Fields of the Lord: Animism, Christian Minorities, and State Development

Religious and ethnic violence between Indonesia's Muslim majority and Christian minorities escalated dramatically after Suharto resigned in 1998. In this ethnographic study of Christianization in Indonesia, Lorraine Aragon delineates some of the background to this conflict. The work departs from many studies of comparative religion by positing that religions - like cultural groups - no longer can be considered as isolated or inherently "orthodox" entities. Moreover, the realization of particular religions in their social contexts are best understood through an examination of institutions that mediate between the power of governments and the agency of particular individuals. To this end, Aragon closely details Central Sulawesi highlanders' institutions of farming and community leadership, regional patterns of exchange, ancestral cosmology, shamanic healing, sacrificial rituals, and ritual speech and song to determine the subtle shifts that have caused contemporary forms of these events to be deemed either Christian or "unchristian".