Читать книгу Salvation in Melanesia - Michael Press - Страница 6
ОглавлениеThe Quest for Christian Renewal
Christianity has had a major impact on the cultural formation of Pacific Islander identities. Pacific Island Christians used to refer to the historical transformation brought about by Christian mission as conversion from darkness to light, from sin to salvation, from taboo to freedom, or from traditional to modern life. This period of initial conversion is finished and only a few people have still personal memories of pre-Christian times. However, conversion and renewal still play a major role in the life of Christians in the South Pacific Islands. The impact of the initial conversion continues, because the receiving parties were actively forming the religion. Secondly, the conversions are reenacted today in personal spiritual conversion. Many Christians regard transformation as the chief aim of their religious life and many churches proclaim the necessity of this aim.
Today, this aim attracts many Christians away from the historical churches which arrived first in the islands, and toward the new churches. Pentecostal churches in particular claim that they convert superficial or “nominal” Christians into true believers and thus fulfill the promises of the New Testament. Of course, the historical churches dispute this claim, knowing that they started with the same aim of conversion and renewal. They criticize the new churches for their unjustified proselytizing. Having been an observer and participant of Christianity in both Fiji and Papua New Guinea (PNG), it seems important for me to assess these claims for transformation and renewal.
This book explores the religious attitudes of Christians in two Protestant churches: the Methodist Church in Fiji (MCF) and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Papua New Guinea (ELCPNG). It is based on my observations, research, and fieldwork during my time as a lecturer at the Pacific Theological College in Suva, the capital of Fiji. The Methodist Church in Fiji comprises around 70 percent of the indigenous Fijians (population about 900,000). It is the first mission church and until today the biggest church in the Fiji Islands. The ELCPNG with around 1.4 million members or 18 percent of the population is the second biggest church after the Catholic Church in PNG (population around 7.8 million).
I begin exploring the history of mission in both churches showing that the form of Christianity in these churches is the result of their history, beginning with the early mission, when patterns of traditional religion merged with the received Christianity, forming a specific Melanesian type of Christianity.1 The conflicts and fusions are outlined between the indigenous Melanesian perceptions of religion and the central Christian doctrine of salvation and renewal. The central part of the book analyzes experiences and life stories to show how the Christian faith has changed individuals and their communities and the ways by which churches educate their members about their faith.
Salvation is the center of the Christian understanding of the believer’s relationship to God. Christian doctrine has described salvation as the process from accepting oneself as a sinner, who has lost the fellowship with God, to the restoration of this fellowship through faith by turning to Jesus Christ, who is the savior through his atoning death on the cross. Biblical faith has its center in the differentiation between the grace of God which is revealed in the gospel of Christ’s death and resurrection and human sin revealed through the law of God.
But how is this concept of salvation perceived by Melanesian Christians? Previous research has asserted that religion in Melanesia is focused on the question of how to gain access to a better life and that in Papua New Guinea the relationship to God is basically utilitarian, serving the goal of acquiring material and spiritual well-being for the community and individuals. In this framework, religion follows a pattern of reciprocity, reward, and punishment.2 Abiding by the law will be rewarded by God. The reward is deserved in this life, because the afterlife is of far less concern than the material blessings here and now. Garry W. Trompf has claimed that the logic of retribution is the overall framework for the society and religion in Papua New Guinea.3 Pastors of the ELCPNG indicated that in the Melanesian context it is difficult to accept the concept of God’s unconditional grace, because people want to do something for their salvation.4 In addition, the concept of salvation through the death of Christ on the cross is hardly acceptable in Melanesia, because suffering used to prove a broken relationship to God while prospering indicates a good relationship.
The tensions between the Melanesian framework of religion and the Christian understanding of salvation have created a specific Melanesian form of faith. This book will compare the lived faith of Christians in Fiji and Papua New Guinea with the Christian doctrines in order to establish the typical elements and problems, which occur through the encounter of Melanesian and Christian religious perspectives. In this comparison Christian doctrines refer to the Protestant teachings about faith and salvation expressed by Martin Luther and modified by John Wesley, the founding fathers and persons of reference for the two churches which are researched. Since both theologians have claimed to be interpreters of the Bible, especially the teachings of the New Testament about salvation, all doctrines need to be related to the Bible as their norm.
