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Mantovani, SVD Introduction Today Papua New Guinea (PNG) recognises itself as a Christian nation. However, Christianity in PNG was not shaped by a dialogue between traditional religions and biblical revelation. It was a monologue by the Western missionaries who did not know the traditional religions and misunderstood much of what they saw. Melanesians accepted Christianity and gave up the symbols the missionaries condemned (e.g. in the Simbu, people gave up the killing of pigs in the cemeteries, the various geruas, etc. These are symbols, i.e., exterior expressions of interior attitudes. By giving up exterior symbols, one did not necessarily give up the interior attitude of which these symbols were the expression. One could replace them with other symbols which the missionaries did not recognise and forbid!). However, one cannot easily forget millennial religious experiences, especially when the environment which mediates them is still unchanged. The danger is that many elements may go underground and continue their existence unchecked. Another and even more serious danger is belief in a Christ who does not fully answer the religious aspirations of Melanesians. As a consequence the search will continue, the religious movements will multiply, and the old religious roots will produce new leaves, new expressions of the traditional religion. It was not ill will that prevented dialogue. It was, in my opinion, also mainly ignorance on the part of the Western missionaries. The knowledge we have today about religions in general and about Christianity in particular was simply not available (for the Roman Catholics one would have to mention the theological breakthrough of the Second Vatican Council which opened new ways for dialogue and inculturation). On the other hand, the Melanesians never reflected philosophically on their religious experience and therefore were not able to verbalise their religious experiences to enable a dialogue to take place. As much as one regrets what happened, many things, given the knowledge of the people involved, were unavoidable. In this article I shall compare the characteristics of Melanesian religions with present day Christianity to detect areas of possible friction and of pastoral and missiological concern. I sometimes use the term Melanesia instead of PNG. PNG is not Melanesia, it is only part of it. Given the fact, however, that the majority of Melanesians live in PNG, it is quite common to talk in these terms when not referring to a specific ethnic group. What is true for PNG in general is, most probably, true for the whole of Melanesia. 1. The Ultimate I prefer to use the term Ultimate instead of the more specific one of God, to allow for more scope in referring to that Reality people live for and from. Melanesian people accepted quite easily the faith in a creator God, source of all things. Their religious traditions, though sometimes nearly forgotten, confirmed this belief. Even the ‘father above’ symbol, seemingly, was not entirely new to their religious experience (see H. Aufenanger, The Passing Scene in North-East New-Guinea, St. Augustin: Anthropos Institute, 1972, p. 79). The anthropological and missiological problem comes from the fact that this theistic symbolism was often nearly forgotten. It was forgotten or, better, not used, because it was not relevant anymore; it did not express the religious concern of the people at the time of the encounter with Christianity. Creation and the Creator did not symbolise and express their religious experience anymore and their life was not motivated by these concerns. Theoretically, two explanations are possible for this fact: either the Melanesians found a better religious symbol, more appropriate to their daily experience, or they were sinners who refused God’s revelation through creation. The missionaries interpreted the disinterest in the creation symbolism as a fall from the worship of the true God; as an expression of sinfulness. Paul in Romans 1:20ff seems to affirm that much. Christianity at that time was not in a position even to consider the possibility of God revealing himself through different but equally valid religious symbols. For Christianity there was only one valid religious symbolism: the biblical one and creation was an integral part of it. However, it was not the free gift, symbolised through creation, which had caught the religious imagination of the gardeners in PNG, but the wonder of growth, of fertility, of cosmic life. Creation, as a matter of fact, was experienced as wanting, as something which needed a radical improvement; it needed redemption, as the Christians would say. Let me quote a traditional story to show what I mean. Once upon a time there was no proper food. People boiled stones and that was their soup. They ate firewood. Children were hungry and cried the whole night so nobody could sleep properly. Eventually a mother asked her child to kill her and to bury her to end this impossible situation. The child did so and out of the grave came the coconut and since that time people eat, children are fat and sleep at night and everybody is happy. The figure who dies to bring the true life is called dema. Creation could not be the symbol for the Ultimate the people were looking for. They were looking for the true life which was missing in creation. The dema offers to die to bring forth that reality without which life was not worth living; without which creation was basically incomplete and wanting. Theologically it was the need for salvation i.e. for true life which made them drop the symbol of creation to pick up the one of the dema, the one who dies to bring true life. It was not human sinfulness but openness to that revelation of which Paul speaks in the first chapter of Romans. This experience, as already mentioned, centres on the wonder of life (bios in Greek) , of growth, of success. This bios, this life, binds the whole universe together; makes