BBC: Around the World in 80 Faiths

6 January 2009 · 15 Comments

Which might have been subtitled: ‘Patronising Anglican on Backwards Pagan Traditions That Aren’t True Christianity (By Which I Mean My Anglican Version of Christianity) Even If Some Of Them Look A Bit Like It and Have Some of the Same Trappings But They’re Clearly Dodgy Otherwise’.

Jones on the John Frum cargo cult

Recently I saw the first episode of the BBC Two series Around the World in 80 Faiths (watch online) and followed Pete Owen Jones, an anglican priest, as he explored Australasia and the Pacific Rim seeking out and “experiencing” rituals from some of the various faith and religious traditions in that part of the world.

Not surprising (at least in my experience) for an anglican priest â€” who embodies the typical qualities of generic ‘niceness’, a willingness to get on with everyone and condescension to ‘lesser’ religions â€” Jones patronises the locals while coming across as being open-minded and willing to get to grips with a culture he’s unfamiliar with, then is comfortably snide while alone behind the safety of a camera lens to an indifferent at-best-vaguely-CofE BBC audience.

One of the communities that Jones visits is that of the John Frum cargo cult of Tanna of the Vanuatu islands. Jones â€” sadly, and predictably â€”Â treats these people as if they are living under some obvious-to-everyone-else delusion (which of course they are) but (and this is my bone of contention) vehemently insisting that his beliefs in his god (3-in-one, self-fathering, becomes-a-man-cracker when magic words are spoken, etc.) are somewhat more sophisticated and otherwise obviously true.

At least Jones acknowledges that there are at least some basic parallels between the beginnings of the cults surrounding the John Frum and Jesus characters, but he insists that the entire point of the John Frum cult was, and is, to eradicate christianity on Tanna. At a daily ceremony where locals raise the flag of the United States, Jones animatedly explains:

To western eyes this “religious” [you can hear the condescending air-quotes is his voice] ceremony is going to seem completely off-the-wall, but it’s important to remember that in the context of Tanna this wasn’t some minority cult, the impact of John Frum was absolutely massive and it nearly wiped out christianity altogether [one presumes he means only on Tana]. Between 1939 and 1941 the numbers (sic) of christians on the island dropped from a high of four thousand to just one hundred.

The segment that immediately follows, that shows a (christian) “prophet” called Fred, receives a much more favourable treatment and Jones, in typical anglican style, credits christianity with being the driving force for bringing people together while reporting at the same time that it’s the traditional island tradition of kastom that is actually the reuniting force (of course its more ‘barbaric’ aspects, like cannibalism, being tempered by christianity) but it was really christianity. Really. Honest guv.

However, I will give him kudos for stripping down to his bathing suit to take part in (at least for a while until the ‘nature worship’ bit comes up) a pagan witchcraft ceremony, which he (thankfully) now understands is not devil worship.

If you have access to the BBC iPlayer service, you can watch Around the World in 80 Faiths for yourself.

Myself, I’m going to clean myself off and re-watch the new Wallace and Gromit. That’s far more entertaining.

Tags: <Arkell v. Pressdram, BBC, christianity, culture, television, truthiness, UK>