Being-in-the-Covenant: Reflections on the Crisis of Historicism in North Malaita, Solomon Islands

Indiana University Press

Chapter Title: Being-in-the-Covenant: Reflections on the Crisis of Historicism in NorthMalaita, Solomon IslandsChapter Author(s): Jaap Timmer

Book Title: Phenomenology in AnthropologyBook Subtitle: A Sense of PerspectiveBook Editor(s): KALPANA RAM, CHRISTOPHER HOUSTONPublished by: Indiana University Press. (2015)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt16gz7f0.12

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175

8 Being-in-the-CovenantReflections on the Crisis of Historicism in North Malaita, Solomon Islands

Jaap Timmer

Biblical prophecy makes a major contribution to discourses and practices of nation and destiny in Solomon Islands. After discussing its broader context, this article investigates the power of Old Testament prophecies through analy-sis of the 2010 Queen’s Birthday speech of Solomon Islands’ governor-general, Sir Frank Kabui, entitled “Our connection with the Throne of England” (Kabui 2010), given to an audience of national and international officials in Honiara, the capital of Solomon Islands. Kabui, a To’abaita speaker from North Malaita, fo-cuses on a British-Israelite theory that claims that Jacob’s pillar stone is kept in Scotland because the kings and queens of Britain are the seed- royal to the House of David. I situate his thoughts in widespread To’abaita ideas about connections between the island of Malaita and Israel to highlight the way in which people read themselves into biblical narratives via the “Table of Nations” in Genesis 10:1–32, seen as the canonical list of peoples. By detailing this particular attempt to situate Solomon Islands in the prophecies and history of the Old Testament, I draw at-tention to an important dimension of local historiography and the meaning of religion in that context.1

In the latter sections of the chapter I make what may seem a surprising jux-taposition. I juxtapose the urgency Malaitans feel to understand and combat their past with the situation and experience in Germany at the end of the First World War, one that fed directly into the phenomenology developed by Heidegger. I use this juxtaposition to develop both an insight into Heidegger’s phenomenology and to reflect on the way people in Solomon Islands bring God’s Word to life to respond to a perceived crisis of history in their land amidst widespread cynicism over Western historiography and positivism. The juxtaposition will shed light on the specific theology and related nationalism in North Malaita while showing how Heidegger’s phenomenology can be used as a foundation for more extensive anthropological research grounded in religious concerns. Just as many To’abaita conclude that the crisis of history, illustrated by the failure of the contemporary postcolonial Solomon Islands’ state, is best countered by a return to “essential


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To’abaitan- ness or Malaitan- ness,” arguing for theocracy as their natural and culturally appropriate form of governance, so also Heidegger’s phenomenologi-cal turn was made in the context of a similar conviction in the destiny of his own people’s natural culture.

Prelude: Becoming JacobEach time I return to the out- of- the- way north ern region of the island of Malaita, To’abaita villagers are keen to discuss signs that indicate to them the imminent end of the world, convinced that God then will restore them to Israel. In Sep tem-ber 2011 and January 2012, people’s main reference point became the global finan-cial crisis. In the village of Manakwai, where I was doing fieldwork, men invited me to a veranda chat to share my opinion about what they saw as the collapse of West ern power. Is it really happening? How serious is the global financial crisis? What do Europeans say about it? Did it herald the end of days?

Six years earlier the most thought- provoking event was the withdrawal of Is-raeli forces from Gaza. People followed the news through reports posted on the internet. At that time an office in Honiara called Israel in Focus (run by Leliana Firisua, now the current Honorary Consul for Israel in Solomon Islands) regu-larly printed stories about politics and religion in the Middle East. These docu-ments circulated among Malaitans in town, many ending up in the hands of vil-lagers in North Malaita, an isolated area barely reached by newspapers. One story concerned the evacuation of Israeli settlers from the Gaza Strip and the with-drawal of Israeli forces in 2005, ending almost four decades of military occupa-tion. People wondered whether this could be related to events prophesized in the Book of Daniel that foretell the punishment of the Babylonian monarchs and the overthrow of their empire, which is read by many as a sign of the end of worldly cum “colonial” (foreign, West ern) powers in Honiara, paving the way for theoc-racy in the Pacific to prepare the nations there for the restoration of Jerusalem.

Not familiar with Old Testament prophecies and finding them largely un-intelligible when I first read them in the field, my interest lay in the ways people related themselves to biblical writings. This interest in turn involved me in con-versation with a growing network of people. Nearly all of them interpreted the heroic stories of death threats, mortal trials, and court intrigues in Daniel (par-ticularly chapters 1–6) as accounts of the struggles of both contemporary Israel and Malaita to ward off evil forces. Remarkably, I was oft en seen as an important source of vital knowledge about Israel and the Reconstruction—not only did I come from a “developed” region of the world where many believed the true tenor of Christian prophecies are known, but my name was Jacob (from my baptismal name—Jakob—which I oft en use when introducing myself in English- or Pijin- speaking environments). Everyone knew the story of Esau’s selling of his birth-right to Jacob, the fact that he had twelve sons and (at least) one daughter, and


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most crucially, that before the birth of his youngest son, Benjamin, Jacob is re-named “Israel” by an angel of the Lord (Genesis 32:28–29 and 35:10).

