Seventh-day Adventist Church in Tonga

Seventh-day Adventists became active in the South Pacific in 1886 when the missionary John Tay visited the Pitcairn Islands. His report caused the Seventh-day Adventist church in the United States to build the Pitcairn mission ship, which made six voyages in the 1890s, bringing missionaries to the Society Islands, Cook Islands, Samoa, Tonga and Fiji.[10] On its first voyage, the Pitcairn visited almost every "white family" in the Tongan islands, and sold books worth more than $500.[11][lower-alpha 2] In June 1891, E. H. Gates and A. J. Read visited Tonga, then called the Friendly Islands, on the fourth journey of the Pitcairn.[13] King George Tupou I (c. 1797 – 18 February 1893) authorized the entry of the missionaries.[14] They left without making any Adventist converts.[13]

Edwin Sebastian Butz and Florence Butz c. 1914

The SDA missionary Edward Hilliard, his wife Ida, and daughter Alta arrived at Nukuʻalofa on 30 August 1895.[15] Ida Hilliard was a teacher, and started a small school late in 1895. At its peak the school had 28 pupils, paying $3 per quarter. The school closed in mid-1899 just before the Hilliards left the islands for Australia.[15][lower-alpha 3] Edward Hilliard earned an income as a carpenter. He understood the importance of learning the local language, and translated some religious tracts into the Tongan language.[21] He was no longer young and found the language difficult. He seems to have focused on converting Europeans.[22]

On 29 September 1896, more Adventist missionaries arrived in Tonga on the Pitcairn, including Sarah[lower-alpha 4] and Maria Young, two nursing trainees from Pitcairn Island, and Edwin and Florence Butz with their daughter Alma. The Butz family initially had difficulty being accepted, as they were Americans and most European residents were British. This was eased by Florence Butz' provision of medical services.[24] In September 1897 Doctor Merritt Kellogg and his wife Eleanor Nolan came to assist with the medical work. He built a timber home at Magaia that was long used as the home of the mission superintendent.[21]

The Butz's tried to establish a permanent mission, but were mainly limited to working with the small papalagi (European) colony. They made sporadic missionary efforts in the islands of Haʻapai and Tongatapu.[14] In June 1899 the Pitcairn again visited, bringing a small prefabricated building that was used at first as a mission home and as a chapel. After 18 months it was taken apart and rebuilt as the small Nuku'alofa church, 5 by 10 metres (16 by 33 ft).[21] The church almost failed to survive.[14] The Butz's were taken to Vavaʻu on the Pitcairn, since it was thought that there were too many missionaries at Nuku'alofa, but they returned after the Hilliards left later in 1899.[21]

Nukuʻalofa

Tongatapu

Vavaʻu

Neiafu

Haʻapai

Faleloa

Niuatoputapu

Mission locations

The first European was baptized on 10 September 1899, on the day that the first Adventist Church in Tonga was organized.[24] He was Charles Edwards, an Englishman and a reformed drinker. He was a medical assistant who also managed the finances and records of the church of Nuku'alofa for many years.[21] Edwards married Maria Young soon after his baptism.[21] Maria helped when Queen Lavinia gave birth to Sālote Tupou III (13 March 1900 – 16 December 1965). Sālote later became queen of Tonga.[25][lower-alpha 5] Timote Mafi was the first Tongan Adventist convert.[29] She was baptized on 22 December 1900, along with her European husband.[24]

The English missionary Shirley Waldemar Baker, founder of the Free Wesleyan Church of Tonga in 1885, fell out with the authorities due to his intrigues to obtain German "protection" for Tonga. When he died in Haʻapai a visiting SDA minister officiated at his burial in 1903 after the Free Church, Wesleyans, Catholics and Anglicans all refused to give him a funeral.[30]

In November 1904 Ella Boyd reopened the Adventist primary school at Nukuʻalofa. She was an American who had trained at the Avondale College in Australia, and had taught in church schools in Australia. By 1905 the school had reached its full capacity of 28 pupils.[31] The school charged pupils 20¢ per week. The curriculum emphasized health, and warned of the evils of narcotics and stimulants.[32] Butz recognized but failed to address the language problem. He noted that the Tongans were very interested in learning English. Until 1905 at least half of the pupils at the Adventist schools were European, or partly European, and the lessons were given in English.[22]

