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ARTICLES

Pentecostalism and Egalitarianism in Melanesia

A Reconsideration of the Pentecostal Gender Paradox

Annelin Eriksen

n ABSTRACT: In this article I discuss ‘the Pentecostal gender paradox’, famously coined by
Bernice Martin. I do so by comparing Melanesian and Pentecostal forms of egalitarian-
ism. My argument centers on the contention that in order for this paradox to emerge,
specific concepts of equality and gender have to be kept fixed across contexts where
they may not necessarily be stable. Pentecostalism has a specific effect on the role of
women in the church, such as giving them access to the spirit, while also impacting on
the notion of equality and ideas about the nature of gender. I conclude that in Pente-
costalism gender is seen as an individual quality and that gender relations are viewed
as power relations.

n KEYWORDS: change, equality, gender, gender paradox, individualism, Melanesia, Pente-

costalism, power

In 2001, Bernice Martin published her well-known paper on ‘the Pentecostal gender paradox’,
and in the last decade or so we have had an increase in focus on questions of gender in studies
of Pentecostalism, perhaps especially in anthropological studies of Pentecostalism (e.g., Mate
2002; Newell 2005; Pype 2012; Soothill 2007; van Klinken 2011). The question of why so many
women join Pentecostal movements and remain there—gaining a new kind of religious status
yet never taking the full consequence of this and breaking with established patriarchal institu-
tions—is indeed one of the most intriguing in social analyses of Pentecostalism, particularly
in the so-called global South. These patriarchal institutions seem to be as much in the church
institution (with men taking on official leadership roles) as outside of it in the continuation of
male status regimes. Why are Pentecostal women not breaking with these structures more fully?
A simple version of the question could be, is Pentecostalism a women’s liberation movement or
not? The conclusion seem to be both ‘yes’ and ‘no’—and thus the paradox.
For some time now, this question has become increasingly problematic for me: there is some-
thing in the way in which it is framed that makes it hard to see it as anything other than a para-
dox. In this article I want to address the gender question in Pentecostalism differently. My claim

Religion and Society: Advances in Research 7 (2016): 37–50 © Berghahn Books

doi:10.3167/arrs.2016.070103
38  n  Annelin Eriksen

is that in order for the paradox to emerge, a specific idea of equality and a specific idea of gender
have to be kept stable across contexts where they might not necessarily be stable. Pentecostalism
does something specific, not only to women’s roles in the church (giving them access to the spirit
and so on), but also to the idea of equality and to the notion of what gender is. In order to make
this argument, I will take as a point of departure ethnographies of what I call ‘difference-based
societies’ in Melanesia and set up a structural contrast to what I call ‘sameness-based societ-
ies’ (see also Rio and Eriksen 2014). The latter, I will claim, constitutes a gradually emerging
cosmology in Melanesian contexts. It is in the rapid growth of some of the international Pente-
costal churches that this transformation is mostly visible because here the idea that all humans
are the same is pushed most radically. It is slightly different in the more local or independent
churches of Pentecostal inspiration, which I will also describe. It is therefore in particular the
international Pentecostal churches (or ‘global Pentecostal churches’) that challenge established
perceptions and values in Melanesian contexts.
So, first, what is a social system based on cosmologies of ‘difference’, and how is it different
from a social system based on the idea of ‘sameness’? Let me clarify the concepts. Difference is
a general concept signifying the process whereby elements are distinguished from each other.
Sameness is the opposite, the lack of differentiation. Sameness is also a concept that analytically
is very close to equality. In this article, I treat the concept of sameness as more general and the
concept of equality as a particular instantiation. More concretely, the lack of differentiation can
be framed as the value of equality. Generally, one might argue that the European value of equal-
ity, with its genealogy going back to the French Revolution, is a specific version of the idea of
sameness. Sameness is a cosmological precondition, one could argue, for a social system where
the value of equality is fundamental. Making the analytical distinction between sameness and
equality is important in the context of Melanesia, because much of the literature on social sys-
tems in the region have taken for granted the universality of the concept of equality. Indeed,
Melanesian societies have often been understood and discussed as almost the prototypical egali-
tarian society (see, e.g., Lepowsky 1990). However, the understanding of what egalitarianism
is has often been based on ideas of economic distribution or political systems of decentraliza-
tion (Sahlins 1963). Melanesia’s ‘big man’ system has, for instance, often been understood as a
political and economic system that is based on an egalitarian form. Understanding Melanesian
societies in light of a specific economic model based on a social ideology with a strong European
heritage has, on the one hand, set Melanesian societies in comparative dialogue with social sys-
tems elsewhere. On the other hand, however, it has perhaps prevented explorations of possible
alternative conceptualizations of social systems in Melanesia, based, at least to some degree, on
local conceptions.
In this article I argue that Melanesian social systems should be understood as a form that
takes difference as given but works, socially, to overcome radical differences. Gender is the key
to this process. In Pentecostalism, cosmological sameness and social equality are given, but
diversification is a social achievement. Gender is a mechanism, perhaps the most important
mechanism, through which this is achieved. In other words, gender plays a dramatically differ-
ent role in the two systems, but in both of them gender is key to the process, creating unity in
one system and diversification in the other.
I begin by suggesting a more nuanced understanding of the significance of gender in Pente-
costalism, making the comparison with what I call difference-based social systems in Melane-
sia as the point of departure. Having outlined the main differences between the two systems,
I will toward the end of the article reconsider what has been called ‘the Pentecostal gender
paradox’ (Martin 2001) in this light. As a matter of fact, in this light, there might not even be
a Pentecostal gender paradox.
 Pentecostalism and Egalitarianism in Melanesia  n  39

