1 - Introduction

Summary

Soga, before he converted to the Christian religion, offered a human sacrifice to his god, cutting off a child's head, and with his warriors drank the blood of the child to make his conversion to Christianity and renounce his allegiance to his god.

Excerpt from program to install a paramount chief, Sepi village, July 8, 1975

In July of 1975 people from all parts of the island of Santa Isabel congregated in Sepi village for a ceremony to install a paramount chief and celebrate the independence of the Church of Melanesia. The status of paramount chief, which had lain dormant for two decades, was revived in a masterful ritual performance that saw the Bishop of Santa Isabel, Dudley Tuti, “anointed” as paramount chief. To observers accustomed to separating indigenous custom from Christianity, there would appear to be considerable irony in the melding of the two agendas: installing a paramount chief, symbol of local tradition, at the same time as marking the independence of the church – the institution that has had the most to do with transforming indigenous practices. However, for the actors involved, the Sepi ceremony was anything but ironic. For them the ceremony was but the latest, if most dramatic, attempt to realize models of identity and history that intertwine elements of “custom” (kastom in local Pidgin) and Christianity that run deep in Santa Isabel social experience.