Coping With The Modern World and Re-Composing Ethnic Identity: Conversion To Christianity Among The Badeng Kenyah Of Long Geng, Sarawak, Malaysia

There has been considerable works on the anthropology of Christianity relating conversion and its impacts to colonialism and consciousness (such as the important work of J. Comaroff) or simply to the success of missionary activities. Works on conversion of indigenous minorities generally relate to the religious politics of identity in relation to the majority people, as pointed out by most contributors in the volume edited by Charles Keyes on Christianity among the indigenous peoples of Southeast Asia. There is often the tendency to see conversion as a passive process on the part of the indigenous people. This paper will use the data from ethnographic research among the Badeng (a sub-group of Kenyah indigenous people) of Long Geng in Sarawak, Malaysia, to show how the “thinkers” and ordinary people have played major roles in actively engaged in conversion to Christianity in their negotiation with their encounter with modern changes that had reached their part of the world. In this respect religion and religious change are used as a kind of capital to negotiate with both traditions and modernity and to open up a way of adjusting to the changing world. Conversion provided the legitimacy to redefine traditions and even to remove some old practices, leading to the re-composing of ethnic identity.