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The Canadian Historical Review 85.1 (2004) 131-134



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The Heavens Are Changing: Nineteenth-Century Protestant Missions and Tsimshian Christianity. Susan Neylan. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press 2002. Pp. xviii, 406, illus. $75.00

The Heavens Are Changing is a good example of ethnohistory, the cross-disciplinary investigation of the indigenous past. In this monograph, Susan Neylan uses a range of documentary and anthropological sources to present a nuanced view of processes of religious change among the Tsimshian on the northwest coast of British Columbia. She describes the spiritual dimensions of Tsimshian culture, using twentieth-century anthropological accounts of non-Christian Tsimshian society. From this base she investigates Tsimshian attitudes and interest in Christianity, [End Page 131] introduced by Protestant missionaries in the nineteenth century, 'a culturally laden relationship wrought with misunderstanding on both sides and influenced by shifting and unequal power relationships.' The study is firmly located in a wide range of historical and anthropological writings on religious change which are used as reference points throughout the book.

In her introduction, Neylan refers to a debate among anthropologists studying conversion in Africa. On one side is Humphrey J. Fisher's model of 'external conversion,' in which the juggernaut of Christianity (or Islam) transforms whole communities; on the other is Robin Horton's concept of 'internal conversion,' which is influenced not by external factors such as the doctrines of the world religion, but by 'pre-existing thought patterns and values, and the pre-existing socio-economic matrix.' Neylan claims that neither approach is entirely satisfactory to her study of the Tsimshian, although her analysis is strongly influenced by the Horton model. Neylan is particularly interested in the meanings Tsimshian ascribed to religious change, while she eschews the political and economic context of colonialism. In line with much of the current literature on religious change, the author is at pains to inform the reader that she does not adhere to a dichotomous (either/or) view of religious encounters, relying on concepts of syncretism, convergence, and dualism to explain how indigenous peoples who are introduced to world religions accommodate them without necessarily sacrificing their own cultural and social values in the process.

Neylan argues that the Tsimshian had a predisposition towards religious innovation. They were fishers, hunters, and traders and their location on the coast facilitated their access not only to trade but to new religious and other ideas, which they apparently readily incorporated into their own cultural and spiritual life. Christianity was just another outside influence. Protestantism fitted well into the Tsimshians' cognitive framework. Neylan considers two concepts in particular: the significance of transformative experiences, which resonated with the evangelical Protestant idea of conversion as instant transformation; and Light, which was an important theme in Tsimshian culture, associated with heaven, and in religious ceremonies with seeing. The pre-Christian Heaven is portrayed as an otherworldly chief with great powers, although not an afterworld. This idea allowed for the convergence of Tsimshian and Christian beliefs and practices. Neylan argues that Christianity made the transformative experience available to a broader range of people than chiefs and shaman in Tsimshian society, while at the same time giving those with power new ways of expressing their power.

Neylan supports her thesis about the convergence of introduced beliefs and practices with existing forms with examples from the writings [End Page 132] of Tsimshian Christians. Nevertheless, I have some concerns about this approach, which is presented as unproblematic. First, the anthropological sources on which Neylan relies are twentieth century and post-date the introduction of Christianity. Is the 'traditional' Tsimshian cosmology presented by anthropologists therefore influenced by Christian concepts of heaven and other beliefs? One might speculate that they were, but this possibility is not addressed in The Heavens Are Changing. Second, even if one accepts that the anthropological sources do present pre-Christian Tsimshian culture, the question arises: If Roman Catholics, rather than evangelical Protestants, had established missions on the Pacific coast, would they have failed because the same translations of transformative experiences could not be made? It is...

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