Difference-Based Cosmologies in Melanesia

But what is a difference-based cosmology? And what are its effects on social life? In the case of
Makira in the Solomon Islands, Michael Scott (2007) has argued that its people do not acknowl-
edge a unity of humankind. In contrast to monotheist religions, where humankind was created
as one, in one act, and where, in Christian theology, multiplicity was created subsequently (e.g.,
the Tower of Babel), in Makira there is no one world. Different matri-clans have very different
origins, and there is no encompassing cosmological idea that unites them all. Rather, accord-
ing to Scott, they represent different ontologies. They live in a ‘poly-ontological’ world. Unity is
never given, but always socially constructed. A ‘mono-ontology’ can take sameness for granted
and thus produce difference between people that is always relative to the foundational unity of
humankind. In a poly-ontological world, this difference is much more fundamental. Because
difference is given, ontologically, social life is always geared toward the creation of (temporary)
unities, according to Scott. A similar point has been made for the case of Ambrym in Vanuatu
(see Rio and Eriksen 2014). Here, the idea of achieving a unity of humankind is extremely
important, but extremely problematic and difficult as well. One might also understand the
oscillation between different relational forms—outlined in Marilyn Strathern’s (1988) model
of mediated and unmediated, cross-sex and same-sex relations—as reflections of this social
effort to create temporary relational wholes. The dynamics of creating complete and incomplete
relations (Strathern 1993) reflect the necessity of a foundational difference. The social is always
geared toward making ‘complete wholes’, which will, eventually, turn into incomplete parts that
again are constructed into new wholes. In Strathern’s analysis, these dynamics emerge more as
a dimension of the social and less as an ontology, but I think there are clear parallels between
her analysis and Scott’s.
In this article, I will take as the point of departure the possibility that in Melanesia difference
is given and sameness/unity must be achieved. I do this in order to set up a structural contrast
to the religious form I am interested in: Pentecostalism. I am aware that there are great varia-
tions in Melanesia, and one would have no problem finding cosmologies that would have a clear
mono-ontological structure (see, e.g., Mimica 1988). For this analysis, however, I will focus on
the encounter between Christian mono-ontologies, what I have called sameness-based ontolo-
gies, and difference-based cosmologies, what Scott refers to as poly-ontologies.

The Unity-Producing Social Machine

The fundamental significance of difference has specific social effects. A difference-based cos-
mology entails the creation of social worlds where the overcoming of radical difference is neces-
sary. I will outline two social institutions fundamentally based on the dynamics of gender, that
is, rituals and marriage, through which this overcoming takes place.

Rituals
In a social system where unity is not given, ceremonies can be seen as a social form that mate-
rializes, for a limited period, fundamental sameness. In these rituals, the total social whole is
articulated, often quite literally as in, for instance, the Ambrym or Pentecost initiation rituals
(bilbilan). These ceremonies involve organized and intense dancing, with hundreds of people
in circles following the same rhythms for several days. People will enter and leave the collective
dancing almost invisibly for small breaks, while the dancing, singing, and beating of drums
40  n  Annelin Eriksen

