Australia's Sunday Sydney Morning Herald carries a long report on the complicated involvement of Methodist churches in Fiji with the Pacific island nation's politics. In the past two decades, Fiji has had four coups, each reflecting tensions between ethnic Fijians, who largely belong to the Methodist Church, and Indian Fijians, most of whom are Hindu. Some in the Methodist Church have backed a proposal to turn Fiji into a Christian state. (Background.) The latest coup, in 2006, which brought military leader Frank Bainimarama to power, was opposed by the Methodist Church. So, while impeding or banning much of the activity traditional Methodists, Bainimarama's allies promoted evangelist Pastor Atu Vulaono, and his "Souls to Jesus" campaign in an attempt to co-opt the traditional leadership of the Methodist Church.
However Vulaono's New Methodist Church , and his campaign against crime that was funded by the Fiji police department, got out of hand. Vulaono was drawing 20,000 people at his rallies and had established 70 churches. Police officers were required to attend New Methodist crusades where they were forced to dance in their police uniforms. A new law-and-order campaign ordered couples not to embrace in public, and sometimes forced prostitutes to jump off a bridge 6 meters into an ocean inlet. Some were forced to attend Vulaono's crusades. Fijian courts were pressuring women who were victims of domestic violence to reconcile with their husbands. Eventually this anti-crime crusade by the New Methodists became too embarrassing for the regime, and the Attorney General put a halt to it. Fiji's chief censor sent a letter to media editors telling them to stop broadcasting the New Methodists' paid programming, because the group had become a security risk.
