Christian bodies: Dialectics of sickness and salvation among the Maisin of Papua new guinea

Journal of Religious History

Volumn 27, Issue 3, 2003, Pages 272-292

  Barker, John ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 15044352027     PISSN: 00224227     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9809.2003.00196.x     Document Type: Conference Paper

References (69)

1. See, for instance, Willington Jojoga, "The Peroveta of Buna," in Prophets of Melanesia, edited by Gary Trompf (Port Moresby: Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies, 1977), 127-42
2. and Dawn Ryan, "Christianity, Cargo Cults and Politics among IheToaripi of Papua," Oceania 40 (1969): 99-118.
3. John Ban, "A Survey of Ecstatic 'Holy Spirit Movements' in Melanesia," Oceania 54 (1983): 109-32, Not surprisingly, many observers - not least leaders of the established churches, but also some researchers and politicians - tended to blame foreigners for "sowing confusion" amongst rural people, most of whom already belonged to a church, and thus triggering revivals.
4. See, for example, R. Robin, "Revival Movements in the Southern Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea," Oceania 52 (1982): 242 -320;
5. Linus S. Digim'Rina, "Millennium: Whose Millennium?" in Expecting the Day of Wrath: Versions of the Millennium in Papua New Guinea, edited by Christin Kocher Schmid, NRI Monograph 36 (Port Moresby: National Research Institute, 1999), 80- 88;
6. Manfred Ernst, Winds of Change: Rapidly Growing Religious Groups in the Pacific Islands (Suva: Pacific Conference of Churches, 1994);
7. Michael Somare, "Inter-Action between Government and Religion in Papua New Guinea," Melanesian Journal of Theology 10, no. 1 (1995): 57-64.
8. Dan Jorgensen, "Life on the Fringe: History and Society in Telefolmin," in The Plight of Peripheral People in Papua New Guinea. Volume 1: The Inland Situation, edited by Robert Gordon, Occasional Paper 7 (Cambridge, Mass.: Cultural Survival, 1981), 59-72
9. and Joel Robbins, "Becoming Sinners: Christian Transformations of Morality and Culture in a Papua New Guinea Society," (PhD diss., University of Virginia, 1998).
10. Frederick Errington and Deborah Gewertz, Articulating Change in the "Last Unknown" (Boulder: Westview, 1995)
11. and Donald Tuzin, The Cassowary's Revenge: The Life and Death of Masculinity in a New Guinea Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997).
12. Pamela J. Stewart and Andrew Strathem, eds. Millennial Markers (Townsville, Australia: Centre for Pacific Studies, James Cook University of North Queensland, 1997).
13. Bronwen Douglas makes this point in a recent overview of the literature, "From Invisible Christians to Gothic Theater: The Romance of the Millennial in Melanesian Anthropology," Current Anthropology 42 (2001): 615-49.
14. Joel Robbins, "Introduction: Global Religions, Pacific Island Transformations," Journal of Ritual Studies 15, no. 2 (2001): 7-12. The general category of revival Christianity includes Fundamentalist and Pentecostal churches and interdenominational organizations, as well as Charismatic movements within mainstream Protestant and Roman Catholic churches. Ernst provides a helpful primer on the differences between these groups.
15. Joel Robbins, "Secrecy and the Sense of an Ending: Narrative, Time, and Everyday Millenarianism in Papua New Guinea and in Christian Fundamentalism," Comparative Studies in Society and History 43 (2001): 525-51.
16. For more detailed accounts of Maisin history, see John Barker, "Optimistic Pragmatists: Anglican Missionaries among the Maisin of Collingwood Bay, Oro Province," Journal of Pacific History 22 (1987): 66-81
17. and John Barker, "Village Inventions: Historical Variations Upon a Regional Theme," Oceania 66 (1996): 211-29.
18. Pioneering missionary efforts in Papua and New Guinea relied heavily upon Pacific Islands evangelists, who were mostly recruited from older mission fields in Polynesia and eastern Melanesia. The Anglicans had no older fields to turn to and so came to rely upon converts in the Melanesian labour force then working in the Queensland sugar plantations. In the early years, some 45 former cane workers devoted their lives to the mission.
19. For background on Pacific Islands missionaries, see Doug Munroe and Andrew Thornley, eds. The Covenant Makers: Islander Missionaries in the Pacific (Suva, Fiji: Pacific Theological College and the Institute of Pacific Studies, University of the South Pacific, 1996);
20. David Wetherell, Reluctant Mission: The Anglican Church in Papua New Guinea, 1891-1942 (St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1977), chapter 3;
21. David Wetherell, "From Fiji to Papua: The Work of the "V'akavuvuli,"' Journal of Pacific History 13 (1978): 153-72.
22. Barker, "Village Inventions."
