Inside the Cult

Religious Innovation and Transmission in Papua New Guinea

Bibliographic Data

ID2579461
AuthorsFrederick Errington, H Whitehouse (0000-0001-6935-6724, corresponding author)
Year1997
Volume3
Issue3
Pages646
Publication date1997-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeREVIEW
Reviewed byInside the Cult: Religious Innovation and Transmission in Papua New Guinea, Frederick Errington, 1997
VenueJournal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1359-0987 • E-ISSN: 1467-9655
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/3034820
OpenAlexW2013547621
Open LibraryOL1119455M
ISBN9780198279815
GOOGLE_BOOK_ID8QGBAAAAMAAJ
LanguageEN
Citations received190

For the past thirty years, adherents of a millenarian cult in Papua New Guinea, known as the Pomio Kivung, have been awaiting the establishment of a period of supernatural bliss, heralded by the return of their ancestors bearing 'cargo'. The author, Harvey Whitehouse, was taken for a reincarnated ancestor, and was thus able to observe the dynamics of the cult from within. From the stable mainstream of the cult, localized splinter groups periodically emerge, hoping to expedite the millennium; the core of this volume concerns the close study of one such group in two Baining villages. The two aspects of the cult studied here - on the one hand a large, uniform, and stable mainstream organization with a well-defined hierarchy demanding orthodoxy of views, and on the other hand a small-scale and temporary movement, emotional and innovative in its views - stand in sharp contrast one to the other, but are here seen as divergent manifestations of the same religious ideology, implemented in differing ways. This original theory of 'modes of religiosity' which Whitehouse here develops draws on recent findings in cognitive psychology to link styles of codification and cultural transmission to the political scale, structure, and ethos of religious communities

Ancient history · Cult · Ethnology · Geography · Mainstream · New guinea · Political science · Sociology · Telecommunications · Transmission (telecommunications · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Engineering · History · Island Studies and Pacific Affairs · Law · Pacific and Southeast Asian Studies · Religion, Society, and Development · Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices · 20th century · Baining (Papua New Guinea people) · Baining (Papua New Guinean people) · Cargo cults · Papua new guinea · Religion · Social life and customs

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