local, regional and worldly interconnections: the catholic and united churches in lihir, papua new...
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Local, Regional and WorldlyInterconnections: The Catholic andUnited Churches in Lihir, Papua NewGuineaSusan R. HemerVersion of record first published: 13 Feb 2011.
To cite this article: Susan R. Hemer (2011): Local, Regional and Worldly Interconnections: TheCatholic and United Churches in Lihir, Papua New Guinea, The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology,12:1, 60-73
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Local, Regional and WorldlyInterconnections: The Catholic andUnited Churches in Lihir, PapuaNew GuineaSusan R. Hemer
At the local level, globalisation has often been interpreted as being passively accepted or
heroically resisted. In the specific context of Christianity in the Lihir Islands, Papua New
Guinea, this paper challenges both conceptualisations. The trajectories of the Catholic
and United churches in Lihir began similarly but have diverged: neither can be cast
simply as localised or globalised. To understand the complex historical, local, regional
and global manifestations and interconnections of Lihirian Christianity I draw inspi-
ration from Tomlinson’s suggestion of ‘complex connectivity’.
Keywords: Christianity; Catholic Church; United Church; Globalisation; Localisation;
Catholic Charismatic Renewal; Confirmation; Legion of Mary; Pindik
Introduction
Christianity has been a part of Lihirians’ lives since early last century. There are a
number of different churches: the Catholic church has the majority of adherents, the
United church has a strong presence in about eight villages, a Christian Life Centre
(CLC) is present in one village, and small numbers of Seventh Day Adventists are
scattered throughout the islands.1 My key fieldsite, Mahur Island, was staunchly
Catholic.2 Consequently in this paper I explore the practices and experiences of
Lihirians and their churches with a focus on Catholicism. The relationships between
Lihirians, the churches and the local, regional and global context is complex. In my
initial reflections on the Catholic and United church services, Catholicism seemed
more localised than the United church:
Correspondence to: Dr Susan R. Hemer, Discipline of Anthropology and Development Studies, University of
Adelaide, South Australia 5005, Australia. Email: [email protected]
ISSN 1444-2213 (print)/ISSN 1740-9314 (online)/11/010060-14
# 2011 The Australian National University
DOI: 10.1080/14442213.2010.535844
The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology
Vol. 12, No. 1, February 2011, pp. 60�73
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I slip a cassette tape into the player, and I am suddenly transported back to theCatholic church in Makapa hamlet on Mahur Island in April 1998. It’s GoodFriday; the sun is shining, the green grass of the open oval is cluttered with peopleundertaking the fourteen stations of the cross. Conches are sounding, and peopleare singing songs about Jesus in Tok Pisin to traditional tunes called Yiargnen.These are songs to express the loss of the deceased. Many people have blackenedtheir hair as a sign of sorrow.
New Year’s Eve 1997. I attend United church in Samo village on the main island ofLihir. The church service starts at about 9 p.m. and lasts for many hours. Thechurch is bare of decoration other than an altar cloth with a picture of a cross on itand a clock on the wall. Six pastors preach in turn. They are dressed formally, withmany wearing ties. The congregation is split by gender into the two sides of thechurch. People start hymns from the floor of the church in Tok Pisin, andsometimes the pastors preach over the top.
My initial understandings were based on the sensory experience of church
services*the sounds of music and language, the visual impact of dress and
decoration, the smell of local plants and flowers. Further analysis revealed a more
nuanced understanding of the complexity of interconnections, historically and
spatially, between Lihirian Christianity and its regional and global context.
In the past globalisation has been seen in terms of the local being homogenised by
the global, or, in contrast, as the local heterogenising the global (Friedman 1995). As
Robertson argued, ‘the very idea of locality is sometimes cast as a form of opposition
or resistance to the hegemonically global’ (1995, p. 29). He goes on to argue that
globalisation encompasses both the compression of the world through the linking of
localities, and the ‘invention’ of locality (Robertson 1995, p. 35).
