Download or read book Christianity in Melanesia written by Theo Aerts and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are various modern methods of an audience-centered reading of the Scriptures. One of them is an anthropology-inspired approach which assumes that people from these parts of the world come to the Bible with quite a different set of presuppositions, grounded in their own age-old traditions. This kind of approach goes purposely away from the well-established kind of reading which is based upon past Jewish history, ancient near-Eastern customs and archaeology, Semitic philology and so on. But without denying the value of these essentially sound segments of learning, is it really necessary that Melanesians should first plunge into Western academia in order to hear God's word? Or is it no longer true that "Greeks" must not first become "Jews" before they can become Christians? The articles gathered in Traditional Religion in Melanesia, and its companion volume Christianity in Melanesia contribute to the goal just described. They make clear that religion as such was not something that was completely new for "the pagans of the past," and that as a rule, too, they were rather selective in accepting the Christian message. This accounts for some misunderstandings, but also for some very positive ways of accepting Christianity.
Download or read book Christianity and Animism in Melanesia written by Kenneth Nehrbass and published by William Carey Library Publishers. This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Kenneth Nehrbass examines the interaction between traditional or animistic religion (called kastom) and Christianity in Vanuatu. First, he briefly outlines major anthropological theories of animism, then he examines eight aspects of animism on Tanna Island and shows how they present a challenge to Christianity. He traces the history of Christianity on Tanna from 1839 to the present, showing which missiological theories the various missionaries were implementing. Nehrbass wanted to find out what experiences in the lives of the islanders distinguished those who left traditional religion behind from those who held on to it. In the end, he contends that there are twenty factors of gospel response and cultural integration that determine whether an animistic background believer will be a mixer, separator, transplanter, or contextualizer.
Download or read book Melanesian Religion written by G. W. Trompf and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2004-08-19 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study surveys systematically the full scope of Melanesian religion, from traditional beliefs and practices to the development of strong indigenous Christian churches and theology. Garry Trompf writes from extensive knowledge of the social and religious aspects and from his own experience living and working in Papua New Guinea. Melanesian Religion provides an invaluable guide and analysis to pressing issues of religious and social change in the Pacific. It provides a useful overview for readers with general interests in the South Pacific region, and in the formulation of indigenous responses to external institutions, beliefs and value systems. The Melanesian peoples of the south-west Pacific form about one-quarter of the world's cultures - cultures in which a deep sense of spiritual consciousness has engendered rich diversity of religious experience. Professor Trompf argues that, to be complete, any interpretation of the social and economic patterns of Melanesian life, past and present, must take proper account of this religious context.
Download or read book Traditional Religion in Melanesia written by Theo Aerts and published by University of Papua New Guinea Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are various modern methods of an audience-centered reading of the Scriptures. One of them is an anthropology-inspired approach which assumes that people from these parts of the world come to the Bible with quite a different set of presuppositions, grounded in their own age-old traditions. This kind of approach goes purposely away from the well-established kind of reading which is based upon past Jewish history, ancient near-Eastern customs and archaeology, Semitic philology and so on. But without denying the value of these essentially sound segments of learning, is it really necessary that Melanesians should first plunge into Western academia in order to hear God's word? Or is it no longer true that "Greeks" must not first become "Jews" before they can become Christians? The articles gathered in Traditional Religion in Melanesia, and its companion volume Christianity in Melanesia contribute to the goal just described. They make clear that religion as such was not something that was completely new for "the pagans of the past," and that as a rule, too, they were rather selective in accepting the Christian message. This accounts for some misunderstandings, but also for some very positive ways of accepting Christianity.
Download or read book Sorcery Witchcraft and Christianity in Melanesia written by Franco Zocca and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book God s Gentlemen written by David Hilliard and published by University of Queensland Press(Australia). This book was released on 2013-05 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: David Hilliard's God's Gentlemen, originally published in 1978, remains the only detached and detailed historical analysis of the work of the Melanesian Mission. Starting with its New Zealand beginnings and its Norfolk Island years (1867-1920), the work follows the Mission's shift of headquarters to the Solomon Islands and on until the beginning of the Second World War. The Mission, which grew out of the personal vision of the first Church of England Bishop of New Zealand, George Selwyn, formally defined its field of work as 'the Islands of Melanesia' although its activities were confined almo.
