ABSTRACT
In the development of the religious situation of the Tikopia in recent times we have apparently an example of the ‘inevitable’ decline and cessation of a small-scale, localized, ‘particularistic’ religious system when confronted and invaded by a large-scale, non-local, proselytizing, ‘universalistic’ system. Such a process in the history of Christianity in many parts of the world—and in the history of other religions such as Islam also—has seemed natural. But why should the disappearance of Tikopia paganism seem inevitable? In what sense has it really disappeared? What made the Tikopia behave as they did? I have tried to give some answers to these questions at various points of my exposition in the foregoing chapters, and now I summarize my views, with some comment of a more general theoretical order.