In contrast, Foster (2005) has argued that people
everywhere meet what comes to them over the horizon with neither passiveacceptance nor heroic resistance. This unhappy and limited choice*like theunmediated opposition between ‘‘the local/indigenous’’ and ‘‘the global/foreign’’*is a consequence of bipolar theory rather than ethnographic andhistorical enquiry. (Foster 2005, p. 167)
Concepts such as syncretism or hybridity have been employed to overcome this
opposition. Ahrens (2002, p. 246) suggested that missionisation in Papua New Guinea
‘promotes a local initiative by which people appropriate Christianity and make it
relevant within [their] horizon’. Papua New Guineans are neither passive nor
resistant, but are agents in hybridising Christianity to their own ends. Robbins has
explicitly refused the ‘distinction between indigenizing differentiation and globalizing
homogenization’ to argue that Pentecostalism in Papua New Guinea is ‘a prime
example of a widespread kind of cultural hybridization’ (Robbins 2004, p. 119). Yet,
despite Rosaldo’s argument that cultures are hybrids ‘all the way down’ (1995, p. xv),
it is difficult to escape the essentialism inherent in a term borrowed from biology
which implies a mixture between two zones of purity as Tomlinson has argued
(1999, p. 143). It is necessary to move beyond such explicit or implicit bipolar or
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oppositional models to generate new insight on the relationships that underpin the
dissemination, interpretation, experience and acceptance of Christianity in Melanesia.
Foster (2008) proposed that sophisticated analyses of globalisation are necessary to
comprehend the relationships that pertain in his case, to the spread, interpretation,
use and meaning of commodities such as Coke. Yet the same could be easily argued
for the movement of people, ideas or knowledge. Tomlinson (1999) has argued that
relationships, global and local, are forms of ‘complex connectivity’, contending that
while there is an appearance of the world as more compressed, places are not
objectively closer together. Instead, due to the ‘multivalent connections that bind our
practices, our experiences and our political, economic and environmental fates
together’ we experience distance in different ways (Tomlinson 1999, pp. 2�3). These
linkages can vary from social-institutional relationships, to the ‘flow’ of goods and
ideas, to the connections provided by modern technologies. Connections are thus
through different modalities, are historically constituted and are not of simple bipolar
(local/global) form. This suggested complexity of connections between people, places,
things and ideas provides a way of thinking about relationships between the local,
regional and global both historically and contemporaneously. As Douglas contends,
‘Most Melanesians experience Christianity neither as foreign or imposed nor as a
separate existential domain but as lived spiritual reality and a powerful ritual practice’
(2005, p. 5) and this reflects my understanding of Christian Lihirians’ experience of
their worlds.
Christianity in Lihir
The Methodists arrived in Lihir first in 1875, shortly followed by the Missionaries of
the Sacred Heart (MSC) in 1882 (Aerts 1998, p. 105; Mather 1984, p. vii). Both
Methodist Missionaries, the forerunners of the United Church, and MSC began
missionisation of the New Guinea islands from bases in the Gazelle Peninsula and
Duke of York Islands in East New Britain. They faced considerable difficulties in
extending their influence to New Ireland with a lack of teachers and pastors, constant
illness, transportation problems and concerns with hostile or even deadly receptions
in many areas (Rooney 1881�3 in Mather 1984, Threlfall 1975). Initial work in
New Ireland was on the south western side, and it took many years to reach Lihir on
the north east. Initial contact with Lihir appears to have been made by the MSC in
1902 (Trompf 1991, p. 169), and by the Methodists in 1919 (Threlfall 1975, p. 97).
The MSC was founded in Rabaul by priest Andre Navarre, who was concerned
with the Catholic church becoming part of people’s lives. Once made Bishop in 1887,
he directed priests to respect the people and to ‘attempt to become one of them’ and
to learn their local language. He advised priests ‘to be wary of interference with
customs, social structures and life style in general’ (Aerts 1998, p. 111). He advocated
the use of catechists, or lay ministers, to give religious instruction, as this would
localise the Church and make it appear less foreign than would the use of overseas
teachers (Aerts 1998, p. 112). Despite this, the MSC had large numbers of overseas
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priests located in the New Guinea islands, mostly from Germany. In contrast, the
Methodist mission at the time relied on a small number of ministers from Britain and
Australia, and a number of teachers and ministers from areas where they previously
worked such as Samoa, Fiji and Tonga (Rooney 1881 in Mather 1984). This led to the
Methodist mission being named ‘The Black Church’ in the 1890s (Threlfall 1975,
p. 67).
