Religious Studies director, Prof. Laurie Maffly-Kipp, was a Visiting Scholar at the University of Auckland March 13th to 27th. During her two week visit, she visited classes as well as met with students and faculty. The visit concluded with Prof. Maffly-Kipp participating in a public symposium titled “Resistance and Innovation: Empire and Native Christianity in the Pacific.” The symposium brought together twenty scholars of Christianity from New Zealand and international institutions representing a variety of disciplines. Together they examined the cultural dynamics of the interaction between native peoples and transplanted Christian churches in the Pacific region. In Christian communities ranging from the Congregational Christians Church Samoa to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) there is a dynamic tension between centralized and localized religious culture. This has created forms of lived religion both distinctively rooted in native culture and intimately linked to wider transnational networks of Christian communities, personalities, texts, and symbols. The exploration of this topic culminated with a public panel, featuring Prof. Maffly-Kipp, titled “Does Christ have a culture? Christianity, colonialism, and the Pacific.”
Video from the Plenary Session on “Maori Mormon Indigeneity in a Global Church” is available for the following talks: Selwyn Katene’s “Sifting the Wheat from the Tares: Maori Leadership in the Mormon Church 1880-1950”; Robert Joseph’s “Reconciling Our Differences-Maori Culture and the Mormon Church”; Gina Colvin’s “Mormon Becoming at the Colonial Outposts:Embracing the Radical Praxis of Uncertainty”; as well as Laurie Maffly-Kipp’s response.
