In God's Image: The Metaculture of Fijian Christianity »

Matt Tomlinson is Lecturer in Anthropology at Monash University in Australia and coeditor of The Limits of Meaning: Case Studies in the Anthropology of Christianity.

Today, most indigenous Fijians are Christians, and the Methodist Church is the foundation of their social and political lives. Yet, as this thought-provoking study of life on rural Kadavu Island finds, Fijians also believe that their ancestors possessed an inherent strength that is lacking in the present day. Looking in particular at the interaction between the church and the traditional chiefly system, Matt Tomlinson finds that this belief about the superiority of the past provokes great anxiety, and that Fijians seek ways of recovering this strength through ritual and political action—Christianity itself simultaneously generates a sense of loss and the means of recuperation. To unravel the cultural dynamics of Christianity in Fiji, Tomlinson explores how this loss is expressed through everyday language and practices.

List of Illustrations vii

Preface and Acknowledgments ix

Part 1 Situation

Introduction 5

1 Situating Kadavu: Church, Chiefs, and the Creation of a Sense of Loss 28

Part 2 Lamentation

2 Signs of the Golden Age 67

3 Sermons 85

4 Kava 109

5 Sacred Land and the Power of Prayer 130

Part 3 Recuperation

6 Onward Christian Soldiers 163

7 The Road to Damascus Runs through Waisomo Village 184

Notes 207

References 223

Index 241