Peters rejects defence claims
Finding answers about how beliefs grew may give insight into future
Hscience ow did Christianity grow over 2000 years from a tiny religious sect to the largest family of religions in the world — and what can it tell us about future social change?
Kiwi and Australian researchers have turned to a new modelling approach to unravel the influences of political hierarchies, social inequality, and population size on the spread of Christianity across 70 island cultures from Madagascar to New Zealand.
After assessing Christian missionary efforts from 1668 to 1950, the researchers found the spread was driven more by the influence of political leaders than grass roots empowerment. They found the common missionary approach — to focus on winning over political leaders — might have paid off as Christianity spread faster in smaller societies and in those with stronger political leadership.
The study’s leader, Dr Joseph Watts, who undertook the research while at the University of Auckland’s School of Psychology, said his findings offered a new window into large-scale behaviour and the process of cultural change.
“If you look at our contemporary world, some things spread incredibly quickly while others take a very long time, so here we provide evidence of why that might be.”
The Austronesian societies they investigated shared a common ancestral language and were located across Southeast Asia, East Africa and the South Pacific.
Historically, they ranged from very small egalitarian family-based communities to large politically complex societies such as Hawaii.
Conversion typically happened in the 18th and 19th centuries, and some societies took months to convert, others up to 205 years.
The range of social structures and conversion histories makes Austronesian societies ideal for theories about how cultural change happens.
Cultures with political leadership structures were often the fastest to convert. This supported a “top-down” process of conversion whereby chiefs and elite leaders, converted by missionaries, were influential in spreading the doctrine. In contrast, social inequality was not related to conversion times. This challenged a widely cited reason for Christianity’s popularity, that it spread from the Joseph Watts, study leader
“bottom-up” by promising the lower classes improved lives in the afterlife.
The research, published today in the international journal, Nature Human Behaviour, also found Christianity spread fastest among small populations. This helped clarify the importance of population size in processes of cultural change.
“While people often think of big societies as sources of innovation, our findings show that bigger societies can also be slow to pick up on new ideas,” Watts said. “In a small population, it becomes more likely that beliefs will be transmitted relatively quickly, particularly if they are being driven by leaders and other powerful figures.”
Fellow study author Professor Quentin Atkinson, also of the University of Auckland, said finding answers about how beliefs had spread gave insight into how they might spread in the future: “This research can help us understand how both the size and the structure of populations influence the diffusion and adoption of new institutions, ideologies or technologies.” Foreign Affairs Minister and Acting Prime Minister Winston Peters has rejected a claim by Australian Immigration Minister Peter Dutton that Australia does all the “heavy lifting” when it comes to policing the region for illegal immigrants.
Dutton made the comments last week during an interview on Australian radio while discussing Justice Minister Andrew Little’s criticism of Australia’s deportation policies, in particular the good character test.
“The fact that they are geographically placed where they are is a fact of geography. But to say that they’re are doing all the heavy lifting given the reset and the amount of money and investment we’re putting into helping our neighbourhood become a safer and more secure place, no, I do not agree with him it all,” Peters said yesterday.
But Peters told reporters he was not upset about Dutton’s comments because foreign affairs was between peoples of different countries, not “temporarily empowered political personalities”.
New Zealand set aside $714.2 million in the Budget for foreign aid that will be heavily prioritised towards the Pacific.
It also recently announced it would spend $2.39 billion on four Boeing P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft to replace its ageing Orion fleet.
Little made his remarks last week when he and Peters featured on the ABC’s Foreign Correspondent programme, saying there appeared to be a “venal, political strain” to Australia’s deportation policies and “certainly not consistent with any humanitarian ideals that I thought both countries once shared”.
Following that programme, Dutton said Little might want to “reflect a little more” on the relationship.
“There’s a lot that we do for New Zealand . . . We’re a big land mass between them and boats coming from Indonesia and Southeast Asia.
“New Zealand don’t contribute really anything to the defence effort that we’ve got where we’re trying to surveil boats that might be on their way to New Zealand. So I hope that Andrew Little reflects a little more on the relationship between Australia and New Zealand where we do a lot of the heavy lifting. We intercept boats which stop them from making their way to New Zealand.”
Little was particularly concerned about Australia’s good character test, under which people could be removed from Australia without being convicted of a crime. Peters also expressed his concern.
“It should be a habeas corpus matter and it’s not being followed properly. Somebody should be tried before they’re evicted from a country. At least they should be given a hearing as to whether or not what’s about to happen is fair and within the law of that host country.”
In a small population, it becomes more likely that beliefs will be transmitted relatively quickly.