Soon I also learned that many villagers believed I played a role in ritually pre-paring Malaita for its role in the apocalypse. Rumor spread rapidly that I had ar-rived two decades ago by submarine from Israel: the submarine traveled through subterranean channels leading to the interior of the island of Malaita where I then hid in a cave with troops of the Israeli Army, to await the right time to prepare Malaita for the reconstruction of Jerusalem. The idea about underground armies is likely informed by To’abaita people’s knowledge about Ameri cans who liqui-dated tons of surplus stock at the end of the Second World War battles in the Pa-cific (Bennett 1987: 182–188).2 Becoming part of these ideas drew me inescapably into long and oft en intense conversations about Malaita’s connections to Israel and the role of Malaitans in the end- time narratives in scripture. On occasions the excitement about meeting Jacob was so intense that people became confused and uncertain. They began to talk tongue- in- cheek about Hebrew legacies in lo-cal culture. Others, especially those keen to seek confirmation of truths that they had recently established on the basis of biblical exegesis and Christian books, were eager to tell their stories to me, eliciting suggestions on how to close the gap be-tween Malaita and Israel.

My newfound religious fame forced me to question my own assumption that biblical narratives are best read as both his tori cal and moral, as I was taught in Dutch Protestant Sunday school. Being cast in a rather liberal vein, this school in-terpreted biblical stories as interpretive—but not factual—accounts of the time in which they were written, even as they offered moral guidance in relation to con-temporary piety. Having never properly read the books of Daniel, the prophecies of Isaiah, or the Revelation to St. John—the texts that most Malaitans find crucial—the relative advantage of this ignorance was that I was now forced to read these with my informants. They read these biblical stories allegorically, as they were not seen as merely recounting history. On the contrary, the present was reconfig ured in the light of these pregnant (with the future) prophecies. In the next section, I detail how To’abaita seek an experience of God that goes beyond mainstream his-tory and theology, illustrating their crisis of historicism—the hermeneutical mode of thinking that assigns a central and basic significance to a specific context, such as historical period, geographical place, and local culture. A discussion of these assumptions in light of the To’abaita crisis of historicism allows me to stress the importance of narrative and the way in which To’abaita find themselves identi-fied in the Christian scripture through biblical exegesis.

Narratives and ConversionOur lives are storied. Were it not for stories, our lives would be unimaginable. Stories make it possible for us to overcome our separateness, to find common


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ground and common cause. To relate a story is to retrace one’s steps, going over the ground of one’s life again, reworking reality to render it more bearable. A story enables us to fuse the world within and the world without. In this way we gain some purchase over events that confounded us, humbled us, and left us helpless. In telling a story we renew our faith that the world is within our grasp. (Jackson 2002: 245)

Susan Harding describes reading practices among born- again Christians in the United States that show striking similarities to practices of reading the Bible in Malaita:

They are history, past and future. Nor are the storied events that prefig ure and fulfill each other connected by mere cause and effect, for much might inter-vene between the two to change the outcome. The his tori cal tissues connect-ing biblically storied events are the sinews of divine design, and nothing in-terrupts God’s plan, by definition. Former events do not bring about later ones but rather reveal in advance God’s plan. Christians through their actions to-day cannot alter God’s plan, but they may be enacting it. Their actions may prefig ure or typify the events of the Second Coming of the Lord. Thus, born- again Christians, through the lens of Bible prophecy, read history backward. Future events, which are fixed and known, determine—if only in the sense of enabling Christians to imagine—the shape, the content, and the significance of present events and actions. (Harding 2000: 230)

Just as evangelical Christianity in North America is inclined to put personal ex-perience with/of the Lord as central to living a religious life, religious practices in North Malaita also revolve largely around rendering present the Divine by placing oneself within the stories of scripture. The narrative authority of the Bible provides the wherewithal to narrate one’s life and world in Christian terms (cf. Harding 2000: 34). The resulting narratives position scriptural authority and logic—which is not singular but can take on a wide variety of shapes depending on who does the exegesis and from which perspective—in personal worlds as well as in rela-tion to a broad spectrum of social and po liti cal settings. Taking seriously these processes challenges conventional understandings of religion that tend to disen-tangle the supernatural from the natural.

What would this mean for the anthropology of Christianity in Melanesia? This is a burgeoning field that tends to build analyses of Christianity around the idea of a doctrine that is adapted locally, bringing about drastic changes. For ex-ample, Joel Robbins’s Becoming Sinners (2004) portrays conversion to Christianity as a collective turn to a coherent moral sys tem that conflicts with indigenous cul-ture, rather than to one that shows continuities with it.3 Most of the forms of re-ligiosity Robbins describes take shape in an evangelical vein that views baptism as a process of complete transformation, leading Robbins to conclude that many



Urapmin experience a contest of values between two different cultures: Chris-tianity and traditional culture (see Robbins 2007; cf. Knauft 2002).

To’abaita also see this contest and are able to reflect extensively on differ-ences between the two traditions. However, their experience of Christianity cen-ters more on perceived continuities between tradition (kastom) and church (lotu), while engaging with modernity (cf. Laugrand and Oosten 2010). In the main they do not experience a tension between these two traditions of knowledge but see similarities between the two in relation to how they both relate to the scripture. This experience comes to light when we do not take Christianity to be a doctrine or theology that people adapt but consider it more as a powerful resource, able to “straighten” the connections between Malaita and Israel in response to people’s concerns, in this case a crisis of history. The governor-general’s narrative (below) illustrates this.

Michael Scott (2005: 106) criticizes Robbins’s approach by arguing against the widespread tendency to “essentialize” the dogmatic features of Christianity. He advocates the need to pay attention to biblical narrative and indigenous Christian discourses (cf. Robbins 2004: 319–326). For many in North Malaita, Old Testa-ment narratives and prophecies are the main resources used to comprehend their own past in the light of colonial and then national modernity, through relation-ships with same-minded Christians in the region and worldwide and with Jeru-salem and Israel. The resulting ethno- theologies show that people are both keen to retain continuity of tradition while eager to effect change through establishing relationships with people and institutions beyond their borders.

