Description: Explains an overlooked but vital chapter in the history of global Pentecostalism - the widespread eruption of intense charismatic revival movements across Melanesia in the 1970s.
Brief description: Jon Bialecki is an Honorary Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, UK
Review Quotes:
"This is a fine exploration of what the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari can teach us about the nature of religious movements, and in particular those known as Pentecostal or charismatic Christian revivals. Based on extensive ethnographic and historical research on such revivals in Melanesia, this book is an important theoretical contribution to the anthropological study of religion that will have a lasting effect on the field." --Joel Robbins, University of Cambridge, UK
"Fraser Macdonald's work on revivals in the South Pacific is important for understanding the development of Christianity in the region. This book is no exception." --Tom Bratrud, University of Bergen, Norway "In this remarkable book, Fraser Macdonald examines charismatic revival as a path that offered Melanesian revivalists in the 1970s a distinct alternative to mission Christianity. When these societies convulsed in religious enthusiasm, he argues, they were not just responding to the political forces of waning colonialism and nascent nationalism. Nor were they simply rejecting mission teachings. Instead, they were ecstatically asserting a new and different way to hope, security, metaphysical order, and even utopia." --Matt Tomlinson, Australian National University, Australia