| caption: |
Chapter Five. Heathens and Baptists |
| caption: |
attack on community spirit by individualistic Christians |
| text: |
ln Christian villages the rich, free of traditional obligations towards their neighbours and forbidden to perform Feasts of (48) Merit, tend to hoard their rice or to sell it to the highest bidder. With the community spirit broken, individualism begins to assert itself, and the Western idea of pride in the possession of goods, fostered probably quite unconsciously by the missionaries, replaces the Ao's traditional pride in the lavish expenditure of his wealth. The mission objects to the Feasts of Merit presumably because the animals consumed in their course are not just slaughtered but sacrificed with appropriate invocations of the spirits. Yet one would think that with a little trouble an institution of an essentially social and economic character could have been remodelled so as to be compatible with Christian tenets. Were such adjustments impossible, Europe would have long lost all its folk festivals and the Christmas tree would long ago have been condemned as a pagan symbol. |
