All things go in pairs,or the sharks will bite: the antithetical nature of Fijian chiefship

Via an historical-cum-ethnographic analysis of the history of chiefship in the vanua (country) of Sawaieke, central Fiji, this essay argues against the prevailing view that Fijian social relations are fundamentally hierarchical. Rather social relations in general and chiefship in particular are predicated on complementary and opposing concepts of equality and hierarchy, such that neither can become, in Dumont's terms, ‘an encompassing value’. This radical opposition between equality and hierarchy, Hegelian in form, is fundamental to Fijian dualism, so it pervades Fijian daily life and informs, for example, sexual relations, kinship, chiefship and notions of the person. ‘The household’ is the basic kinship unit and while relations within households are hierarchical, relations across households are those of balanced reciprocal exchange, epitomised in the relation between cross-cousins as equals and affines. The analysis shows that Fijian chiefship — past or present — cannot, as ‘value’, encompass the pervasive antithesis between hierarchy and equality. Rather its efficacy and its continuity require that hierarchy and equality remain in tension with one another as opposing, and equally important, concepts of social relations.     

Capital Shares: The Way Back into the With of Christianity

Abstract

In the ten years since the publication of Michael Hardt's and Antonio Negri's Empire, the relationship between Christianity and global capital has received increasing theological attention among the adherents, critics, sympathizersssa, and apostates of Radical Orthodoxy. At stake in this conversation is the possibility that Christianity might provide a universal ontology sufficient to ground a counter-hegemonic, specifically socialist, praxis. One question that many of these authors rarely address, however, is the extent to which Christian universalism has been responsible for the emergence of global capital in the first place. This article will address this profound split at the heart of a tradition; that is, Christianity's culpability for and resistance to global capital. To this end, "Capital Shares" sketches the aporia of Christianity's relation to Empire and then appeals to Jean-Luc Nancy's "deconstruction of Christianity"; in particular, his attempt to find "a source of Christianity, more original than Christianity itself, that might provoke another possibility to arise."     

Editorial

For John Stuart Mill, Matthew Arnold, and their later Victorian respondents, the Stoic writer and second-century CE Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius represented a test-case for the sufficiency of the ostensibly masculine practices of askesis and detachment as ethical ideals, specifically in the context of Christianity. A brief passage in Mill's On Liberty (1859) comparing Stoic ethics with Christian ethical practice provoked an extended response from Arnold in an 1863 review essay. Mill and Arnold both used comparisons with Christianity to trace the contours and to explore the limits of Marcus Aurelius's ‘lovable’ nature; in doing so, Arnold in particular enacted a peculiar kind of historical sympathy for both the Marcus Aurelius that was and for a missed rapprochement between classical and Christian ethics. For a series of later writers, including freethinkers, religious conservatives and liberal Christians, Marcus Aurelius either promised or threatened to reconcile Stoicism with Christianity. Assessing the emperor in the light of Christianity became a means both for producing or denying a link to the classical past and for describing the condition of Christianity in England. A key point of contention for these writers and a landmark in the broader debate over Victorian secularization was the question of Marcus Aurelius' role in the torture and killing of 48 Christians at Lugdunum (Lyons) in 177 CE.     

Anthropology,Self-determination and Aboriginal Belief in the Christian God

Over the past forty years the Aboriginal people of Galiwin'ku (Elcho Island) in north-east Arnhem Land have successfully incorporated Christianity into their world view. However, a Uniting Church report characterises members of this same Yolngu (Aboriginal) community as being overwhelmed with feelings of inferiority and powerlessness and unable to function within structures established by Balanda (non-Aborigines). This paper contrasts the ways in which Christianity has helped break down the separation between cultural groups with its function as a structure for explicit discourse on Aboriginal/non-Aboriginal relations and inequality. While some Elcho Islanders see anthropologists as people who listen in order to work for Aborigines, Aboriginal Christians see them and other ‘scientists’ as attempting to undermine Aboriginal belief in the Christian God. They are seen as degrading a spiritual movement which has its foundation in the Dreaming and as posing a potential threat to the momentum of Aboriginal directed change in the community.     

