Abstract
By foregrounding space and the role it plays in the experience and recollection of conversion, Dundon illustrates how people conceptualise conversion to Christianity as meaningful. Her analysis of cultural continuity in terms of the parallels between practices and experiences of the ancestors and those of the missionaries draws attention to the importance of the places in which Gogodala live and move, and how they imagine the place to which they will travel to when they die (Wabila/Heaven). Conversion to Christianity, instigated by UFM missionaries and the establishment of the first UFM stations, churches and educational and health facilities, is perceived as a rupture, but not as traumatic and destructive. Rather, conversion is understood as a disjuncture between ‘before’ (when the ancestors did not know where they came from and its significance) and ‘now’ (when this has been revealed to them over time and through the spaces opened up between mission, church and community).
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- 1.
At this time, Prince and Prince (1981, p. 14) write “[t]he 12 Gogodala ‘tenant farmers’ were becoming more a personal retinue of the two missionaries, a mutually dependent community somehow maintaining itself in an environment alien to them all. Albert Drysdale found a growing love in his heart for these Gogodala men and sensed the beginning of a response in them to the message he had come to bring. His desire to visit the Gogodala territory became a fixed resolve.”
- 2.
Several young men followed his lead, and the UFM base at Awaba grew slowly but steadily, although the first Gogodala man at Pisi to declare himself a Christian, Gauba, was killed in 1938 when he fell out of a tree.
- 3.
Yet, despite this and the establishment of the Wasua Bible School, Prince and Prince (1991, p. 20) note that by 1955 “the Gogodala church found itself standing still” and was attracting few new members from outside the community of the faithful. The 1960s and 1970s saw a revival of interest and new conversions to the church, however, which reflected the establishment of the new national church.
- 4.
Prince and Prince (1991, p. 20) note that by 1955, “the Gogodala church found itself standing still.” A revival of attendance at church and in Christianity more generally was initiated by a renewal of church membership instigated by staff at UFM headquarters in Melbourne, Australia.
- 5.
As a result, the last village longhouse at Isago was destroyed in 1979, but by this time, this longhouse was unique in Gogodala villages and had been for a couple of decades.
- 6.
One of the founders was a former ECPNG pastor and chairperson who held a bachelor of divinity from Banz College and family history of close connection to the early missionaries.
- 7.
The founders of the CEF publicly questioned the ongoing relationship between expatriate missionaries and the ECPNG and argued that, as Papua New Guineans, the Gogodala should embrace a “Melanesian” Church rather than one connected so substantially to an expatriate mission.
- 8.
There are many resonances with the experiences of the Gebusi as they moved into Nomad Station from Gasumi village to Gasumi corner and converted to Christianity and adopted a particular style of “becoming modern” as discussed by Bruce Knauft (2002) in Exchanging the Past: A Rainforest World of Before and After.
- 9.
Prince and Prince (1991, p. 122) write that since then, “the Gogodala and neighbouring peoples have had access to high school which would otherwise have been denied them, severely handicapping the development of the whole area.”
- 10.
A major percentage of Gogodala with higher school certificates or university degrees are the children or grandchildren of early Christians and/or pastors.
- 11.
For the Ipili, heaven—a “good place”—is also the place in which new identities and social relations will be created; there will be no white or black or distance between people; no one will have to work or plant their own food (Jacka 2005, p. 649).
- 12.
This has also more recently been explicitly and very publically linked to Israel, which, although not usually conflated with heaven explicitly, certainly is ascribed many of the same characteristics—houses, cars, TVs, and a lifestyle based on leisure and ease (Dundon 2011a).
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Dundon, A. (2012). The Gateway to the Fly: Christianity, Continuity, and Spaces of Conversion in Papua New Guinea. In: Manderson, L., Smith, W., Tomlinson, M. (eds) Flows of Faith. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2932-2_9
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