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There are two big questions for anthropologists examining widespread conversion to Christianity: why and how? Why do people abandon coherent religious systems they have practiced for centuries in favor of a new—often radically new—way of thought? Then, even after people decide to accept the new religious framework, how does that happen? How do people apprehend these entirely new forms of thought if, as so many anthropologists argue, new concepts can only be grasped in terms of a pre-existing cultural framework? And for Christian anthropologists, there may be a third question: how might our interaction with these questions within the disciplinary framework of anthropology be distinctively informed by a theological understanding of the human person and the overarching story of creation, sin, and redemption?
Becoming Sinners: Christianity and Moral Torment in a Papua New Guinea Society
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In answer to the first question, some have pointed to social disruption—colonialism, capitalism and globalization—as the reason people are abandoning traditional beliefs on a massive scale and turning toward Christianity or other non-local religions. Others argue that there are clear material advantages for those who adopt these widespread religions. Both these explanations falter, however, in the face of ethnographic evidence. First, traditional religions are often very capable of adapting to contemporary capitalism and modern citizenship. Just look at what Shirley MacLaine and New Age spirituality did for old-fashioned animism. Second, people frequently sacrifice material or social benefits in joining non-local religions such as Christianity. There is little economic or political incentive for Chinese citizens to join the house church movement, yet it is thought that 100 million may have done so.
Answers to the second question—how people convert—have been even more elusive and unsatisfying. One popular anthropological answer is that, in truth, traditionalists don't really convert at all. Instances of "conversion" are largely cosmetic changes in form, while the "real" cultural structures remain unchanged. Christianity, in this view, is a thin veneer; scratch an African Anglican and you make a traditionalist bleed. Another view puts Christianity within the power structures of capitalism and the modern state; Christianity is part of a hegemonic cultural system, sometimes resisted with more or less success, but always seeking to supplant traditional systems through the powerful mechanisms of capitalist institutions, discourse, and social formation. Again, these explanations make sense of some cases, but certainly not all. To paint non-Western Christians as either clever imitators of Christianity or victims of a global hegemony is to dismiss all those who would say that they really have become Christians because they want to, or to tell them that they aren't really Christians anyway. As Christianity spreads throughout much of the world without the assistance of Western missionaries or other "foreign" agents, these depictions of global Christianity ring increasingly hollow.
The best analyses come from scholars who take Christians seriously enough to actually believe them when they say that they are Christians, while finding theoretically satisfying ways of exploring what that entails in both the why and how of their conversion. One of the best studies to come out of this select group is Joel Robbins' recent ethnographic work on the Urapmin of Papua New Guinea. Robbins seeks to do more than simply describe Christianity among an out-of-the-way people; he explores the largest questions of cultural change:
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