Becoming sinners : Christianity and moral torment in a Papua New Guinea society / by Joel Robbins.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Robbins, Joel, 1961-

Series:

Ethnographic studies in subjectivity ; 4.

Ethnographic studies in subjectivity ; 4

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Christianity--Papua New Guinea--Urapmin.

Christianity.

Urapmin (Papua New Guinea)--Religious life and customs.

Urapmin (Papua New Guinea).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (413 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Berkeley, Calif. : University of California Press, c2004.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In a world of swift and sweeping cultural transformations, few have seen changes as rapid and dramatic as those experienced by the Urapmin of Papua New Guinea in the last four decades. A remote people never directly "missionized," the Urapmin began in the 1960's to send young men to study with Baptist missionaries living among neighboring communities. By the late 1970's, the Urapmin had undergone a charismatic revival, abandoning their traditional religion for a Christianity intensely focused on human sinfulness and driven by a constant sense of millennial expectation. Exploring the Christian culture of the Urapmin, Joel Robbins shows how its preoccupations provide keys to understanding the nature of cultural change more generally. In so doing, he offers one of the richest available anthropological accounts of Christianity as a lived religion. Theoretically ambitious and engagingly written, his book opens a unique perspective on a Melanesian society, religious experience, and the very nature of rapid cultural change.

Contents:

Part one : becoming sinners

From salt to the law : contact and the early colonial period

Christianity and the colonial transformation of regional relations

Revival, second stage conversion, and the localization of the Urapmin Church

Part two : living in sin

Contemporary Urapmin in millennial time and space

Willfulness, lawfulness, and Urapmin morality

Desire and its discontents : free time and Christian morality

Rituals of redemption and technologies of the self

Millennialism and the contest of values

Christianity, cultural change, and the moral life of the hybrid.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 351-376) and index.

ISBN:

9786612762888

9781282762886

1282762885

9780520937086

0520937082

9781597344838

1597344834

OCLC:

475931969