By the 1930s both the Catholic Missionaries of the Sacred Heart and the
Methodists had constructed mission stations on the main island of the Lihir group,
Niolam. The Catholic Mission was more influential, with an estimated 85 per cent of
the Lihirian population Catholic in 1986 (Filer & Jackson 1986). Catholicism not
only provided Christian worship, but also health care, which it continues to this day,
and education. The outer islands of the group, Malie, Masahet and Mahur are wholly
Catholic, and have long been considered the most devoted in Lihir (Filer & Jackson
1986; Bainton 2010, personal communication). The Methodist mission, now United
Church is mostly restricted to five villages on the more isolated, less populated
western side of the main island, and two villages on the northern side. There is a
long-standing, clear demarcation of territory between the Catholic and United
churches, with all but two or three villages supporting a single denomination.
The trajectories of Catholic and United churches both started from the base in the
New Guinea islands, and both began permanent work in Lihir at about the same
time. Despite the position of Andre Navarre of the MSC, in practice both churches
initially had a relatively hostile approach to local cultural traditions. Although
difficult to decipher with few reliable written records, both discouraged or banned
certain practices, such as magic and sorcery, female initiation, and certain rituals
related to pregnancy and mortuary ceremonies. Additionally, they encouraged
changes such as deep burial, public cemeteries, education and certain forms of
bodily comportment (cf. Eves 1996, 2004).
The approaches of the two churches have diverged since the 1960s, particularly
with respect to local customs and practices. With the findings of the Second Vatican
Council (1962�65), customs that were not in direct opposition to the Catholic
church were to be allowed, even encouraged. Church rituals changed, the use of the
vernacular was encouraged, and lay people allowed much greater participation
(Komonchak 1990). This process has been taken up with gusto in Lihir.
Local and Regional: Catholicism and United
It was primarily a sensory understanding that led me to see the Catholic church as
interwoven with its Lihirian location. As in the vignette about Easter, music provided
the most obvious bridge between Catholic worship and Lihirian practices. While in
many services songs were sung in Tok Pisin from the Yumi Lotu book (1985; to tunes
such as ‘When the Saints go Marching in’), for a large proportion of services, and
certainly for special services, tunes were often local with words either in Tok Pisin or
in the Lir language. These were accompanied by local instruments such as hour glass
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drums (a kndr), slit drums (a glamuit), bamboo clappers and more rarely by conch
shells.
Language in Catholic services was always a mix of Tok Pisin and Lir language.
Often parts of the Bible were read in Tok Pisin and then expanded upon in Lir. Many
of the common prayers were translated into Lir by Father Neuhaus, one of the
German Priests stationed in Lihir in the 1940s. Through music and language, the
sounds of Catholicism resonate and connect with Lihir people’s experience of their
customary practices.
For key church events and feast days people would wear Lihir forms of decoration
such as a bunch of scented herbs (karon and zingil) or a cordyline plant hung at the
back of their necks as they would for major customary feasts. Women dressed in
bright meri-blouses and men in shorts or in laplaps. For Good Friday of Easter in
1998 people blackened their hair as a sign of grief for Jesus. Rarely, people would boil
coconut milk to make ku and shine their skin with this mixture for church events as
they would for major customary feasts. Major church events were also always
accompanied by feasting. Hence important days in Catholic ritual were constituted as
major customary events through the sensorial experiences of sight, smell and taste.
While the Catholic church in Lihir has embraced practices specific to the local
culture, the same cannot be said for the United church at Samo Village where I spent
some weeks during my doctoral fieldwork and made numerous visits during 2000�2.
This church was spartan in comparison with Catholic churches: there was no
decoration, no crucifix, statues or pictures of Jesus or Mary. Seating was separated by
gender, with women and girls sitting on the right side of the church, rather than in
family groups or with friends as is the case on Mahur. Like on Mahur, church services
were announced with the use of three warning bells to allow people adequate time to
awake, get ready and go to the church. Yet people still drifted in late, while those
already there sang choruses. In August 1998 the pastor was an older local man who
was involved with kastam, and had been through a process of customary feasting
called Tunkanut (see Hemer 2002, in press). For a particular church service he wore a
light blue long sleeve shirt tucked in to a beige laplap with a belt and a tie. At the time
I commented that he ‘looked like photos of Fijian guys [ministers] from 100 years
ago’ (Fieldnotes 10 August 1998).
