37-‐9, which reads in part:

Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me…rivers of

living water will flow from within them. By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who

believed in him were later to receive.

Thus these two fluid elemental images – of fire and water – are used to express this spiritual

experience of the Holy Spirit, seen as at once unifying and elevating.

Not only does the Holy Spirit move like a fluid through people in Holy Spirit baptism, the

glossolalia this experience is seen to trigger speaks to another kind of flow that can unite and

divide across ethnic lines: the flow of language. In the Christian Biblical tradition, the building

of the tower of Babel led God to divide the world by languages (Genesis 11:1-‐9). When the

Holy Spirit descended at Pentecost as tongues of fire, the disciples were said to ‘speak in other

tongues’, and could be understood by the speakers of diverse languages who had gathered

(Acts 2:4-‐12). If language is a kind of flow, the language of tongues prompted by the Holy

Spirit flowed freely, crossing linguistic lines and reuniting those who had been divided

(although some observers are recorded as suggesting that all that was flowing freely was the

wine).

In the contemporary context, in Assemblies of God churches in Fiji, words spoken in

tongues are not universally understood, but may on occasion be interpreted by someone

present who is likewise inspired by the Holy Spirit, suggesting a kind of universalism to the

language, that anyone can potentially speak it given the right context of Holy Spirit blessing,

and that it is a holy language that can be heard and understood by anyone given that spiritual

gift in that moment. In fact, the relationship between language and such Pentecostal

experience carries valences of both universalism and particularity. In the story Meena told me

of her own experience of Holy Spirit baptism, she went to hear a visiting preacher at a nearby

Hindi-‐language Assemblies of God church: ‘It was where I was filled with the Holy Spirit. I will

never forget it.’ Even though Meena had always seen the English language church as her home,

this powerful experience took place during worship in her native tongue. Indeed, Assemblies

of God members often speak of how much more powerful worship is when conducted in a

person’s own language.

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In understanding these flows of language, then, it is worth paying attention to those

things that unite while also speaking with specificity to a person’s linguistic emplacement.

Like flows of relationship, flows of language in tongues or in other worship contexts work

through the particularities of social experience, ethnicity and emplacement, while also in a

sense transcending these conditions through being an experience potentially shared in

common among Pentecostals. As Stuart Rockefeller illustrates in his exegesis of the concept of

‘flow’ widely used in academic writings about globalisation, it is worth being careful to ensure

that an emphasis on flow does not elide emplacement, territoriality and local specificities, as it

all too often can (Rockefeller 2011). Thus the relationships and connections mediated through

Holy Spirit baptism, like those of water baptism, must also be seen as being lived through the

specificities of experience, including those of ethnicity and language.

Halapua’s theology of moana

A contrasting imagery of water that likewise engages issues of relationship across lines of

difference, including of ethnicity, is offered by Winston Halapua in the theology he calls

theomoana. Halapua’s theology reflects both his leadership roles in the church and his

scholarly inclinations. His interests in social justice among Fiji’s ethnically diverse populations

extend to his earliest scholarly work, reflected in his doctoral research in sociology at the

University of the South Pacific, and his subsequent publications on the social conditions of

Melanesians in Fiji and on militarism in Fiji in the wake of the 1987 coups (Halapua 2001,

2003a, 2003b). Formerly the Dean of the Anglican Cathedral in Suva, and now the Anglican

Archbishop of Polynesia based in Suva, he has long related to the issues presented by this

social landscape through his work in the church.

In between these two roles, Halapua was based in Aotearoa New Zealand, relocating

there to take up positions as a lecturer at the University of Auckland’s School of Theology and

later as a College Principal of St John’s Theological College, Auckland. It was in this context

that he developed his theology of theomoana, published as Waves of God’s Embrace (2008).

While inflecting his long-‐standing concerns about ethnic conflict, theomoana speaks at a more

general register, integrating Halapua’s diverse experiences in ministry, his perspectives on

philosophical and theological concepts from Oceania, and his personal experiences of the

ocean from the Pacific Islands to Auckland. Moana is a term that means ‘ocean’ in many Pacific

languages. Halapua draws on this theology of moana to talk about relationship as a means of

building understanding and bridging differences. In this, it is the water of the ocean that

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operates metaphorically and conceptually as conveyer and mediator, transforming people

through their relationships with each other.

