'Kastom', Syncretism and Self-Determination
The Reconciliation of 'Bipotaim' and 'Pastaim' in the Church of Torres Strait
Keywords:
Anglican Church, Torres Strait, Church of Torres Strait, political, communal and doctrinal issues, syncretic theologyAbstract
Late in 1997 the Anglican Church in Torres Strait, for more than eighty years the bastion of Torres Strait Christianity, split, and in the following year the new Church of Torres Strait came into being, its congregations aligned with the traditional Anglican communion. What follows is an attempt to unravel the complex political, communal and doctrinal issues that caused the split, considering them in the light of an ongoing assertion of indigenous self-determination which can be traced back to the colonial era. The article also briefly traces the emergence since the early 1980s of a potentially liberating syncretic theology in the Torres Strait Anglican tradition which may hold within it the possibility of a reconciliation between bipotaim and pastaim, darkness and light, and tries to assess the implications of the split for this nascent theology.
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