My last post reminded me of something I stumbled on last year.  A group of villagers on the island of Tanna in the South Pacific believe Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, is a divine being. This Prince Philip Movement is only one of a number of so-called “cargo cults” that sprang up in Melanesia, primarily on Tanna and other islands within Vanuatu, during World War II or in years since.

Tanna is an one island of many within the Republic of Vanuatu, an archipelago in the South Pacific.  It lies south of Papua New Guinea and about a thousand miles east of Australia.  Before colonization by the French and British in the 17th Century, it had been occupied for some three thousand years.  Yet, prior to the war, many islanders had never been exposed to modern technology and goods. Suddenly, strangers–first the Japanese, then the Allies–arrived and built facilities and landed ships and airplanes laden with manufactured goods, prepared food, and technologies they could in no way understand.  Many goods were shared to build relationships, and the peripheral benefit to islanders was unprecedented and unexplainable.  Many came to see the outsiders as gods.

But then the war ended, and it was over.   The islanders were alone again.  The ships and airplanes no longer came, the era of abundance gone without explanation.  Sociologists and anthropologists offer various takes on how these events melded with pre-existing religious beliefs, but the upshot is that various cults arose that attempt even today to bring back the abundance:  Practitioners build makeshift runways and air facilities, make fake radios from coconuts, dress in imitation GI costumes and hold drills with bamboo rifles…hoping it will bring back the cargo.

Because we are in full knowledge of how the “cargo” came about, it’s easy to laugh at the islanders and their practices. Taken in context, however, it is also easy to see how earlier peoples developed beliefs around phenomena they did not understand, around needs and desires they dearly wished fulfilled, around fears they wished to dispel.  What is ironic, however, is that so many modern practioners of old religions can smile at the islanders’ naïveté yet dress for church and temple and mosque with a straight face.

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