it into a cosmos. Because of these two elements I call this religious experience bio-cosmic. This biocosmic religious experience of the planters was not recognised and therefore no dialogue could take place. What are the consequences of this fact? Consequences of the lack of dialogue The Melanesian religious experience of the planters was never the object of serious reflection. There was no chance for the Gospel to shed its light on the biocosmic experience and its symbolism because it never understood it. What Christianity knows and condemns in Melanesian religions are the exterior symbols of the same. What the symbols stood for, was basically unknown. The Gospel cannot challenge what it does not know. (During one of the Orientation Courses for new missionaries a Lutheran Pastor made the participants aware of this aspect: what Western Christianity condemns is its own interpretation of the Melanesian religious reality and not the reality itself and this hinders the Gospel from challenging the Melanesian reality as it is experienced by Melanesians). Christianity hoped that the ‘pagan’ biocosmic beliefs and rituals would eventually disappear; but a deep millennial religious experience will not disappear that quickly and will probably go underground and remain unchecked. If it cannot develop in the open, where it can be challenged, it is in danger of degenerating and developing in the wrong direction, harming people and their progress instead of enriching and helping them. One might be surprised at the proliferation of Christian denominations in Melanesia. One explanation is that traditional Christianity did not satisfy the religious longing of the people and so the religious quest is still on. PNG is famous for the ongoing religious movements often called ‘cargo cults’. The ‘cargo’ activity might have decreased and might have been substituted by other forms, however, the cargo mentality is still alive. Once again, the term ‘cargo’ expresses the Western reinterpretation and misinterpretation of a Melanesian longing for something of which the exterior signs of growth and success are symbols. It is the longing for a true, holistic life (see J. Strelan, "Search for Salvation. Studies in the History and Theology of Cargo Cults", Adelaide: Lutheran Publishing House, 1977). The great traditional feasts in PNG had to do with the celebration of life in all its forms: the harvest, the distribution of wealth, new life in birth, new fertility in puberty, new maturity in marriage, etc. The Christian liturgy which should be the expression of the living faith, does not have any place for the biocosmic symbols. Human and cosmic growth and fertility, gardens and their fertility, bush and rivers and their fertility, do not belong and are not celebrated through the official Christian liturgy. The great celebrations of puberty are in the village but not in the church. Even Baptism celebrates the new life in Christ but not the physical life as wonder, as miracle. The growth and fertility of pigs do not have a place in the Christian liturgy. Either the liturgy does not express the living Christian faith or the Christian faith does not reflect the daily life of the planters and their concerns. Points of contact Actually, there was a basic agreement between Christianity and Melanesian religions and this can explain the success of Christianity in spite of the misunderstandings. Christianity is based on the conviction that something essential was amiss in creation and that God had to become man to redress this situation. Death had entered creation and there was the need for new life. Melanesian religions are based on the same experience of the lack of true life and make the acquisition of true life their religious quest, their ultimate concern. In this Christianity and the religion of the Melanesian planters agree. Melanesian religions have been rightly described as ‘search for, maintenance, and celebration of life’. Even if there was agreement in the basics, there was difference in other important aspects. The fact that there was a Creator who was good, had consequences for any religious experience based on it. That negative aspects in creation — evil in general, sickness, death, misfortune, etc. — could not be attributed to the Creator and neither to a negative principle which could not exist beside an omnipotent Creator. The evil could be blamed only on human failure, on human sin. In this religious experience, creation, sin, and redemption belong together. Even for Christianity, Redemption needed human sin to take place. "O felix culpa" exclaimed St Austin, "which gave us such a Redeemer. We needed a sin to get a Redeemer". The Melanesian planters saw it differently. The world was not completed; something essential was still missing. It was nobody’s fault; the fact of an evolution. The dema brought that life which was missing. The religious and human concern is on how to participate in it. Missionaries did not know about this Dema complex and began their preaching from creation instead of starting from redemption. (I never heard a missionary mention it and I never read about it in any publication by missionaries. When I mentioned the Dema mythology the missionaries were rather surprised and even sceptical about it. It was too new to them and also too challenging; it raised too many theoretical and practical questions). They began with a Creator instead of a Redeemer; with the Old Testament instead of the New Testament. They could not begin with the Redeemer because the cause of that redemption — human sin — had to be first stressed and recognised. Christianity preached a God who was Love, but was in danger of putting human sin and not love at the beginning. It was a case of a ‘felix culpa’ not of a ‘felix Amor’! It had to introduce sin, as the cause of the lack of true life and as the reason for the death of Christ. For many missionaries this preaching of sin was not easy. Melanesians had trouble in understanding and accepting