Rev. Ame Tugaue, the General Secretary of the church, rejected such sentiments and said on 19 October that "all Christians" supported the Unity Bill. He strongly criticized Koroi's dissident group for making a negative submission to the parliamentary committee studying the legislation. ""Reconciliation is God’s programme and everything will go a long way if people put aside their differences and focus on reconciliation,"" he asserted, saying that the Unity Bill was an effective tool towards realizing that goal. The submission to which Tugaue objected maintained that the church and civil government are both instituted by God, but given different spheres of responsibility, and that it was wrong for either institution to interfere with the other. The biblical command to forgive was given to believers as individuals, not the state, said the submission. Tugaue rejected this, saying that the dissidents' submission presented a bad image of the church, especially to indigenous Fijians. The Methodist church supported the bill and would continue to do so, no matter what objections were raised by others, Tugaue said.