Beyond rupture: Christian culture in the Pacific

Abstract

Abstract In its many forms, Christianity tends to focus adherents’ attention upon earlier religious traditions, compelling them to renew their faith, repent and seek redemption. This special issue takes up questions about Christianity’s temporal ‘secondarity’. Contributors move beyond increasingly futile theoretical debates about rupture and continuity by considering how Christians in Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands conceptualise and enact their fraught relationships with prior religious traditions. By examining the place of culture within Christianity, contributors avoid the analytical pitfalls of assuming that Pacific culture is not already thoroughly Christian. Rather than taking up questions about initial Christian conversion, these articles focus on revival. The relentless campaigns of Christian renewal that have transformed religious landscapes more than a generation aim not only to overcome pre‐Christian powers, but also to supersede earlier versions of Christianity. In examining not only highly localised ethnotheologies, but also regional movements, this issue opens questions that should be of interest beyond the anthropology of Christianity.

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