‘We visit the colo towns … when it is safe to go’: Indigenous Adoption of Methodist Christianity in the Wainibuka and Wainimala Valleys,Fiji, in the 1870s

ABSTRACT

The Methodist mission in Fiji was from its inception maritime in nature and was slow to move into the interior of the largest island, Viti Levu. In the 1870s, only two European missionaries ministered to most of Viti Levu, leaving the greater part of evangelism and teaching in the hands of Fijian native ministers (talatala itaukei) and particularly teachers (vakavuvuli). Using evidence from mission and secular travellers in the eastern highland areas of the Wainimala and Wainibuka valleys, this paper suggests that the measles epidemic of 1875, while horrific in its direct effects, did not lead to widespread rejection of Christianity in the valleys of eastern Colo. Rather, Methodism progressed slowly, developing in ways that maintained Fijian priorities and customary practices, and the forms of education and fundraising adopted included Indigenous modes of learning and exchange.     

Drinking to Mana and Ethnicity: Trajectories of Yaqona Practice and Symbolism in Eastern Fiji

This paper sets out a transformational history of yaqona use in Fiji from first contact with Europeans to present times. Trying to transcend the familiar history/structure dichotomy, two relatively separate trajectories of Fijian practice are identified, both incorporating enduring cultural premises, both logically and historically transformative. In the older of these trajectories, yaqona drinking is transformed ritually to promote or block the circulation of mana in embodied Fijian ‘lands’. In the younger pathway, by contrast, secular variants of yaqona ceremonial are invented to ethnic effect as one particular transformation of a modern structure that, against the grain of ritual practice, tends to detach ethnic Fijians from ancestral powers. It is suggested that, whilst, in appropriate spaces, contemporary ethnic objectifications of yaqona are formulated in opposition to other ethnic presences as expressions of ‘authentic’ Fijian‐ness, the underlying ritual transformations of yaqona produce a range of Fijian states that exceed this authenticity and challenge the otherwise hegemonic claims of ethnicity.     

Bradley Holt,Thirsty for God: A Brief History of Christian Spirituality

Abstract

In this essay, I consider the relationship between more radically open conceptions of democracy and the recent "return of religion" as the return of distinct, particular religions. The radical democracy of figures such as Derrida, Badiou, and Hardt and Negri is found to be not radical enough to be open to the particular religious other. Derrida's "religion without religion" does violence to the particularity of concrete religious traditions, Badiou appropriates Paul's universalism while abandoning the particularity and difference in his conception of collective identity, and Hardt and Negri advocate a "politics of love" while severing that love from its ground— namely, God. I then show a way of rethinking both society and Christianity so that Christianity finds a place in society and society makes room for Christianity. A radical Christianity devoid of self-privilege and triumphalism provides a model for an intersubjectivity of love in which the other really comes first. Paul's radical conception of membership in the body of Christ accomplishes precisely what radical democracy fails to do: it allows for heterophony as well as polyphony, and incoherence as well as commonality. It is only when church and society allow the possibility of incoherence and heterophony that they are truly open to the other, and it is only when they are truly open to the other that they satisfy the demands of a truly radical democracy and radical Christianity.     

Ritual Appropriation and Appropriate Ritual: Christian Healing and Adaptations of Asian Religions

This article analyzes the uses of the past for liberal Christians who borrow from Asian healing‐related practices such as yoga, Buddhist meditation and Reiki. It focuses on questions of historicity, both in the ways liberal Christians validate their syncretism by drawing connections to the Christian past, and in the way that longer histories of orientalism and colonialism shape current Christian interactions with Asian religions. Centred on the narratives of three North American Anglicans, and informed by attendance at their various healing services, meditation groups, yoga classes and Reiki sessions, this article is evidence of a wider liberal Christian embrace of difference via ritual. The article argues that these liberal Christians use “ritual proximity” to bring together symbols, acts and memories from various times and cultures, thus constructing new lineages of religious inheritance within webs of Christian ritual.     