To be sure, To’abaita are generally familiar with ideas and practices of West-ern Christianity. Architectural styles of churches, liturgies, styles of preaching, ways of praying, gestures, forms of devotion, and use of quotes from the Bible all follow elements and patterns that people in the West are familiar with. But what about religious practices that originate in local mythology about origins and travel, or narratives interpreting European discovery, exploration and military might in the Pacific, or Christian politics concerning the state and the nation? These are themes that people oft en explicate when seeking the meaning of the scriptures and Christianity. Hence it is insufficient to think about what it is to be a Chris-tian in Solomon Islands if we limit our framework to what we as non- Solomon Islands dwellers assume to be Christian ways of being.

Malaitans look beyond the Bible for textual sources of inspiration. For ex-ample, Kabui takes a keen local interest in Western forms of theology and practice that the main churches in North Malaita would see as heterodox. Kabui’s perspec-tive is heavily influenced by the theology of Herbert W. Armstrong (1892–1986), the founder of the Worldwide Church of God (in 1933), in particular his British- Israelite views. An early pioneer of radio and tele-evangelism, first taking to the


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airwaves in the 1930s from Oregon, Armstrong preached a wide array of theo-logical ideas that he claimed came directly from the Bible, including interpreta-tions of biblical prophecy in light of British Israelism. The governor- general seems to have been inspired by the way Armstrong includes people that are not listed in Genesis, by reinterpreting Old Testament prophecies. Armstrong does this most meticulously in his book entitled The United States and Britain in Prophecy (1967).

Armstrong’s ideas and publications have been circulating in Solomon Islands at least since the 1960s, initially through Armstrong’s radio programs that were broadcast by the Solomon Islands Broadcasting Company. Issues of Armstrong’s magazine The Plain Truth have also been distributed since the 1960s in the capital Honiara, and copies and recounts made their way into rural villages. The United States and Britain in Prophecy seems to have influenced people’s thinking most significantly. I know a few older people in North Malaita who still hold a cher-ished copy of the first or second edition of the book, using it as a sacred source of knowledge. Their worldviews include many of the ideas that underpin the speech by the governor-general.

The British- Israelite variety of the Lost Tribes theory is prominent in Ka-bui’s account discussed below. While many people reconcile local genealogies with the genealogies in the Old Testament, this speech, true to the position of the governor-general of Solomon Islands, connects Solomon Islands to a particular genealogy of the British throne. In that way it incorporates Solomon Islands into Christian world history and into God’s plan for humanity. By contrast, the con-ventional “white” theology spread by mainstream Solomon churches (the South Sea Evangelical Church, the Roman Catholic Church, the Anglican Church, and the Jehovah’s Witnesses) are seen by many locals to reflect a West ern ethnocen-tric reading of Solomon Islands history. In that reading, Solomon Islanders are characterized as pagan and as sinners according to mission Christianity (cf. Peel 2000, Knauft 2002, Robbins 2004); rendered primitive and undeveloped in colo-nial and postcolonial government discourses; perceived as needy citizens of a failed state in the theory of Australia’s Arc of Instability postulated by foreign security analysts and development organizations (in clud ing the international RAMSI in-tervention; see Rumley et al. 2006); and accused of living shady lives in a shadow state of sorts (Braithwaite et al. 2010). Obviously the way people experience mo-dernity in Solomon Islands reflects a vastly more diverse set of evaluations, in-clud ing through the agency of cultural creativity.

As will become clear in the speech, the fascination and obsession with both present- day and biblical Jerusalem reflect apocalyptic intimations that articulate with a mood of economic or political distress. Modernity in Solomon Islands is not just about past and present but more about ups and downs (cf. Ferguson 2006). By contrast, the development narratives offered by the postcolonial state, and the



multitude of foreign bodies that support it, resonates by and large in theological narratives promulgated by mainstream churches. Accordingly, on Maliata the mainstream churches are oft en criticized for following the “white” reading of his-tory relegating Solomon Islanders to pagan, uncivilized, backward, marginalized, and still developing people. Countering such classifications, many Malaitans also condemn the worship in those churches as meaningless, as they seek an alterna-tive through experiencing “the imminent presence of God,” as Michael Maeliau, leader of a local movement called the All People’s Prayer Assembly (APPA), says (see Maeliau 2006 and Timmer 2012a).

Because the narrative of the governor-general resonates intimately with many of the ideas held by leaders and followers of the APPA, it is important to realize that the APPA’s theology is influential in fundamentally challenging the key pa-rameters of mainstream history, in particular colonial time reckoning and the classifications of indigenous belief systems and ways of living as primitive, pa-gan, backward, undeveloped, and so on. In general, when To’abaita read them-selves into the scripture, they evoke past and future simultaneously; time is not about going backward or forward but it is about the episode, the event. These un-derstandings also make people think globally, both here (Malaita and Solomon Islands) and there (Israel, Jerusalem, the United Kingdom). This reading has a long genealogy.

In the 1950s, dissatisfaction with the theology of the South Sea Evangelical Church (the main Church in the region) led to the establishment of the Remnant Church (Burt 1983). The Remnant Church heralded the demise of the mainstream churches by declaring the idea that Malaitans are of Jewish descent and members of one of the Ten Lost Tribes, that the Ark of the Covenant and King Solomon’s Temple lay hidden in the mountainous interior of the island, and that people had been practicing Judaism until recently (see Timmer 2012b). Many of these ideas are still alive today, most notably in the APPA that attracts hundreds of followers in North Malaita and beyond (see Timmer 2012a). The APPA’s theology illustrates how characters, events, and prophecies in the Bible engage people in a heightened sense with what needs change amid concerns over regional and global marginali-zation in the context of the failing promises of government-promised modernity (Timmer 2008). Their mission is true, as they dwell inside God’s unfailing Word.