In the years 2005 until 2008 I conducted forty semi-structured narrative interviews in the ELCPNG and another thirty-five interviews in Fiji, with Methodist and a few Pentecostal Church members. A workshop was held with students of the ELCPNG Senior Flierl Seminary in Logaweng, enabling the students to interview six church members in rural areas of the ELCPNG. I interviewed church members in the five areas: Asaroka and Goroka in the Highlands and Madang, Finschhafen, and Lae at the coast. Half of the interviewees live in urban areas, half in rural areas. I interviewed mainly pastors and church leaders (thirty-five interviewees in Papua New Guinea and Fiji); the rest are church members, mostly male (thirteen female interviewees). The purpose of the interviews was not to present a representative account but to compare individual life stories or experiences of transformation in faith following the method of narrative interviewing.5
All interviews were conducted in confidentiality, and the names of interviewees are withheld by mutual agreement. All interviewees agreed that the interviews are published in this book. They were asked to describe their religious experiences and the changes which they experienced in their relationship with God. They were encouraged to narrate the stories of their faith development in detail. All interviews were transcribed and indexed using qualitative data software. The interviews were analyzed according to typical features of transformation in faith, which will be explained in chapters 2, 3, and 4. I have used some interviews as examples of conversion or renewal stories, especially in chapter 3. In addition, I used the archives of the two churches: the archive of the Neuendettelsau mission in Germany (concerning the Lutheran Mission in PNG), the State Library of New South Wales in Sydney concerning the reports from the Methodist Mission in Fiji, and the library of the Pacific Theological College in Suva, which holds a number of unpublished theses about these churches.
Chapter 1 of this book provides a brief overview about the methods and theology of early Christian mission, using sources from the missionaries and the respective church histories. Some of the Methodist and Lutheran missionaries gave detailed account of their observations, which allows some reconstruction of how the mission changed the pre-Christian religion and how it was actively adapted by the Melanesian people in the process of reception. The purpose of this chapter is to sketch the major principles employed by the respective missions and the reactions of the indigenous people to them. For instance, in preaching salvation for sinners the missionaries were confused by the lack of guilt feelings on the side of the converts, which they expected from their own conversion experience. The revival-movements of the nineteenth century, most notably in Methodism, focused on the inner experience of conversion and holiness. Some Lutheran missionaries concluded that the idea of the unconditional atoning love of God, which he showed in the death of Christ, was too difficult for Melanesians to grasp; others established Christian communities in which the law of God was regarded as gateway to the blessings of God. The latter proved successful, because it matched with traditional Melanesian patterns of the relationship with the gods. In Fiji, the Methodist missionaries kept working for a second personal conversion and for ongoing sanctification and provided the means for achieving this in class-meetings and revivals. However, these means changed to defining the marks of a good Christian according to moral behavior.
Chapter 2 outlines how the Christian faith is experienced in Fiji and PNG concerning the perceptions of God. It explains the main images of God used by Christians in Fiji and PNG; furthermore, how the culture shapes the experiences and expectations of faith with regards to the family, the clan, and the land. The most important views of the relationship to God are explained in more detail—the relationship of law, retribution, and punishment, which are often subsumed under the biblical image of God as Father. Which representations of the person in its relation to God and the society are employed?
Chapter 3 brings into focus the understanding of renewal and conversion. It asks how transformation is experienced, which factors support or hinder it and which steps are commonly necessary in order to enable and sustain the transformation. Conversion was not only the aim of the Christian mission but also the aim of the present churches to convert Christians from sinners to saints or from passive to active Christians. How do the churches form the members’ perceptions of their relationship with God, and how successful are the churches’ strategies for renewal? How do people respond in their religious search for a better life? How do they integrate their conversion into their life story in the cultures of Fiji and PNG? There are different influences such as the Melanesian religious focus on well-being and reciprocity, the evangelical emphasis on surrender to Christ and God’s laws, or the emphasis on practical experience and proofs. The relationship between religious individualism and the cultural and communal patterns will be discussed.
Both the Methodist Church in Fiji and the ELCPNG emphasize renewal and conversion, but often this transformation does not happen. This explains the attraction and success of the Pentecostal churches, whose principal goal is to convert passive Christians into inspired and “born again” Christians. Methodist and Lutheran Christians have converted to the Pentecostal churches. Therefore, chapter 4 explores and compares features of the Pentecostal perception and practice of renewal in Fiji and PNG, based on interviews with Pentecostal Christians. According to the Pentecostal doctrine, experiences of the Holy Spirit are a necessary “second work of grace.” The cooperation of the believer in the formation of the inner person is a necessary feature of life in the Spirit.6 Do the Pentecostal churches promote a modern individualistic type of religion or do they continue pre-Christian patterns of religious experiences?
