Abstract:
Early 20th century, Australian and New Zealand Methodist missionaries in the Western Solomons espoused a double theme of self-sacrifice: referencing Calvary, they both proffered themselves on behalf of Islanders’ salvation and advocated Islanders learning self-sacrifice as proof of their salvation. In both cases, self-sacrifice was understood as a gift of self on behalf of others. I particularly focus on missionaries’ perceptions of themselves as striving to emulate and reciprocate Christ’s sacrifice through their own, sometimes tragic, lives and, accordingly, as providing moral models for islanders. I consider anthropological conceptualization of dividual – gift and suggest that, contra missionaries’ perceptions, their understandings echoed Melanesian conceptualizations of the gift as instrument of dividual being, facilitating conversions. In elaborating these hidden affinities, I draw upon recent theological claims that pre-Christian Pacific personhood was fundamentally Christian and on Trouillot’s concept of “impossibility” to consider missionaries’ apparent inability to discern the parallels between their own and Islanders’ understandings.