In particular, leaders in the APPA see that old missionary concepts, categories, and liturgy are useless for recognizing and living with the “immanent presence of the Lord.” Besides evoking particular experiences of God and one’s role in the fulfillment of His word, living with the presence of the Lord is also marked by an aspiration to systematically follow God’s word and the language of the Bible. I ex-pand below on the crisis of history which underlies the new theologies and read-ings of Christian scripture as a living word.


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Crises of Historicism

Ongoing po liti cal demands for more autonomy for the provinces of Solomon Is-lands, in particular from North Malaita, became heightened around the time of a civil war that devastated the country. This war is referred to locally as “the eth-nic tension” (tensun). Overall disgruntlement and tensions between people from Malaita and Guadalcanal, partly related to poorly regulated urbanization, led to a civil conflict that began in 1998 and was only effectively subdued with the arrival of the Australian- led Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) in 2003 (Moore 2004, Fraenkel 2004, Kwa’ioloa & Burt 2012, Allen 2013). Follow-ing a series of violent clashes between Malaitans and people from Guadalcanal in the period from 1998 to 2002, Malaitan politicians rejected the plan for a federal government sys tem discussed during the Townsville truce negotiations (Corrin Care 2005: 167). They demanded to have their own executive governor and legis-lative assembly. Until now, constitutional reform has stalled, feeding a sense of ongoing crisis in the nation and uncertainty about its origins and authenticity (West ern or biblical?) and its destiny (ongoing failure, or becoming part of the restoration to Jerusalem?) among Malaitans.

In his reflection on the tensun in a booklet entitled Trouble in Paradise (2003), Michael Maeliau points out that while Malaitans have contributed greatly to na-tional development, they were chased back to their island to continue to suffer from discrimination. The most viable political solution to this situation is political au-tonomy or even independence of Malaita: “If the Solomon Islands as a country is heading for a Solomon Islands version of State Government then I think it needs only two States, Malaita and the rest of Solomon Islands the other. If all the Prov-inces still prefer the State Government status then a separate Act is required to dif-ferentiate Malaita as a separate autonomous po liti cal entity” (Maeliau 2003: 68). Maeliau reaches this conclusion after detailing the longstanding contribution of Malaitans to regional and national development. Not only are Malaitans the larg-est group in Solomon Islands, they also are the most laborious. During the period of labor trade in the late nineteenth century when many Solomon Islanders were recruited to work as indentured laborers in sugar cane plantations in Queensland, Malaitans contributed most and paid the highest toll, with “their blood, sweat and tears” (Maeliau 2003: 50, and see 20–21). Maeliau continues stating that Malai-tans also worked hard in Solomon Islands’ copra industry, thus contributing sig-nificantly to the welfare of the British Protectorate of Solomon Islands. Lack of acknowledgment of Malaitans and lack of interest in developing Malaita began during the colonial period and continued into the postcolonial period (Maeliau 2003: 22, 51).

Amid economic and developmental discrimination Maeliau discerns wide-spread anti- Malaitan sentiments, a situation he compares to “the Aborigines in



white Australian domination, the Maori and Pakeha problem in New Zealand and the Kanakas and European Immigrants race problems in New Caledonia” (30). The tensun aggravated these sentiments, and through massive eviction from land occupied by Malaitans on Guadalcanal, Malaitans became further victim-ized. They not only lost the ethnic conflict but also have become “perpetual sec-ond class citizens in other Provinces” (52). Maeliau sees continuity with an older missionary perspective that portrayed Malaitans as the most infamous savages (20). The ultimate solution he sees is to return to one God and one land (47).

One way of analyzing this situation is to describe it as a crisis of historicism, a crisis in people’s efforts to ascertain and establish the historical authenticity of a nation. The crisis in Malaita shows similarities with a crisis of historicism in post–World War I Germany, the period during which Heidegger developed his phe-nomenology on the basis of a radical critique of positivism in the sciences. What inspires people in Malaita is not the question of the authenticity of the copy or of the origi nal but the idea that their origi nal is derived from the most authentic source possible: God’s word, in which they feature conspicuously.

To’abaita’s concern with authenticity in light of a crisis of historicism is remi-niscent of Martin Heidegger’s response to the crisis of historicism in Germany after the Great War. In Heidegger, Dilthey, and the Crisis of Historicism (1995), Charles Bambach points out that Heidegger connected to the postwar crisis in Germany much more through his religious and theological concerns than through the dominant neo-Kantian philosophy of the day. Bambach illustrates this con-nection by detailing Heidegger’s interest and reaction to Swiss Reformed theolo-gian Karl Barth’s epoch-making commentary on Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, published in 1919.

In that period following the Great War, a generation of Germans came to painfully realize that Germany had lost a war and that po liti cal and social life was in decline. The myth of a nation had become a fiasco and there was little left in terms of his tori cal continuity with a glorious past, the main ideological pil-lar that had so far upheld the bourgeois narrative of order and optimism. “The faith of the liberal epoch in progress, culture and Bildung was at an end” (Bam-bach 1995: 188). In a context of disenchanted identities and confusion about fu-ture directions of the nation, Barth made Paul’s Epistle speak again as the liv-ing word of God to contemporary people. Paul wrote to the church members at Rome about what he regarded as the essential elements of the Christian religion, that the Gospel is the saving power of God: Barth recounts it as a “kind of ‘her-meneutical manifesto’ that called for an end to dominant research practices [in theology and biblical studies] so that the living word could speak in the contem-porary situation” (Bambach 1995: 191). Heidegger echoed Barth’s analy sis of the crisis in both theology and in the world—but not his political sympathies, given Barth’s socialism—linking it to his shift from Catholicism to Protestantism after


