- 1 The hypotheses this article proposes have been developed with the support of Brazilian, French and (...)
- 2 The populations of Atauro speak different languages, all of Austronesian origin, namely: Ratkungu ( (...)
- 3 Throughout this article I use the terms ʻHousesʼ and ʻgroups of originʼ as synonyms. Houses are cha (...)
1Despite the linguistic diversity one finds among the contemporary populations of Atauro,2 all seem to have shared (and engaged with) institutions and social values that are characteristic of the Austronesian world, namely: membership in corporate groups such as Houses (or groups of origin)3 structured through asymmetric relations between them; the formation of alliances through marriage exchanges of the bride wealth type (and its variants); a diarchy of powers; a binary ideology of classification; semantic parallelism in ritual speech; values pertaining to origin, ancestry, precedence; and animistic religious practices till recently (Wouden 1968 [1935]; Duarte 1984; Fox 1996, 1997; Boarccaech 2013, 2021; Guillaud 2021; Facal & Guillaud 2020). Through a variety of rituals, such local institutions have manifested themselves and the material and symbolic dimensions of collective life reproduced.
- 4 Given the analytical legacies of the anthropological literature on missions, I choose to employ the (...)
- 5 According to the 2022 demographic census (East Timor 2023), 97.5% of the East Timorese population i (...)
2This institutional complex has served as the basis for dynamics pertaining to cohesion, fission, and territorial expansion on the island and beyond, and it constitutes the very basis of its cultural heritage (Boarccaech 2021; Guillaud 2021). However, the adherence to the Protestant Christianity of the Assembly of God Church by most of Atauro population has caused changes in this institutional complex.4 Unlike the rest of the territory of East Timor, where almost all the population is Catholic, Atauro is home to the largest contingent (both in relative and absolute terms) of the Protestant population in the country.5
3Pastoral anxieties about making true Christians out of the followers of the Assembly of God Church have resulted in restrictions on the reproduction of knowledge and of practices of different persuasions. This article discusses certain ways through which the Assembly of God’s Protestantism challenges and transforms the reproduction of some of the local institutions. I argue that the pastoral actions of this religious denomination have introduced tensions regarding aspects related to cosmology and practices of social reproduction among the Protestant population of Atauro in such a way as to bring about the following effects: 1. the decline of asymmetry and inequality as values that shape relationships between Houses (lisan); 2. the dissociation between lulik (its many meanings include ʻlife-giverʼ, ʻlife-takerʼ, ʻsacredʼ, ʻdangerousʼ, ʻforbiddenʼ, ʻfertileʼ, ʻritualʼ, ʻsame originʼ), and kultura (culture); and 3. the Christianization of kultura, while maintaining the kultura as the main means for the negotiation of material reproduction.
4Such changes result from restrictions imposed on certain areas of local knowledge including animistic cults, origin narratives, sacrifices, ritual exchanges, and other modalities of actions that, in a comprehensive way, mobilize agents perceived as contradictory to the Christian project of the Assembly of God Church. Before demonstrating these hypotheses, some conceptual mediation is required.
5From an emic perspective, local institutions are called kultura. East Timorese employ the notion of kultura when they wish to mark their difference from others (whether positively or negatively). Among many Catholics, and non-Christians, kultura also refers to mystical and supernatural knowledge as they are related to practices pertaining to ancestor worship, as well as to other invisible beings to which a large degree of agency is attributed even within the world of visible beings. In most of the cases — but not for protestant leadership in Atauro — kultura also evokes the lulik category, which refers to notions of fertility and sacredness, among others things that will be discussed below.
- 6 These criteria were: being older than 18 years; the ability to speak Portuguese; not following loca (...)
- 7 Mandani (1998) suggests that practices of recognition and expansion of civic incorporation in Afric (...)
6From a genealogical point of view, kultura is a derivation of the word ʻcultureʼ which, in addition to being a twentieth century anthropology category, was also a category of colonial governance, vernacularized as it was in terms such as ʻcustomʼ and ʻusos e costumesʼ (ʻcustoms and common usage,ʼ an expression used by the Portuguese empire) (Silva & Simião 2012). In colonial usage, these categories served as the basis for policies pertaining to moral exclusion which attributed different political statuses to different colonized subjects. Those considered to be governed by ʻusos e costumesʼ were the uncivilized, to whom the status of assimilado (assimilated) could not be attributed. The Assimilated were those whose social reproduction and identity were already based on institutions introduced by colonial power.6 It is not by chance that, as Mandani (1998) suggests,7 this same category is today used by vulnerable populations as a means to promote rights and public policies differentiated by group. A clear example of this are the policies that recognize and safeguard cultural heritage.
- 8 Pastoral power refers to the action of guiding people in their ordinary life by caring for them; it (...)
7One must also acknowledge that the pastoral power8 (Foucault 2008) of the Assembly of God Church has been exercised in combination with the governance aspirations of the Portuguese, Indonesian, and East Timorese states that recently held sovereignty over Atauro. As demonstrated time and again, Christian missionary actions have been used as spearheads in colonial and national political projects (Aragon 2000; Keane 2007; Comaroff & Comaroff 1997). Thus, there are many elective affinities between nation-focused projects of domestication of both behavior and worldview and Christian-focused projects. The greatest expressions of that are perhaps the very process through which the category of ʻreligionʼ is transposed and internalized by people and institutions of governance, as well as by the epistemology of the social sciences itself (Asad 1993, 2010). In the twentieth century, in the territories whose populations were the object of missionary actions and under the control of the Indonesian state, as is the case of Atauro, a separation between religion (local or worldwide) and culture was introduced, which exists to this day (Aragon 2000; Howell 2001).
