Introduction: Religious Rupture and Revival in the Pacific

Michael Goldsmith retired in 2014 as Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand, where he remains an Honorary Fellow. He has published across a wide range of topics in Pacific ethnography, history and politics, but much of his work has focused on Tuvalu, where he conducted fieldwork in 1978–1979 and 1979–1980, with brief return visits since. In pursuit of more detailed understanding of Tuvaluan history, he has collaborated on several occasions with the historian Doug Munro, most notably on The Accidental Missionary: Tales of Elekana (Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies, University of Canterbury, 2002). He also retains a strong interest in aspects of New Zealand cultural identity and ethnicity, especially in relation to the dominant majority (“European”, “white”, or “Pākehā”)

Fraser Macdonald is an anthropologist of religion and a Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand. His research focuses on the intersection of evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity and Melanesian cultural contexts. He has recently been awarded a Marsden Fast Start grant to conduct research into Melanesian revivalism in the 1970s.