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1917. For Bambach, Heidegger’s “religious questions came to affect the very notion of historical consciousness so prevalent in German historicist thinking” (Bam-bach 1995: 195).4

In his response to the crisis of historicism in Germany, Heidegger’s project of phenomenology resonates positively with that of vari ous theologians, in par-ticular with Karl Barth’s revolutionary commentary on Paul’s Epistle to the Ro-mans. Like Barth, Heidegger sought to go beyond an “objective history” to an “existential history”: “One of the things that the theologians . . . seem to pro-vide [Heidegger] is the model of a turn against (putatively) scientific history—against Historie. To be sure, in Sein und Zeit Heidegger worked in a philosophi-cal and not at all in a theological register, but it is clear that he carried much over from theology to philosophy” (Megill 1997: 427). While, as Bambach (1995) shows, Karl Barth’s commentary (1919) was a key hermeneutical manifesto for Heidegger, Herbert Armstrong’s The United States and Britain in Prophecy (1967) forms a key source for his tori cal consciousness and a Dasein (“existence”) for To’abaita in the sense of the mysterious, shaping their fate and their destiny as a nation. Arm-strong’s book sees the history and politics of the modern world as the fulfillment of the Bible’s divine prophecies. It contains teachings that include a form of Brit-ish Israelism (the United States and Britain are remnants of the tribe of Israel), the observation of all Old Testament laws, and a belief in Jesus’s imminent return. Similar to Heidegger’s response to the crisis of historicism in postwar Germany, the To’abaita respond to their crisis of historicism through theological concerns. Challenging West ern categories, an evolving To’abaita historiography warns that hundreds of years before the coming of Christianity in the early twentieth cen-tury, surrounding groups seduced Malaitans to beliefs and practices such as an-cestor worship and cannibalism. When Christianity came, so their history goes, people were reminded of their authentic belief sys tem (Judaism) and the founda-tional principles of their customary regulations (The Laws of Moses). While the mainstream churches in the region preach theologies that originate in the West as well as attitudes toward indigenous people that suggest they have a long way to go to attain emancipation and enlightenment, APPA circulates theologies that forge irreconcilable tensions between Western Christianity and old Judaic wis-dom concerning the immanent presence of God.

To many To’abaita, the scriptures of the Bible are not historical documents about Israel and the immediate Middle East ern region, but are a living testimony to the vitality and power of the true word of God. Many focus on the word of God in relation to the reality of lived experience. For those in APPA this experience is oft en intense and exciting, as shown in a respondent’s response to Acts 1:8, which says, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” This text is for APPA the most criti cal of the Acts of the Apostles,



as its adherents see it as a reflection of the social and economically marginal po-sition of Malaita, its ends-of-the-earth distance from Jerusalem, and the fact that people feel that the world around them is falling into apostasy. “The Bible speaks to us, in combination with revelations (downloads) by God, and this is our guid-ance, making holiness our way of life,” Maeliau told me in De cem ber 2011 (see also Maeliau 2006).

The Throne of DavidThe idea of holiness as separation from the world, as setting Israel apart from the nations, is essential to the fulfillment of the statutes and rituals of the covenant. This is what marks out special or covenanted people. It is to this unique role, and the rights and duties it entails, that the people assent at Sinai and thereafter. To be holy is to be like God; and imitatio Dei is the fundamental of humanity. (Smith 2003: 59)

Believing themselves to be a covenanted people, many To’abaita pray for their restoration to Jerusalem but also about nation and citizenship. In 2010, Kabui, in his capacity as the governor- general, delivered the Queen’s Birthday speech at the time that the constitutional reform process had stalled for a number of rea-sons, in clud ing outright rejection of a proposal for a federal state by a number of Malaitan politicians. As a former British colony, Solomon Islands belongs to the Commonwealth with Elizabeth II as the present monarch, represented by the governor- general. The state’s current constitution is the Solomon Islands Inde-pendence Order of 1978, comprising many statutes and conventions that are Brit-ish in origin and which give Solomon Islands a parliamentary sys tem of govern-ment similar to those of the other Commonwealth realms. The country has been working on a new constitution for several years, and a constitutional convention was to finish the task in Oc to ber 2008. A draft published in 2004 is all that ex-ists thus far; it declares Solomon Islands a republic, and it is widely expected that this change will be part of the envisioned new constitution. Much of the delay is caused by concern over devolution of powers of the central government to the re-gions, but as Kabui’s speech shows, there are also major theological concerns over breaking the link with the House of David (which Kabui refers to as “the Throne of David”). I quote here from key portions of Kabui (2010) while still keeping close to the narrative structure of the origi nal to convey a sense of how To’abaita nar-rate common ground and common cause.

The Queen is the pub lic face of the Throne of England. Our Constitution has made us part of it at least for now. What then is the Royal Throne of England to us? Does the Throne of England have anything important which we ought to know about? . . .

The story is that the Throne of England is the direct descendant of the Throne of David as it is told in the Bible. The story is long and complicated but you


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can read it in the Bible for yourselves. Some parts of the story are not found in the Bible but can be found in other literature on the same topic. . . . The Bible says that the Throne of David will last forever. We must believe this because 2 Samuel, 7 verse 16 says it. God made the same promise to King Solomon. In other words, the sins of Israel will be punished but the Throne of David will not be taken from his line until the return of Christ.

King David and King Solomon were from the House of Judah, the Southern Kingdom. The last King of Judah was Zedekiah. This King had lived in Judea during his time. However, he was killed by the army of King Nebuchadnez-zar together with his sons and other male royalties because he disobeyed God. With the death of King Zedekiah and his sons, the royal line of King Zedekiah seems to have come to an end. This was not to be because King Zedekiah has three daughters.