Download or read book Becoming Sinners written by Joel Robbins and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2004-04-12 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study of cultural change through the study of the Christianization of the Urapmin, a Melanesian society in Papua New Guinea.
Download or read book Melanesian Religion written by G. W. Trompf and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1991-04-26 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Am invariable guide and analysis to pressing issues of religious and Soviet change in the Pacific.
Download or read book An Archaeology of Early Christianity in Vanuatu written by James L. Flexner and published by ANU Press. This book was released on 2016-12-19 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Religious change is at its core a material as much as a spiritual process. Beliefs related to intangible spirits, ghosts, or gods were enacted through material relationships between people, places, and objects. The archaeology of mission sites from Tanna and Erromango islands, southern Vanuatu (formerly the New Hebrides), offer an informative case study for understanding the material dimensions of religious change. One of the primary ways that cultural difference was thrown into relief in the Presbyterian New Hebrides missions was in the realm of objects. Christian Protestant missionaries believed that religious conversion had to be accompanied by changes in the material conditions of everyday life. Results of field archaeology and museum research on Tanna and Erromango, southern Vanuatu, show that the process of material transformation was not unidirectional. Just as Melanesian people changed religious beliefs and integrated some imported objects into everyday life, missionaries integrated local elements into their daily lives. Attempts to produce ‘civilised Christian natives’, or to change some elements of native life relating purely to ‘religion’ but not others, resulted instead in a proliferation of ‘hybrid’ forms. This is visible in the continuity of a variety of traditional practices subsumed under the umbrella term ‘kastom’ through to the present alongside Christianity. Melanesians didn’t become Christian, Christianity became Melanesian. The material basis of religious change was integral to this process.
Download or read book Pentecostalism and Witchcraft written by Knut Rio and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-10-29 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access book presents fresh ethnographic work from the regions of Africa and Melanesia—where the popularity of charismatic Christianity can be linked to a revival and transformation of witchcraft. The volume demonstrates how the Holy Spirit has become an adversary to the reconfirmed presence of witches, demons, and sorcerers as manifestations of evil. We learn how this is articulated in spiritual warfare, in crusades, and in healing or witch-killing raids. The contributors highlight what happens to phenomena that people address as locally specific witchcraft or sorcery when re-molded within the universalist Pentecostal demonology, vocabulary, and confrontational methodology.
Download or read book Gender Christianity and Change in Vanuatu written by Ms Annelin Eriksen and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2012-12-28 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on cultural change and the socio-political movements in the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu, this book uses both anthropological and historical analysis to examine the way the relationship between gender and Christianity has shaped processes of social change. Based on extensive research conducted over several decades, it is one of the few books available to focus on Vanuatu and on the impact of Christianity in Melanesia more generally – as well as on the significance of gender relations in understanding these developments. Providing a model for understanding and comparing processes of change in small-scale societies, this fascinating book will appeal to scholars and students interested in the ethnography of Melanesia and in issues related to contemporary cultural change and gender more generally.
Download or read book The Last Heathen written by Charles Montgomery and published by D & M Publishers. This book was released on 2009-09-01 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1892, the Bishop of Tasmania set sail for Melanesia with the intent of rescuing islanders from lives of fear, black magic and cannibalism. Over 100 years later, his great grandson, Charles Montgomery, followed the bishop’s route through the South Pacific, seeking out the spirits and myths his missionary forebear had sought to destroy. Montgomery explored remote shores where gospel and empire never took hold. He rubbed shoulders with barefoot preachers, witch doctors and gun-toting rebels, only to discover that the pagan spirits were more tenacious than the missionaries had imagined. Melanesians had stirred Jesus and Mary into an already spicy broth of ancestor worship, ghosts, shark gods and magic. Through confrontations with a bizarre cast of characters—the randy ethnographer, the soft-talking assassin, the leper prophet—the journey becomes a debate on the nature of magic, myth and faith, and a metaphor for the transforming power of story. The Last Heathen marks the debut of an exciting young writer who charts his adventures with passion, insight and grace.