8The information to which I refer throughout this text was produced during eight months of fieldwork conducted in Atauro in 2015, 2019, 2022 and 2024. Most of the time I was based in the village of Usubemassu (see fig. 2 in the introduction to this volume) and carried out my research in Tetun. I also avail myself of some insights made available by the literature regarding the impacts of Protestant missions on local populations.
9To support my hypothesis, this article is organized into three sections. The first section presents parts of the history of Protestant missionary practices in Atauro and some of the phenomena that occur on the island today which express such practices. The connection between said history and the present is explored through evidence that shows governance anxieties over making the relations between Houses more egalitarian and symmetrical. In this context, I also discuss the way certain rituals and their officiation were hijacked by the Assembly of God authorities.
10Hamos lulik (ʻto cleanseʼ or ʻto remove the lulikʼ), — the second section — after achieving a synthesis with regards to the semantic field covered by the expression lulik explores the reasons and implications of its rejection among Protestants. The Church’s new toponymic strategies, the dynamics taking place on the Day of the Dead, and the demobilization of local knowledge pertaining to carving statues are all discussed as part of the Assembly of God Church’s pastoral strategy for Christianizing local practices (kultura). I thus point out the projects for disconnecting the ideas of lulik, lisan, and kultura.
11The third section discusses the coexistence (and its tensions) between the lisan (groups of origin) as institutions which guide social and material reproduction, and the censorship imposed by the Assembly of God Church with regards to the mention and worship of the lulik. The tension derives from the fact that, in many cases, notions of lulik are pivotal parts of the narratives of origin. I present possible tensions which certain epistemic efforts (carried out by the research team involved in the project “Cultural Policies, Local Heritage and Collaborative Approaches in Eastern Insulindia” –POPEI-coll itself) as well as governance efforts carried out by the State and other agents may bring into the monotheistic project of the Assembly of God itself.
- 9 Parts of this section were previously published in Tetun in Guillaud et al. eds. (2023).
12At least three missionary endeavors of different Protestant origins appear to have played a role in the adherence to Christianity of parts of Atauro’s population during the twentieth century. Interviews with some pastors of the Assembly of God Church reveal that a missionary named Martin was already active on the island in 1930. There is no consensus as to which denomination he was affiliated with. Some suggest he was in the service of the Baptist Church; others claim he was a Lutheran missionary.
13After World War II, it is said that the sea currents carried a small ship (beiro in Tetun) with people from Atauro to Alor. Upon the unexpected arrival in Alor, the passengers were hosted by a Christian couple, Juliana and Franz Braz, who asked if the Christian God was known in Atauro. Upon learning that everyone in Atauro was still non-Christian, the couple decided to move in order to convert the Atauro islanders to Protestant Christianity.
- 10 Such a phenomenon will be discussed below.
- 11 Luis Cardoso, the most prominent East Timorese novelist who spent part of his childhood in Atauro, (...)
14They first settled in the hills near what is now the village of Atekru (see fig. 2 in the introduction to this volume). According to the new toponymy proposed by the Assembly of God,10 this place is now called Ephron. Durand (2004) reports that as early as the 1960s, Juliana and Franz Braz led a community of 1,350 people — almost 40% of Atauro’s population at the time. Outsiders called the community taka matan (Tetun), meaning those who ʻclose their eyesʼ (due to the fact that they closed their eyes while praying).11 The fact that, in the same period, only 400 people had adhered to Catholicism in Atauro shows how effective Juliana and Franz Braz’s missionary endeavors were.
- 12 The mobilization of these two words with very similar meaning to qualify the same place is the very (...)
15Sharing some of his knowledge of this community with me, one of the principal pastors of the Assembly of God Church in East Timor stated that the place where Juliana and Franz Braz lived and carried out their missionary work was called Sama Rata, an Indonesian expression meaning ʻsame, equals.ʼ12 After being forced to move closer to Vila Maumeta by the Portuguese authorities, they called their new home Tetap Rata, which means ʻto remain equal.ʼ My interlocutor’s memories of Juliana and Franz’s activities point out that the core of their work was about promoting equality between people. They allegedly taught that no one is greater or lesser than anyone else before God, so everyone is equal and deserving of the same treatment and respect as anyone else.
- 13 Marriage exchanges refer to the mutual exchange of wealth between wife-givers and wife-takers by me (...)
- 14 The ʻtraditional barlakeadu lawʼ was elaborated as a response to Law 3/2009, which dealt with local (...)
- 15 Such a local law would have been implemented by Makadade leaders.
