Becoming Sinners: Christianity and Moral Torment in a Papua New Guinea Society

Record summary

Joel Robbins’s study of Urapmin Christianity describes conversion, confession, spiritual struggle, dreams, moral experience, and the reinterpretation of older practices within an evangelical framework. It is useful for comparing visionary or possession-like narratives because the book carefully connects personal experience with ritual, doctrine, kinship, and social change. The lead concerns an anthropological account of religious life, not a case file establishing paranormal events. Researchers should identify which passages concern dreams or visions and distinguish ethnographic interpretation from Urapmin testimony.