Winti and Christian prophetic traditions in the Torres Strait

Record summary

Torres Strait Islander religious life combines Christianity with continuing relationships to ancestors, spirits, ceremonial places and island histories. Late twentieth-century writings on communities such as Mer and Saibai discuss visionary, prophetic and end-time language without reducing it to a single movement. This is a comparative lead for apocalyptic journeys because accounts of death, return, ancestral presence and Christian resurrection may overlap in narrative form. Researchers must identify the particular island, church and speaker rather than treating ‘Torres Strait belief’ as uniform.