16I came across this quest for equality (in marriage negotiations between Houses) on several occasions during my research in Atauro. I consider such a concern to be an important challenge for the institution of asymmetry between Houses, which is characteristic of Eastern Indonesia. One of the most prominent examples is the ʻtraditional barlakeadu lawʼ for marriage negotiations in the suco of Makadade. This law, implemented in January 2014, established certain rules related to affiliation, residence, and material limits regulating negotiation of rights in people through marriage exchanges.13 Among the various articles that make it up,14 one specific article stands out.15 After listing all the Houses (lisan) existing in Makadade, the ʻtraditional barlakeadu law (marriage law)ʼ then proposed, in article number 10, the following:
“On the classification and categorization of lisan in the Makadade area:
The classification and categorization pertaining to the 17 lisans [Houses] in the Makadade area is the same for all. There is no classification category or lisan which can be deemed to be either superior or inferior to any other.ˮ (Freely translated from the original in Tetun by this author).
- 16 These were the numbers presented in the Vila Maumeta State Administration Office (the headquarters (...)
17Different interpretations may arise as to what the ʻlawʼ content is leading to. Firstly, we know for a fact that laws do not merely mirror reality; they are technologies of governance, aimed at producing realities themselves. Secondly, Makadade is a place in which about 55% of the population are Protestants and 45% are Catholics.16 As I have already suggested (Silva 2018), Catholic Christianity has been much more tolerant with regards to local values (such as inequality and asymmetry) than Protestant Christianity in East Timor, and elsewhere, since the Vatican II Council. Thirdly, Kultura is an institutional framework whose modus operandi has been, until recently, marked by intense contestations, due to, among other things, its oral character. Taking all this into account, the codification of (or the pursuit of) the quest for equality in the form of law may mean that equality is not in fact observed yet but remains a moral ideal to be pursued. In fact, the intent to integrate equality as a value into Kultura has also been highlighted by some spokespersons for Houses involved in marriage negotiations in Dili (Silva 2013).
- 17 There are very different compositions of marriage exchanges across Timorese peoples and their House (...)
18Other facts (which can be taken as indicators of just how Protestant Christianity is stressing inequalities and asymmetries) are some suggestions that have been made about gifts pertaining to marriage exchanges in Usubemassu village.17 According to Francisco, one of the people authorized to narrate local origin stories (and thus recognized for his knowledge of the stories of ancient times), the pastoral practice of the Assembly of God suggests that:
“According to God’s Word, no one should measure or compare [gifts], and no one should ask for too much either. This is what the Church has taught us because the lisans are mutually dependent. So, if we’re smart, we’ll follow that. This is so because if you ask too much of me [in the form of gifts, thereby causing me financial hardships or bringing about indebtedness], then I will act the same way. However, if you ask of me that which is just and natural, according to my [material] conditions, I shall do the same to you. This is really wonderful because it allows your people and my people to live well and to build a good relationship between us; thus, we follow God’s Word and this is very good.ˮ (Personal communication by Francisco in Usubemassu, September 17, 2019, and freely translated from the original in Tetun by the author)
19In Francisco’s words, marriage exchanges should not be managed in such a way as to exploit others, making them poorer. He told me, “Kultura should not make people poorer (Tetun: Kultura la bele hakiak ema).” As is well known, one of the main expressions of the asymmetry between wife-givers and wife-takers is the quality and quantity of resources exchanged for marriage and other life-cycle rituals (see Facal in this volume). Wife/fertility donors have been considered superior in these relationships, and, as such, would be entitled to receive far more material resources than they offer, as extensively demonstrated in the literature (van Wouden 1968 [1935]; Fox 1980, 1996).
- 18 It is worth noting that, in Atauro, Catholics also claim to exchange low volumes of wealth for marr (...)
20In any case, what is seen as an excessive quantity (or quality) of goods and money (used in marriage exchanges on the main island of East Timor) is a phenomenon mobilized by the Protestant residents of Atauro to value their own lifestyle and their religious adherence. In general, they are proud of their asceticism and consider themselves and their own ways of life morally superior to what can be found in Dili and the Catholics or ʻpagansʼ of Atauro as a whole.18 This is so because the Protestants do not employ a very large volume of resources in life-cycle rituals and are told not to make sacrifices to ancestors, among other things.
21The reconfiguration of marriage exchanges in Atauro — combined with the assimilation of equality as a value — has induced the standardization of the marriage gifts exchanged between some groups of origin (whose members are Assembly of God adherents). In 2019, for example, I identified that one of Usubemassu’s groups of origin had standardized the marriage donations made by the domestic units involved, or nuclear families linked to it, so as not to generate asymmetries.
22Alongside this, the Assembly of God seems to have taken the lead in carrying out various life-cycle rituals, thus overshadowing groups of origin. If it is true that the groups of origin still mobilize the financial resources to undertake weddings and burial rituals, the most significant moments of these events are officiated by Church authorities and the labor involved to carry them out (the preparation of food, tents, props, etc.) is coordinated by working groups also organized by the Church. Apparently, the Assembly of God in Atauro has thus parasitized local rituals to monopolize religious authority, as did the Salvation Army in Sulawesi (Aragon 2000), and as does the East Timorese state with regards to local institutions of governance (Silva 2014).