continue. The striking feature of these ceremonies is their capacity to involve such a huge num-
ber of people in the same task—the movement and the rhythm—which clearly manifests, in a
physical form, the presence of a total social whole. This is not only a Durkheimian argument
about rituals’ collective conscience, reflecting the idea of an encompassment of individuals in a
greater social whole. Rather, in addition to this sociological effect, rituals also create a cosmo-
logical sameness. It is as if every difference vanishes for a moment, and instead we see a total
unity emerge. The rituals create a common focus and a common goal: one can not remain unin-
volved. Both audibly and visibly, unity is communicated and created.
During these occasions, one might say that the total social whole was created for a limited
period, and the overcoming of ontological difference clearly achieved. Often, gender functioned
as the dynamic onto which this total social whole could be ordered. In other words, gender had
the potential for structuring these social wholes, which reflects what I here call the ‘unifying
capacity’ of gender in difference-based cosmologies.
Andre Iteanu’s (1990) description of Orokaiva rituals in Papua New Guinea is of interest
here. Among the Orokaiva, according to Iteanu, there is an ongoing oscillation between a pri-
mary state of what the Orokaiva call jo and a ritually achieved state of what they call pure. The
former state is one of non-totality; the latter creates order and hierarchy, between man and
woman and between humans and pigs. The ritual, one might say, is a social machine that pro-
duces hierarchical relations. However, between the rituals, Iteanu points out, there is an erosion
of this order. For instance, during and in the period after a ritual, men and women eat separately.
Men eat on platforms elevated from the eating platforms of the women. After some time, when
the ritually produced order fades, men and women will eat together. Human-pig relations also
become blurred in the period between the rituals, with babies and piglets being treated in a
similar manner, for example. However, during a ritual the pigs are treated radically differently,
as they become exchange objects to be cut into pieces and distributed.
We see here how gender is the key dynamic from which a total social order emerges. Collec-
tive rituals were occasions for the social recognition of unity through the creation of a momen-
tary gender hierarchy. The rituals were thus contexts for both the manifestation of a total social
whole and for the articulation of possible hierarchies. Hierarchies require totalizing wholes
(Dumont 1980). In poly-ontological contexts, this whole needs to be socially created, as it is
not ontologically given. In these contexts, I claim that it is often through the dynamic of gender
that encompassing wholes are created. This is perhaps most clearly expressed in the namange
society, which has been documented in most of the islands in central and north Vanuatu. In this
ceremonial status society, men competed for grades in a stratified system (see Allen 1981; Erik-
sen 2008; Rio 2007). I have described elsewhere in detail how this ritual society produced an
almost purified masculinity (Eriksen 2008; see also Rio 2007), in which femininity was totally
excluded. During these rituals, the world was created as if only masculinity existed, and men
would be stratified according to the degree to which they could achieve this form of masculinity.
However, as pointed out by Strathern (1988), femininity is heavily in the background in these
all-male rituals. It is only in relation to this background of the total opposite that the production
of masculinity is at all meaningful. Thus, the differentiation of the feminine and the masculine is
the key for the creation of this ritual society, and thus also for the momentary display of encom-
passing social wholes.
Nevertheless, as in the case of the Orokaiva, these rituals were an expression of an exceptional
social state. Everyday life did not involve this kind of large-scale effort at displaying totalities.
On the contrary, as I have argued for the case of Ambrym (Eriksen 2008), everyday life was far
removed from these ritual contexts. The men who achieved the highest grades, who sacrificed
the highest number of pigs, and thus became very potent, both socially and spiritually, would
 Pentecostalism and Egalitarianism in Melanesia  n  41

be feared and respected, but also made irrelevant for day-to-day activities (see Eriksen 2008).
Although the namange society is mostly a historical phenomenon and currently practiced to a
limited degree on Ambrym and other islands of Vanuatu,1 it is very much present in people’s
minds and imaginaries. People often talk about the great chiefs of the past, of the men who man-
aged to climb the grades of the mage (the local Ambrym variant of the namange) and achieve an
almost other-worldly status. In their accounts, they also convey the segregated pattern of village
life, where the great men of the namange had to live by themselves, cook their own food, and eat
alone—described locally in Bislama as eating ‘taboo fire’ (tambu fae).
We see here how differences were always acknowledged, but not turned into encompass-
ing hierarchies in day-to-day life. Clearly, the high men of the namange were given a specific
position in everyday life, but outside of the ritual context, it is not clear whether this position
was one of elevation or outcast (Eriksen 2008). In other words, the hierarchy became blurred
outside of the ritual context. Paradoxically, the ritual mechanisms that turned difference and
multiplicity into unity and hierarchy left day-to-day life ‘open’ to any emerging alternative form
of difference. When the churches arrived on Ambrym, there was a genuine openness toward
this new form of difference. Everyone, except perhaps the high men of the graded society, was
interested and engaged. Furthermore, everyday life in an Ambrym village is characterized by an
always present awareness that other kinds of creatures might emerge in the form of a man or a
woman to deceive you. This might be the lisepsep (invisible creatures in the trees), the sorcerer
(who famously can take on other people’s appearance), or any hitherto unknown creatures that
might be imported from other islands or from abroad. Ideas of African sorcery, for instance, are
a growing concern among villagers. This idea that people in the next village might not be what
they seem to be makes it even more important to continually work to overcome fundamental
difference. One might argue that the awareness of this fundamental difference makes people
work hard to achieve a form of sameness. The ritual contexts are one result of this, although
it takes a hierarchical form. In day-to-day life as well, people create mechanisms to overcome
difference, but in a way that does not trigger any total encompassment. Instead, everyday life is
characterized by engagements in relations that turn ‘the other’ into a part of yourself. Strathern
(1988) has shown how this dynamic between momentary unities that are deconstructed and
reconstructed is in many ways the motor of social life in Melanesia.