Prophet Jeremiah in the Bible was to play a crucial role assigned to him by God. You can read the Book of Jeremiah 1, verses 9 and 10. His assignment was to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant. In other words, Prophet Jeremiah was to be God’s instrument by which the royal line of King David was going to be passed on and sustained according to God’s promise in the Bible. Genesis 49, verse 10, Ezekiel 17, verse 22 and Ezekiel 22, verses 26–27 are the scriptures that speak about the role Prophet Jeremiah had played in this history. It is God’s plan.

Prophet Jeremiah had saved King Zedekiah’s daughters’ lives from destruc-tion by the army of King Nebuchadnezzar. Prophet Jeremiah himself hid with King Zedekiah’s daughters in a cave under the Temple built by King Solomon during the destruction of Jerusalem. The Ark of the Covenant, Jacob’s Pillar Stone and David’s Harp were also hidden in that cave from destruction.

Prophet Jeremiah then escaped from Judea with his secretary Baruch, the three Princesses and their maids to a place called Tanis in Egypt. The other two Princesses died in Egypt. From there, the rest of the party sailed across to Spain and then stayed in Gibraltar. Prophet Jeremiah’s Secretary, Baruch, died there and was buried in Gibraltar. The remaining members of the party again all set sail along the coast of Spain and arrived in Cornwall in South England.

Teia Tephi, the surviving Princess, then set sail again and arrived in Ire-land on June 18, 583 bc. The Prophet Jeremiah followed later with the Ark of the Covenant for security reason [sic].

They arrived in Ireland with three things: the Ark of the Covenant, Jacob’s Pillar Stone and King David’s Harp. Teia Tephi married the High King of Ire-land on June 21, 583 bc. The King of Ireland was the descendant of Zara, the twin brother of Pharez, the sons of Judah, the son of Jacob, the son of Isaac, the son of Abraham. You can read about these twin brothers in Genesis 38.5

The book of Ezekiel 21, verses 26–27 had foretold this blood union of the twin brothers, the sons of Judah. The descendants of Zara had long migrated from Judea to Spain and then to Ireland. Teia Tephi and the High King of Ire-land made their marriage promises over the Jacob’s Pillar Stone and she stood upon it when she was acknowledged as the Queen of Ireland.

The Jacob’s Pillar Stone remained in Ireland for one thousand years. All the Irish Kings had sat over the Jacob’s Pillar Stone when they were crowned Kings



of Ireland. The Stone was then removed from Ireland and landed in Scotland where it served the same purpose for the Scottish Kings.

Providing an interpretation of both scripture and the national problem of Solomon Islands, Kabui places Solomon Islands in the prophecies of the Old Testament as a member of the Commonwealth, with Britain as the biblically sanctified holder of the Throne of David and the Stone of Jacob, which Scottish mythology suggests was used in the coronation of early Scottish monarchs and in biblical times by Jacob as a pillow. Also known as the Coronation Stone and the Stone of Scone, it is one of the earliest symbols of Scottish nationhood and has been an emblem of strained relations with England since it was stolen by Edward I in 1296 (Aitchi-son 2009; Hamilton 1953). Profoundly inspired by Armstrong (1967: 100–102), Ka-bui recounts how “Jacob’s pillar- stone” (Genesis 28:18) was brought to Ireland by Jeremiah and is now resting in Westminster Abbey in Lon don, in the form of the coronation chair:

This Jacob’s Pillar Stone was the stone Jacob used as a pillow when he was asleep and had a dream, seeing a ladder reaching into heaven from the ground and angels going up and down the ladder. High above the ladder, God stood, and spoke to Jacob. The next morning Jacob took the stone and set it up and poured oil over it. He called that place Bethel which means the House of God. You can read Genesis 28, verses 10 to 22 for yourselves.

Prophet Jeremiah is said to have died and been buried in Ireland. The Ark of the Covenant was also hidden in Ireland and is believed to be still there with David’s Harp. The Ark of the Covenant contains the Torah and the Ten Com-mandments. The Jacob Pillar Stone is said to be the Throne of David.

The Jacob’s Pillar Stone is also known as the Stone of Destiny. It was also given the name Stone of Scone during its time in Scotland, signifying the ca-thedral where it used to be kept. In the year 1296 ad, King Edward I of England invaded Scotland and removed the Stone of Destiny. He placed it in Westmin-ster Abbey in Lon don.

The Kings and Queens of England had sat over the Stone of Destiny on be-ing crowned for over 600 years. The coronation chair for the English Kings and Queens was made by King Edward I, in the year 1301 ad and is still in West-minster Abbey in Lon don today after Queen Elizabeth II was crowned Queen in 1953. . . . The Stone of Destiny that used to lie underneath the coronation chair each time a King or Queen is crowned in Westminster Abbey is no longer there today. It was returned to Scotland by agreement in 1996. It will return to England when the next King is crowned in Westminster Abbey. The Stone had earlier been stolen from Westminster Abbey in 1950 by Scottish national-ists and then recovered and returned to Westminster Abbey. King Edward I, had signed an agreement in 1328 ad to return the Stone of Destiny but had not done so for over six hundred years.

The fulfilment of the prophetic scriptures in the Bible, the Throne of David had been over turned (1) from Jerusalem and planted in Ireland, (2) over turned and planted in Scotland and then (3) overturned and planted in England. The


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Bible says it will not be further (4) overturned until Jesus Christ returns. The Throne will then be turned over to Jesus Christ, the Kings [sic] of Kings in the Second Coming.

Clearly, there is biblical connection between the Throne of England and Solomon Islands through the office of the Governor-General through our Con-stitution. Our Constitution says that the executive authority of the people of Solomon Islands is vested in the Head of State, being Her Majesty the Queen of England, a direct descendant of King David. She is the descendant of the Throne of David. I am therefore privileged to represent that Throne today in Solomon Islands as the Queen’s representative. The Scottish nationalists will of course have something to say but that is a matter beyond me.