23Historically, anthropology has demonstrated the ʻtotalʼ nature of certain social institutions (Mauss 1974), such as weddings, funerals, etc. They are economic, political, artistic, religious, and technological institutions — all at the same time. Thus, the increasing authority of the Assembly of God in life-cycle rituals potentially implies the loss of ritual knowledge, such as poetic narratives, singing and dancing practices, forms of negotiation of collective life, genealogical memories, topographical knowledge, etc. This is evident in the performance where the Church prohibits resorting to ritual speeches and other local knowledge which presupposes that mystical beings (other than the Christian god) act on the world.
24In addition to the aforementioned process parasitizing off the life-cycle rituals, a loss of local knowledge also takes place due to the annihilation of the very buildings of sacred houses, whose constant reconstruction called for the mobilization of various knowledge sources (Fidalgo-Castro 2015; Silva 2019), and their connection to invisible agents which thereby call into question the monopoly of power of the Christian god. The process pertaining to remodeling local institutions is made even more evident in the way in which certain local leaders refer to the concept of lulik, a central driver of collective life among non-Protestant populations throughout East Timor.
25The word lulik has various meanings in Atauro, as is also the case in all of East Timor. It can be employed as an adjective, a noun, and even as a verb (Bovensiepen 2015). While lulik, in some contexts, evokes negative feelings of fear, danger, prohibition, or even those emotions associated with evil forces (which can annihilate life), in other contexts, the same word describes processes of creation, fertility, and differentiation, thus suggesting positive feelings and expectations. In an opposition which is very common among the populations of the region, lulik is sometimes regarded as a life-giving power, while at other times, its potency is considered a life-taker (Bovensiepen & Rosa 2016: 666). By and large, lulik refers to the need to observe a proper and ideal way of establishing relations between humans and other agents of their environment (Fidalgo-Castro & Alonso-Poblácion 2023). So, lulik qualifies ideal forms of behavior before certain agents and events. Such prescribed comportment may have to do with distance, proximity, or any other kind of controlled conduct (ibid.: 18). As Trindade (2012) suggests, lulik is a moral guideline for extraordinary, as well as ordinary, moments of life in East Timor.
26The East Timorese people’s contact with and adherence to different denominations of Christianity has affected the very meanings attributed to lulik. The fact that there has been no consensus within religious institutions on how to interpret lulik also contributes to giving multiple meanings to such a concept. Catholic missionaries who worked in East Timor between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries often approached local ideas about lulik as something opposed to the Christian idea of sacredness. This changed somewhat in the twentieth century, when some Catholic missionaries began to explore possible overlaps between local ideas of lulik and the idea of sacredness (Bovensiepen and Rosa 2016: 665), although simultaneously, in the pastoral practices of Protestant denominations, such as the Assembly of God, lulik has been addressed as a manifestation of the devil. Below, I provide a summary of some shared meanings attributed to the word lulik (and its local variants like luli, for instance), as made available in certain anthropological literature. My assumption is that such understandings were somehow shared by Atauro people until their adhesion to Christianity.
27Lulik qualifies the process of the emergence of an agent (such as a human being or an animal) out of others with whom it previously shared an existential unity. For example, in the myth of origin reported by Koli Kala (Abilio de Sousa Araújo) and Leki Reti (Lukas Alves) to Rappoport (Guillaud et al. eds. 2023), humans emerge as specific beings from a process of differentiation between heaven, earth, and light. Light and man were, initially, one unified being until at a specific moment, man separated himself from the light becoming a particular being.
28In this same myth, we see that the emergence of the world as we know it today is presented as a process of differentiation between various agents: the sky, the light, the dolphin, the earth, the pig, and finally the human being. However, simultaneously, indirectly it is maintained that all these agents once shared a common existence, unified in a single being.
- 19 For some time now, in certain areas of Atauro, most people are buried in cemeteries due to pastoral (...)
29Among Austronesian peoples, in many stories that tell of the origins of places, uma lulik (sacred houses), lisan (Houses), and people, it is asserted that in the past the ancestors, as well as the earth, the stones, and the trees were one and the same (Fox 1996; 1997). The emergence of humans came about through a differentiation from the earth, for they used to be part of the earth. This is why, when people died, they were buried in their original territories, ideally. Thus, lulik refers to a past of common existence between entities that came to be thought of as different at a later time. Lulik is an expression through which ideas of rupture and differentiation are cultivated.19
30Furthermore, lulik is thought of as a feminine power and is associated with ideas of immobility and silence, as well as with ancestral forces (Bovensiepen 2015: 127).
31Among many East Timorese peoples, local rituals often evoke or try to momentarily reproduce a past of common existence, when different entities coexisted within the same material support (Traube 1986; Hicks 1984). Moreover, a balance is sought to be achieved between them: for instance, between male and female, older and younger brother, and so on. Lulik practices, the worship of lulik, or merely the return to places considered lulik, are all ways of recomposing a primordial unity which can be a source of either empowerment or danger. They are also ways of making contact with primordial beings who in turn are a source of fertility — if the relationship is well cultivated.