Marriage
This leads me to the second social institution I want to look at in the context of difference-
based cosmologies: marriage. As a ritual, marriage is also a social institution that creates same-
ness, but not in the most obvious sense. It is not the Lévi-Straussian idea that marriage makes
connections and unties kin-groups that I am pointing to here (because this is actually not the
case, as we will soon see), but that gender again functions as a dynamic of differentiation that
connects across difference. Let me explain by returning to the case of Ambrym. Rio (2007) has
shown that the kinship and marriage system on Ambrym is based on the (for us) paradoxical
idea that marrying across radical difference is necessary in order to reproduce the distinctive-
ness of the kin-group (the buluim). On Ambrym, gardening is an analogy. The yam needs the
vine in order to grow and reach its potential, just as a man needs a wife in order to reproduce.
But in the same way that the vine is detached from the yam and can be cut off when harvested,
the wife is not part of the kin-group into which she marries. She is always detached. In other
words, there is never a real connection, or merger, of two kin-groups in a marriage. Precisely
because the feminine is seen as different from the masculine, and because the masculine is
what is being produced in the kin-group, there is never any real connection. The offspring will
42  n  Annelin Eriksen

be fundamentally part of the patriline, the father’s buluim and not the mother’s. Thus, we can
see how gender becomes fundamental for the perpetuation of the distinct buluims, because the
feminine is always that which is external to the buluim, that which moves, connects, and makes
it grow. A sister is, for instance, called a metehal—a path. Masculinity implies the opposite; it
implies the core of the buluim, that is, place, stasis, and permanence.
Gender has a double function here. On the one hand, gender recreates the distinctiveness of
kin-groups and is thus a prerequisite for difference-based ontologies. Only because the femi-
nine, in the form of the in-marrying women, is always external, as is the vine to the yam, can the
buluim reproduce its distinctiveness. On the other hand, gender also has another and perhaps
more surprising function: across the different buluims, and thus across radical differences, the
gender system is the same. For example, on Ambrym, whether the kin-group is the line of men
emerging from the Banyan tree or the line of men descending from the trickster figure (half-
man, half-spirit), who arrived in a canoe from the neighboring island Pentecost (Eriksen 2008),
femininity and masculinity work the same way. Men from the Banyan line and men from the
Pentecost line will all reproduce their lineage substance by marrying women from other groups,
just as the yam needs the vine to grow and move above the ground. Thus, gender differentiation
is a system of differentiation that unites. It cuts across other differences.
In sum, we might say that in Melanesia we can find societies wherein difference is given and
unity/sameness needs to be socially achieved. Gender is fundamental for how social institutions
such as rituals and marriage alliances create this sameness. Much literature from Melanesia has
shown exactly how important gender is socially (see, e.g., Strathern 1988; Wardlow 2006). In
Strathern’s (1988) model of Melanesia, it is exactly through the dynamics of gender that one can
observe the mechanics of making wholes into parts and parts into wholes. Gender, being a sys-
tem of differentiation based (usually) on the binaries of femininity and masculinity, can create
basic unities in everyday life, while taking on other encompassing qualities in ceremonial life.
Let us now turn to Christianity, in particular Pentecostalism. As with Christianity more gen-
erally to varying degrees, Pentecostalism is based on an idea of sameness: all humans are uni-
versally the same and have the same potential for salvation. This belief, in a Melanesian context,
changes everything. For example, it changes what gender is. I will now look at the social effects
of Pentecostalism, where gender in many ways has the opposite effect—creating difference.
When sameness is given, gender becomes the instrument through which the most fundamental
difference is articulated.