this universal sinfulness. To exalt God’s love the missionaries had to stress human sinfulness. The biocosmic religious experience, theoretically, could stress the redeeming love and the human need of it without needing human sinfulness as a pedestal for that love to appear. Basically, instead of beginning where the people were spiritually, Christianity had to bring them where it was itself and then presented Christ as the solution which fitted its own spirituality. No wonder, there is such a proliferation of religious movements in Melanesia. Reality of sin It was not a question of ignoring sin either. Melanesians knew about sin, even today they are obsessed by it. Every mishap, every accident, every sickness and death is caused by sin. However, they did not project it into the past as the cause for the lack of true life. In a way, that lack of true life was natural and had not to be explained. One does not have to explain that once upon a time there was no fire, that there were no gardens. This is a fact. One only rejoices that today one has fire and gardens that produce; one is solely concerned with how to use them properly; how to make the best of this happy situation; how to get the most out of it. It is in this happy situation that sin comes in as the explanation why, in spite of the true life being given, one does not participate in it. It is in this concrete situation of want that sin, understood as broken relationships, becomes important. 2. God’s creative and sustaining power The belief in a creator God was accepted rather easily in spite of the many serious problems we just mentioned. Where Christianity and traditional religions clashed head on and never accepted each other’s position, was in the administration of the creative and sustaining power of God. Both religions stress the need of, and the dependency on, a power which is not human but nevertheless absolutely necessary for human life. Both Christianity and traditional religions stress the need of good relationships on the side of humans to have access to that power. However, these good relationships are addressed to totally different entities in the two types of religion. The difference was radical and caused open confrontation. It was termed ‘power encounter’ in missionary circles. Missionaries accused the people of believing in other sources of power beside the Creator God; of believing in other gods, be they spirits, ancestors, or whatever. Present day Christianity is still confronted by this problem. Officially, according to Church teaching, the power is only in the ‘hands’ of God, however, this misses the point and does not address the deep religious experience of the planters. First I shall look at this ‘power’, then at the human responsibility in relation to God, and, finally, at two types of agents: the healers and sorcerers. The power Christianity stresses the fact that God is the only source of every power. Nothing can happen without his direct or indirect intervention. The spirits are his angels, i.e., his subordinate ‘messengers’ or his impotent enemies, i.e., the fallen angels, the demons, Satan. God is the source of life and everything. People are totally dependent on him who personally cares for everybody and everything. The human attitude is one of gratitude for what one has received and one of petition for what one needs. If God refuses the petition, there is nothing the creature can do. The basic difference between Western Christianity and Melanesian religions is that for the latter the power on which everything depends is separated from God. Expressed from a Christian point of view, God has made available to the world that power so that he does not have to intervene anymore. All Melanesian religions have here their starting point. There is a special power already available in the world and nothing happens without it. Who or what is the ultimate source of this power is of no concern to the people; is no part of their religion. The ultimate source is a philosophical question while people are concerned with sheer survival, with finding access to that power now. This power is being possessed by or is attached to material things, to actions, to words, and to human or spirit beings. As we already saw, the question is not who originated and gave it to humankind, but who has it now; from whom can one get it now. The concern is on how to enter into a proper relationship with the beings who presently have this power either to avoid being affected negatively or in order to be helped in one’s enterprise. Good relationships are essential, however, not to the ultimate Source but to those who have the power now. Those who have it now, according to the traditional stories, are no gods, i.e. no sources of that power. They are not independent mediators either. They are members of the cosmos one lives in. Even the so-called ‘spirits’, as they are called in English, are only one head taller than the rest. As a matter of fact, that head can be chopped off — as the stories tell — if one has the proper relationships (I like to mention Fr John Z’graggen’s (SVD) vast collection of stories in Pidgin from the North Coast of PNG). Obviously, the ultimate Source of everything is in danger of becoming a ‘deus otiosus’ — a retired God. From a Christian point of view, it is his generosity which endangers him! The Source has given all power away and has also given the knowledge on how to tap and use it. People can easily forget him as they do not need him immediately. This, from the missionary point of view, is the real and only problem and could have been solved without much hassle. Now, after one century of Western indoctrination, the situation is much more complicated. The disagreement between Christianity and traditional religions is the administration of that power. Christians say that it comes directly from God while traditional religions say that it is administered by other relatively independent entities. As a matter of fact, the disagreement