Pragmatic vs. Spiritual

"...those who convert from a local to a world religion for pragmatic reasons rarely come to understand that world religion as anything more than a means to locally defined worldly ends," (p.85). To sum it up in layman's terms people's who switch from their local religion to a world religion often do so for practical reasons rather than embracing the spirituality of their new religion and thus lack a deeper understanding and relationship with it. The spiritual aspects of religion are equally as important as the practical aspects. However, in the transition from a local to a world religion, the world religion's ability to touch the spirit of it's new converts is lacking once you leave the Western Christian influenced world. This could be seen as a draw back from that particular worlds mission to "civilize" the "uncivilized" societies because the first people that the Western Christian world sent were missionaries who job was to spread the law and word of Christ and convert the peoples of the lands they visited before anyone else came. This is seen across Africa and specifically detailed in books such as Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, and Unbowed by Wangari Maathai. These books are good examples of why individual peoples of specific local religions and ethnic groups converted. Women who had previously given birth to twins converted in the hopes of being able to now keep their babies, and men who were deemed weak like women converted because the Christian religion empowers all men. The Urapmin, however, were not converted like many other local groups they more or less willingly converted to Christianity but they like many other groups and peoples converted for pragmatic reasons. The Urapmin like the laws that the Western Christian world presented to them, and the derivative of many of these laws were from Christian practices. Urapmin also sought to convert because of the Christian view on sin which played into Urapmin ideology. It can be said that the spiritual aspect of Christianity was lost on them because of the way that Western Christian spirituality is defined, however it is my belief that they do participate in the spiritual aspects of Christianity especially when they convene for a Spirit disko. While most local religious groups convert for pragmatic reasons and loose the spiritual aspects of the Christianity, I believe that the Urapmin did not loose the spiritual aspect of Christianity and may in fact have expanded on it's definition.

-Ciara Williams