Kabui relates biblical elements to underpin his justification in terms of the line of authority from Israel to England to Solomon Islands. The speech suggests that Malaita ought not to become a federal state within Solomon Islands because that would sever the link with the line of David, threatening inclusion of Malaitans in the thousand- year Kingdom of God. Kabui assumes that Solomon Islands’s consti-tution ensures that the nation will be part of the Bible’s end- time story as long as it remains within the Commonwealth, whose own destiny, according to Armstrong, is assured. Moreover, in search for a common ancestry, the narrative goes back to Noah’s time when humankind started again after the flood, which also bridges the gap between Solomon Islands and Israel. In that sense, the governor- general would support state government just as long as the office of governor- general is retained, that is, while there is no movement to a republican form of government.

Clearly, the fact that our Head of State is the Queen of England is not some-thing of little weight for Christians. She comes from the line of Judah. She is an Israelite according to Genesis 32, verse 22–31. The symbol of the tribe of Judah is the lion. The Royal Coat of Arms of the United Kingdom has three lions in the first and fourth quarters. You will notice that the governor- general’s flag flies at Government House and is flown wherever the governor- general goes. That lion is the symbol of the lion of Judah. Please show it respect together with our national flag.

I have decided to tell you this story to enable you to understand where we fit in our constitutional arrangement with the United Kingdom under our Consti-tution. We ought to know where we fit in as some of the descendants of Noah and how we related to the other descendants of Noah in this world. [End of speech]

The governor- general’s speech exemplifies the way in which many To’abaita ex-plore biblical narrative positivistically, believing that the gap between Malaita and Israel can be closed by unraveling the truth behind texts in the Old Testament. By closing that gap, people also deal with distinctions along racial lines. Whites are the originators of Christian lore and the keepers of the secrets that give access to



power and redemption. As Kabui’s speech illustrates, such a narrative bridges this gap by constructing a historiography that argues against white people’s linear and evolutionary histories. As discussed above, the latter places Solomon Islands at the stage of barbarism while To’abaita historiography provides a central place, a Heideggerian Being- in- the- World (In- der- Welt- sein) to Solomon Islanders.

Authenticity and PhenomenologyAs with Heidegger’s critique on Historie, it is theology that inspires To’abaita people’s criti cal attitude toward West ern churches and education. Some To’abaita like Kabui take their cue from Armstrong’s theology as elaborated in The United States and Britain in Prophecy. This text strongly rebukes leaders of the West-ern world for ignoring biblical prophecies as key to understanding their relations with other nations. They are “tampering with forces of nature they lack the pru-dence, knowledge, ability and wisdom to control,” writes Armstrong, adding that modern men are “steeped in modern educational deceptions” (1967: x), “falsely educated and deceived into closing their minds to the great causes behind world events and trends” (1967: ix). With an unprejudiced eye, Armstrong goes on to in-terpret the Bible as a book about Israelitish nationality in an attempt to determine which modern nations are addressed in the narratives of the Old Testament: “On the world scene nothing is so important right now as to know where the white, English- speaking people are identified in scores and hundreds of prophecies—prophecies which describe vividly our sudden rise to national power and reveal the causes of that greatness; prophecies that paint a crystal- clear picture of our present international dilemma; prophecies that open our eyes wide to see what now lies immediately ahead for our nations—and what our ultimate and final status shall be” (1967: 10). Unsurprisingly, in Armstrong’s theology Israel loses its identity when the birthright tribes of Ephraim and Menasseh of the “lost” House of Israel go to Britain and the United States—they now constitute “the real Israel (racially and nationally) of today” (1967: 43; Kidd 2006: 217–218). Similarly, in Ka-bui’s speech and in many To’abaitan minds, exegeses of Old Testament prophe-cies (with or without Armstrong’s guidance) become literally the pre- text for a sense of Dasein and of Solomon Islands as the ultimate Heimat.

Though many To’abaita are convinced that God speaks to humans and re-veals the divine plan—the high number of prophets in the region is the most tell-ing evidence of this—most are occupied with speaking themselves into the Bible, reflecting on biblical characters and stories to shape their thoughts, to model their actions, replicating biblical history as prefig ured types (cf. Tomlinson 2010: 747, paraphrasing Harding 2000). People do not embrace Christianity because of nostalgia or as part of a revival of tradition that now includes elements of Chris-tian lore. Instead, Kabui’s speech illustrates the way in which people are engaged


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with key aspects of po liti cal modernity. Indeed, the vari ous dimensions of their religious beliefs ought to be seen as their intention to master, or at least manage, modernity in Solomon Islands. The substance of Kabui’s speech concerns the fu-ture of the Solomon Islands’ nation, its state and its constitution, all read into and through the Bible, with significant guidance from Armstrong’s exegesis of Old Testament prophecies that narrate the real history of Britain and America.

In engaging with Armstrong’s theology and with the Old Testament’s cove-nantal magic while being extremely perturbed by the possibility that Solomon Is-lands will be disconnected from the Commonwealth in the future, the governor- general reassures listeners with biblical truths, so that even in the face of the un certainties of modern times a future appears possible and positive. The end time in Kabui’s narrative is not about the end of history but the end time that is just around the corner. That end of time gives the narrative power and shows that people do not slip into a sort of value-neutral measure of time with conversion to Christianity. To’abaita experience a crisis of historicism amid many signs that signal to them the relevance of biblical prophecies concerning the deterioration of the world during its final days. Many attempt to counter this crisis by seeking to make the scripture a phenomenological reality in relation to the identity and destiny of the nation.