Melanesian Pentecostalism
It is important to note that when I talk about Melanesia and Pentecostalism, I am generating a
model of a certain possibility. In present-day Melanesia, there are a great number of different
forms of Christianity and of neo-traditionalist groups, cargo cults, political parties, and protest
groups. I will claim that although these groups might not articulate a distinct difference-based
worldview, some of the present-day concerns that these groups have can be better understood
if we view them as reactions to, or developments of, a worldview wherein difference is given.
Pentecostal groups are a case in point. Thus, we need to see new social formations, mainly on
the urban scene in Melanesia, in the context of this oscillation between difference and sameness.
However, as will become apparent, there has also been a gradual shift that is perhaps especially
observable in the urban areas where Pentecostalism has grown most rapidly. Christianity, and
in particular its Pentecostal variants, assumes sameness as fundamental. In Christian teachings,
God created the world by bringing light into darkness, and He created humankind in His image.
 Pentecostalism and Egalitarianism in Melanesia  n  43

Thus, in Christianity, as in other monotheistic religions, humanity is unitary; there is only one
beginning and only one kind of human being. As a result, in Christianity, difference needed
to be introduced through sinfulness (the Garden of Eden, the Tower of Babel). The question
becomes, how does this idea of an assumed unity of humankind take form in local imaginar-
ies and social life in Melanesia today? And how can we understand the effects of an encounter
between a difference-based ontology and a sameness-based ontology?
In revivalist forms of Christianity, and in Pentecostalism in particular, this unity of human-
kind has taken a specific form: the equality of individuals before God. As Dumont (1986)
has outlined, in the history of Christianity in Europe, the idea of an ‘outworldly individual’
dedicated to the spiritual and the godly generated an encompassing value hierarchy. However,
this idea of an outworldly individual who was able to become spiritually elevated developed
into the idea of the individual in the world. Strong arguments have been made about the
causal link between Christianity in Europe and the development of egalitarian individual-
ism (Dumont 1986; Martin 2001). In Pentecostalism, where the focus on the individual and
his or her belief is primary, the individual has become the only value possible, and this value
cannot create a totalizing hierarchy. The very idea that every individual is similar negates the
notion of hierarchy in the sense of a socially stratified system. Furthermore, individualism is
a value that does not easily encompass other values. Individualism in itself creates a system
that is fundamentally ‘flat’; any value will be acceptable, and it is the ‘right’ of the individual
to hold it. Even a value that would contradict the very centrality of the individual would be
accepted, because individuals articulate it. We can see a paradox here in individual-based
social systems: the belief that any individual has the right to express any value and any world-
view undermines the idea of difference and reinforces the centrality of the individual. There
is therefore in individualism a sense in which difference can never really occur. There is a
fundamental denial of difference. Sameness is always already there. Let us look at the specific
form this takes in Melanesia.

Port Vila
On the urban scene in Melanesia, Pentecostal and charismatic churches are growing in number
and becoming increasingly popular. In Port Vila, the capital of Vanuatu, there is a great variety
of Pentecostal churches. Some of them are international and are often led by senior pastors
from abroad, typically from Australia or the US. The Neil Thomas Ministries (NTM), the Pot-
ter’s House, and the Foursquare Church are examples. Other Pentecostal churches are locally
initiated and have a clear local profile. They build their own churches around their neighbor-
hoods, often recruiting members from kinship and island networks. The international churches
recruit, to some extent, from the emerging elites and aspiring middle classes. These are the
groups of people in town for whom kinship networks have become burdensome (Gewertz and
Errington 1999). The local churches often describe themselves as independent and often also
claim to be the original Christian churches (Eriksen 2009). The Bible Church, a congregation
established about 15 years ago by a man from Tongoa in central Vanuatu, might be described
as representing a middle ground between the local and the international churches, and it has a
typical profile. It was initially started after a visit from American missionaries, but the founding
father had a vision from God in which he saw himself building a new church that would make
a difference for the people in Vanuatu (Eriksen 2012). The church is independent, although still
in touch with the congregation in the US that sent the missionaries. The church recruits widely
from both squatter areas and more established middle-class neighborhoods. The services given
in the church have a clear Pentecostal inspiration, where individual prayer, shouts of hallelujah,
44  n  Annelin Eriksen

and the raising of arms and shutting of eyes start the service. It is also not uncommon for people
to receive the Holy Spirit during the service; the spirit is said to be strong in the church.
In the local Pentecostal churches in Vanuatu, there is often a noticeable emphasis on inde-
pendence and the achievement of national unity. These churches usually have an explicit politi-
cal agenda (see Eriksen 2009). In the more internationally oriented churches of the Pentecostal
kind, this political dimension of unity and independence is not present to the same degree.
Rather, there is a strong emphasis on individual health and wealth. One might argue that in
local Pentecostal churches we can still observe the effects of a difference-based cosmology. The
churches are contexts from which one can create unity. In other words, the churches are cer-
emonial contexts that are similar to the ones described above (e.g., the namange). In the church,
through collective prayer, for instance, the focus is directed to the total social whole. The church
becomes a new tool through which this can be achieved. Whereas kastom-based (traditional)
ceremonies have to some degree lost the potential for creating large encompassing unities,
becoming to an increasing degree exchange-based ceremonies (cf. Rio 2014), the independent
churches typically work to create this encompassing unity. The following is, for instance, stated
in a popular, local hymn in Bislama:2
Yu we yu God blong unity/You who are the God of Unity
Yu we yu tri be yu wan/you who are three but one
Mekem Mifala I kam wan/make us become one
Blong mifala I save mekem wok blong yu/so we can work with you
Unity hemi paoa blong jos/Unity is the power of the church
Unity hemi hat blong wan nation/unity is the heart of the nation
Long north kasem south/from north to south
Long east kasem west/from east to west
Yumi joen tru long Jisas Kraes/we join in Jesus Christ