23. John Barker, "Between Heaven and Earth: Missionaries, Environmentalists and the Mai-sin," in Pacific Island Societies in a Global World, edited by Victoria Lockwood (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, in press).
24. In February 1997, Australian newspapers revealed that Prime Minister Sir Julius Chan had secretly contracted with a British firm, Sandline International, to supply foreign mercenaries to fight against rebels in Bougainville Province. The startling news erupted into a full political crisis when the head of the Papua New Guinea army, Brigadier-General Jerry Singirok, publicly criticized the government and was subsequently fired from his position, setting up a confrontation between the army and the ruling political faction in Parliament. By the beginning of April, the Prime Minister had been forced to resign. These events are described in Henry Ivarature, "The Sandline International Controversy in Papua New Guinea," in Governance and Reform in the South Pacific, edited by Peter Larmour (Canberra: National Centre for Development Studies, Australian National University, 1998), 200- 52. At the time, the crisis energized several Christian organizations around the country, who, in newspaper, radio, and billboard advertisements called for prayer meetings for national reconciliation.
25. This is not to claim that the movement did not challenge common moral assumptions, particularly in its stress upon individual responsibility rather than community solidarity. This is a point I take up in the final section of the present paper.
26. For a detailed account of how Maisin perceive such objects, and the implications of this for the local preservation of cultural artifacts, see John Barker, "Dangerous Objects: Changing Indigenous Perceptions of Material Culture in a Papua New Guinea Society." Pacific Science 55 (2001): 359-75.
27. For much more detailed accounts of these events, see John Barker, "Missionaries and Sorcerers: Changes in Sorcery Beliefs among the Maisin of Collingwood Bay, Oro Province," Research in Melanesia 7 (1983): 13-24;
28. John Barker, "Encounters with Evil: The Historical Construction of Sorcery in Maisin Society, Papua New Guinea," Oceania 61 (1990): 139-55;
29. Barker, "Optimistic Pragmatists."
30. Percy John Monev, "Letter from Uiaku, 10 March 1903," Missionary Notes 101 (1903): 33-34.
31. Anonymous, "[Untitled Letter]." Occasional Papers of the New Guinea Mission 77 (1925): 8-9.
32. This was a healing and fertility movement first reported in 1911 on Cape Nelson to the north of the Maisin that had begun with a visitation by a supernatural python. See F. E. Williams, Orokaiva Magic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1928)
33. and Peter Worsley, The Trumpet Shall Sound: A Study of "Cargo Cults" in Melanesia (New York: Schocken Books, 1968).
34. Wanigela Log Book, 25 April 1921. Anglican Archives, University of Papua New Guinea.
35. A. J, Thompson, "At Wanigela: Truth Stronger Than Fiction." A.B.M. Review 19, no. 165-66(1933): 165-66.
36. Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution: Christianity, Colonialism and Consciousness in South Africa, Volume 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991)
37. and John T. Comaroff and Jean Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution: The Dialectics of Modernity on a South African Frontier, Volume 2 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997).
38. Robbins, "Secrecy and the Sense of an Ending," 527
39. Robbins, "Secrecy and the Sense of an Ending," 533.
40. Worsley.
41. Welherell, Reluctant Mission, 190-91.
42. One elderly man I interviewed recognized "Asisi" as an Orokaivan word meaning "spirit" but did not recall Maisin having used the term, Erik Schwimmer describes the Orokaivan concept of ahihi more accurately as "soul," in Exchange in the Social Structure of the Orokaiva (New York: St, Martin's, 1973), 91. Missionary observers in the 1930s referred to Maikin and his followers as "Asisi men." suggesting that this was a local manifestation of a wider regional movement, probably disseminated along the same paths as the better known Taro Cult.
43. See. for example, Reo F. Fortune, Sorcerers of Dobu (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. 1932);
44. Leonard B. Click, "Sorcery and Witchcraft" in Anthropology in New Guinea (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1973);
45. M. Patterson. "Sorcery and Witchcraft in Melanesia". Oceania 45 (1974-75): 232-60, 12-34.
46. Marty Zelenietz and Shirley Lindenbaum, eds. Social Analysis [Sorcery and Social Change in Melanesia, Special Issue] 8 (1981).
47. F. Magowan, "Syncretism or Synchronicity? Remapping the Yolngu of Place," The Australian Journal of Anthropology [Beyond Syncretism: Indigenous Expressions of World Religions, Special Issue 13] 12 (2001): 275-290.
