Explaining the Inexplicable: Traditional and Syncretistic Religiosity in Melanesia

Abstract

The phenomenon of universal religiosity and its possible functions is explored by using ethnographic data from fieldwork with the Eipo in Highland New Guinea from 1974 to the present. Their religious beliefs are described as well as the transition to Christianity. The core of all religions, as that of the Eipo and other ethnic groups in Melanesia, can probably be seen as an evolved mental adaptation to cope with the bewildering magnitude of phenomena which plague the exceptionally large human cortex. Our ancestors needed rituals to interact with the supernatural powers who were believed to have created and to be in control of the world. Helplessness, stress and anxiety were reduced through belief and ritual. It is no wonder that we are, by our very nature, Homo religiosus. The Eipo are a case in point as they understood that they had lived in a time bubble, isolated from the rest of the world in which a competing religion was providing seemingly better cosmogenetic explanations. Their rather radical solution was to accept the Christian belief brought to them by missionaries as a means to adapt to the ways of the new world and to have their children educated, no matter how difficult this would prove.