This is of course not an absolute distinction between the local churches and the international
churches. Rather, one might point out that the former churches focus on the social whole to a
greater extent than the latter. In the local churches, maps of Vanuatu that show the locations
of the local congregations are often on display, either outside the church or above the pulpit.
The discourse often emphasizes the importance of kaverem ap Vanuatu (encompass or ‘cover’
Vanuatu). Furthermore, although these churches teach the necessity of individual conversion
and the importance of the relationship between the individual and God, they do not emphasize
ideals of economic individualization. The so-called health-and-wealth gospel is preached only
to a limited degree, and when the idea of economic prosperity is articulated, it is as a message of
prosperity for the community as a whole (prosperity on the island, in Port Vila, etc.). Generally,
it appears that the value of creating relations, emphasizing these relations, and thus achieving
unity—at least momentarily and for certain purposes—is still paramount. The ideal of these
churches might be, as in the ceremonial contexts of namange or bilbilan described above, to
achieve an absolute unity (kaverem ap Vanuatu). For instance, it is often pointed out that we
need a conversion not only at the level of the individual but also at the level of the social—that
society as a whole (the island, the town, the country) needs a new start, even a ‘break with
the past’, in order to achieve a new, and real, independence (Eriksen 2009). Interestingly, the
dynamics of gender are parallel to the dynamics described for ritual institutions above. As in the
namange society, masculinity is in many ways celebrated in these local churches as encompass-
ing an absolute ideal (see also Eriksen 2012).
However, in the urban areas, mainly in international churches, a new kind of individualiza-
tion is also taking shape. This is reflected not only at the level of conversion, and in the idea of
 Pentecostalism and Egalitarianism in Melanesia  n  45

the individual and one’s personal relationship with God, but also in economic ideals and in new
notions of privacy and individual rights. I will claim that in these churches an idea of sameness
and equality before God is given and not something that one needs to work for or to explicitly
call for. Because sameness is given ontologically, it has become less interesting and less pressing,
one might say, to make this the main focus of prayer in the church. Rather, sameness in the form
of collective unity might be limiting the freedom of the individual to act as he or she wants. For
example, during services in one of these churches, comments such as “why should the standards
of others limit me?” and “why should I lower myself to the level of others?” were discussed.3 It is
not far-fetched to argue that these kinds of statements, along with the increasing popularity of
the health-and-wealth gospel in the form of individual prosperity, are indicative of an increas-
ing individualism. As pointed out above, individualism also brings along a very specific idea of
sameness: equality.
Equality implies a form of sameness in which individuals are the basic social units and the
idea of the individual is the basic value. The form of sameness achieved socially on Ambrym
during a namange ceremony was obviously a very different form of sameness. This was a same-
ness based on hierarchy and totality. The egalitarian individualism displayed in the interna-
tional Pentecostal churches is a new form of sameness. Therefore, when attending services in
these churches (which I started to do in 2014), I have been struck by what seems to be a very
different tone and style compared to services in the independent local churches where I usually
spend more time. In the latter churches, the focus is rarely on the differences between people.
In the more internationally oriented churches, however, we might see how the ontology of
sameness potentially can result in a sociality of egalitarian individualism because difference
is never ontologically threatening. Therefore, unity and the production of totalities are not
primary in this kind of sociality. I think the comments made in the international Pentecostal
church (referred to above) reflect not only the ways in which the idea of the individual unit has
achieved a new significance, but also the movement toward a taken-for-granted idea of same-
ness, in which, as I have pointed out, the differentiation between individuals becomes socially
more important.
I should at this point add that I am not arguing that there are ontological divides between
people in the same city, or even in the same neighborhood, in the sense that people attend-
ing what I call international churches see sameness in humanity, whereas people who attend
services in what I call independent churches work endlessly for unity because they cannot take
it ontologically for granted. This would be a caricature of the argument. Instead, I would say
that there are greater tendencies in the independent churches to focus on unity (although one
could also find evidence for the existence of the opposite perspective) and a greater tendency for
the international churches to focus on sameness. Recognizing this binary, analytically, makes it
easier to see the social effects of these differences.

