The Gospel and salvation movements : a case study of cargo cults in Papua New Guinea

It seems that the variety of expression in Melanesian salvation movements, more commonly referred to as cargo cults, has had a particular fascination for Westerners. Melanesians have performed rituals which, when subjected to the scrutiny of Westerners, have seemed absolutely ludicrous, because they have been carried out with apparent abandon for the purpose of bringing on an immediate millenarian age, perhaps ushered in by returning ancestors bearing unimaginable quantities of material possessions or cargo, from which the Pidgin English term kago is derived. This paper presents evidence that many such salvation movements represent ideologically consistent, but syncretistic interpretations of the Gospel on the basis of traditional Melanesian worldview themes. It has been more than twenty-five years since I. C. Jarvie wrote about cargo cults that the literature grows larger every quarter; it is rapidly becoming a full-time job to keep up with it (1963:1). Since that time the number of studies has continued to multiply so that Burridge (1969:34) spoke of hundreds of recorded millenarian movements occurring in Melanesia within a century, and H. Schwartz (1987:531) stated that there have been more than three thousand studies of millenarianism printed in this century. Although researchers have documented much variety in the manifestations of salvation cults, many of the studies have been based on interpretive models having a single focus so that they have tended to cluster around five types. 1. economic factors such as material deprivation, resulting in adjustment, nativistic, and cargo movements, political factors such as colonial oppression resulting in revolutionary, reactionary, militant, denunciatory, and nationalistic movements, 2. sociological factors such as societal stresses, either internal to the society or caused through culture contact, resulting in acculturative, accomodative, adjustment, reformative, and nativistic movements, 3. psychological factors such as paranoia, tensions, feelings of insecurity or inadequacy, or lack of self-respect, resulting in crisis, deprivation, vitalistic, revitalization, or revival movements, 4. religious factors, usually focusing on the advent of a future golden age or a reunion with returning ancestors resulting in millenarian, millenial, or chiliastic movements. If the focus is on a past golden age, they are known as restorative, if on a process, they are regarded as syncretistic, redemptive, or revivalistic, if expressing a relationship to Christianity, Gospel and Salvation Movements 5. they are regarded as cultic, separatistic, schismatic, independent, or New Religious movements, or if focusing on the redeemer they are known as messianic, prophetic, spiritistic, thaumaturgical, or Holy Spirit movements