page_title: Seventh-day Adventist Church in Tonga
section_title: Date Line controversy
hierarchical_section_title: Seventh-day Adventist Church in Tonga / Date Line controversy
caption_attribution_description: English: Time zones in the South Pacific
context_page_description: The Seventh-day Adventist Church in Tonga, is one of the smaller religious groups in the South Pacific island state of Tonga with over 3,599 members as of June 30, 2018, started by Seventh-day Adventist missionaries from the United States who visited in 1891 and settled in 1895. They set up schools but made very little progress in conversion, handicapped by dietary rules that prohibited popular local foods such as pork and shellfish, and that also banned tobacco, alcohol and kava.
  The church was revitalized in 1912 with renewed emphasis on evangelism. In 1922 it resumed its strategy of providing education, which resulted in an increase in conversions. After keeping a low profile during World War II, the church grew quickly from 1950 to the 1970s. However, membership subsequently declined due to emigration and competition with other churches. The SDA of Tonga is part of the South Pacific Division of Seventh-day Adventists. It operates several schools in Tonga, and provides opportunities for further studies at Adventist institutions abroad.
  Tonga lies to the east of the 180° meridian but to the west of the International Date Line, in the time zone UTC+13:00.
context_section_description: The Sabbath in seventh-day churches is observed on the seventh day of the week, typically from sunset on Friday until sunset on Saturday. This is an important part of the beliefs and practices of the church. Kellogg, Butz and Hilliard debated which was the correct day to observe the Sabbath in Tonga. The practice on the Pitcairn had been to change days at the 180° meridian. Islands such as Samoa and Tonga were well to the east of this line, so the missionaries observed the Sabbath on the day sequence of the Western Hemisphere. However, the Tonga islands used the same days as New Zealand and Australia, so the missionaries were observing the seventh-day Sabbath on Sunday.
  The tract by Adventist John N. Andrews entitled The Definitive Seventh Day (1871) recommended using a Bering Strait date line. If this was accepted, the Tonga Adventists were celebrating the Sabbath on the wrong day. However, an international conference in 1884 established the International Date Line (IDL) at 180° while allowing for local adjustments. The Tonga missionaries sent letters to church leaders in Tahiti, Australia and the U.S. asking for advice, and even asked Ellen G. White for her opinion. Replies were contradictory. It was not until 1901 that White sent a letter to Kellogg but her reply did not answer the question, it simply stated it was not his task to solve the problem of the dayline. Time, circumstances and practice led to the 180° meridian being imposed by the Adventists as the IDL, and the SDA church in Tonga observes the Sabbath on Sunday. Historian, Kenneth Bain, in his 1967 book,
  The Friendly Islanders, claimed that SDA adherence to the 180 degree meridian is a face saving compromise which their pioneer missionaries searched out because the nation had strict Sunday laws.
  In 1970, Robert Leo Odom's book, The Lord's Day On A Round World was reissued by the Church with added chapters covering the Church's Sunday observance in Tonga.
  In 1995, the time zone of Kiribati was changed so Adventists on the Phoenix and Line Islands observe Sunday. In 2011, the time zone of Samoa was changed to align the working week with that of Australia and New Zealand, placing these countries in the same time zone as Tonga. In August 2012, the SDA of Samoa confirmed that it would follow the example of Tonga and officially observe the Sabbath on Sunday rather than move the Sabbath in accordance with the changed time zone.
caption: Time zones in the South Pacific. Tonga time is UTC+13 rather than UTC−12
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