Vanuatu Religions
VANUATU RELIGIONS. Formerly known as the New Hebrides, Vanuatu is a Y-shaped archipelago of mostly volcanic islands located about sixteen hundred kilometers northeast of the Queensland coast of Australia. The physical, linguistic, and cultural diversity of the 100,000 or so indigenous inhabitants of the sixty-three occupied islands is extreme even for the western Pacific, a diversity that is fully reflected in religious belief and practice. While the dominant traits in all contexts may be described as Melanesian, Polynesian influences, including those pertaining to religion, are sufficiently widespread and important to set this area apart from the rest of Melanesia. This article will ignore the profound impact of Christianity on contemporary religion, but it should be stressed, however, that much of what is described here as traditional continues today to be a major part of belief and practice, even among those who have been converted to Christianity for some generations.
Supernatural Powers and Spirit Beings
The traditional religions of Vanuatu, like religions universally, have as their identifying theme the cultural and social elaboration of people's ideas and emotions concerning the nature and locus of supernatural powers. Throughout the archipelago such powers, though mostly associated with various classes of spirit beings, are also commonly attributed to a wide range of "natural" phenomena, including humans, animals, birds, fish, plants, and stones.
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