Tonga
POPULATION 106,137
FREE WESLEYAN CHURCH 35 percent
ROMAN CATHOLIC 15 percent
MORMON 15 percent
FREE CHURCH OF TONGA 10 percent
CHURCH OF TONGA 6 percent
SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTIST 4 percent
TOKAIKOLO FELLOWSHIP 3 percent
ASSEMBLIES OF GOD 2 percent
OTHER 10 percent
Country Overview
Introduction
The Kingdom of Tonga is an archipelago of more than 150 islands in the Pacific Ocean. It lies between Samoa to northeast, New Zealand to the southwest, and Fiji to the west. A British protectorate from 1905 to 1970, Tonga has nonetheless maintained considerable independence from European colonial powers and has fostered its indigenous cultural traditions and lifestyles.
Before Western contact and the arrival of Christianity, the Tongan people adhered to a religious system that had much in common with other Polynesian religions found in Samoa, Hawaii, and elsewhere in the Pacific. At the center of this religion was a belief in a pantheon of gods, the concept of mana as the supernatural force creating good fortune and prosperity, and a system of taboo restrictions, known as tapu, meant to ensure balance and prosperity.
English missionaries arrived in 1826, and by the middle of the nineteenth century nearly all Tongans were converted to Christianity. Tonga was politically centralized into a monarchy.
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