The Egalitarian Paradox

Perhaps when we look at the question of gender, the taken-for-granted quality of sameness and
equality in Pentecostalism might become more obvious. Whereas gender in a difference-based
social formation cuts across other differences, becoming almost an explicit ordering mecha-
nism, in an egalitarian system (based on what we have called sameness-based ontology) gender
has an uneasy place. On the one hand, gender is a form of difference that is not valued. Any
other difference is important; for example, it is an individual ‘right’ to be different. But differen-
tiation along gendered lines negates ‘freedom’; it negates the possibility of the individual right to
46  n  Annelin Eriksen

become what one wants. Thus, gender is ideally negated. When I ask my Pentecostal interlocu-
tors in Port Vila (especially the ones who most frequently attend services in the international
churches) about the difference between men and women, they all reply, very unambiguously,
that men and women are of the same worth; they have the same possibility of conversion and
belief. There is no real difference. However, when talking about the social significance of gender,
they become less certain. There is ambivalence to the way gender actually structures everyday
life, but also important church tasks (e.g., there are no female pastors), dress codes, the social
division of labor, and so on. Yet this difference is rarely expressed. As I have argued elsewhere
(Eriksen 2014), there seems to be a clear denial of gender as a form of difference. This is, how-
ever, not so surprising. Gender is no longer a dynamic onto which total social wholes are con-
structed. Rather, gender has become an attribute of the individual person. In a sameness-based
cosmology, gender as a difference can exist only if it is attached to individuals. As I have argued
above, in the logic of individualism, the individual is the sole value. Thus, gender can have an
effect only if it is an individual quality.
Let us now turn to the Pentecostal gender paradox, phrased so eloquently by Bernice Martin
(2001: 54–55): “[T]he Pentecostal doctrine of salvation, and its liturgical practices based on the
gifts of the Spirit, carry a radically modernizing egalitarian impulse, albeit inside a formal patri-
archal casing.” Martin outlined the paradoxes implied in the growth of Pentecostalism, especially
in the global South, and especially in South America, where women to a greater extent than men
converted and remained converted, but where no formal office could be given to women and the
patriarchal structures, at least apparently, continued. Pentecostalism offered women access to
the Spirit in a much more egalitarian way than any other form of Christianity, and perhaps any
other form of organized religion. But, as Martin points out, it was as if a silent agreement was
based on an understanding that women would get more freedom and more access to the sacred
only if they did not claim it officially. It could be done, but not stated. Elizabeth Brusco (1986)
has shown how Colombian Pentecostalism effectively was a women’s movement and, as such,
was much more successful than any Western NGO promoting feminist ideas. Women convert-
ing to Pentecostalism managed to ‘please’ the established patriarchal structures where men as
household heads retained formal authority at the same time that they suddenly had more access
to spirituality and a greater say, for instance, when slain in the Spirit or as prophets and heal-
ers in religious questions. Thus, Pentecostalism maintained the nostalgia for traditional gender
ideals, as Salvatore Cucchiari (1990) has pointed out. The established gender-segregated insti-
tutions could live on, in spite of an apparent feminine liberation in Pentecostal congregations.
With Pentecostalism one could break with patriarchal institutions without breaking with them.
However, is it the case that gender relations change Pentecostalism, or does Pentecostalism
change what gender is? I maintain that only if the latter is ignored can we claim that there is a
Pentecostal gender paradox. When people, whether in South America, in Africa, or in Melane-
sia, turn to the Pentecostal churches as ‘modernizing machines’ that make attainable European
Enlightenment ideals, whereby individualism and equality for everyone can be had (although
only unofficially for women), this is not only a move from one form of religion to another,
but also often a move to an individualized sociality where gender has a specific significance.
In the case of (some) Melanesian societies, it is a move from a sociality based on difference to
one based on sameness (in the form of equality). In this latter form, gender becomes first and
foremost a matter of individual identification. I have elsewhere discussed the specific form that
this individualization of gender takes in Melanesia (Eriksen, forthcoming). I have shown the
way in which, for instance, femininity is increasingly understood as an essence contained by the
body. This is very different from the way in which femininity was understood in a non-Christian
context, where menstrual taboos were based on the idea that feminine substance was powerfully
 Pentecostalism and Egalitarianism in Melanesia  n  47