32Thus, events and objects that evoke separation are often considered lulik. In the context of Atauro, particularly in Makili, and to a certain extent in Makadade, the spears (osa lolon) exchanged even today to seal marriages evoke this symbology of separation and rupture through which differentiated entities emerge and then build relations among themselves. This recalls one of McKinnon’s narratives (1991) about the dynamics of social reproduction on the island of Tanimbar (Eastern Indonesia), which is based in processes of separation and decomposition of the various beings later considered to be mutually dependent. The risk of non-differentiation between humans and the environments they inhabit is managed precisely through the mobilization of lulik forces. Moreover, the relationship with events and objects considered to be lulik takes place by way of an ethic of exchange and reciprocity based on the recognition of the dependence of humans on the superior lulik forces.
33In contexts where the relationship with foreign groups or institutions is at stake, lulik takes on the meaning of what is local and indigenous (McWilliam et al. 2015). If the foreign entity, at a later point, comes to be considered part of what is local — such as representatives of foreign countries that are turned into returning younger siblings — then what was once foreign may be classified as lulik. Another tendency can also be seen in the relationship between lulik and foreign elements. When the relationship with foreigners is experienced positively, lulik is perceived as a positive force, as life-giving. However, when the relationship with foreigners is narrated negatively, lulik is considered a source of anger and threat, as a life-taking power. Lulik also evokes what cannot be explained by modern Western rationality.
34Currently, the Protestant leadership of the Assembly of God in Atauro approaches lulik in a rather particular way. For them, lulik is a synonym of what Christianity calls the devil. This is because lulik beliefs suggest there are several supernatural entities acting in the creation of the world and the unfolding of life in the world of the living. For Protestant Christianity, the Christian god exclusively created and runs the world. Everything happens because of his plans and will. For this reason, ancestors’ cults and all cults pertaining to landscape elements such as stones, trees, water sources, etc., are considered deviations from the Christian ideal and thus represent the devil.
35As a result, such cult practices are considered dirty or impure. For this reason, the Protestant leaders in the northern region of Atauro proclaim that within their villages lulik has already been cleansed — hamos lulik ona — and therefore the populations no longer need to resort to lulik in order to manage their relations with supernatural entities. Said edicts refer to the following ideal scenario: populations who adhered to the Assembly of God’s Christianity no longer worship trees, stones, places or objects. Moreover, they do not make sacrifices to ancestors or other invisible beings. This is in clear contrast with the typical practices among the Catholics or among residents of rai bo’ot (big land, the main East Timor island).
- 20 In Atauro, the compulsory Protestant disengagement from knowledge and practices which implied the r (...)
- 21 Galipaud & Assis (2014) suggest that, among several East Timorese populations, pottery-making (as w (...)
- 22 Guillaud (2021: 195) suggests that there was economic specialization among some villages and sucos (...)
36It is not by chance that the parts of the population of Atauro, particularly in Makili, which joined the Assembly of God’s Christianity, no longer engage in the production of the much-appreciated local statues. It seems that the Protestant Church banned its faithful of carrying out such work in 1974 (Barrkman 2017: 25–27; Rappoport, pers. com.) 20. This restriction was activated because many of the statues are representations of invisible beings, were objects of devotion and sacrifices in the past, and represented mediators of the communication processes between visible and invisible beings. In addition, the knowledge related to the making of such statues is considered to be part of ancestral legacies, whose (highly valued) repetition evokes a multiplicity of agents21 who challenge the Christian god’s monopoly of power project.22
- 23 In addition, people in Arlo lost an important part of the knowledge related to pottery production ( (...)
37The prohibition of making and worshipping statues is thus a way to avoid the reproduction of something associated with the idea of local or indigenous religion.23 By repressing the reproduction of this knowledge, the reproduction of a series of related technical knowledge (pertaining to the environment, trees, artistic manipulation of wood, religious knowledge, etc.) is also hampered (Barrkman 2017: 25–27). However, recent efforts to revive certain cultural practices to attract more tourists to Atauro — such as resuming the Souk Sose ritual in Makili in 2023 — may be working to reverse this trend. I will return to this hypothesis below.
- 24 Rosa (2018) demonstrated some of the processes through which Catholic missionaries in East Timor ca (...)
- 25 I approach narratives as cosmological projects, which are internalized (albeit only partially) by d (...)
38The disenchantment in the material mediations through which people connected with the invisible world reflects a shaping goal in Protestant and Catholic24 missionary practices. It aims to institute the Christian God as the only invisible being endowed with agency in the world; the only one responsible for the creation and control of everything in it, starting with local institutions (Rosa 2018; Aragon 2000).25 In this regard, Barrkman (2017: 18) suggests:
“Concepts of duality, such as sea and earth, above and below, underpin Atauro society as exemplified by the fertility sculptures – the feminine, Lepu-Hmoru and the masculine, Baku-Mau (...). More recently, these masculine and feminine fertility deities have been absorbed into Christian beliefs as representations of the Virgin Mary and Joseph, the parents of Jesus Christ.ˮ
- 26 Comaroff & Comaroff (1997: 216–19) report that the same strategy was used by Methodists missions in (...)
