A Cultural Revival and the Custom of Christianity in Papua New Guinea

Abstract

I was sitting on the floor of a large and crowded church in Uladu village in the Western Province of Papua New Guinea (PNG) in early 1995, listening to a sermon by an expatriate missionary from the Asia Pacific Christian Mission (APCM). She was addressing a women’s conference held by the Evangelical Church of Papua New Guinea (ECPNG). I had been in the area for only a couple of months, living in a village to the south of Uladu called Tai, and had been invited to attend by both the women in Tai village and the female hierarchy of the church. The missionary began by stating that ‘false idols’ in God’s church were to be destroyed; then she proffered to the large group of women: ‘Why don’t we have Aida?’ When none of the women gathered responded to her question, she continued saying firmly, ‘Because we are God’s people and cannot have false idols in God’s church’. Throughout the sermon, she derided unbelievers like those to the north, who, she said, had heard the Christian message but had not acted upon it: these people, she argued, were as stubborn and ignorant as those who still practised Aida Gi.