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Title: Anthropology and Religion

Author: Peter Henry Buck

Publication details: Yale University Press, 1939, New Haven, CT

Part of: Tidal Pools: Digitized Texts from Oceania for Samoan and Pacific Studies

This text is the subject of: National Library of New Zealand catalogue

License: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 New Zealand Licence

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Anthropology and Religion

For the first time in history millions of people in the western world are turning from religion to other sources of solace and belief. In this book an anthropologist, who believes that the things that man has created with his mind and worshiped in the spirit are as real to him as the material things he has made with his hands, shows what happened recently to the entire culture of a people when its gods were cast away. Dr. Buck is one of the world's authorities on Polynesian civilization. He rel…

For the first time in history millions of people in the western world are turning from religion to other sources of solace and belief. In this book an anthropologist, who believes that the things that man has created with his mind and worshiped in the spirit are as real to him as the material things he has made with his hands, shows what happened recently to the entire culture of a people when its gods were cast away. Dr. Buck is one of the world's authorities on Polynesian civilization. He relates how the Polynesians created their gods, by deifying certain ancestors in order to obtain their supernatural help; the priesthood fixed them in a theology; and the man-created gods in their turn remade man. The traditional religion was so integral a part of the civilization and all its arts and crafts that when the Polynesian gods were deserted for Christianity the native culture was wrecked. Dr. Buck observes a recognizable parallel between the experience of the Polynesians and the present situation of the western nations, where, this time, powerful and sinister forces are confronting Christianity. Dr. Buck has had unique advantages in studying the life and religion of the Polynesian people. He had a Maori mother, was born in New Zealand, and has lived for years in the Islands. His earlier book, Vikings of the Sunrise, was widely read.