Abstract
It is not uncommon to set off to a fieldwork site to study one aspect of a society, yet cumulative turns of events and ensued observations in the field may lead one to focus on a distinctively different theme in ethnographic writing. This may be the case with Liana Chua’s The Christianity of Culture: Conversion, Ethnic Citizenship, and the Matter of Religion in Malaysian Borneo. The author embarked on her doctoral dissertation research on Bidayuh cultural identity, yet she soon found that the question of Bidayuh culture is intrinsically related to Bidayuh conversion to Christianity. Couching her discussions in a nascent theoretical framework of the anthropology of Christianity, Chua counters a current theoretical emphasis to see a conversion to Christianity as discontinuity and rupture from previous modes of religious expression and identities. Chua, instead, looks more closely into the aspects of continuity in the conversion processes. She claims that this approach will further deepen our understanding of conversion, and her current work proves that it certainly does.
The Bidayuh is one of thirty or so ethnic groups officially recognized in the State of Sarawak in Malaysia. Firmly situating the Bidayuh in the context of Malaysia’s racial politics in the early twenty-first century, Chua provides us with a sensitive reading as to what is at stake in the context of the dominant Malay-Muslim populations. In particular, Chua focuses on ways in which Christian identities continue to enable the Bidayuh to go in and out of different adat (way of life). Here, the author emphasizes actions and performance in defining one’s ethnicity, and not the genealogy or provenance of one’s “race.” For example, being Christian allows Bidayuhs to eat Bidayuh food such as pork; conversion to Islam would clearly prohibit this practice. Chua attends to the complexities of the conversion to Christianity from a variety of vantage points: one of the ways is by attending to practical matters such as eating and dressing. She also frames this line of inquiry, that of attending to practical and tangible aspects of the conversion processes, as a critical response to the study, which focused too much on the aspect of “cultural consciousness.”
Chua’s main inquiry is into what she calls the adat gawai “question.” Chua had arrived in the village of her study when the majority of practitioners of old rituals, called adat gawai, had converted to Christianity. Although some non-Christian gawai practitioners are still alive and therefore carrying out the practice, Chua notices that enacting adat gawai rituals would not be possible without the help of Christian villagers. According to Chua, however, most Christians profess their sense of liberation from a “dark, fearful, gawai-following past” (5). Then, why do Christians help the performance of adat gawai rituals at all? Further, in this search of Bidayuh “culture,” Chua arrives at an understanding of adat gawai as being treated as the “culture” of Bidayuh, performed at foreign dignitaries’ visits and other politically important occasions. Studying three Christian groups in a village: Anglicans, Roman Catholics, and a small branch of an evangelical group called Sidang Injil Borneo (or SIB), Chua paints reasonably complex pictures of Christian involvement in the construction and the maintenance of the “Bidayuh culture.” In addition to explaining this paradox using such concepts as the “culturalization” and “politicization” of Bidayuh practices, Chua also reveals spiritual dimensions of the adat gawai performance by Christian villagers. Both Christians and non-Christian Bidayuhs, although in varying degrees, continue to affirm the existence of gawai spirits and therefore are anxious about the implications of ritual performance.
Overall, Chua treats the Bidayuh conversion to Christianity with sensitivity and balanced judgement. Chua’s writing is characterized by its theoretical vigour, informed by both historical and ethnographic writings. However, more ethnographic details of the Bidayuh life may be warranted. Her use of ethnographic details from her own fieldwork is not extensive and Chua often refers to ethnographic descriptions from historical records and other ethnographies. Further “muddy” examples from her own fieldwork would have enriched her theoretical discussions of expressions of continuity. I would also have liked to learn more about the discontinuity and rupture of Bidayuh Christians from their adat gawai past, although doing so might have jeopardized her main claim. By situating minority Christian communities in Muslim dominated contexts, this ethnography provides us with a valuable access point to the complex social and political situations of today’s world, in which different ethnic and faith groups must peacefully coexist. This book can be assigned as reading for the Anthropology of Religion course. Chua’s current work is also a welcome addition to a growing number of studies of Christianity in Asia.