Annelin Eriksen

‘New Life’: Pentecostalism as Social Critique in Vanuatu

This paper argues that the new Pentecostal churches proliferating in the southwest Pacific nation, Vanuatu, must be understood in relation to the colonial history, the history of the churches, and the way the nation achieved its independence. The dominating frames of understanding Pentecostal churches in anthropology today, what I call the sociological perspective and the economic perspective, are insufficient in this context. Through an analysis of specific church groups breaking away from the mainline churches, and their Pentecostal-oriented rhetoric, I argue that the focus on change and on the break with the past becomes meaningful in relation to a general political development. The independent, new churches thus become powerful social movements working for social change. This change is specifically connected to the failures of the state; their failure to secure and protect, for instance, land rights against foreign investment.

Sarah’s Sinfulness

Early anthropological studies of Pentecostalism and gender, dominated by Latin American and Caribbean ethnography, focused to a large extent on women’s conversion and how Pentecostal ideology has limited masculine oppressive behavior and provided women with social community, faith healing, domestic counseling, and so forth. These studies of Pentecostalism have thus been dominated by a focus on women on the one hand and on social community and social change on the other. The primary question asked in these studies has been, does Pentecostalism bring about an increased degree of equality? With the development of the anthropology of Christianity, the focus has shifted to a more thoroughgoing understanding of Christianity as a culture. In this paper I argue that this shift can also stimulate a shift in the way we study equality and gender in Pentecostalism. Instead of looking at men and women’s roles, we need to look at the specific idea of egalitarianism that this form of Christianity brings about and how this shapes the way in which gendered difference is articulated. I present a case from Vanuatu, South West Pacific, arguing that we need to look at gendered values, and I suggest a focus on what I call “the charismatic space.”

Missionaries, Healing and Sorcery in Melanesia: A Scottish Evangelist in Ambrym Island, Vanuatu

Melanesian people have recently become highly occupied with history as an arena for moral scrutiny and causal explanations for contemporary failures. On the island of Ambrym in Vanuatu, this form of ontological worry goes back to the first missionaries on the island, the Murray brothers. This article takes us back to events in the 1880s when the missionaries were active on Ambrym, and searches into their social position. Drawing on the diary of Charles Murray, the main argument unfolds around his involvement in the realm of mens ritual powers, how he himself played his part as a highly knowledgeable magician and how his downfall came about by challenging a manly realm of knowledge and power and his wider inclusion of women and lesser men in his church.

What kind of God

Comment on Luhrmann, Tanya. 2012. When God talks back: Understanding the American Evangelical relationship with God. New York: Alfred E. Knopf.

Going to ‘Pentecost’: how to study Pentecostalism – in Melanesia, for example

In this article, I question regional context as primary context in anthropological analyses. I argue that the idea of historical continuity in a geographical locality/region might prevent us from understanding not only radical change, but also more gradually emerging social patterns that connect the ethnography to very different kinds of histories and places. Concretely, I focus on the global Charismatic and Pentecostal movements, and as an experiment, I ask whether it is possible to go to ‘Pentecost’, instead of going to Melanesia. With ‘going to Pentecost’ as a heuristic device, I suggest it is possible to overcome methodological challenges in the study of global religious movements. In this article, I thus trace the practices and articulations of my interlocutors as part of a wider Pentecostal universe. I show how notions of seeing, borders, separations, and protection are crucial in ‘Pentecost’, and I connect this to key Christian ideas and values.

The value of anthropology

Comment on van der Veer, Peter. 2016. The value of comparison. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Demons, Devils, and Witches in Pentecostal Port Vila: On Changing Cosmologies of Evil in Melanesia

In accounts of “traditional Melanesia,” we learned that witchcraft was an underlying structural condition of relations between men and women and an ever-present potential of social relations themselves. In many ways, traditional sorcery practices were considered legitimate and morally “good” However, there are reasons for thinking that recent upscaling of beating, burning, or killing of witches in Melanesia can be related to the Pentecostal beliefs that align witchcraft with evil and individual morality. In Vanuatu today, especially in urban areas, there is hectic activity aimed at sorting out the problem of sorcery and witchcraft in the new Pentecostal churches, and these churches are designed for exactly the purpose of healing and exorcism. They move into suburbs with what they call “spiritual warfare” and cleanse whole neighborhoods for signs of hidden evil. Whereas the locus of the divination practices in Pre-Christian Melanesia was a realm of forces beyond human control, the modern equivalent ritual is directly attacking the moral person and making that into both an instrument of divination and a sacrificial body.

Understanding Cultural Change: The Return of Core Anthropological Concepts

Core anthropological concepts like culture and society have become vacated categories. The four books reviewed here all represent important efforts to return these concepts to anthropology. Among the key issues discussed here is the importance of such concepts for an understanding of cultural change. What is culture? How does culture change? How is agency related to the process of change?