In the spacious, relaxed offices of the Anglican Church headquarters in Suva, where the

walls are lined with paintings and crosses, I waited for some time while the Archbishop was

caught up with other commitments. Having arrived from a funeral, and soon to head to a

church gathering in the Solomon Islands, he had agreed to see me on his very brief return to

the capital. The lay head of the church sat and spoke quietly with me for much of my wait,

about Anglicanism, his own role in the church, and my research on Pentecostalism. After I was

ushered into the office, the Archbishop introduced himself, insisting I call him Winston.

Following some preliminary conversation and the administrative necessities that precede

interviews, I explained to him that I hoped to speak with him about his theology of theomoana.

Leaning forward and smiling a warm, engaging smile, he said:

Theomoana theology is about relationship, relationship and relationship. There’s

nothing else but relationship. And because the ocean, the rhythm of the ocean is what

makes it alive, because it flows…It is a departure from trying to figure out God. It is a

point of saying, when you relate to others, you’ll find God there.

…the moana is alive because it flows, one ocean to another. To stop flowing is stagnant

and nothing alive. Is to simply say to live life in isolation.

An advocate for interfaith work, Halapua has played an important role in bringing

together people of different faiths, particularly in the wake of the 1987 coups, in which

divisions between Christians, Hindus and Muslims were sharpened. The discourses of ethno-‐

nationalism brought to the fore in these coups conflated images of Christianity, land and i

taukei identity, claiming to defend the vanua and the interests of indigenous Fijians, which

were depicted as under threat from so-‐called ‘outsiders’, particularly Indo-‐Fijians. While

framed as a struggle for indigenous liberation, as Halapua pointed out in his analysis of this

period, these coups had none of the dynamics of other indigenous struggles. Rather, they

involved an assertion of the language of indigenous rights in the interests of a particular set of

powerful players, against the interests of both poor Fijians, and non-‐indigenous people

(Halapua 2003a; Halapua 2003b). He explained to me:

I say the most powerful thing that has connected Fiji…is actually the land…The concept

of the land is the interconnectedness. And the danger of this coup is masking violence,

and it’s using the concept land, which appears as interconnected, appears as home,

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appears as a space of trust, appears that of celebrating the past and moving to the

future, all these positive sides of the concept, and behind it is the poison.

Methodist church leaders who had gained influence within the church in the wake of

these coups echoed the language of ethno-‐nationalism used by Rabuka: that the coups were

about defending Christian values and the vanua. They pushed to declare Fiji a Christian nation,

and ban Sunday trading (Newland 2007; 2009; Tomlinson 2009, 163–173). Given the

centrality of discourses about protecting the vanua in both these and the later coup in 2000,

along with the contested issues of land, land ownership and tenure that remain politically

explosive to this day, Halapua’s assessment of this situation is telling: ‘But then I say, so much

about the land, and I say, we are “landlocked”. But with the ocean, we are not locked, we are

let loose.’

And yet, as Katerina Teaiwa points out, the ocean is a place of awe, of danger and tension,

as well as integration. She writes:

[I]n the Pacific Islands there is both an integrated and objective approach to nature

where things are understood to be connected but also vastly different. The differences

and connections between humans, spirits, ghosts, ancestors, land and sea are to be

celebrated, feared, placated, manipulated, sometimes ignored or denied; and are both

within and beyond human control (K. M. Teaiwa 2008, 113).

Halapua’s interfaith practice, and the emphasis on ethnic pluralism within and beyond the

church, is central to his work: ‘It’s beautiful! For me, that’s what Fiji is!’ And yet his

interreligious goals have incited significant criticism from both outside the church and among

church members. He spoke to me about the Anglican priests who work with him, who find his

approach to interreligious engagement extremely challenging. Some, he explained, are very

angry with him, particularly for his interfaith work: ‘we have our own Indian priests who

were Hindus before and became Christian, who find it difficult for me to talk about interfaith.’

And yet he explained with laughter:

Life is full of difficulties. But the difficulty is because we haven’t gone to that depth.

This is part of the moana theology.