is more theological than practical. When Christianity says, that God is the only source of physical life it does not deny the necessary role of the parents and their sexual relations. The parents and the sexual act become mediators of physical life without denying, for the believer, that they can do so only because God willed it to be so. Melanesians when they look for that power are not different from Christian parents who want a child and therefore have intercourse. That is where God put his creative power for people to use. This is basically the Melanesian attitude. They look for the power where it has been put. One should keep theology and science apart. One can be theologically right — using the power where one believes the Creator has put it — and scientifically wrong — the power is not where one thinks it is. But this is intellectual ignorance which might affect one’s physical health and not an ethical sin which breaks the salvific relation to God. One should keep the two aspects separated. It was the Christian suspicion and misunderstanding that created the confusion and mixed the theological and scientific aspects. Because of this misunderstanding, instead of helping Melanesians to go to the ultimate source, we concentrated on denying the possibility of God acting only indirectly in helping his children. When help did come through healing, for instance, we were forced to say it is not from God, so his love could not be experienced in daily life. Here there was open confrontation between Christianity and traditional religions: all the traditional rituals were proscribed and labelled magic and superstition. Anthropologically, one can suspect that proscription did not solve the problem and only forced the rituals underground. Once they go underground there is no control and the danger is that the worst of the traditional ways will develop and not the best. Individuals will exploit these beliefs for personal, egoistic advantage and gain. It will not be the proper relationships to everything and everybody which will be stressed and cultivated, but the exterior action, the legalism. It will not be the guilt for the broken relationship to the living and dead and to the environment and the desire to straighten them that will be deepened and cultivated, but the legal compensation, the material pay back. Besides, even were the old rituals not to be practised anymore, the new Christian rituals are in danger of being reinterpreted in the sense of the old ones. Melanesian religiosity misses the personal involvement; the actions. Prayers are no adequate substitute for the traditional rituals. When praying one is asked to fold one’s hands to receive God’s free gift but Melanesian religious experience tells one that God has already shown how to plant a garden. Is the asking for food with folded hands instead of getting them dirty not ignoring his gift of knowledge and power? Is that passive praying really obedience to God’s plan as experienced by the cultivators or disregard for it? Is it universal Christian faith or Western cultural religious experience? Yes religious, yes Christian, but cultural, limited, Western and not universal. 3. Human ‘work’ Human intervention through traditional rituals was formally rejected and branded as magic and superstition. The absolute gratuitousness of God’s action and love was stressed and the human intervention was interpreted as denial of this key aspect of God’s love. For people nourished by a biocosmic religious experience, by God’s revelation through the cultures of the planters, this was not true. The difference between a planter and a gatherer is that the former must tend to the environment to get his food and must do it according to certain rules. The older generation teaches the younger one how to go about getting a good crop. The gatherer does not interfere with the environment. He takes only what is put there by the one who created it. The gatherer only collects, gathers what is already available. He is not involved in the process of cultivating what he collects. These are two totally different attitudes: the former must get involved in the process of getting the crops to grow, the latter not. As a matter of fact, he could not get involved even if he tried. This is the cultural background for the misunderstandings between the two religious experiences. There was and there is a basic misunderstanding of the biocosmic blind obedience and trust in the rituals, i.e., in the prescribed way. The problem of the biocosmic religion was not the use of human skill to improve, but just the opposite: there was too little trust in the human reasoning and too much trust in and obedience to the prescribed way. Let us take the dema story I already mentioned. To kill the mother, the source of life for the child, in order that the child might have life, does not make sense. It goes against human reasoning and logic. However, those who follow this nonsensical advice, survive, while those who use their common sense, perish. The distinction between the divine, the supernatural, the non-human is theologically very important but practically irrelevant. The main point was that people did not trust their intellect and followed their experience and reason. This misunderstanding of the religious situation by the missionaries allowed the worst of this absolute obedience and dependence on what comes from outside human reason, to become the main hindrance to medical and technical development. The ritual was part of a process of secularisation, of recognising the human responsibility in the world. (I distinguish between secularisation and secularism. The former denotes a process from a situation where everything was expected from the supernatural to a situation of recognition and acceptance of the human responsibility in the world while the latter denotes an attitude which denies the supernatural in this world). However, this responsibility was still very tentative, still bound to a revelation