The evolving notion of nation allows people to acquire a new sense of self, a new framework of reference and agency in a plan for the future. Christian narra-tive thus presents an alternative modernity that is meaningful to many To’abaita as it provides a new sense of self and a shared destiny. In short, Kabui’s speech is not an attempt to rewrite or straighten Solomon Islands’ history in Western terms but rather to limit the scope of orthodox his tori cal science (colonial contact, de-velopment and civilization processes) by bringing the Christian scripture to life through relating it to present existence and its problems.

This is just the point I seek to locate by juxtaposing To’abaita response to what many see as their crisis of historicism with Heidegger’s response to the crisis in historicism in postwar Germany. In his reflection on Heidegger’s phenomenology, Bambach reads Being and Time as an attempt at linking Germans to “something concealed, mysterious, and chthonic whose meaning lies hidden beneath the sur-face of the earth, or rather whose meaning needs to be worked out in confrontation (Aus-einander-setzung) with this concealment in order to grant one an authentic identity” (2003: 19). What autochthony means here is not simply a rootedness in the soil or in the past or in tradition with which one views his world, but the mys-terious that shapes the fate of the in di vidual and the destiny of his nation (Volk). As we know, Heidegger envisioned a radical philosophical revolution to recuper-ate a sense of origi nal wonderment beyond Historie, just like Barth felt the need to posit an experience and revelation of God that broke liberal theology’s merg-ing of the Divine with human cultures, achievements, and progressive evolution.



Epilogue: Heidegger and Solomon(s)

Heidegger’s Being and Time is among the most important books written in the twentieth century, declaring a fundamental shift in the way we understand the world. Given the numerous articles, books, and volumes seeking to apply phe-nomenological insights in anthropology (see Desjarlais and Throop 2011 for a major review), we might conclude that the discipline is still grappling with its implications. I have followed Bambach’s lead in contextualizing Heidegger’s phe-nome no logi cal insights in terms of the era in which he lived. This has stimulated a comparative reflection on the upsurge of an urgent existential reading of the covenant among To’abaita. This upsurge has come about in response to a per-ceived crisis in historical narratives about people’s developmental plight. There is no single necessary politics that ensues from the disclosure of such connec-tions. Heidegger’s involvement in National Socialism (Safranski 1999) itself di-verges sharply from the politics of Karl Barth, whose crisis in liberal theology stemmed from his distress at German professors’ notorious support for the Kai-ser’s war effort. In all cases, however, an existentially charged theology has been produced, which has the capacity to challenge evolutionary understandings of temporality. I have shown how in North Malaita connection with Israel produces historiographies that differ remarkably from Western/white histories that tend to relegate Solomon Islanders to colonial and national status, and as backward and developing. People challenge these judgments by being-in-the-covenant, ensur-ing that they will be part of biblical futures long hidden from them and that are still difficult to access. The resulting new historiography positions people at the very center of biblical prophecy, suggesting a key role for Malaitans in the ful-fillment of the Book. Narrating one’s past, present, and future in biblical terms is a powerful act that gives people a sense of belonging and the prospect of bibli-cal futures. The power of God’s word is linked to the temporal and spatial mean-ings of nation and covenantal forms of ethnic election that are growing in popu-larity in Malaitan lifeworlds.

In this narrated election Solomon Islanders claim that they are equal gen-tiles or, when pushed a bit further as many other To’abaita do, members of the group that God choose to be His people. As the lost tribe their status is no differ-ent from powerful colonial British and contemporary Australians and New Zea-landers, indeed from all other whites. But utopia in To’abaita lifeworlds is not just a revolutionary idea and people are not just haunted by the thought of a per-fect society. While they interpret much of their past as a memory of a lost para-dise, they also see and experience its materials for remaking the world that allows for a To’abaita Dasein. As I have shown, the materials for remaking that world are largely theological, which alerts us also to the influence of theological analy-sis of the contemporary situation on Heidegger’s own philo sophi cal phenome-


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nology, which came to the conclusion that only a people rooted in its own earth could tackle the crisis of historicism in Europe. This resonates, too, with To’abaita struggles against churches that are West ern, and their debates over the Westmin-ster state organization, the Commonwealth, and the republic. Kabui’s theologi-cally grounded response is to identify with the Throne of David in Westminster Abbey, while many To’abaita think they are Israelites and that their fate is proph-esied in the Old Testament.

When read together, we are alerted to a further domain of anthropology, which might explore further the phe nome no logi cal ramifications of po liti cal the-ologies.

Notes

1. My contextualization of the governor- general’s narrative relies on fieldwork conducted over a number of visits to Solomon Islands since 2005. This chapter is in fact one in a series of essays (Timmer 2008, 2012a, 2012b) in which I attempt to chart the massive variety of connec-tions that Malaitans establish with Israel as a dynamic sense of religiosity, historicity, nation-ality, and “stateness.”

2. Michael Scott (2011, 2012) writes about underground armies among neighboring Ma-kira and reports that people believe that Ameri cans constructed underground buildings and filled them with loads of equipment by way of preparing Solomon Islands for the full epiphany of Makiran power.

3. See Hefner’s (1993) introduction to Conversion to Christianity for a review of litera-ture beyond Melanesia.

4. In a review of Bambach’s book, Allan Megill (1997) argues that this should have been connected to the crisis of liberal theology that preceded Barth’s “crisis” as Heidegger actually attended to the dilemmas of liberal theology. Clearly more work remains to be done on the theological dimensions in Heidegger’s work (but see Crowe 2006).

5. At this stage Kabui’s narrative follows rather closely the exegesis of Armstrong (1967) in chapter 8, “The Mysterious Breach,” which locates the real Israel in Britain and the United States.

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Being-in-the-Covenant: Reflections on the Crisis of Historicism in North Malaita, Solomon Islands

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