Why Alewai village needed a church: Some reflections on Christianity, conversion, and male leadership in south‐east Papua New Guinea

Abstract

In the Vula'a villages of south‐east Papua New Guinea, the experience of more than a century of Christianity has been incorporated into local understandings of identity and tradition. Church‐building (in both the architectural and ideological sense) is at the centre of village life. Even though it was a general policy of the London Missionary Society to build a church in every village in which conversion was undertaken, they did not build a church in the Vula'a village of Alewai. In 2001 the fact that Alewai did not have a church initiated a chain of events that draws attention to a situation of current relevance for Papua New Guinea, as evangelists no longer work to convert the ‘heathen’ but to convert Christians from one denomination to another. As a case study the article is focused on the pastors and deacons of the United Church and thus also serves to document some of the changes that have occurred in male leadership since the early colonial era.

The morality of mweki: Performing sexuality in the ‘Islands of Love’

“…While only a relatively small number of Trobriand Islanders have joined Pentecostal congregations, and there is much fluidity of movement back to the longer‐established churches, the number of congregants belies the influence of the Pentecostal message and style of worship. While missions and Christianity have a long history in PNG, the arrival of Pentecostal and Pentecostal‐like churches in the country have resulted in a renewed Christian fervour and the implications of a ‘Revived’ Christianity have variably been represented in changing beliefs and practices in ‘mainline’ United Churches as well, not only in the Trobriands but in PNG as a whole; that is to say, the United church has become increasingly Pentecostalized (Van Heekeren : 5; see also both Eriksen and Eves, this volume and compare Freeman : 11 for similar processes in Africa and Gooren for Latin America). Defining and distinguishing between terms like Pentecostal, evangelical, Revival, and so on can be difficult; theological definitions often do not suffice, nor do self‐identifications provide consistent and unified agreement on what these terms connote.…”

Doing away with Doba? Women’s Wealth and Shifting Values in Trobriand Mortuary Distributions

“…Some scholars suggest that kula is a fairly recent institution, emerging in the last 500 years or so, and that it has changed considerably in orientation and execution since European contact (Keesing 1990;Schram 2013: 70-71;Van Heekeren 2014). Anecdotal evidence suggests that the same can be said for the manufacture and exchange of doba, both in terms of skirts and bundles.…”

Introduction

“…; Gooren ; Hermkens ; Hoenigman ; Jolly et al. ; Tomlinson ; Hermkens ; Schram ; Strathern ; Cox and Macintyre ; Van Heekeren , to name but a few). Melanesia has also played a prominent role in theorisation within the discipline that takes gender as an analytical point of reference.…”