Religion
The king and the majority of the royal family are members of the Free Wesleyan Church (Methodist) which claims some 40,000 adherents in the country. There are four other Methodist denominations in the country. The Roman Catholic Church and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints each have a strong presence in the country as well. There is also a small Seventh-day Adventist Church group (Anglicans), some adherents of the Bahá'í Faith in Tonga, and there are even some Tongan Muslims.
Tongans are ardent church goers. Church service usually follows a call and response structure. Singing in the church is often done a cappella. Although church attends primarily to the spiritual needs of the population, it also functions as the primary social hub. As consequence people who go to a church of another denomination are absolutely not shunned.
Sunday in Tonga is celebrated as a strict sabbath, enshrined so in the constitution, and despite some voices to the opposite, the Sunday ban is not likely to be abolished soon. No trade is allowed on Sunday, except essential services, after special approval by the minister of police. Those that break the law risk a fine or imprisonment.
Read more about this topic: Culture Of Tonga
Famous quotes containing the word religion:
“Unless criticism refuses to take itself quite so seriously or at least to permit its readers not to, it will inevitably continue to reflect the finicky canons of the genteel tradition and the depressing pieties of the Culture Religion of Modernism.”
—Leslie Fiedler (b. 1917)
“Democracy and Republicanism in their best partisan utterances alike declare for human rights. Jefferson, the father of Democracy, Lincoln, the embodiment of Republicanism, and the Divine author of the religion on which true civilization rests, all proclaim the equal rights of all men.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“Whoever seeks to set one religion against another seeks to destroy all religion.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)