39Proposing a narrative regime of Christian origin is something that can also be seen in the Assembly of God’s toponymic strategy for the island of Atauro. In fact, for some decades now, the Church has replaced local toponyms with names derived from biblical narratives. According to some interlocutors, this replacement was a missionary strategy to acquaint the people with biblical sites. Others have suggested that such names derive from prophecies that anticipated the future of these Atauro sites, according to the characteristics of each biblical toponym. For example, Usubemassu was called Jerusalem because of a vision in which the place would house people from all over the world (a supposed feature of the original Jerusalem). The promising tourism opportunities and all the visitors coming from abroad (to view the local corals) is now considered proof that the prophecy did come true.26
40Today, there is indeed a dual naming system for various places on the island. For the sake of brevity, I share here only the double-name system of a few localities:
Local Name
|
Christian Name
|
Uaru Ana/Baru Ana
|
Jericho
|
Berau
|
Sileu
|
Bikeli
|
Bethlehem
|
Makili
|
Damascus
|
Vila Maumeta
|
Canaan
|
Akrema
|
Sinai
|
Usubemassu
|
Jerusalem
|
41As I have already suggested (Silva 2011: 158), Durkheim (2000) wrote that toponyms are part of a cognitive system that guides people and allows them to recognize who they are in relation to others. Fox (1997: 12), in turn, points out that, among the peoples of Eastern Indonesia, there is a potential reversibility between genealogy and topogeny. Therefore, enunciating locations in ritual contexts has the following functions: 1. to define origins and lines of precedence among related social groups; and 2. to provide a chronological succession of events in order to situate social actors in both space and time. In addition, we can recall the fact that some toponyms can be considered lulik, thus evoking a consubstantiation in the past between a place, a people, and other environmental elements. Meanwhile, the more recently proposed Christian toponymy links people to imagined new places and geographies. We are thus facing logics of both de-territorialization and re-territorialization simultaneously (Aragon 2000: 32).
42If all these things are at stake with regards to the names of the sites in Atauro, then replacing the local toponymy with a new — and Christian — one, contributes to quelling various local knowledge, as well as the memory of concepts that could hardly be included in Christian narratives in a coherent way like animistic and monistic assumptions that speak of the relationship between humans and other elements of the environment, of non-Christian deities, and ways of relating to them, etc.
43Christianizing the names of places also contributes to silencing the powers of the invisible beings associated with them, to whom people attribute agency in the very process of creating such places. Obliterating the original place names will then discourage the memory of narratives of origin associated with places and related historical events which are otherwise not recorded, as revealed by the investigations of Guillaud (2021). Through the analysis of narratives, we glean information about events such as wars, disputes over water, alliances with populations from other islands in the region, among several other extremely important facts.
- 27 By purification, Bruno Latour (1994) understands the processes of separation and the imposition of (...)
- 28 It is interesting to note that, as Aragon (2000) reports, the Salvation Army missionaries presented (...)
44Inspired by Keane (2007), it seems to me that the pastoral practices reported above work to promote a process of purification27 and monopolization of local religious practices. In this context, the use of the expression hamos lulik (ʻto cleanseʼ, ʻto remove the/from the lulikʼ) is quite telling.28 Its goal is to establish the Christian God as the only supernatural source of power and agency. In other words, we are faced with a monopolizing agency, carving itself out of an opposition to animist practices (as well as other practices), and which goes on to revoke the long-recognized agency of ancestors, objects, places, words (Keane 2007).
45As indicated above, the notion of lulik has also become a signifier used to evoke actions attributed to the devil. Some Assembly of God leaders consider lulik to be a kind of a devilish manifestation in disguise which should therefore be kept at arm’s length. Any kind of ritual manifestation related to the dead or invisible agents is seen as an opportunity for the devil to manifest itself, even if in a disguised manner. The Assembly of God Church preaches that when a person dies, he or she cannot act over the living, nor can the living and the dead communicate with each other. From this point of view, it thus makes no sense to light candles or to offer gifts or sacrifices to the dead.
46The material effects of such premises come to light on the Day of the Dead in villages with a hegemonically Protestant population. In stark contrast to what happens in most of East Timor, the Day of the Dead is experienced there as just any other day, without any kind of ritual. The Protestants claim that on that day, they just miss their dead relatives or friends more than on other days. There is no public ceremony, within or outside of the Church, to pay homage or sacrifice to the departed.
47However, the rejection of lulik does not imply a break with other institutions that are typical of the region. On the contrary, the denial of a prior communion with ancestors and other supernatural beings did not imply a detachment of people from their group of origin or House (lisan, Tetun). Instead, what appears to be occurring is a dissociation between the native categories of lulik and Kultura. Thus, people continue to turn to some institutions of Kultura to organize their material and collective life, as long as Kultura is inscribed in a Christian narrative regime and, as a result, the origin groups, the lisans, are narrated as being the creation of the Christian god. The contents of Kultura related to lulik are removed/cleansed, as if to give coherence to a combination of, on one hand, local institutions of social organization and, on the other hand, the premises of Christianity and the market society.
48In Ussebemassu, the lisans (Houses) have kept their role as key institutions regulating the following phenomena: negotiations on rights in people, access to land, and conflict resolution. The population of this village is linked to nine Houses, namely: Ai Luli, Major, Koronel, Uhu Rala, Loro Piu, Aku Ai, Maseu, Tilman Nai, Maker. The centrality of groups of origin in collective life in Usubemassu revealed itself to me primarily during marriage rituals.
