My God, My Land

Abstract

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)Jacqueline Ryle's My God, My Land: Interwoven Paths of Christianity and Tradition in Fiji uses the lens of contemporary Christianity to examine the interconnectedness of the Fijian people to the land, each other, and to God or the power of the ancestral spirits through space and time--past, present, and future. Ryle employs the perspectives of the followers of the Methodist Church, the Pentecostal Church, and charismatic Catholicism to understand how people come together in shared social, cultural, and faith communities. She also examines the ways in which the Methodist and Pentecostal churches used these communities strategically and politically to exclude others (especially Indo-Fijians), while charismatic Catholics and liberal Christians employed their faith communities inclusively to build bridges across differences.Ryle begins with the Fijian concept of the Three Pillars, the overarching ideology of Fijian society that connects people to the land, God, and chiefly authority/government. During the colonial period (1874-1970), the Methodist Church embraced the Three Pillars for its own purposes, inserting itself into this structure in order to prop up its authority. While the Methodist Church saw success during much of the colonial period, by the latter part of the twentieth century it no longer met the needs of many Fijians plagued by modernization, poverty, urbanization, and increasing class differences. While the Methodist Church remained associated with the governing elite and the status quo, the Pentecostal Church made converts by rejecting the traditional Three Pillars and, instead, emphasizing the individual's relationship with God. Despite their differing ideas about the individual's relationship to God and the land, both the Pentecostal and Methodist churches sought to have Fiji defined constitutionally as a Christian State. In this continuing effort, they worked together to effectively deny Indo-Fijian citizenship.Ryle uses these three religious perspectives--Methodist, Pentecostal, and charismatic Catholic--as a lens for understanding Fijians reactions to the coups of 1987, 2000, 2006. With their enduring ideology of the Three Pillars, many Methodists saw the 1987 coup and its violence against Indo-Fijians as propping up traditional Fijian culture, authority, and identity. Likewise, the 1987 coup emphasized their connectedness to each other, God, and the land, while creating boundaries between themselves and those they viewed as other. …