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ANTH3021 DISCUSSION PREPARATION GUIDE Name________________________________ Date___________________ Reading: Author / Title__________________________________________ __________________________________________ 1. What was the reading about? State in one complete sentence the theme of this work. 2. How did the author get the information? How did they put together and present this information? Was there a particular structure to the work? Was it qualitative, quantitative, and/or comparative? Was it based on textual research, observation, and/or participation? Etc. 3. What did you learn from this reading? Be specific and concrete. a. b. 4. Note words that are unfamiliar or seem to be used in a special manner to create a particular impression. Define the word in the context of the phrase where you found it. a. b. 5. What questions does this selection bring up for you? Write one or two questions that open the space for discussion about key points in the articles, gaps in the knowledge, new research questions raised. Avoid "yes/no" questions, try to open the space for people to share opinions without trying to lead them to particular conclusions. a. b. 6. (To be filled out in class during discussion) What are some of the best ideas that you heard from other people in your discussion group? Untitled Heirs to Biblical Prophecy The All Peoples Prayer Assembly in Solomon Islands Jaap Timmer ABSTRACT: The notion that forebears of Solomon Islanders might be descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel is widespread among To’abaita speakers in North Malaita, and it features in a particular way in the theology of the popular All Peoples Prayer Assembly (APPA), also known as the Deep Sea Canoe Movement. Prominent in this boast of an Israelite genealogy is a utopian fantasy of a just ‘‘Israel’’ grounded in the ancestral soil of the island of Malaita. This article describes the APPA worldview as an alternative modernity that is meaningful to the To’abaitans because it provides a new sense of self and a shared destiny. Although APPA’s theology relates to the people’s socio-economic con- cerns, it reveals more clearly the continuity of some key cultural models through changing global influences, local histories and cultural dynamics. KEYWORDS: All Peoples Prayer Assembly, Deep Sea Canoe Movement, Christian modernity, To’abaita, Malaita, Solomon Islands O ver the last few decades, anthropologists have contributedmuch toward demonstrating that non-Western religious move-ments are contemporary expressions coeval with modernity in the West.1 Challenging assumptions that relate rationality to modernity and irrationality to religious tradition, Michael Taussig, for example, 16 Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions, Volume 18, Issue 4, pages 16–34. ISSN 1092-6690 (print), 1541-8480. (electronic). © 2015 by The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Rights and Permissions website, at http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintinfo.asp. DOI: 10.1525/nr.2015.18.4.16. http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintinfo.asp characterizes the way people in Venezuela see the modern state in terms of spirit possession.2 In reference to Africa James Ferguson argues: If non-Western cultures were not necessarily non-modern ones, then it would be necessary to develop a more pluralized understanding of modernity: not modernity in the singular (where the question is: Are you there yet or not?) but modernities in the plural, a variety of different ways of being modern: ‘‘alternative modernities.’’3 The case I discuss in this article highlights the alternative modernity of religious, institutional and social distinctiveness of Christianity that has merged into indigenous To’abaita life in the northern region of Malaita, the most populous island of the nation-state of Solomon Islands in the Melanesia region of the Pacific. The general To’abaita expression of Christianity, which tends to identify To’abaitans as Israelites, has helped produce religion, custom and tradition (kastom) in historically and locally specific ways, showing the connection between seemingly disparate forms of religiosity and forces of globalization. I will trace the historical significance of Christianity among To’abaitans, its production of a certain awareness of the region and the world, and the emergence of religious nationalism. This will illustrate how the All Peoples Prayer Assembly (APPA), earlier called the Deep Sea Canoe Movement, which is popular among To’abaitans, provides an alternative modernity.4 APPA has a cosmopolitan, eclectic theology, which com- bines elements of local tradition, evangelical Christianity and Judaism. Michael Maeliau, an ordained but recently expelled (see below) minister in the South Sea Evangelical Church (SSEC), established the movement in the early 1980s as the Deep Sea Canoe Movement. Beginning in 2007 it officially became the All Peoples Prayer Assembly. While the movement has seen steady growth among To’abaita people in North Malaita, it is difficult to determine a firm number of followers because people attend APPA services and rituals without necessarily con- fessing adherence. I estimate there are hundreds of active followers and thousands of sympathizers. Most followers live in North Malaita, but the movement also attracts people, mostly Malaitans, in Honiara, the capital of Solomon Islands, on Guadalcanal Island. Principally a prayer movement, the All Peoples Prayer Assembly reg- ularly organizes events with sermons and worship to evoke spiritual awakening through united prayer. These local convocations—labeled Fathers Arise, Mothers Arise, Youth Arise and Leaders Arise—may attract hundreds of people, usually dressed in white and adhering to certain purity rules, including avoidance of entering praying floors wear- ing flip-flops or muddy shoes. These events used to be held under tem- porary