Religion in Vanuatu

Before Christianity, the indigenous religion of Vanuatu was inherited from Oceanian and Melanesian traditions.[7] Missionaries often called this pre-Christian religion “pagan” or “heathen” in English, and as “times of darkness” in the country's local languages,[8][9]^: 207 or in Bislama (taem blong tudak).[10]^: 86 [11]^: 140

The traditional religion, sometimes considered a form of animism, has been described by various authors, notably the Anglican missionary and anthropologist Robert Codrington in his famous 1891 monograph The Melanesians: Studies in Their Anthropology and Folk-lore (1891).[12] He was followed by other scholars, including anthropologists[13][14] and linguists.[9]

Concepts central to the traditional religion include mana,[15][16] tabu,[17] and the worship of ancestral spirits (tamate).[7][9][13][14] Named deities or mythological figures included Qat and Qasavara in the Banks Is, Tagaro on Ambae, Lisepsep across the archipelago.[9]^{: 218–222}

Grade-taking ceremonies, which existed throughout Vanuatu, were associated with the indigenous religion, and with the transmission of mana.

Many aspects of the traditional religion have survived until today, in parallel with the adoption of Christianity, at least in some rural areas of Vanuatu.[10]^: 86 [11]

Christian missionization of Vanuatu began as early as 1606 upon the arrival of the Spanish explorer Pedro Fernandes de Queirós in Vanuatu.[18] Missionaries representing several Western churches brought Christianity to the country in the 19th and early 20th centuries, specifically from Presbyterian, Catholic and Anglican missions.[6] Some foreign missionaries continue this work; however, approximately 90% of the clergy of the established churches were indigenous by 2007.[6] The Summer Institute of Linguistics have been active in translating the Bible into the country's many indigenous languages.[6][19][20]

Because of the modernities that the military in World War II brought with them when they came to the islands, several cargo cults developed. Many died out, but the John Frum cult on Tanna is still large, and has adherents in the parliament. As well, Tanna is home to the Prince Philip Movement, which reveres the United Kingdom's Prince Philip.[21] Villagers of the Yaohnanen tribe believed in an ancient story about the pale-skinned son of a mountain spirit venturing across the seas to look for a powerful woman to marry. Prince Philip, having visited the island with his new wife Queen Elizabeth, fit the description exactly and is therefore revered and even held as a god around the isle of Tanna.[22]

The effects of colonialism and Christianization have differed enormously throughout Vanuatu, partially due to the Anglo-French condominium governance as well as due to the uncoordinated Christian missionization efforts throughout the nation.[23] The diverse approaches of the Catholic mission, the Melanesian Mission and the Church of Christ combined with varied cultural communities resulted in vastly different local attitudes regarding religion, tradition, and community restructuring.[23] Often, Ni-Vanuatu converted to Christianity in the hopes of attaining the apparent wealth and prosperity the European Christians possessed.[18] Through the spread of Christianity, missionaries aimed to restructure indigenous societies by desegregating gendered eating and sleeping customs, prohibiting exclusive men’s houses, and reworking the idea of the domestic Ni-Vanuatu woman, in order to save women from what the missionaries saw as a “degraded state in kastom."[24] In doing so, the missionaries inadvertently thrust Ni-Vanuatu women into the separate, but similarly gender-segregated Christian church, where men hold disproportionate power. While this new religious system upheld women in familial, motherly roles, it “stripped away those sacred aspects of human kinship which gave women a crucial if subordinated place in the ancestral religion."[24]

As Christianity gained followers, eventually becoming the prominent religion, support of local kastom decreased due to missionaries’ habitual suppression of the incorporated local values, practices, and traditions.[23] Kastom is an all-encompassing Bislama word that refers to traditional practices including culture, religion, art, economics, and magic in Vanuatu.[25]

Vanuatu indigenous culture and kastom dramatically declined in the face of European colonization. The Europeans brought with them disease, weaponry and alcohol which lead to the death of indigenous peoples, as well as forcibly removed Ni-Vanuatu citizens, relocating them to Australia for forced labor.[23] As well, European missionaries and Ni-Vanuatu Christian converts consciously oppressed certain kastom ways of life. While tolerance of kastom varied between churches, locations, and missions, the majority of Christians deemed the erasure of certain customs as a precondition to Christian conversion. Some of these practices included: “Polygyny, pig sacrifices, ‘idolatry,’ kava drinking, and men’s secret societies,” as missionaries believed such practices exemplified “heathenism” and “the powers of darkness.”[23]

Kastom played a key role in mobilizing Vanuatu's independence movement in the 1970s, through establishing a national identity within a largescale resistance against Anglo-French colonialism.[23] In 1971, Ni-Vanuatu Christian converts established the Vanuaaku Pati, originally named the New Hebrides National Party (NHNP), a political party which aimed to revive and maintain kastom as an essential part of Vanuatu nationalism.[23] The Vanuaaku Pati highlighted the need for Vanuatu to break away from its colonizers, while simultaneously “emphasized the importance of kastom as a non-European ‘grass-roots’ force exemplifying the ‘Melanesian way’ as opposed to ‘the white man’s way.’[23]

Prior to the 1979 national elections, the Vanuaaku Pati “published its electoral platform,” affirming protection of kastom within the government. The document outlined a plan to create a National Council of Chiefs, ultimately ensuring the inclusion of kastom via leaders with power within custom law.[23]