Christian Politics in Oceania [Hardcover]

The phrase Christian politics evokes two meanings: political relations between denominations in one direction, and the contributions of Christian churches to debates about the governing of society. The contributors to this volume address Christian politics in both senses and argue that Christianity is always and inevitably political in the Pacific Islands. Drawing on ethnographic and historical research in Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, and Fiji, the authors argue that Christianity and politics have redefined each other in much of Oceania in ways that make the two categories inseparable at any level of analysis. The individual chapters vividly illuminate the ways in which Christian politics operate across a wide scale, from interpersonal relations to national and global interconnections.

Matt Tomlinsonis currently an ARC Future Fellow in the Department of Anthropology at Australian National University's College of Asia and the Pacific.

Debra McDougallis Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Sociology at the University of Western Australia.

A key strength of the volume is its broad conception of Christian politics, understood both as the relations between Christian groups and the articulation between Christianity and wider societal structures& Its attention to scale, denominational difference and to the histories of colonial and postcolonial state formation in the region will provide a useful basis for further comparative work on Christian movements, both within the Pacific Islands and further afield.???Social Anthropology/Anthropologie sociale

The volume is refreshingly open and non-ideological...All the essays are detailed, thoughtful and considerably nuanced in their analyses. As such, the volume is a fine example of the emerging discipline of the anthropology of Christianity, finally not afraid to move into theology, history, l33