Download or read book Tradition and Christianity written by Ben Burt and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 1994 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 1994. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Download or read book Christianity and Animism in Melanesia written by Kenneth Nehrbass and published by William Carey Publishing. This book was released on 2012-02-26 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Kenneth Nehrbass examines the interaction between traditional or animistic religion (called kastom) and Christianity in Vanuatu. First, he briefly outlines major anthropological theories of animism, then he examines eight aspects of animism on Tanna Island and shows how they present a challenge to Christianity. He traces the history of Christianity on Tanna from 1839 to the present, showing which missiological theories the various missionaries were implementing. Nehrbass wanted to find out what experiences in the lives of the islanders distinguished those who left traditional religion behind from those who held on to it. In the end, he contends that there are twenty factors of gospel response and cultural integration that determine whether an animistic background believer will be a mixer, separator, transplanter, or contextualizer.
Download or read book Salvation in Melanesia written by Michael Press and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-06-15 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Salvation in Melanesia explores the views of salvation held by Methodist, Lutheran, and Pentecostal Christians in Fiji and Papua New Guinea, uncovering the ways in which a Protestant theology of unconditional salvation through God’s judgment and grace has been combined with traditional Melanesian religious concepts of reciprocity, retribution, and obedience to cultural laws. While Pentecostal churches have offered new experiences of transformation by rejecting what they regard as the mingling of Melanesian culture with Christianity in other churches, they have also kept certain elements of traditional Melanesian spirituality. Meanwhile, today economic globalization and secularization result in new questions about the relationship between the people, the leaders, the land, and God. Michael Press uses mission sources and interviews to describe the different concepts of mission, their reception, the main images of God, and the relationship between religion and culture in Melanesian churches, as well as the factors that support or hinder personal transformation.
Download or read book The Anthropology of Christianity written by Fenella Cannell and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2006-11-07 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection provides vivid ethnographic explorations of particular, local Christianities as they are experienced by different groups around the world. At the same time, the contributors, all anthropologists, rethink the vexed relationship between anthropology and Christianity. As Fenella Cannell contends in her powerful introduction, Christianity is the critical “repressed” of anthropology. To a great extent, anthropology first defined itself as a rational, empirically based enterprise quite different from theology. The theology it repudiated was, for the most part, Christian. Cannell asserts that anthropological theory carries within it ideas profoundly shaped by this rejection. Because of this, anthropology has been less successful in considering Christianity as an ethnographic object than it has in considering other religions. This collection is designed to advance a more subtle and less self-limiting anthropological study of Christianity. The contributors examine the contours of Christianity among diverse groups: Catholics in India, the Philippines, and Bolivia, and Seventh-Day Adventists in Madagascar; the Swedish branch of Word of Life, a charismatic church based in the United States; and Protestants in Amazonia, Melanesia, and Indonesia. Highlighting the wide variation in what it means to be Christian, the contributors reveal vastly different understandings and valuations of conversion, orthodoxy, Scripture, the inspired word, ritual, gifts, and the concept of heaven. In the process they bring to light how local Christian practices and beliefs are affected by encounters with colonialism and modernity, by the opposition between Catholicism and Protestantism, and by the proximity of other religions and belief systems. Together the contributors show that it not sufficient for anthropologists to assume that they know in advance what the Christian experience is; each local variation must be encountered on its own terms. Contributors. Cecilia Busby, Fenella Cannell, Simon Coleman, Peter Gow, Olivia Harris, Webb Keane, Eva Keller, David Mosse, Danilyn Rutherford, Christina Toren, Harvey Whitehouse
Download or read book Melanesia and Its Churches written by Franco Zocca and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is immediately striking about this book is the breadth of its coverage. Its aim is "to present the current situation of the Melanesian Christians and to trace these situations back to their roots, both historical and cultural" (p. 1). In eight chapters the author addresses geography and population, traditional cultures and religions, European colonization, evangelization (in two chapters), movements, emerging independence, and current statistical data of the churches across Melanesia (Fiji, New Caledonia, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, East and West New Guinea).
