Matt Tomlinson

Passports to Eternity: Whales’ Teeth and Transcendence in Fijian Methodism

Christianity is often considered a religion of transcendence, in which divinity “goes beyond” human space and time. Recent anthropological scholarship has noted, however, that claims to transcendence must be expressed materially. This chapter examines the ways in which Fijian Methodists attempt to achieve a kind of Christian transcendence in which they escape negative influences of the vanua (land, chiefdoms, and the “traditional” order generally). They do so by offering sperm whales’ teeth to church authorities in order to apologise and atone for the sins of ancestors. Such rituals do not achieve the transcendence they aim for, however, as the whales’ teeth–the material tokens offered to gain divine favour–gain their ritual value precisely because of their attachment to the vanua.

Beliefs Beyond Borders and Communities of Faith

This introduction illustrates the thematics of migration of peoples, faiths and the technologies and materials of religion. By comparing and contrasting old and new religions in a number of different Asian and Pacific settings, we highlight the tensions of globalisation and modernity – the challenges of minority faiths and religious institutions in dominant settings, the work involved in proselytisation, the imaginary and literal links among members of faith communities within and across borders, and the politics of religious adherence.

Reflexivity, Tradition, and Power: The Work of R.R. Nayacakalou

Abstract In this paper, I explore the moral challenges of reflexivity in the contexts of social hierarchy and the politics of tradition. I analyze the work of indigenous Fijian anthropologist R.R. Nayacakalou, a keen social observer who endured professional challenges because of his nonchiefly social status. A student of Raymond Firths at the University of London, Nayacakalou was the first indigenous Fijian to earn his Ph.D. in anthropology. He was managing the Native Land Trust Board in Fiji when he died tragically young in 1972. His reputation has suffered since his death, as his untimely passing has been interpreted by some indigenous Fijians as punishment for his supposed alienation of indigenous lands. Nayacakalous life and work illustrate the ways in which anthropological reflexivity can inspire moral critique from its subjects when a critical stance toward tradition is mistaken as an attack on indigenous sovereignty.

Try the spirits: power encounters and anti-wonder in Christian missions

Abstract Missionaries who attempted to convert Pacific Islanders to Protestant Christianity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries often engaged in public contests meant to demonstrate the power of Jehovah and the weakness of indigenous gods. These ‘power encounters’, as they came to be called, depended on a relationship between wonder and anti-wonder: missionaries were fully invested in the concept of wonder as radical alterity, as the success of their efforts depended on local populations’ willingness and capacity to open up to the previously unimaginable; but to make new encounters with wonder possible, missionaries had to challenge local expectations of spiritual efficacy, denying local sites’ original potential to evoke wonder. In this article, I begin by examining several cases of power encounters in Oceania, including Fiji, Tonga, and Solomon Islands. I then turn specifically to trees as spiritual sites that were prominent in old Fiji – and therefore the target of ax-wielding missionaries – but remain today as sites of a perceived fundamental, indigenous, land-based spiritual efficacy.

Christian Difference. A Review Essay

The discipline called the “anthropology of Christianity” began to gain traction in the early to mid-2000s when interested scholars focused on Christianity as an object of collaborative and comparative cross-cultural analysis. Along with several landmark works of Joel Robbins, one foundational text is Fenella Cannells edited volume The Anthropology of Christianity , published in 2006. In her introductory essay, Cannell poses a pointed question for the volume and the discipline itself: “What difference does Christianity make?” Bracketing the question of whether “difference” can or should be defined (Green 2014), several anthropologists have taken inspiration from Cannell, including Naomi Haynes (2014) in the concluding essay to a recent special issue of Current Anthropology , and myself and Debra McDougall (2013) in an edited volume on Christian politics in Oceania. Difference, as the criterion by which continuity and transformation are evaluated, is arguably the key concept for an effective anthropological engagement with Christianity.