Chapter 5 makes a theological evaluation of the transformation into a new person which is promised in the Christian tradition and experienced by many Christians in Fiji or PNG. How did the encounter between Christian mission with its (salvation) historical worldview and the mythological Melanesian religion shape and modify the Christian teachings? What has prevented the transformation into the new person and what supported it? Sociological and anthropological perspectives are included in the analysis about the ways of Melanesian Christians since they met with the global world during the time of the mission. Many Christians have lived, experienced, and taught Christian faith in a certain way whereby obedience to the law of God is expected to return blessings and well-being. Has this prevented transformation through the renewing power of the Christian faith? In order to answer this question I outline the theology of the Reformation, in particular Martin Luther, who opposed a type of religion which has some similarities with the type of religion that I encountered in Fiji and in PNG. John Wesley’s theology of experiential moral development seems to be closer to the type of faith, which we encounter in Fiji and PNG. Wesley’s theology was inherited by the Pentecostal movement. This theological differentiation helps to understand better the development of the Christian faith in Fiji and PNG, and to appreciate its strengths and its problems from the perspective of the theology.
The Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century increased the dynamic of secularization in rejecting any form of mediation between God and humans. In the Western world, Christianity paved the way toward a globalized world, which is now based on a secular, scientific worldview in which economy, politics, science, or health follow their own rules and religion is no longer the foundation of the society. This Western secular worldview has not yet permeated the societies in the South Pacific islands where religion and the laws of the ancestors are still strong. However, there are many conflicts between the traditional beliefs and the practices of a world without God, practices which were introduced in the wake of the economic and political globalization. People live in simultaneous and often conflicting worldviews at the same time, which poses a major obstacle to personal and social transformation. In the final chapter of this book I will look at these conflicting worldviews, through which the Pacific Islanders, once famous for their navigation skills, have to navigate their communities. I will argue that the classical theology of salvation, which was clarified in the Reformation, still offers guidance in this difficult navigation into a new world.
Since the arrival of the explorers, traders, missionaries, and colonial agents, the world of the Melanesian people has dramatically changed. The Christian faith has been an engine of transformation. In adopting and inhabiting the Christian faith Melanesian people have both preserved and transformed their society, worldviews, and convictions, so that a specific Pacific way has emerged, perhaps an alternative to a modernization driven by economic exploitation of the nature and the individualization of the society.
I am grateful to a number of people who have made this book possible. First I thank all Christians in Fiji and Papua New Guinea who have shared their views in the interviews. Mrs. Deidre Madden, a former colleague at Pacific Theological College from Australia, helped proofreading and commenting, and Mission One World of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria sponsored and supported the research.
NOTES
1. According to the ethnological standard, the term “Melanesian” refers to the population and culture of the people of Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, Fiji, and New Caledonia, who share many features of culture and religion, including a similar history of mission and conversion to Christianity. In this book, Melanesian refers mainly to the people of Fiji and Papua New Guinea.
2. Ennio Mantovani, Divine Revelation and the Religions of Papua New Guinea. A Missiological Manual (Melanesian Institute: Goroka, 2000). Gernot Fugmann, “Salvation in Melanesian Religions,” in An Introduction to Melanesian Religions, ed. by Ennio Mantovani (Melanesian Institute: Goroka, 1984), 279–96.
3. Garry W. Trompf, The Logic of Retribution in Melanesian Religions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
4. The Relevance of Lutheran Theology in an Afro-Melanesian Context. Final Report, Neuendettelsau, 1983.
5. Sandra Jovchelovitch and Martin W. Bauer, “Narrative Interviewing,” in Qualitative Researching With Text, Image and Sound, eds. Martin W. Bauer and George Gaskell (London: Sage, 2000), 57–74; Fritz Schütze, “Narrative Repräsentation kollektiver Schicksalsbetroffenheit,” in Erzählforschung, ed. E. Laemmert (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 1983), 568–90.
6. Walter. J. Hollenweger, Pentecostalism. Origins and Developments Worldwide (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 1997), 218–57.
