ABSTRACT
In the previous three chapters I have summarized developments in the religious history of the Tikopia especially in the first half of the present century. This period saw the decline of the traditional local faith to the point where the complete victory of Christianity as a proselytizing movement seemed assured. Yet the progressive establishment of the Christian Church was not automatic, was not a simple process of dawning enlightenment for the Tikopia. It was the result of hard-fought struggle in which intellectual argument, emotional commitment, and vested interests of many kinds provided a multiple set of accepting or resisting factors. Basically, the outcome was due to the social effects of the cumulative choices made by Tikopia individuals in consultation with or affected by members of their family, their peer group, their neighbourhood, their clan. Some emerged as active preferences, as when a ritual elder made the decision to abandon his kava rites, his offerings to gods and ancestors, and his formal religious support to his chief. Other preferences were more passive, as when the people of Faea in docile fashion followed their chief to the church. The full implications of their choices were often unrealized for a long period.