coming from outside human nature and contradicting it. The traditional stories stress this situation very clearly. Humans did not trust their own intellect but relied totally on outside revelation. It is just the opposite of what the missionaries assumed and accused the people of. It was not human skill bending the supernatural, but total human subjection hindering the development of human reasoning and human skills. This is what I read in the traditional stories. The rituals were human involvement but in total submission to a revelation that contradicted human experience. There was open distrust of human reason and wisdom. The missionary task ought to have helped people go to the next step of secularisation: to trust and use their God-given reason. It is not a question of allowing traditional rituals and practices to continue for ever, but to begin where the people are, offering them alternatives which make sense within their system and can take off from there. An example might illustrate what I mean by this. One day a church worker told me: When I am sick, sometimes I go to the European nurse and sometimes to the traditional healer. God is our father and does not like us, his children, to suffer even if it is our own fault if we get sick. He therefore gave knowledge to some people on how to cure sickness. He gave you Europeans the knowledge about injections and penicillin and he gave our ancestors other knowledge on how to heal. Therefore, sometimes I go to the nurse and sometimes to the healer and when I am healed I remunerate those who cured me and I thank the Father in heaven because it was neither the nurse nor the healer who helped me but the knowledge and power of the Father through them. Here is a man who is a Christian church worker but still very much a Melanesian. For him, God will never help unless humans get involved and follow the prescribed way. God revealed to his children how to cure and now they must do the curing. This Melanesian Christian reinterprets the Western medicine as an alternative to the traditional one and as a further sign of God’s care. Just to pray without going to the healer or to the nurse would have been wrong for him; it would have been a sign of no trust in the Father — a sin against the first commandment in the Christian sense. The best prayer was to use what God had already provided. This Christian still uses both systems, but once the Western medicine proves to him that it can take better care of all his needs, he will have no problem in giving up what does not help anymore. (This is not the case as yet. Western medicine cares for the body but not enough for the heart, the feelings, the emotions of the whole person as traditional healing often does). If he goes to the traditional healer, it is because he still finds help there. Some denominations like the Roman Catholics offered a compromise through their many rituals and blessings. Other denominations had no such alternatives. However, the basic religious experience is not recognised. The danger is that what is not taken care of officially, is done in bad conscience. What the church worker had done and told me about, is condemned as a sin against the first commandment by the Christian churches. Anthropologically, one is allowed to doubt whether this religious experience can be forgotten, especially when the cultural environment which mediates it, is still present. The Christian teaching and the daily experience contradict each other. If the problem is seen and discussed in an open dialogue, solutions can be found that can be acceptable and the abuses can be prevented. However, ignorance or denial of the deep religious roots of the problem will not solve it. This problem of the access to power is further clarified by looking at some of the mediators of that power: the healers and sorcerers, the ancestors, and the ‘spirits’. 4. Healers and sorcerers Christianity recognises the possibility of miraculous actions but miracles always point to God and his direct help. A miracle proves that one is God’s friend, that God helps him or her. A miracle by somebody who does not recognise God is interpreted as coming from God’s enemy, Satan. When Christianity faced the healers and sorcerers in PNG it was not prepared to assess the situation and to dialogue with it. Either the power came directly from God or it came from Satan. That a person might have naturally such miraculous powers was not considered. The only solution was to reject any claim of validity for the power of these people or to link it with bad spirits. The fact that Christians still go to traditional healers proves that there is an area of conflict. The lack of dialogue once more allowed the worst to happen. Instead of developing a greatly needed process of discernment between healers and fakes, between helpers and exploiters of human credulity, everybody was put into the same category and condemned. Those who had experienced healing could not accept this categorical condemnation. Their experience proved it wrong and so people doubted the ability of the Western Church to understand the Melanesian reality. Even today people speak of ‘bush’ sickness and ‘bush’ healing. Bush sickness cannot be understood and cured by Western medicine and the Western mind in general. Christianity with its blank denial prevented the much needed discernment to develop. People can be exploited by anybody who is clever enough to do so. The loser is the faith of the people which misses a chance to experience God’s care for them in this important field of healing and the people’s pockets which are taxed by the demands of many who only exploit their credulity. Instead of liberating the people from exploitation and opening their eyes to the revelation which takes place continuously in daily life, Western Christianity made it difficult for Christians to free themselves. 