‘I Was Like Abraham’: notes on the anthropology of Christianity from the Solomon Islands

This article offers a detailed exegesis of what I term the ethno-theology of Timothy Karu, a Solomon Islands Anglican whose understanding of the nature of his matrilineage is informed by the Pauline account of the election of Israel. The analysis suggests a non-essentialising treatment of Christianity that nevertheless demonstrates how Solomon Islanders engage simultaneously with multiple interlocking macro and micro Christian logics in ways that aspire to systematicity. The starting point for this analysis is the identification of an unacknowledged tension between the approaches of John Barker and Joel Robbins, two influential anthropologists of Christianity whose work reflects a wider divide between anti-essentialism and cultural analysis in current anthropology. The article contributes to an overall rapprochement between these two orientations within the anthropology of Christianity.