Dr. Debra McDougall University of Western Australia

Abstract:

Baha’i and Jehovah’s Witnesses, Christian Outreach Center and Revival  Flame, conservative Wesleyians and neo-orthodox Anglicans, even Sunni  and Ahmadiyya Muslims— a proliferating number of religious movements are drawing converts from the five historical churches of Solomon Islands. In this seminar, I focus on the stories of two very different interlocutors: first, a young man from the island of Ranongga who left the United Church to join a series of Pentecostal churches, and second, a middle-aged Malaitan man living in Honiara who left the South Seas Evangelical Church to embrace Islam.* Together their accounts shed light on the contradictory nature of religion in contemporary Melanesia. Proselytization in urban centers often leads to painfully divisive denominationalism in rural villages, where communities once united around a single church find themselves torn apart. Yet because evangelism thoroughly pervades the public culture of the Solomons, it provides common interactional ground for people from different islands and different churches. Thus even as Muslims reject and are rejected by the Christian majority, they, too, speak the language of evangelism. I conclude with some reflections on the methodological and theoretical challenges of ethnographically investigating swiftly changing religious networks that bridge the rural-urban divide in Melanesia.
* His account is also discussed in a recently published article, D. McDougall, 2009, ‘Becoming Sinless: Converting to Islam in the Christian Solomon Islands,’ American Anthropologist, 111(4):480-491.

Debra McDougall is an Australian Postdoctoral Fellow, currently undertaking research for an Australian Research Council Discovery Project on religious institutions in the Solomon Islands, and teaching in Anthropology and Sociology at the University of Western Australia. Her research interests include the globalization of Christianity, religion and political economy, territoriality, and semiotic anthropology, with a geographic focus on the Pacific Islands. For a decade, she has carried out ethnographic research in the Solomon Islands. Debra McDougall has a BA in History from Penn State University, and an MA and PhD in Anthropology from the University of Chicago.

You can also meet Debra informally in an encounter after the seminar in the Corner Room where, as usual, beverage will be served.


All interested are welcome!