49Every time an origin group (lisan) plans to take a woman in marriage, the men of the household, both single and married, are called upon to submit monetary contributions to this event. This is done months or even years before the wedding ceremony, so that people can plan how they will organize their household finances in advance and thus be able to contribute in some way. The money raised can then be used to pay for the costs involved in the wedding ceremony — either those related to the ceremony in the church or to the lunch offered to the wedding participants — or else it can also be used to obtain the gifts that the groom’s House will have to offer to the bride’s House. Festive events are carefully planned with the help of local leaders linked to the Assembly of God Church. In this regard, it is important to know that the Assembly of God Church in Usubemassu has a working group with the exclusive function of organizing gatherings, be they wedding ceremonies, Christmas, pastoral activities, etc.
50The marriages in Usubemassu entail three different transactions pertaining to the bride, which are openly announced by the master of ceremonies and then performed by representatives of the following institutions: the lisan (House), the Church, and the State. During the religious ceremony, the bride is formally transferred to her new cult community, that is, the branch of the Assembly of God Church where she will have to attend services and other religious activities after marriage. The lead pastor of the bride’s origin village introduces her to her new community and to the lead pastor of the village where the marriage ceremony is taking place. Ideally (and often), this village is the groom’s own village.
51After lunch is served, the ritual moment of transferring the rights over the bride between the lisans (Houses) takes place. To this end, the spokespersons of the Houses of both groom and bride are invited to the stage. They salute and thank the guests and all those involved in the wedding ceremony and declare that henceforth the bride is part of the groom’s House (lisan). To seal the transaction, the taker-of-fertility (the groom’s House) offers gifts to the givers-of-fertility (the bride’s House), although these are not compulsory. Such gifts are also reciprocally given by the fertility givers.
52The last transaction involving women that takes place in the marriage ceremony is the transfer of the bride’s name from her home village to her husband’s village. This is done by the heads of the respective villages of bride and groom. Finally, the bride’s village leader declares that, through marriage, the bride has become resident in her husband’s village. An official document is then given to the head of the suco that is hosting the ceremony.
53In the first section of this text, I argued that there is an effort on the part of Church authorities to officiate at life-cycle rituals. Then, in the above paragraphs, I pointed out the action of other authorities in the social production of marriage, namely the spokespersons of the bride and groom’s origin groups and the local representatives of the State. Such conditions are not in contradiction and apparently this is due to the following state of affairs.
- 29 In Silva & Pedrosa (forthcoming), I argue that much of the existing public space in Usubemassu is m (...)
54In public spaces, the action of invisible entities in the social production of marriage is attributed exclusively to the Christian god. His teachings on matrimonial praxis are evoked in the hall of the Assembly of God church where the religious wedding takes place, and his blessings are requested at different times during the ceremonies that are part of the wedding. In addition, the performance of the groups of origin’s spokespersons during lunch is strictly civil, so to speak, because it concerns the transfer of house affiliation from groom to bride — which also implies rights over inheritance, over descendants, etc. During the ritual performances of the spokespersons, the action of the ancestors or other invisible beings is not invoked at all; neither are the lulik forces. Finally, the public recognition declarations of the local state authorities about the place of residence of the bride and groom are a way of linking their political and social rights and religious obligations to a new locality. Thus, the pastors of the Assembly of God hold the monopoly of communication with invisible agents in the various rituals that are part of the wedding.29
- 30 The food for the people attending funerals is also prepared thanks to financial donations from neig (...)
55At funerals, the Houses play a minor role. Often, the meals offered to those present are prepared using contributions offered by the groups of origin with whom the deceased person’s House has some material gift credit.30 The origin groups’ participation seems to be limited to this. There is no mention of any supernatural agent, nor of any fact related to the deceased person’s House during the funeral ceremony — other than the eventual citation of his or her name —, nor any attempt to mobilize the deceased person through sacrifices, as is common among non-Protestants.
- 31 In spite of this, the first harvests, offerings, and requests for blessings are directed exclusivel (...)
56A domain in which lisans (Houses) have maintained governance power is that of land rights. In Usubemassu, land rights have been negotiated based on existing memories of the installation trajectories within the Houses’ sites, and the alliances established between them.31 The same occurs in other places on the island, as reported by Guillaud (2021) and Boarccaech (2021).
57It turns out that much of the historical information about the trajectory of Houses is recorded in narratives of origin, and to reproduce them — by evoking lulik contents and the consequent agency of invisible beings with superpowers other than the Christian god — may not be well regarded by the authorities of the Assembly of God Church.
58When reflecting on her research experiences regarding the narratives of origin and places in the villages located in the north of Atauro, especially Bikeli, Akrema, and Vatu'u, Guillaud (pers. com., February 2024) highlights difficulties in mobilizing this knowledge. While in some localities there seems to have been a disappearance of these narratives, in others, as in Akrema, there is an extremely negative view of the time of the ancestors portrayed as a period of wars, famine, and disease, which is why authorized people show no interest in talking about it. In opposition to this period, the present time is portrayed as a period of abundance, happiness, and peace. Guillaud could access a few fragments of narratives when walking with custodians of narratives (lia nain), through certain territories of Akrema; they having suggested, in their own terms, that certain knowledge can only be narrated at specific places. The narratives are territorialized (Guillaud, pers. com.). At the same time, Guillaud (pers. com.) acknowledges that in both Makadade, and Makili, Assembly of God members participated (in her research on local territoriality) just as much as Catholics. Boarccaech (pers. com., February 2024) states the same. Protestant church members were not reluctant to share information related to the time of the ancestors. Some hypotheses can be constructed to make sense of this state of affairs.