…The deeper tensions require deeper understandings of one another. And because we

are going through this, I understand. Relationship is very beautiful on one side, it’s

responsibility on the other side. But I cannot live without it.

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Echoing Teaiwa’s reminder that the message of the ocean is ‘not necessarily integration but

sometimes tension’, Halapua nevertheless sees moana as offering a further metaphor for

moving through these tensions, in the very depths of its potential. Essential to this is the

vastness of the ocean, Wendt’s space of sacredness: ‘Moana is open. And moana is about space.

It’s saying, “Allow the space with its own integrity.”’

Halapua’s conception of baptism likewise reflects this same kind of openness, within a

framework acknowledging his own specificity:

The baptism is the only channel. And the baptism is God’s gift to enable us to become

Christlike. And to become Christlike is a diverse body. Those who see it in the way how

they interpreted it, I say, ‘Hallelujah.’ But when you begin to set boundaries, then I will

say, ‘You need to relook again.’ Because the Spirit of God at the beginning was open and

moving.

Seeming on the surface to place boundaries around his notion of baptism and the centrality of

specifically Christian experience, he then added:

Because we are baptised, we talk inside, and we can talk from outside. The whole idea

of flowing is flowing and learning from one another. I say, as a Christian, the baptism – I

cannot talk in any other way. At the same time I’m saying, because God is bigger than

baptism. That’s the channel it was given, but that is not God. God is bigger than what

we understand baptism, because God is God. Therefore other religions, for me, have

access to God like anybody else.

While echoing an idea that baptism creates an inside and an outside, he then troubles this

notion with his idea that these problems belong to God. It is not for people to worry about

who is in and out, but rather, to engage with others from the specific emplacements in which

each of us finds ourselves.

The oceanic imagery encompassed in theomoana is fed by Hau’ofa’s vision of Oceania as

a vast network of interconnected and interlocked peoples, an interplay of land and sea which

should be understood as fundamental in forging Pacific identities. For Halapua, as for Hau’ofa,

this interlinking is an image of connectedness in diversity.6 Thus he explained to me:

The Pacific Ocean won’t say to Arctic, ‘You’re too cold, and I don’t need you.’ The Pacific

Ocean needs the Arctic. And the Arctic needs the Pacific Ocean. To live, I need Rachel,

and Rachel need Winston. So, stating that, there is no other way. We have to live.

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And in order to live, we need one another, the flowing of the oceans one to the other.

Their distinctness is not compromised.

Contrasts and convergences

There are important differences between these two theologies and their implications for the

kinds of sociality to which they give rise. As has been observed by others (Brison 2007;

Miyazaki 2004, 88, 95), evangelical churches in Fiji place a great deal of emphasis upon the

individual connected into a globalised Christian network. Believers’ baptism strongly

engenders such an individualised conception of commitment, drawing in new members

through their own deep, considered conviction. And yet, as Kuru points out, baptism is a

process of transforming individuals into community. In the Assemblies of God, members refer

to each other as Sister and Brother, worship and pray together, give testimony to each other,

and aid each other in their mission work, forging themselves together into a collective. Indeed,

people often choose baptism through pre-‐existing familial and friendship ties. While an

emphasis on individual conviction remains, each church member is thus also linked to others

through countless connections, as they are in church contexts that practice infant baptism.

A further contrast is at play in the quality of relationships engendered through these two

theologies. In Assemblies of God, baptism in water and the Holy Spirit help forge relationships

of sameness. This is not to say that differences between people within the church body have

no salience; both differences of life experience, such as one’s ethnic, kinship or economic

background, and differences of religious experience, such as whether one has received the

Holy Spirit baptism, can shape where one fits within the church body. And yet, baptism in

Assemblies of God creates a separation of inside and outside. With respect to the outside,

what is inside is forged primarily through what is held in common, over and above ethnicity

or any other differences: commitment to God as understood through AG theology and

affirmed in baptism. By contrast, the quality of relationship emphasised in theomoana is

primarily relationship across difference. Thus Halapua can say, the ‘Pacific Ocean needs the

Arctic’, a perspective that underpins his willingness to engage in relationship with others who

hold very different views, including in interreligious dialogue and interfaith worship.

