1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910810538503321

Autore

Robbins Joel <1961->

Titolo

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

Pubbl/distr/stampa

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

ISBN

9786612762888

1-282-76288-5

0-520-93708-2

1-59734-483-4

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (413 pages)

Collana

Ethnographic studies in subjectivity ; ; 4

Disciplina

306.6/09957/7

Soggetti

Christianity - Papua New Guinea - Urapmin

Urapmin (Papua New Guinea) Religious life and customs

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

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

Nota di contenuto

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.

Sommario/riassunto

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.