Services in the United church were also conducted in a mixture of Tok Pisin and
Lir language, however this was the only marker I could find that suggested I was in
Lihir rather than somewhere else. Hymns were drawn from a book: words were often
in Tolai language, and the tunes were not Lihirian. More common than hymns were
choruses in Tok Pisin, many of which were different to the songs used in Catholic
services. For many choruses, prayers were held at the same time, with people praying
loudly simultaneously. Music consisted of guitars and tambourines, often with the
use of an amplifier. This form of music, often called a ‘string band’, is now common
in many places in Papua New Guinea, and many cassettes of such music are available
for purchase. Methodist missionaries in the 1880s had suggested that traditional
tunes should be used in hymns, yet this was rejected by people from New Britain and
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New Ireland, as ‘all traditional music was associated with spirit-worship and sorcery;
even if Christian words were set to such tunes, they would arouse old associations’
(Threlfall 1975, p. 59).
The style of dress and music, and the use of Tolai language made the United church
services a ‘regional’ rather than localised experience. This was prompted in the early
years of missionisation by the reliance on South Sea ministers rather than Europeans,
and the decision that it was too difficult to provide translations of the Bible and songs
into all languages of the region. In the late 1960s the Methodist mission combined
with the London Missionary Society and the Presbyterian church to become the
United Church in Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands (Trompf 1991), and
in 1996 it became the Papua New Guinea United Church. In its local practice it
appears as a national church, a regional or country-wide institution rather than being
localised at the grass-roots.
The lack of integration between the United church and other aspects of life in
Samo was also surprising. During 1998 the grass went uncut at the Samo school
which bordered onto the church area, leading to the school being closed. There was
confusion about the relationship between the school and the church: should the grass
at the school be cut on Government Day (Monday) or Mission Day (Friday)? The
pastor also bemoaned the loss of time to too much kastam wok, despite his own
involvement in kastam. Others blamed the uncut grass on too many church activities,
and on a lack of leadership. Such conflict between school, church and kastam never
arose on Mahur: they didn’t conceive of these aspects of village life as being in conflict
or competition. Perhaps this lack of integration in Samo was the reason for the
relatively poor attendance at church on occasions. In a village of about 350 people,
only 100 attended a particular church service in August 1998. Even services held the
day after a week of customary feasting, were not significantly impacted upon on
Mahur.
Catholic church services in Lihir were conducted by local catechists trained on
New Ireland. Many Lihirians are trained at least to the level of catechist, and many
beyond this level, to be nuns, brothers or priests. Local catechists were assisted in the
organisation of weekly services by groups who conducted other parts of the service,
such as leading the singing and doing Bible readings. These groups were organised by
clan, so each of the four clans on Mahur took the lead in the week’s services in turn.
These groups would meet in the days prior to services to choose songs and practice
these, as well as clean and decorate the church. Church services drew upon local
forms of organisation and supported these in a different context.
During most of my doctoral fieldwork, the Catholic church was overseen in Lihir
by an expatriate American Priest, Steve Boland. He was one of the most obvious
continuing reminders of the imported nature of Catholicism. Yet his presence was
rarely felt on Mahur, given his heavy responsibilities for the parishes on the Lihir and
Anir Islands. When his term in Lihir finished, the Bishop of New Ireland Province,
Ambrose Kiapseni, a Lihirian from Masahet Island, reported to me that Father Steve
would be the last non-National priest in Lihir*leadership of the Catholic church is
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becoming localised. This is part of Catholic church policy: overseas recruitment was
reduced in the late 1960s, and overseas priests were gradually replaced with local ones
as they retired (Aerts 1998, p. 108). By the 1990s there were over 200 fully trained
Catholic theologians in Papua New Guinea (Ahrens 1998, p. xiii).