leaf roofs erected in the forests between villages, but a few years ago they moved to APPA’s well-built Aroma Centre, a teaching venue named Timmer: Heirs to Biblical Prophecy 17 after the Spice Route,5 which according to Maeliau is a possible route along which Hebrews traveled in deep-sea canoes and populated the Pacific Islands and along which they may return to Jerusalem. The Aroma Centre welcomes foreign visitors and is used for prayer convocations. APPA participants’ belief in the power of prayer is strong. For exam- ple, Michael Maeliau has been engaged in a ‘‘prayer journey,’’6 a series of prayer convocations abroad, and some groups have staged non-stop, days-long prayer sessions atop mountains where ancestor worship took place in pre-Christian times. The more globally oriented prayer convo- cations concern the whole Pacific—as well as all nations—to call upon the people of God’s Kingdom to arise in prayer and usher in the King of Glory, in other words, the Second Coming of Christ. APPA recently has engaged in prayer meetings for ‘‘all peoples of the land.’’ In fact, a con- vocation in Israel in 2012 was attended by a number of North American Indians following the first-ever APPA convocation in the United States in Pasadena, California in 2009. In addition to prayer convocations APPA organizes so-called ‘‘Jerusalem Counsels,’’ annual meetings in Jerusalem of APPA’s spiritual elders. ‘‘Counsel’’7 in this context means consulta- tion, both between the spiritual elders of APPA and between the elders and God. Elders are appointed by Maeliau and the group of elders comprises five or so persons who have matured to Maeliau’s level of spirituality and who understand the ‘‘proper’’ way of praising God. Like Maeliau, they sometimes act as God’s messengers. APPA participants in the region of North Malaita typically come from the South Sea Evangelical Church (SSEC), the oldest and most promi- nent denomination on Malaita.8 While most participants are still SSEC members, the South Sea Evangelical Church, headquartered in Honiara, considers APPA to be a breakaway movement. In 2009 the SSEC expelled Maeliau from the church he had pastored for more than two decades on grounds of deviation from Scripture, arguing that APPA was trying to gain control over a territorial area traditionally belonging to SSEC. Throughout the region of North Malaita, the menorah, which is the emblem of the State of Israel, and the Israeli flag are widely displayed in churches and on rooftops. People also unfold the flag during politically significant gatherings as they did at the 2003 peace ceremony in Auki, Malaita’s provincial capital, which concluded a five-year conflict (tenson or tension) between factions from Malaita and Guadalcanal. The tension, partly related to poorly regulated urbanization, devastated many people’s livelihoods and crippled the country’s economy; it was curtailed with the arrival of the Australian-led Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI).9 During the 2003 ceremony, Malaitan Eagle Force com- mander and To’abaita speaker Jimmy ‘‘Rasta’’ Lusibaea was the first to give up his machine gun and a battle jacket he wore while fighting rival militias from Guadalcanal. Following Lusibaea, heavily armed militants wearing camouflage face paint, helmets and red bandanas handed over Nova Religio 18 an impressive array of military firepower for destruction by international peacekeeping officers. Lusibaea and his To’abaita fighters marched to the ceremony under the Israeli flag, which they considered the symbol of their sovereignty. It is in this environment that the alternative modernity in which many To’abaitans identify as Jews has flourished. AN ALTERNATIVE MODERNITY A recent example of foreign scholarship accentuating the rural/ backward/religious versus urban/modern/secular divide as an explan- atory tool in the analysis of a ‘‘weak state’’ is the book Pillars and Shadows: Statebuilding as Peacebuilding in Solomon Islands by John Braithwaite, Sinclair Dinnen, Matthew Allen, Valerie Braithwaite and Hillary Charlesworth.10 From the vantage point of political science the authors examine sources of social and political instability in Solomon Islands and the evaluations of subsequent peace- and state-building efforts. Their analysis focuses on the failures of the state before, during and after violent events during the tension and builds extensively on Western assumptions about the division between state and society, casting almost all that happens in the ‘‘shadows’’ of the state as irrational and backward. Such shadows, like those in Africa described by William Reno in his analysis of warlordism,11 seem to result from the authors’ assumptions about the lack of enlightenment in the backwaters, reflecting the meth- odological difficulties and limitations of a state-society dichotomy.12 The methodology of the Pillars and Shadows authors explicitly dis- courages inclusion of widespread local theories, ruling out ‘‘non- credible interpretations’’ and ‘‘imagined histories concocted by supposed combatants with grandiose visions of their self-importance to saving their nation.’’13 A close look at All Peoples Prayer Assembly, however, reveals the importance of including ‘‘imagined histories,’’ especially when engaging the idea of the modern nation and terms and practices denigrating citizens in rural regions such as North Malaita. According to APPA’s worldview, To’abaita people have a crucial role in salvaging the nation to enable the people’s return to Jerusalem for the Final Restoration, the creation of a messianic kingdom ruled by Christ (see Daniel 9:25; Acts 1:6, 3:21). This alternative idea of nation as a collective people, embedded firmly in the Christian Bible, allows adherents to acquire a new sense of self, a new frame of reference, and a new agency for the future. The Bible does not simply offer solace, and it cannot be read as just a weapon of the weak, as in James C. Scott’s negative terms