Yolngu Conversations with Faith: The “outward signs of conversion” to Christianity and Islam

Abstract

Some unmistakable allusions to “Allah” in the folklore of north-east Arnhem Land suggest that before British colonization the Yolngu were engaging with Muslim life-worlds at a much deeper level than has been presumed, because many references to Macassans became unspoken until the Christian mission period was over. This article emerges from the hypothetical question what might have happened if the Muslim contacts had not been forbidden and replaced with Christian missions at the beginning of the twentieth century. To sound the depth of that prior engagement with Islam and probe whether perhaps a gradual process of religious conversion was underway, it examines the “outward signs” of religious conversion used by Christian missionaries. These “outward signs” are borrowed from Norman Etherington (2002), who observed in his study of Christian missions in Natal that since it is not possible to look into the soul, observable behaviours and material indicators served to signpost progress in the acceptance of Christian faith.