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Religion in Oceania

Christianity is the dominant religion in Oceania with 55 to 65% (2020 estimate).[1]

History

Prior to contact with Europeans, the different groups of the Pacific lived in systems of theocracy which generally utilised the widespread concept of tabu.[2]Various Christian missionary organisations arrived in Japan (1549), the Philippines (16th century) and the Aleutians (18th century), but European and American missions converted most of the islands of Oceania to Christianity in the course of the 19th century.[3]

Religious distribution

Australasia

Melanesia

Micronesia

Polynesia

Hyponyms

See also

References

  1. ^ Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life (December 2012), The Global Religious Landscape: A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World's Major Religious Groups as of 2010 (PDF), Pew Research Center, retrieved 29 May 2020
  2. ^ Marett, Robert Ranulph (1922). "Tabu". In Hastings, James; Selbie, John Alexander; Gray, Louis Herbert (eds.). Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics. Vol. 12: Suffering-Zwingli. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. p. 182. ISBN 9780567065094. Retrieved 10 June 2024. [...] king, chiefs, priests, and the gods themselves, formed one undivided theocracy, whereof tabu constituted he chief instrument, at once spiritual and temporal in its nature and effects. [...] Primary connexion of Oceanic tabu with a theocratic system [...] Secondary developments of tabu in Oceania [...] whereas the essence ot tabu in its local signification consists [...] in a theocratic form of government, which in its turn may have developed by way of an apotheosis of landlordism, the ramifications of the notion are endless and cover the whole religion of Oceania [...]. The theocracy could consecrate a site, or devote a victim, or appropriate a house or canoe, or betroth a woman, or proclaim a rest-day for men or a close-time for game [...].
  3. ^ Storch, Tanya, ed. (2006). Religions and Missionaries Around the Pacific, 1500-1900. The Pacific World Series, No. 17: Lands, Peoples and History of the Pacific, 1500-1900. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. ISBN 9780754606673. Retrieved 10 June 2024.

External links