present outside of the individual body and was even more powerful when not contained in the
body. One can describe this transformation as a shift from an outward-oriented femininity to
one of interiorization of femininity, following the discursive landscape of egalitarian individual-
ism (e.g., in its Pentecostal form).
This development can be compared to Foucault’s analysis of changes that took place in
Europe in the seventeenth century. Foucault ([1976] 1990) has described one of the major dis-
courses on gender: the discourse on sex. He shows how this discourse shifted in focus from the
act in itself to ideas of inner feelings, “the stirrings … of desire” (ibid.: 21). In other words, a
process of interiorization can also be detected in Foucault’s analysis of the European history of
sexuality. Sexuality became a matter of subjective feelings of desire that generated confessional
practices of not only the classical Catholic kind but also more scandalous ones on the improper
literary scene. Foucault’s point is that sex was turned into an unmentionable phenomenon, con-
nected to shame and guilt; but although it was unmentionable, it also became the subject of an
extremely elaborate discourse. Sex became a matter of an inner state that should be controlled
through confessional practices. On all levels of the social, from state policies on demography
and population control, to the educational system with its architectural designs and organiza-
tional regulations, to the individual with his or her confessional practices, the discourse on sex
had a formative function. Foucault shows us how gender became sex, and sex became power, or,
more precisely, how the discourse on sex became a technology of power.
Foucault’s analysis of European developments is interesting not only in the context of Mela-
nesia and the processes of interiorization I have pointed to, but also because his analyses reveal
an important idiom for our understanding of relationships generally in an egalitarian individ-
ualist cosmology and cross-sex relations in particular—namely, power. Power is a key idiom
through which gender relations are understood and even created in an egalitarian cosmology.
Thus, with the move to a sociality that takes equality for granted, gender becomes individual-
ized, and the key social concept through which it is made meaningful is power. Gender rela-
tions are relations of control and power in the cosmological universe where equality is the key.
Power, and its specific masculine expression, the phallus and the idiom of penetration, has thus
also become a key concept for feminist critique (Cixous 1976; Irigaray 1985; Kristeva 1982). My
point here is that the semiotics of egalitarian individualism is structured on a sexual difference
that becomes meaningful first and foremost through the idiom of power. Gender relations are
understood as power relations.

Concluding Thoughts
Returning then, to the Pentecostal gender paradox, it seems to me that this is a paradox that
takes a very specific concept of gender as the point of departure. Firstly, gender is an individual
quality, and, secondly, gender relations are framed as power relations.
In a Pentecostal light, for example, women are seen as unliberated in an Ambrym kinship
and marriage system; when converting to Pentecostalism, they leave behind social institutions
that appear to be gender-segregated. However, my point is a simple one. For this to be the case,
the concept of gender needs to be kept stable across contexts where this is not the case. As I have
argued above, gender generated very different dynamics, for instance, in the ritual contexts of
the namange or in Ambrym marriage and kinship structures. Gender created social unity, not
power relations at the level of the individual.
In Latin American contexts, which Martin was perhaps mainly referring to when she phrased
the paradox, one might argue that the transition is not as radical as the one I have outlined for
48  n  Annelin Eriksen

Melanesia (or some cases in Melanesia). In the case of Latin America, the transition is mainly
one from Catholicism to evangelicalism (or Pentecostalism), and in these instances the concept
of gender might be more stable than in the contexts I have described for Melanesia. This might be
partly so, but I do think an increased awareness of the changes not only in what we might call the
sociological dimensions of gender in Pentecostal conversions (what women and men do in the
church and what they cannot do) but also the more conceptual aspects of gender (what feminin-
ity is and what masculinity is, and, even more fundamentally, what gender is first and foremost)
might give us increased insights into the gender paradox. In Latin American contexts, the switch
from Catholicism to evangelicalism certainly might also trigger shifts at this level.
The Pentecostal gender paradox assumes a universality of gender that is problematic. This
becomes particularly evident when conducting ethnographic studies in Melanesia, but it is also
a point that should be taken seriously in efforts to understand religious and cultural change gen-
erally. When converting to Christianity, and to evangelical or Pentecostal forms of Christianity,
it is not only the religion that changes but a fundamental perception of what a human being
is—and thus also, of course, the perception of what gender is.

n ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I thank Joel Robbins for an initial discussion about the argument of this article and Bruce Kapferer
for discussions about egalitarianism. I also thank the editors of Advances in Research: Religion and
Society, Simon Coleman, Sondra Hausner, and Ruy Blanes, as well as the anonymous reviewers.

n Annelin Eriksen is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Bergen, Norway.

She has worked in Vanuatu, Melanesia, for over two decades. Her research deals extensively
with Pentecostal churches in the capital Port Vila and with analyses of gender. Recent pub-
lications include “Sarah’s Sinfulness” (Current Anthropology, 2014) and “The Pastor and the
Prophetess” (Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2012); annelin.eriksen@uib.no.

n Notes
1. However, I recently learned that in North Ambrym the namange is being revived in certain villages.
2. An English-based pidgin language, Bislama is one of the official languages of Vanuatu.
3. It was a third-generation urban-based dweller, with higher education from a US university and a
prestigious job in an international company, who made these comments.

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