Although nearly all Pacific Islanders are Christians—with the exception of the inhabitants of inland New Guinea, where Christianity has made only some inroads—a few villages, families, and individuals maintain a "heathen" religious status. Although Christianity is deeply entrenched in the Pacific, it is only one of the several cosmological planes on which the islanders simultaneously exist without feeling a sense of contradiction. Families still decide which son will be trained to be a chief; which will receive a European education in order to become a civil servant, Protestant pastor, or Catholic priest or cathechist; and which will stay in the village to learn the traditional religious lore to keep open the old paths to the invisible world.

The Christianity of Pacific Islanders has a predominantly mythical quality. Maurice Leenhardt (1922) captured the essence of Pacific Islanders' understanding of Christianity in his account of Melanesian soldiers...