- 32 This fact is also recorded in the literature of Luis Cardoso.
- 33 The non-governmental organization Empreza Diak also explored local knowledge as a means to increase (...)
59The Protestant mission begun in the northern region of Atauro — where Bikeli, Akrema, and Vatu’u are located — and a large part of those affiliated with either the Assembly of God Church, or the other religious denominations that preceded it, settled there. Thus, villages of northern Atauro have been constituted as Protestant territories historically.32 Given this, constraints on the reproduction of origin narratives, without Catholic competition, have been in place here for a long period enjoying broad hegemony. This picture differs greatly from what we see in Makili, Makadade or Vila Maumeta, where the Catholic Church continues to encourage the mobilization of local knowledge as a means of strengthening the engagement of populations with the market economy.33
60At the same time, because the narratives of origin legitimize demands for land ownership and use among the sucos (and within them), and among the Houses, it is quite possible that such narratives may gain new traction — in particular to legitimize property demands regarding coastal lands, as pressure is exerted in the face of projects to turn Atauro into a diving industry hotspot.
61It is also important to highlight that projects to expand the market economy in Atauro (commonly called ʻdevelopment projectsʼ), and epistemic projects such as POPEI operate so as to value certain local knowledge, even if with different goals. Both carry out the mobilization, reproduction, and recording of narratives that can challenge the Assembly of God’s Church project of ʻcleaning up the lulik.ʼ
62For instance, by responding to a suggestion made by the local non-governmental organization (NGO) Roman Luan, people in Makili rallied to resume the practice named Souk Sose, a set of ritual procedures aimed at positively mobilizing mystical beings in charge of water production. According to the director of Roman Luan, Marcelo Soares (pers. com., June 2024), the NGO intends to revive kultura in order to attract more tourists to highland Atauro. In this case, the resumption of ritual knowledge is intended to foster practices which could later be consumed as a tourism commodity, even considering the ritual is not experienced as so by local inhabitants.
63The book Lian Rama Hana. Istórias lian no knananuk Atauro (Guillaud et al. eds. 2023) may also be considered a challenge to the Assembly of God’s project of cleaning the lulik. This is because the book presents various local narratives which challenge the monopolization of agency by the Christian god. It contains local stories about the origin of the human beings and other elements of the environment, a number of facts related to powerful places in the island, among other very compelling elements in which ancestors and other mystical beings play central roles. The book itself was produced as a request of ritual leaders — including those following the Assembly of God — in Makili and Makadade.
64It is not by chance that Aragon (2000) identified a great tension between policies of recognition and safeguarding of local heritage in Sulawesi and authorities of the Salvation Army acting in Tobaku. The appropriation of local institutions and knowledge by the State in Indonesia, by means of such policies, brought the risk of reviving people’s adherence to ancestor worship and other local institutions which challenge the monopolization of agency by the Christian God.
65Acciaioli (1985) demonstrates that uses of local knowledge for promoting tourism implied transformation of a part of it into art and even secularization. Such unintentional effects ended up allowing local knowledge coherent coexistence with Christianity and other monotheistic religions. Only time will reveal how Atauro evolves.
66At the beginning of this work, I chose as my object of analysis the classificatory and cosmological displacements that have been produced by the missionary action of the Assembly of God Church among certain populations on the island of Atauro.
67I hope to have demonstrated not only the ways in which the doctrine of Christian equality is potentially modifying the asymmetric relationships between Houses, but also the attempts to encapsulate local institutions within a Christian meta-narrative, the dissociation between lulik and kultura, and the attempt to Christianize kultura in order to maintain its functionalities for the material reproduction of collective life.
68Such an arrangement allows the Houses to continue to operate as a central institution for the material reproduction of life among the Protestants of Atauro. From my point of view, this results from the fact that much of people’s material reproduction is functionally linked to resources managed by Houses and domestic units, such as land, animals and people, in a context in which neither the Assembly of God Church, nor the State, nor the Market, has the governance capacity to overtake the local institutions. In fact, the East Timorese state-building has been carried out by parasitizing local institutions, that is, through the appropriation of local governance complexes (Silva 2014).
69Governance projects aimed at increasing household incomes in Atauro by means of tourism are now turning to local knowledge, reevaluating its value as a commodity, thus also parasitizing such knowledge. Additionally, epistemic efforts like the project ‘Cultural Policies, Local Heritage and Collaborative Approaches in Eastern Insulindia’ (POPEI-Coll) are stimulating the revitalization or the proper recognition of local knowledge and institutions by the very act of actively seeking and documenting them through research routines and their products such as the book Lian Rama Hana and the YouTube channel Atauro Heritage Timor-Leste,34 among others.
70Such facts reveal a tense coexistence between local knowledge and Assembly of God pastoral practices which is heading toward a new and more intense traction in the future. Inevitably, new negotiations and adaptations will arise, necessitating further research and critical analysis to understand how various actors navigate this evolving interplay between religion, kultura, and the market.