The fire next time: The conversion of the Huli Apocalypse

Christian notions of the Apocalypse, which were first introduced to Hull sp eakers of the Southern Highlands of Papua New Guinea during the 1950s, enco untered an existing indigenous eschatology, or doctrine of last things. Pre contact Hull cosmology posited a moral constitution for the fertility of th e universe in which the health of people and the land reflected the state o f moral order in Hull society. Failure in social behaviour, which could be gauged from the declining condition of the "skin" of the land, was attribut ed to an inexorable process of loss of the knowledge of customary lore. Hum an agency, however, was accorded a significant role in redressing this univ ersal tendency to entropy, and ritual leaders claimed the ability to induce an apocalyptic, earth renewing fall of fertile soil from the sky. The adop tion of Christian understandings of the Apocalypse as the revelation of div ine will, and the abandonment of most of the precontact rituals, have thus had significant consequences for Hull conceptions of the role of human agen cy in history, and for the nature of their engagement with the land.