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This paper addresses how Christianity, and in particular Catholicism, is deployed in response to gender‐based violence (GBV) in Papua New Guinea. It provides insights into the various ways the Catholic community, Church, and its clergy respond to and manage GBV. Focusing on a case study in the Autonomous Region of Bougainville in Papua New Guinea, the article reveals how Gender Equality Theology is used and received to address GBV in this region. What transpires is that despite supporting social change, Gender Equality Theology also advocates a particular status quo by essentialising gender relations, and thereby excluding non‐binary gender identifications and relations. The article will discuss this paradox, highlighting the importance of vernacularisation and how despite its conservatism, Gender Equality Theology provides victims, survivors, counselors, and activists with resources to respond to GBV and change gender inequality in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The basic premise of this paper is that oppressive and violent behaviour is not an essential aspect of the male identity. Seeking to comprehend the underlying causes of violence, specifically against women but also more generally, this paper examines some of the alternative ways of being a man that have accompanied Christianity. Through observation of some Pentecostals from New Ireland, I have concluded that new ways of being a man that are less oppressive and dominating for women are emerging. This phenomenon I argue is a step towards gender equality, since it involves creating more caring and equitable relationships and a step towards reducing violence both against women and in the community, since it embraces non-violent ways of being a man. Particularly useful in analysing the process of reforming men is Foucault's work on governmentality since it relates well to the Pentecostal emphasis on radical change in being 'born again'. Conversion for born-again Christians is more than simply abandoning sin; rather it involves the creation of a new self and becoming a new person. Similarly, Foucault argues that the individual practises the art of self-governance in re-forming her or himself as she or he desires. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the story of the formation and subsequent activities of a church women's group in Maisin villages and women's experiences of Christianity more broadly, in relation to the changing production and uses of traditional bark cloth ( tapa), a signature women's product which has become a marker of Maisin identity. While the influence of the local Mothers' Union has waxed and waned over the past 60 years, tapa cloth has had a continuing influence upon its fortunes. Tapa cloth has been the chief means for church women to raise funds to support their activities and the local church. However, we argue that, more fundamentally, tapa has shaped women's gendered Christian identities, experiences and history, mediating relationships with men, between generations of women, and with various sorts of 'missionaries' who have often justified their intrusions in terms of improving women's lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Papua New Guinean imaginings of Israel as a potential development partner draw on Christian renderings of the Bible, but they also reflect an understanding of Israel as a modern, technologically advanced nation. As middle-class Papua New Guineans reflect on the failures of national development since gaining independence from Australia, they express ambivalence about the appropriateness of Western models of development for the Papua New Guinean context. However, the influx of Asian investment is also seen as lacking, or even threatening; therefore, Asian models of development alsofail to offer an appealing hope for the future. In this paper, I argue that these racialised understandings of modernity represent a 'post-colonial racial triangle', a discursive field within which the moral implications of development are understood and debated. Within this triangle, Melanesians are thought to have 'culture' and (Christian) 'morality' but lack 'development'. Australians or 'whitemen' are thought to have 'development' and 'morality' but to lack 'culture'. 'Asians' are thought to have 'development' and 'culture' but to lack (Christian) morality. Taking this moral framing of race into account, Israel emerges as a possible aid donor with the credentials to reconcile these three positions as it is seen to be the possessor of 'development', 'culture', and 'morality'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In early 2000s, a large group of Gogodala-speaking villagers in the Western Province (WP) of Papua New Guinea, led by a man I refer to as Henry, claimed to be members of the Lost Tribes of Israel. Henry and his supporters arranged for the visit of Tudor Parfitt, then Director of the Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of London, to WP. In this paper, I suggest that an ongoing local interest in 'origins' has been framed in light of biblical teachings, and this more recent claim of a connection between the Gogodala ancestors and the Lost Tribes of Israel. I explore the generation of such ideas and claims through an examination of the significance of babala ('rules' or 'laws') as practices vital to the maintenance of village-based life, and biblical teachings on behaviour and practice focused on by the local Unevangelised Fields Mission. In this context, I explore the implications of the conjuncture of babala and the Bible, and the visits by Parfitt and his team, through the recent development of a 'Messianic Church' in Balimo with explicit forms of worship associated with Judaism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gambling and financial investment have a long shared history, with many convergences and many moments where each has defined the other as its opposite. In the contemporary Pacific, not least among evangelical Christians, gambling is often understood as wasteful entertainment and even as an irresponsible vice. Investment on the other hand is seen as a productive activity for both individuals and society at large. These moral concerns draw on discourses of proprietorship of the self, of money and of risk. This paper explores moral attitudes to gambling/investment among middle-class investors in a mass Ponzi scheme in Papua New Guinea ( PNG) and charts new valorizations of risk and investment as components of the construction of modern 'financial selves'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we draw on fieldwork with middle-class investors in 'fast money schemes' ( Ponzi scams) to consider how Neo- Pentecostal Christianity may be mediating social and economic change in Papua New Guinea, particularly in relation to gender equality. Ideas of companionate marriage and the cultivation of an affective self imply masculinities that are more sensitive and less domineering. As these images of fulfilled modernity flow out from Pentecostal churches into broader Papua New Guinean society, they corroborate Taylor's theory of how change occurs within the modern social imaginary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]