The Christian Dividual and Sacrifice: Personal Partibility and the Paradox of Modern Religious Efflorescence among North Mekeo

This chapter explores the paradox of modern religion's efflorescence as exemplified in North Mekeo peoples' encounter with Christianity. It argues that certain critical compatibilities between the pre-existing religion and notions of Christian personhood and agency have facilitated villagers' conscious conversion. The chapter also argues that some key notions of the New Melanesian Ethnography (NME) can be more clearly appreciated in relation to elements of sacrifice theory and the specific domain of sacred or religious relations than in the general terms of Maussian gift exchange as elaborated by M. Strathern. The formal compatibility between indigenous Melanesian and Christian religions, as highlighted by the NME and sacrifice theory, sheds new light on the paradox of the efflorescence of religion. For anthropologists, the perception that Melanesians may organize a part of their social experience in accordance with the NME's model of personal partibility is unlikely to occasion much surprise.