Viti, The Soil from Eden: On Historical Praxis As a Mode of Connecting in Kadavu‪.‬

HISTORICAL PRAXIS, CHRISTIANITY AND CONNECTEDNESS In the contexts of ethnicized political conflicts between Fijians (1) and Indo-Fijians Methodism, still the denomination of an estimated 70% of the Fijians, became politically relevant as certain circles within the Methodist Church tried to make an ethnically interpreted form of it part of Fijian identity in contrast to the mainly non-Christian Indo-Fijians. (2) Both, Christianity (lotu vaKarisito) and a life according to the norms and values conceived to be traditional, or, in Fijian terms, vakavanua ('in the manner of the land (vanua)') have been declared to be cornerstones of being Fijian. (3) Such convictions are founded in the history of Fijian Methodism since its beginnings in 1835, which is characterized by its close relationship with the chiefly elite and its acceptance of many traditional Fijian norms, values and institutions within the religious praxis of Methodism. This history poses the question: how is it possible that Christianity, itself characterized by a strong universalistic orientation, can become part of a particularistic agenda, an agenda founded on the complex notion of vanua ('land') with its socio-political, territorial, moral and spiritual dimensions including the chiefly system as well as the realms of ancestors, mana and tabu? (4) The answer to this question is not a simple one and probably there are as many answers as individual actors. But all these actors use cultural resources to bring about these processes of forming Christian worldviews. In this article an attempt is made to show one possible way to link Christianity and the vanua through a historical praxis made possible by structurally similar modes of constructing the past.