As scholars of interethnic relations in Fiji have pointed out, relationships across ethnic

lines are usefully understood in terms of both their harmonies and their dissonances. In the

Assemblies of God examples, such dissonances are apparent in a context where, alongside

calls for multiculturalism, ethnicity remains discursively so marked. But Halapua, too, conveys

21

a sense of this kind of dissonance, in the response of the Indo-‐Fijian priests within his church

to his interfaith efforts. As Teresia Teaiwa observes, ‘the ocean has the power to both separate

and unite us.’ In both of these cases, these dissonances arise through processes of reaching

towards interethnic relationships (albeit in rather different ways) within a broader social

context in which ethnicity remains a most salient source of social distinction, and often

division.

The imagery of water in these theologies points to the resonance of water as a mediator

and transformer, both in Christianity, and in the social life of Oceania. This emergence of

similar imagery, of water as transforming, of flows, oceans and waves, is striking, particularly

in this Fijian context where land has been so central to Christian theology. And yet, land too

has its capacity to flow, while water can stagnate. As Margaret Jolly has pointed out, Hau’ofa’s

vision of Oceania was never intended to exclude land, but to foreground a connection between

land and sea (Jolly 2007). The identification of baptism with burial is testament to

commonalities of meaning that diffuse between water and earth, sea and land. It is worth

noting Rockefeller’s caution about the dangers of falsely counterposing ‘flow’ and ‘place’, as

ultimately generating a celebration of ‘flowing’ completely abstracted from lived realities.

Relationships are lived not in the abstract, but through people’s embodied experiences,

languages, and identifications. Negotiating the complexity of these lived realities involves

tensions and dissonances of relationship as well as harmonies, especially in a context like Fiji,

where these identifications and experiences carry such resounding, troubled implications.

Nevertheless, in the spaces of interethnic interaction expressed in these two theologies, we

also find new configurations of connection. These are all the more significant for how they

appear to differ from dominant discourses, both social and academic, which have generally

emphasised separations of sociality between Fiji’s ethnic communities, while associating

Christianity overwhelmingly with the community of i taukei. By exploring the dynamics of

interethnic connection in such spaces as these, scholars and writers looking into these fields

of shared social life can open up new ways of seeing Fiji.

Acknowledgements

This research was made possible through funding from the ARC Laureate project

‘Engendering Persons, Transforming Things: Christianities, Commodities and Individualism in

Oceania’. I am extremely grateful for the generous welcome of church leaders and

congregants of the Assemblies of God churches of Fiji and the Anglican Church of Fiji. I would

22

also like to thank those who offered comments on this work, in particular Katerina Teaiwa,

whose encouragement and insights have been invaluable, and Katherine Lepani and Margaret

Jolly, whose contributions have shaped this analysis and writing.

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1 This worship song is widely attributed to Sadhu Sundar Singh. 2 All quotes in this article are drawn from the Christian Bible New International Version. 3 Although it was not explicit in this situation, such comments in Fiji can refer to the practice among Gujarati Hindus of praying to Lakshmi, goddess of prosperity and fortune, thus inflecting both social and religious stereotypes.

4 Note, however, that elections initially promised for 2009 were postponed, and are now proposed for 2014, while significant restrictions have been placed on the re-‐registration of political parties in 2013.

5 Jonathon Prasad reports that the Assemblies of God, in the days following the 2006 coup, pronounced Bainimarama as ‘ungodly’ and ‘the enemy’, while deposed Prime Minister Qarase was regarded as ‘doing God’s will’ (J. Prasad 2009, 230 n 7). However, in the years of my research from 2012, the church leadership has remained generally circumspect.

6 Speaking to the Episcopal Diocese of Hawai’i in late 2012, Presiding Episcopal Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori drew at length on Hau’ofa’s envisioning of Oceania alongside Halapua’s theomoana to call for ecumenical dialogue, saying ‘We are ohana [family] because we have our life from living water, we know the eternal oceanic reality of continuity and change, and of the gifts of crossing the great expanses of the sea, especially when some see that expanse as a barrier to keep strangers out’ (Jefferts Schori 2012).

Living Water: Christian Theologies and Interethnic Relations in Fiji

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