The Confirmation/Pindik Ceremony
Perhaps one of the most obvious linkages between Catholicism and its location
evident during my initial fieldwork in Lihir was Confirmation and Pindik. During
1998 grade five children on Mahur undertook Confirmation in the Catholic Church,
and this process was combined with initiation into Pindik. This is a well-established
biennial amalgamation on the outer islands of the Lihir group, and has been
occurring for 25 to 30 years. It was particularly encouraged by Father Tom Burns,
who was based on Lihir for some 15 years beginning in the 1970s in the post-Vatican
II era (Father Steve Boland 2010: personal communication). In the past Pindik was
for the teaching of specific skills needed for adulthood. A few people said it was ‘like a
college’, and the initiates were taught such things as garden and fishing techniques
and magic*all those things needed for everyday living. Now Pindik has been
dovetailed with Confirmation, and teaching is about being a good Christian.
In many respects, Pindik is spoken of as an ‘entity’, personified and present in a
specific place. Pindik has a spirit, which is awoken or ‘stood upright’ (tu: stand up)
for the teaching of the initiates and the ceremonies, and then put back to sleep or sat
down (kez: sit). The spirit of Pindik is considered dangerous, being able to walk the
village and harm people who disobey the laws in place during the time Pindik is
‘awake’. People should not wander around at night or joke about the power of Pindik.
Before Pindik is awoken, structures are built within a coconut frond fence
(benben). These structures can take many forms, according to the imagination of the
‘boss’ of Pindik. However, the painted designs (circles on a black background
representing eyes) remain constant. Once these structures have been built, Pindik can
be awoken. In 1998 the built structure was a boat, painted with seven circles to
indicate both the eyes of Pindik and the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church.
The preparations for the May celebration began in late January, and by April were
consuming the attention, time and resources of customary and church leaders on
Mahur as well as the lay population.
The ceremony of Confirmation/Pindik was a joint ceremony encompassing both
kastam (traditional practice) and lotu (church practice). The initiates were decorated:
the girls in a grass skirt (muel) and decoration over their chests (sasie), and the boys
with leaves. They were led into the wel (boat structure) which was enclosed in the
benben directly in front of the church early in the morning on the day of the
ceremony. At the other end of the village men painted in red and black emerged from
a men’s house, lined up and began to sing and play the music of Pindik, while
walking and dancing from the north end of the village. The walls of the benben were
then broken to reveal the initiates to all those watching, including the bishop,
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Ambrose Kiapseni, and the parish priest, Father Steve Boland. The ‘door’ of the boat
was opened and one by one the initiates emerged after Ngalparok placed knus3 on
their heads. When this was done the master of ceremonies,4 Peter Marwan said:
‘Nau lotu kastam i pinis. Nau yumi go long sait bilong lotu confirmation.’(Tok Pisin: Now customary worship is finished. Now we will do confirmationworship)
We then all moved into the church and the children received the sacrament of
confirmation. There was singing (mostly in Tok Pisin) with music played on kundu
drums by those who played for Pindik. Later I wrote:
What struck me later as I listened to the tape [cassette tape of the music] was thatthe tune for giving sacrament was the same as that when Ngalparok put knus [onthe children]. And when we sang ‘Kam God Spirit Takodor’ in the Haus Lotu [TokPisin: church], it was the tune they used for breaking [the] benben. Thus the lotuand kastam sides were like interlocked mirror images. (Fieldnote book 9, p. 82)
Pindik is known and practiced in many places in New Ireland, however, people in
Lihir dispute any suggestion that it originated outside their location (cf. Wagner
1986). They stated that in the past there were six Pindik groups in Lihir: two on
Mahur, one for men and one for women, and four other Pindik groups for males on
the other islands in the Lihir group. While said to be indigenous to Lihir by Lihirians
themselves, other cultural groups on New Ireland have had groups or ‘cults’ that are
termed Pindik, a Tolai word meaning ‘secret’. For the Usen Barok, Pindik is a word
that refers to any sort of secret society, each of which then have individual names
such as Buai, Tubuan and Taberan (Wagner 1986, pp. 122�40). However for Lihirians
it seems that Pindik refers not to the class of cults or secret societies, but to a specific
one. They have claimed Pindik as their own.
