Abolish Christianity from Tongan Politics? ^Featured

Editor,

Perversion of language in politics increases rampantly nowadays especially in America and I’m afraid it starts happening in Tonga.

Instead of saying that we need to abolish Christianity from the public square, or take out the God-talk from our Constitution, or forbid praying in the Parliament or Government schools, we clouded the minds of our people by just saying that we need to keep intact the Separation of Church and State. Properly understood, what exactly is Separation of Church and State? How does that principle be applied in Tongan context? Silence.

Warning from Orwell

In his brilliant essay, “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell, one of the British most ardent political analysts in the first half of the twentieth century warns, “If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” He describes how politicians use language to “name things without calling up mental pictures of them.” As a result, people are lost in the abstraction of their “indefensible ideas” and that is a form of political manipulation.

Since words anchor our minds in reality, I challenged Sione Mokofisi to define his terms (Separation of Church and State), since definition is about the first act of the three acts of the mind--comprehension, judging, and reasoning. Sadly, he refused to “call up the mental pictures” of the Separation of Church and State that he wants Tonga to protect and to promote.

Mokofisi knows that once we wade into the definitions of Separation of Church and State, exploring its political and social implications as defined by the French of the 19th century, or the Americans of the 21st century, we would be exposed to an atheistic radical call to abolish Christianity from politics which is a significant part of our Tongan identity.

As a “stubborn preacher,” let me directly engage Mr Mokofisi’s first three charges against me:

1.”You deny there was a “Reformation.”

As a former student of theology, I know what Reformation is, and it has nothing to do with Separation of Church and State.

“Reformation,” as used by historians and theologians, is defined by Dr. Alister McGrath, a Professor of Historical Theology at Oxford University, as “a western European movement, centering upon individuals such as Martin Luther, Huldrych Zwingli, and John Calvin, concerned with the moral, theological, and institutional reform of the Christian Church in that region.”

Reformation marks the formation as well as the separation of the Protestants from the Catholic Church, but it never endorses a Separation of Church and State as defined by the French and Americans of the 21st century. Read the political theories of Reformers like Calvin and see if there is any assertion about Separation of Church and State.

2.”You deny that King George Tupou I, and PM Shirley Baker, persecuted, jailed, and deported Wesleyan Church followers in the 19th century.”

This is a straw man argument. I never denied that there was no evil in our history. Instead, I proposed that even with those evils in our history, comparing Tonga with the Church in Europe during the 18th and 19th century, the Church in Tonga did a better job than the Church in Europe.

If we do the same thing with Monarchy system of government and compare Tongan Monarchy with European monarchies of the 19th century, we can confidently and indisputably claim that Tongan monarchy did far a greater job than Europe. It does not mean that we were perfect. It simply means we were better or the lesser of the two evils.

We should be careful not to embrace the West’s disdain against Monarchy and the Church. We know our liberty is a result of concerted effort of Church and State. And as we move into a new era, it is unwise to unquestionably adopt the Western political ideas and academic assessments of history for their stories are different from our story.

If we trash the Church in Tonga as evil to the Government and to politics as a whole, then we can justify Akilisi’s original intent to remove the absolute power of our Monarchy and establish a British style of government.

3.”You deny there’s an universal definition of separation of Church and State.”

I’m still waiting for that universal definition of Separation of Church and State and please when you come up with the definition, give us examples of the practical application of the Separation of Church and State as utilizing nowadays in America and Europe.

Reminder

Without the Christian missionaries helping out in the process of modernizing Tonga, you and I would still have each other for lunch. 

Christian missionaries left the comfort of their homeland to bring Christianity to Tonga. Many died in the process. No Muslims, no Bahai, no Hindu, no liberal progressive sacrificed their lives to bring their faith as a medium of change to save us from our dark ages. So do not be too harsh on judging the Church failures in history. After all, oku mou mafana ni he penu kehee.

May the Church and State stay the test of time and Tonga should build on that.

Senituli Penitani
Nomuka