5. Ancestors Western Christian and Melanesian experiences clash on the reality of the dead and ancestors or, better, on the nature of the human person and of human life. Does death end the relationships which make up the human person? Does death change them drastically? Melanesians see the person, who is constituted by relationships, as continuing after death and this means his or her duties and rights, his or her obligations and expectations which make up the relationships to the community, continue. The dead are still an integral part of human society and of their original community. Western Christianity does not accept this world view. For the West, the dead and ancestors do not belong to human society anymore; as souls, which belong to the category of the spirits, they belong to the world of spirits, not to the human one. Even the Roman Catholics, influenced by the decisions of the Rites Controversy in China, rejected this Melanesian understanding of ancestors. Christianity spoke about ancestor worship, about a kind of idolatry in which the ancestors took the place of God or assumed the role of mediators, a role which belongs only to Jesus Christ. However, Melanesians felt obligations and had expectations of a social nature; they relate to blood relatives not to supernatural beings. That after a century of teaching to the contrary some or even many are confused is to be expected. It is interesting to note the changes taking place in some parts of PNG. Today pigs are not killed in the cemeteries during the funeral but while the old people are still alive to strengthen the relationships and make up for any wrong that might have been done in the past. The old people are then told that no more pigs will be killed at their funeral, proving that the killing in the cemeteries was not a sacrifice to the spirit of the dead, as Christianity understood it, but a meal with the departed relatives to strengthen the communal ties. The Roman Catholic church tried to find a compromise with its veneration of the saints, but, even that is the solution of another culture and does not solve the Melanesian problem. Melanesians are not concerned with saints in heaven but with active members of their natural community here on earth. It is not the presence of their ancestors in the Canon of the Mass which interests them, but their presence and help in daily life. They are not interested in saints but in relatives. Anthropologically, a Christianity in which there is no special place for the ancestors is not Melanesian, is not fully inculturated. 6. Spirits Christianity came with its faith in spiritual entities: angels, archangels, cherubim and seraphim, etc., etc. It recognised a whole spiritual world between the divine and the human one. So did the Melanesians. Although the traditional definition of Melanesian religions as ‘animism’ is definitely superficial and one-sided, it does stress the relevance of ‘spirits’ in the PNG religious life. However, the Christian and the Melanesian worlds were not integrated. There was no dialogue but monologue. The spiritual entities were not recognised as symbols of God’s care but were taken simplistically as well defined entities. A whole field of dialogue was thus precluded. The Bible could profess faith in guardian angels of people (Mt 18:10) and places (Dn 10:12-14), but was not able to dialogue with the similar experiences in Melanesian religions. The possibility of linking the ‘masalai’ — the Pidgin term for ‘spirits’ — with the care of God for his people, as the Bible did with the Iranian spirits, was not actualised, and Christianity in Melanesia is the poorer for it. Anthropologically this is a key area of friction and should be of pastoral concern. Conclusion Christianity in PNG has deep roots and people are ready to die for this faith as blessed Peter Torot, the catechist who died for his faith during the Second World War, exemplifies. However, the daily life of Christians shows tensions which cannot be explained away by human sinfulness and by evil in people. History shows that the first encounter between the Christian missionaries and the people of PNG, though motivated by love — and many gave their life for this service — was marred by ignorance and misunderstanding of the local religious experiences. Besides, Christianity was not totally unbiased as it grew out of Israel which, in order to survive as an ethnic group, had to fight against the agrarian and so strongly biocosmic religions of Canaan. That fight for survival did not allow Israel to dialogue with the biocosmic religious experience and its symbols. Christianity followed suit. PNG easily accepted the Christian God, the creator of heaven and earth, the people somehow already knew, but that God was too heavenly, too spiritual and his liturgy was concerned with eternal life, with spiritual grace, with heaven and not with the PNG biocosmic concerns of gardens, pigs, growth, and fertility in all its forms. Secondly, regarding the relation of the creatures to God, Christianity did not understand the Melanesian religious experience and attitude and branded it as primitive, magical, and superstitious. This misunderstanding prevented dialogue and the Gospel could not challenge these religious aspects but only the Western (mis)interpretations of the same, forcing them to go underground where no check nor challenge is possible. The central problem is that of mediation: does the creator God act directly or indirectly through mediators? This mediation refers to the ordinary people who perform so-called rituals in their daily life, to healers and sorcerers, to ancestors, and to so-called spirits. Though the traditional definition of Melanesian religions as ‘animism’ is definitely superficial and one-sided, it does stress the relevance of ‘spirits’ in PNG religious life. Christianity to be an integral part of the Melanesian cultures must enter into a serious dialogue about these ‘spirits’. To stress that there is only one mediator, Jesus Christ, is to miss the point. Who is Jesus Christ for PNG? Jesus is the answer, no doubt, but what is the PNG question? |