Tradition and Christianity: Controversial Funerals and Concepts of the Person among the Paiwan,Taiwan

This essay focuses on the complex and dynamic relationships between tradition and Christianity among the Paiwan, an Austronesian‐speaking people in Taiwan. The ethnography comes from a village in which adherents of traditional religion and Presbyterians live in the same area, but in separate quarters. They have close kinship and marriage ties; however, the funeral constitutes a major area of controversy and tension. I juxtapose their contrasting representations of death and funerals to highlight their differences and trace the source of their conflict to the ideological domain of concepts of the person. I argue that the differences in their funerals can be explained by the differences in the ways the two groups articulate two versions of the person. Adherents of traditional religion emphasize the holistic side of the person by calling the spirit of the deceased to reunite with the living, whereas Presbyterians stress the individualistic side of the person and maintain the boundary between the living and the dead. I propose that it is the co‐existence of two distinct concepts of the person and the different ways of articulating those concepts which shape the dynamic but often contradictory relationship between tradition and Christianity.