Christianity and Secularisation in the West and the Middle East: A Theological Stance

In this article I argue that Christianity is essentially secular. Hence, secularisation not only has a theological connotation concerning Christian faith but also it is the highest and most perfect realisation of Christian religion, since it signifies the cross that is in the centre of Christian faith. As Christians take upon themselves secularisation as an existential choice, namely the powerlessness of God and of the human being, they simultaneously take the worldly‐human existence as “here” and “now” upon themselves. I will argue that this is the culmination of Reformation. Further, I want to demonstrate that secular Christianity, in the sense given in this article, remains a challenge for both Western and Eastern worlds. In order to accomplish this I will reflect in the first part of this article — from a theological point of view — upon some sociological interpretations or theories concerning mainly secularisation in Western Europe and also the contemporary socio‐political scene in the Middle East. In the second part of the article I will present several Western and Eastern theological positions that defend secularisation, and through their contributions I will construct my own theological stance for secular Christianity.     

Yangjiao or the ��Other��? Christianity and Chinese society in the second half of the nineteenth century

This article explores the relationship between Christianity and Chinese society in the second half of the nineteenth century by re-examining the primary sources of anti-Christian movements. The first part shows how Christian churches broke the dominance of the Qing government over local society. Conflicts between Christianity and Chinese religion were often transformed into political confrontations between churches and the Qing bureaucracy. The second part analyzes how Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism interpreted Christianity, with an emphasis on how to understand the perception of Christianity in Chinese society. Exploring broader societal perceptions of Christianity—and not just those expressed in the writings of the Confucian literati—allows for a more nuanced understanding of Chinese interpretations of Christianity. The third part studies the relationship between churches and Chinese religious sects. On the one hand, in the language of anti-Christian movements such as those of the Zaili and Cai sects, Christianity was the hateful “Other.” On the other hand, in the process of preaching Christianity, churches themselves experienced a period of transmutation: they recruited into the church not only non-religious civilians but also the followers of popular religions. For a long period, Christianity was called yangjiao, the “foreign religion,” making it the “Other.” Missionaries started to feel an urgency to reject their identity as the “Other” after the harrowing experience of the Boxer Movement.     

美国历史上反犹主义的宗教文化根源

反犹主义在欧洲基督教世界是一种普遍性的反对犹太人及犹太教的历史现象。反犹主义运动也一直伴随着犹太人的美国移民史。美国作为一个以基督教为主导的国家,它所秉承的基督教文化传统无疑对其国内反犹主义运动起了首要的推动作用,为反犹主义的孳生和高涨提供了适宜的土壤。探讨这一问题,对于认识和把握多元民族国家中的文化）中突与整合,对于加强族群间的和解与合作、消除种族主义和偏狭的宗教情结,有着深刻的现实意义。     

Moving Words: Christian Language and the Modern World

Within the anthropology of Christianity, much attention has been paid to the convergence of Christianity with modern understandings of language. In this essay, I review scholarship that traces the historical connections between modern and Christian views of language, particularly in British colonial attacks on Hindu language practices, and I examine two recent ethnographies that offer different vantage points on the variety of ways in which contemporary Christians use language in a self-consciously modern way.     

A Response to Tomás Halík

Abstract

The Churches were significant players in the debate surrounding what has been called Britain's "lost opportunity" in the 1940s and 50s to play a leading role in building a united Europe. This article focuses on Christian theological and historical assumptions about humanity as a universal community, the nation and the Church. It examines Christian discourse about the political dimension of these communities and the part that Christianity as a belief system should ideally play between them. It then outlines the "Christendom" narrative, which represented medieval Europe as a model for the future of Europe, as a partial realization of the ideal alignment of power and culture, which in its decay was the cause of international crisis. Finally, some of the points of tension between Christendom, British national identity, and a united Europe among Christians are discussed.     

What was the Religious Crisis of the 1960s?