Lihirians have also claimed Catholicism and its values as their own. Histories on
Mahur tell of Tgorous, the man who took up a golgol plant (used to taboo areas and
trees) and travelled throughout Mahur and then the rest of Lihir declaring ‘A maniel!
A maniel!’ (Peace! Peace!). It is said that he brought the time of warfare and
cannibalism to an end before the arrival of either the church or German
administration. This history declares in retrospect that Mahurians began to value
peace and cooperation before the coming of the church. Whether this is ‘true’ is
beside the point, Mahurians have declared the values of Catholicism to be their
own*a picture of Tgorous, in fact, was painted on the front of the old church in
Kuelam village.5
At first glance it would seem as though Catholic and United churches could simply
be opposed to one another as local to non-local or regional in their practice and
orientation in Lihir. Yet this misrepresents how people in Lihir understood and
experienced Christianity, and how Mahurians saw Catholicism as being other than
something once-foreign and now made local.
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Catholicism and Connectivity
For Mahurians, Catholicism has provided a sense of connectedness to the world
outside their small island. The links between Catholic communities in Lihir have
been strengthened by the sense of sharing something in common, by the travels of the
priest around the island group for services, and by major events such as Pentecost. In
1998 Pentecost involved the gathering of the populations of Mahur and Malie Islands
on Masahet Island for a massed service and feasting with leadership from one of the
two Parish Priests, Father Dominic Maka, and about 2,500 to 3,000 people in
attendance. This service provided a sensory and experiential confirmation of the
unity of the Catholic church in Lihir.
This connectivity of Catholic communities highlights the disconnections between
Catholics and other denominations. There is not any serious sectarianism, and many
Lihirians attend another church when away from their home church visiting family in
other villages. Yet Catholics seem to have a sense of difference, even superiority. One
retired catechist, Kosniel said that ‘katolik i gat as’6 in the form of the communion
sacrament. He went on to say:
All the other denominations are like new shoots on a tree. The tree has roots and isstrong. In a strong wind it will stand, but the new shoots will be thrown about andbreak.
This statement highlights the sense of history that many Mahurians associate with
Catholicism, and its position historically as the first form of Christianity. They also
claim that they chose Catholicism over the Methodist Mission. Kosniel went on in the
conversation to say that while the United church arrived in Lihir first, the local
leaders at the time told them to go away as they only wanted Catholicism. Despite
this, there was never any effort to convert anyone from United to Catholic or vice
versa, and Father Steve Boland noted that he had a good relationship with United
Church leaders (Fr Steve Boland 2010, personal communication).
In mundane ways, Catholicism provides links to the world beyond Lihir. Their
ecclesiastical calendar, the cycle and timing of major events and feast days, is
programmed from outside Lihir. Each year the local catechists are provided with a
diary that informs them of the timing of major events and the weekly calendar of
worship. Services are planned around this calendar set from outside. During Lent no
major feasts are held, and any that have to be held (for example, major funerals)
cannot involve the consumption of pork.
Lihirians have also enthusiastically embraced the Legion of Mary. The group was
started in Lihir by Father Steve in the early 1990s and carries out apostolic or
charitable work in the community under the aegis of Mary. The Legion is the largest
apostolic organisation of lay people in the Catholic Church, and has been in existence
since the 1920s. On Mahur, there are a number of groups arranged in a pyramid
structure. Kuelam village has two groups (called praesidium), which are responsible
to the curia, a more senior group representative of Mahur as a whole. This pyramid
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structure is a feature of Legion*praesidium are responsible to Curia, and then to
other groups more senior to them ‘all the way to Rome’ as one woman explained to
me. Actually, the international headquarters, the Concilium are located in Dublin,
Ireland (Concilium Legionis Mariae 2005). Members of the Legion often conducted
short prayer services in pairs with families or small groups on Mahur, as well as
having weekly meetings of the praesidium as determined by the guidelines of the
organisation. The enthusiasm shown for the Legion of Mary is partially due to the
connections it has provided to global Catholicism, and also to local communities.
When initially in Lihir Fr Steve Boland encouraged Legion groups to send teams out
to other parishes in New Ireland, such as Tanga, Anir and Tabar.
