Ebooks for the Classroom+Faculty

Indigenous Peoples and Religious Change
ISBN: 9789047405559
Platform/Publisher: BRILL / BRILL
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Unlimited; Download: Unlimited
Subjects: Literature and society.; Politics and literature.;

This book explores a range of societies in and around the Pacific and southern Africa in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that encountered religions introduced from elsewhere, or fashioned their own responses to already established religious traditions. These changes observed through the responses of the receiving societies indicate that religious change is a creative dynamic, rather than a passive acceptance of new ideas, beliefs and practices. While change is often triggered by the introduction of new understandings, it can only become entrenched within a community when it takes on meaning for individuals, and becomes embedded within the social and cultural life of the community.