The Butz family left on 27 December 1905. In ten years Butz had baptized two Tongans and twelve Europeans. In the next seven years just one person was baptized at Nuku'alofa, Joni Latu, in 1910. He later became an SDA minister.[32] For a while the Nukuʻalofa school thrived, reaching about sixty pupils in 1907.[33] Another school was established at Faleloa in 1908, with thirty students.[34] An Adventist leader who visited Faleloa in 1908 wrote that the school was a "credit to our school work not only in Tonga, but throughout the Australasian field."[35] The monthly Tongan-language Talafekau Moʻoni (Faithful Messenger) began to appear in 1909. It was mostly written by Frances Waugh, the translator at Avondale Press, and Tongan students at the Avondale School.[36] Some members of the royal family patronized the SDA school, but the church suffered from emigration and lapses.[14] By 1911 the school at Faleloa was almost deserted and there were just eighteen students remaining at Nukuʻalofa.[37] That year both schools closed.[35]

Royal family of Tonga c. 1930. Relations with the Adventists were good.

In 1912, George G. Stewart and his wife Grace reestablished the mission.[14] Stewart, who arrived early in 1912, reported that Adventist work was "practically at a standstill."[38] He and the Ethelbert Thorpe family changed the emphasis of the mission from education to evangelism.[39] The church was now better organized for work in the Pacific, with bases in New Zealand and Australia.[14] Stewart rebuilt the Falaloa school, which had been badly damaged by a hurricane, and started revival meetings in an effort to improve standards of worship.[36] The missionaries used the Tongan language, and their school at Nukuʻalofa under Maggie Ferguson attracted Tongan pupils eager to obtain education.[14] By June 1915 the SDA Church in Tonga had fourteen Tongan members.[39] In 1917 the mission home at Faleloa was expanded to provide accommodation for female pupils at the Faleloa school, which by then had a total of about forty pupils.[40] By 1918 the school had sixty pupils.[41]

The 1918 flu pandemic caused a major set-back, and the missionary Pearl Tolhurst died. The SDA concluded that its future success would depend on development of its schools.[14] Robert and Frances Smith came from Hawaii in 1920, and supervised the mission until 1927.[42] The mission was formally organized as the Tonga Mission in 1921. The next year, the South Pacific Division of Seventh-day Adventists was founded.[43] The school at Nuku'alofa was reopened with about forty pupils, and a government teacher from Australia joined the mission. Bible classes were given in Tongan by Joni Latu. The mission bought a small boat named Talafekau (Messenger) for the Faleloa missionaries. The Talafekau Mo'oni magazine was relaunched in January 1922, printed bi-monthly in Fiji, and a 50-song hymnal in Tongan was also printed. The first camp meeting was held in June 1922 at Nuku'alofa, attended by members of the Faleloa and Neiafu churches.[44]

Growth in the Tongan mission after the 1920s was largely due to converts among pupils at the SDA schools, especially those of Maggie Ferguson. In 1930, 75% of Tongan Adventists had been converted by the schools.[45] A training center for mission workers was established at Vaini in January 1926.[44] The training school, later called Beulah College, formed the basis for rapid growth from the 1950s to the 1970s. About half the students of Beulah College were non-SDA, but many of these were baptized.[45] In 1937 the school was formally recognized by the government, based on the success of its pupils in public exams.[13] In the mid-1930s, the government passed a law that all college students must attend church on the Sabbath. A group of students at Tonga College decided to worship at the nearby SDA church at Mangaia, and many of them joined the Adventists.[46]

During World War II (1939–45) the Seventh-day Adventists kept a low profile in Tonga and grew slowly. As conscientious objectors, they could not fight during the war, which they interpreted as heralding the Last Days when Christ would return. They had good relations with Queen Sālote but were viewed as outsiders.[8] From 1940 there are few reports on SDA medical work in Tonga.[47]

Until 1946, the total membership of the SDA on Niue and Tonga was never more than 100. However, after the war, the SDA grew rapidly on Tonga, along with most other Pacific Island groups.[48] By the 1960s, the threshold for baptism had slipped, with baptism approved for those who had only renounced use of alcohol and tobacco a few hours earlier.[49] After the 1970s, growth in SDA membership in Tonga slowed sharply due to emigration and competition from other churches.[50] As of 2012, SDA members made up just 2% of the population, among other groups including Free Wesleyan (37%), The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (17%), Roman Catholic (16%), Free Church of Tonga (11%), Church of Tonga (8%) and Anglican (1%).[51]