People on Mahur have a consciousness of Rome as a central or orienting place in
their lives, as indicated above in relation to the Legion of Mary. The Pope is a known
figure whose decisions impact upon their daily lives. Moral views on abortion and
contraception are perceived to emanate from the Pope in Rome and to carry his
authority. Despite local and national concerns with population growth and the
impact of oft repeated childbirth on women, it is the view of the Pope which holds
sway over most Lihir Catholics. On Mahur people explicitly noted that divorce was a
‘sin’. Women refused to admit to miscarrying a child for fear of being seen as
committing the mortal sin of ‘kilim pikinini’. The authority of the Pope is further
demonstrated by low uptake of Western family planning methods (the contraceptive
pill, contraceptive injections and tubal ligations) compared with members of United
Church villages.
Catholicism represents and provides connections to other people elsewhere in
Papua New Guinea and the world. Their main priest during the 1990s, Father Steve
Boland, was an embodiment of connectivity to other places, and a visible and audible
reminder of such connections, being a citizen of the United States. He requested
confessions be in Tok Pisin rather than the local language so that he could understand
them. Audibly he embodied difference from Lihirians themselves, and so connections
to the wider world, because of his accent in Tok Pisin. Lihirian brothers and priests
also must have lengthy stays away from Lihir to train. The first ordained Lihirian
priest, Father Andrew Pong, travelled the world while employed by the Catholic
church. The Bishop of the Diocese of New Ireland, Ambrose Kiapseni, is a Lihirian
acting in a regionally important role. He provides a link for Lihirians between
themselves and the national and international hierarchy of the Catholic church.
Contestation and the Catholic Charismatic Renewal
During 1998 a new movement within the Lihir Catholic church began on Mahur. The
Catholic Charismatic Renewal (CCR) first became apparent during a 3-day Catholic
retreat organised by the CCR, with the aim of getting people to reflect on their lives,
the state of their relationships and the role of the Holy Spirit. For the first 2 days the
services and singing were led by community members from Mahur, while on day
three the retreat was led by four members of the CCR. Two of these members were
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from elsewhere in Lihir, one was from Lamasong in New Ireland, and the other from
the Sepik. It became apparent immediately that the service held at the completion of
the retreat was different from the normal Catholic service. It went for two and a half
hours, with music from tambourines and guitars, singing while people waved their
hands and shook, and group prayers where everyone spoke out loud at once. People
knelt in the aisle for the laying on of hands by the Charismatic leaders. The man from
Lamasong led the service and gave personal testimony of the power of the CCR in his
own life.
It was only much later that I became aware that the CCR was a global renewal
movement within the Catholic Church initiated in the United States in the late 1960s.
It was part of a New Ireland diocesan-wide movement, coordinated by Br. Joe Tesar
from the United States (Fr Steve Boland personal communication 2010). Globally its
principal forms of expression are the prayer meeting, which encompasses a lengthy
time of praise with songs with guitar accompaniment, and spontaneous and
simultaneous prayer (Hocken 2004, p. 206). These elements were clearly apparent
in the service held on Mahur which was designated as a ‘prea miting’ rather than as
‘lotu’, yet Mahurians were not aware of the origin of these aspects of the CCR and its
services.
CCR was met in Mahur, Lihir and New Ireland, more broadly, with mixed
reactions and some contestation. Father Steve Boland spoke approvingly of some
charismatics in the Parish, but observed that some had influences other than
Catholicism, and that he had cautioned Lihirians against such charismatics during
services at the main Parish church, Palie. Hocken noted that the majority of Western
clergy have tended to tolerate rather than support the CCR, despite the support of
Popes Paul IV and John Paul II (Hocken 2004, pp. 206�7; Csordas 2007).
For catechists, there was concern that the CCR would compete with other
commitments, particularly those to the Legion of Mary. There was also an attempt to
question the moral basis of new forms of worship, with accusations by leaders in the
Catholic church on Mahur that the laying on of hands was a context that allowed
male adherents of CCR to fondle women.