The crisis of the 1960s is now central to debates about religious change and secularisation in the twentieth century. However, the nature of the crisis is contested. Using Hugh McLeod's The Religious Crisis of the 1960s (2007) as a starting point, this article explores the issues that divide scholars — the origin and length of the crisis (was it revolution or evolution?); was it generated more by developments within the Christian churches or by developments without them; and what was the relative importance of liberal Christianity versus conservative Christianity in the development and legacy of the crisis? It argues that secularisation of the period should be regarded as mostly a sudden and shocking event, based on external threats, and reflected in the churches dividing between liberals and conservatives in ways that were to become ever more militant as the century wore on.     

The Public Role of Religion: A Central-European Perspective

Abstract

Church leaders in Europe frequently lament that the environment is non-religious and unchristian. Reflecting on how the European countries which fell under Communist domination have adjusted to the post-Communist era, the paper advances the view that the situation should be characterized differently. European Christianity stands on the threshold of another of its historical metamorphoses. The continent is not simply unchristian or non-religious, but neither is not religious in a Christian way. Christianity is not the religion of present-day Europe, and at the same time European Christianity can no longer be seen as a "religion."     

Untangling liberal democracy from territoriality: from ethnic/civic to ethnic/territorial nationalism

The term ‘civic nationalism’ as it is used today in nationalism studies is misleading because it combines territorial collective identity with liberal‐democratic values. As such, for example, it does not provide much insight into the comparison of Azerbaijani and Georgian concepts of national identity. Azerbaijan, arguably an authoritarian country, has used unconditional citizenship by birth on territory (jus soli) and refused to naturalize Azeri co‐ethnics from Georgia. Georgia, seemingly a developed liberal democracy, hasn't practiced any jus soli, has bestowed citizenship on Georgian co‐ethnics abroad and refused it to its ethnic minorities. These two cases testify to the need to revise the term ‘civic nationalism’, inapplicable to many, especially non‐Western, empirical cases of national identity. By establishing distinct historical narratives based on premodernist sources, the article argues that the ethnic/territorial tension is premodern, which explains why civic nationalism has a premodern (territoriality) and a modern (liberal‐democratic values) component. Territorial collective identity, in its contrast to an ethnic one, has deep historical roots and needs to be separated from the overall umbrella of civic nationalism. Such an approach resolves many current theoretical objections to ethnic/civic dichotomy, a ubiquitous, but still insufficiently understood, heuristic tool.     

The Queen's preferred chant and Greece's nineteenth century Orthodox‐Christian national problem

When in 1875 Queen Olga of Greece insisted a multi‐part chant be introduced in the Athens Cathedral, a widespread debate about the influence of Western European culture upon Greek‐Orthodox tradition was initiated in Athens. With a significant part of this debate originating in mid‐century Vienna, and Russian musical influences affecting the form of the otherwise ancient Byzantine chant, the issue of polyphony acquired cultural‐historical dimensions intimately connected to historical continuity and the Orthodox‐Christian musical tradition. The debate transformed rapidly from a musicological enquiry into a matter of national identity, and an otherwise innocent aesthetic choice showcased the musical dimensions of Greek national claims at continuity. This article examines the historical contingencies that fuelled this debate, showcases the importance of patronage for musical transference and highlights the potency of Greek national Orthodoxy as a carrier of historical continuity for the ethnic group, here seen through music.     

Lactantius's “Modern” Conception of Religio*

Scholars of religion sometimes argue that a distinctively modern conception of religion takes religion to be a trans-cultural category, divisible into “true” and “false” versions, of which Christianity is the core type. Thus, according to the so-called modern conception of religion, every culture has its own religion. Some are true (paradigmatically Christianity), some are false. This paper argues that these ideas were present in Lactantius's (c. 250–325) conception of religio. It shows this by presenting Lactantius's development of a theory of religio. This theory was the product of Lactantius combining one Ciceronian conception of religio and a Christian origin-story about where religio comes from. Lactantius used this theory to analyse Christianity and what he took to be its competitors.