48. This is not to suggest that there are no skeptics. Better-educated Maisin tend to dismiss the likelihood of certain types of sorcery, but not sorcery in general. A retired dentist in Uiaku, for instance, told me that he strongly doubted the reality of yawu sorcery and believed that most attacks used "poisons." For more details on sorcery among the Maisin see John Barker, "Western Medicine and the Continuity of Belief: The Maisin of Collingwood Bay, Oro Province," in A Continuing Trial of Treatment: Medical Pluralism in Papua New Guinea, edited by Stephen Frankel and Gilbert Lewis (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989), 69-93;
49. Barker, "Encounters with Evil";
50. Barker, "Missionaries and Sorcerers."
51. See, for instance, Michael W. Young, Fighting with Food: Leadership, Values, and Social Control in a Massim Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971)
52. and Epeli Hau'ofa, Mekeo: Inequality and Ambivalence in a Village Society (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1981).
53. Maisin make a common distinction found in many non-literate cultures between stories told for entertainment and instruction (kikiki) and "true" stories (kikiki moturan) relating founding events in the past.
54. Unlike many Melanesian societies, Maisin tend to see sorcery as deriving from within their own communities. I was often surprised when Maisin attributed sorcery attacks to actions that struck me as quite trivial and petty. One elder in Uiaku, for instance, was widely believed to have ensorcelled and murdered his sister after she refused to share a cigarette with him. Such stories convey vividly the sense that sorcerers are both evil and predictable.
55. See K. O. L. Burridge. "The Mclanesian Manager," in Studies in Social Anthropology, edited by J. Beattie and G. Lienhardt (Oxford: Clarendon, 1975), 86-104.
56. Such tensions may be revealed by misfortunes other than sickness. In 1982. many villages interpreted the failing fortunes of the local cooperative store as a reflection of tensions within the community. At one meeting, Deacon Russell reminded the assembled that the store would only be "healed" (jebuga) when people ceased gossiping about those attempting to run it. See John Barker, "We Are 'Ekelesia': Conversion in Uiaku, Papua New Guinea," in Christian Conversion: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives on a Great Transformation, edited by Robert Hefner (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 199-230.
57. K. O. L, Burridge. Someone, No One: An Essay on Individuality (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979).
58. Barker, "We Are 'Ekelesia,'"
59. This distinction resembles Jean and John Comaroff's useful opposition between the self-conscious level of missionary efforts and the hegemonic influences of routine mission practices and orientations. See Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff, "Christianity and Colonialism in South Africa," American Ethnologist 13, no. 1 (1986): 1-22;
60. Comaroff and Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution.
61. For a comparable Melanesian example, see Michael French Smith, "Bloody Time and Bloody Scarcity: Capitalism, Authority, and the Transformation of Temporal Experience in a Papua New Guinea Village," American Ethnologist 9, no. 3 (1982): 503-18.
62. For a critique, see John Barker, "Christianity in Western Melanesian Ethnography," in History and Tradition in Melanesian Anthropology, edited by James Carrier (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 144-73.
63. This has been a popular explanation for the disaster throughout Oro Province for many years. For an Orokaivan version, see Erik Schwimmer, "Cultural Consequences of a Volcanic Eruption Experienced by the Mount Lamington Orokaiva." [Mimeo] (Eugene: Department of Anthropology, University of Oregon, 1969).
64. Barker, "Western Medicine and the Continuity of Belief."
65. Marshall Sahlins, Islands of History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985).
66. Max Weber, "Religious Rejections of the World and Their Directions." in From Max Weber, edited by H. H. Gerth and C. W. Mills (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946 [ 1915]).
67. For comparable Africanist perspectives, see Terence Ranger, "The Local and the Global in Southern African Religious History," in Conversion to Christianity, edited by Robert W. Hefner (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993);
68. J. D. Y. Peel, Religious Encounter and the Making of the Yoruha (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000);
69. David Maxwell, Christians and Chiefs in Zimbabwe: A Social History of the Hwesa People c.1870s-1990s (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999).