For the lay population on Mahur the initial response to the CCR in the retreat was
confusion. People questioned the meaning of the ‘baptism of the Holy Spirit’. Once
this became clearer, there were three main responses to the CCR. A few younger men
declared it was the work of Satan. Many people, particularly adult males were
uncomfortable with CCR. They argued that being in CCR was no more likely to lead
people to change their lives, and that Catholicism was enough on its own. Many
women instead said that CCR was clear in its teachings, that it was a part of
Catholicism, and that it wasn’t for them to judge activities which allowed people to
change their lives. At the time I left Mahur the CCR was well established in one of the
three villages on Mahur, but its future was still contested and uncertain. What can be
noted, however, is that the presence of the Catholic church is not felt on Mahur as a
timeless and monolithic entity, but as complex and historically specific.
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Conclusion: The Complexity of the Local and the Global
Simplistically it could be argued that Catholicism is localised, but this would
misrepresent the complexity of connections between Lihirians, Christianity, their
history and contemporary experience of the world. Catholicism has been through
phases of opposition to some customary practices, then greater engagement,
localisation of the leadership of the church, and engagement of the lay members of
the church through the Legion of Mary and the CCR. Paradoxically, Catholicism is
embedded within Lihirian local worlds, yet provides a sense of global connectedness
and position. The United church appears less local in its sensory engagement with
Lihirian forms of music, feasting, decoration and organisation, yet provides regional
links and experiences for its adherents with the New Guinea islands, the country of
Papua New Guinea and the Pacific.
In neither case can Christianity in Lihir be seen as foreign or imposed, and nor is it
experienced in that way. What was once imported has become contemporary
‘tradition’. As Davidson notes, the
mainline churches have over time become the old-line churches. Whereas theyrepresented challenge and change when they first arrived as missionary organiza-tions in the Pacific, they have become identified with the voice of tradition.(Davidson 2004, p. 143)
When analyses emphasise the ‘old’ and the ‘new’, or the local and the global, bipolar
theorising can obstruct us from seeing how the people themselves experience
Christianity, or any other aspect of the contemporary globalised world. In Lihir, as
I have shown, there is a continuing process of change and renewal of aspects of
Christian practice. For contemporary Lihirians, Christianity is their history. The
structure of this history cannot be seen in terms of hybridity between the local and
the global. Instead, there are complex relationships of historical continuity and
change. Christianity is closely woven into Lihirians’ lives, but the two denominations
serve to highlight the variety of ways Christianity intersects with their everyday lives
and experiences.
Acknowledgements
A short version of this paper was originally given at ARC-Asia Pacific Futures
Network Conference, Adelaide, Australia, 2 December 2008. I thank Alison Dundon
for the opportunity to write this paper and for her comments, as well as those
of fellow presenters and the two anonymous reviewers. Thanks to Nick Bainton and
Fr Steve Boland for clarifying various points.
Notes
[1] Until about 5 years ago, the only Pentecostal church on the islands was the Christian Life
Centre. However the large influx of migrants associated with mining has led to an
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efflorescence of denominations on Lihir, including Apostolic Grace, Assemblies of God,
Association of Local Church, Baptist and Revival. There is considerable animosity about the
arrival of these new churches (Bainton 2010, personal communication). In this paper I restrict
my analysis to pre-2002 which was my last major period of fieldwork, and to the Catholic and
United churches which were present in the two locations where I worked (Mahur and Samo).
[2] I carried out doctoral fieldwork in Lihir in 1997�8 for 12 months. The Lihir Islands, part of
New Ireland Province, are located north-east of New Ireland, and comprise the main island,
Niolam and three smaller islands, Malie, Masahet and Mahur. For most of my initial fieldwork
I was based in Kuelam village on Mahur Island which was Catholic, while I also made periodic
visits to the Samo village, a United Church village, on the main island of Lihir, Niolam. I made
short return visits in 1999, and a further 2 years fieldwork in 2000�2, largely based in
Londolovit Township on Niolam.
[3] Knus is a substance made of crushed plant leaves, lime and water, the mixture varying
according to its purpose which may be to ward off illness or a tndol (bush spirits). It is
generally dotted onto the head and joints, but in this case was put only on the head.
[4] They use the term ‘MC’.
[5] The story of Tgorous was known elsewhere in Lihir, and on the front post of the church in
Lakaziz on Masahet Island there was a carving of Tgorous.
[6] ‘Catholicism has a strong basis’.
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