Cults of Goods Cult: Exploring the Interesting Phenomenon

Imagine this: World War II is unleashing on the world, but in a distant corner across the seas of America, swathes of land remain untouched by its wrath. In a paradocratic world near Australia, the indigenous tribesmen live their lives surrounded by magnificent waves and lush greenery. Devoid of the material treasures of modern civilization, their lives continue to be oblivious to the greed that is suffocating the rest of the world. Until one day comes, curious-looking machines bring uniformed men who change the islanders forever.

1. The arrival of strange-looking machines

Shipping cults were tribes of indigenous islanders who attributed the enormous white wealth and power to magic. As planes, ships, radios and television made their way to these islands, they were so stunned that there was no better explanation to justify their mixing. In the true sense of the word, the word "goods" refers to goods and products that cults believe were created by divine forces.

The first use of the term appeared in the 1945 issue of the now monthly colonial news magazine Pacific Islands, which attributed postwar culture to misleading religious teachings. The prophecy varied between movements, but the main theme remained that an ancestor may have traveled to the West long ago and learned the tricks of producing goods there. They then shipped the goods home, which the foreigners got on the way.

2. The Renaissance of Commodity Communities

Thus this exposure inspired the desire to reclaim what is right for them. While industrialization was booming in the West in the twentieth century, islanders were imitating Western progress by imitating its goods. They made radios out of wood and planes out of straw, believing they could have the same effects. They were chasing progress without applying the same principles, an approach that earned them the name of the merchandise cults.

3. Imitating Western progress

Members of these denominations also began to perform white behaviors in ritual ceremonies in the hope that one day the god would recognize them and give them what is currently with the whites. The cult of goods has become a religion, seen in its finest and oldest form throughout Melanesia, the land of the island nations stacked between Australia and the Pacific. Thus the frenzy spread throughout the region in the form of taro worship in New Guinea, the failala madness in Papua, the naked worship in Espiritu Santo, the cult of Toka in the Fiji Islands and many others. What was central to all these movements was the belief that new goods would usher in a new era. Another religious community worshipped King George V of England as God.

4. Worship of goods as a religion

Some 184 cults have been identified throughout the region; only a few remain. While some believe in the return of their ancestors, others continue to wait for foreigners themselves to bring the revered goods home. They have set up landing strips, docking bays, and other infrastructure to facilitate their access to isolated islands. A common example is the John Froome movement, which is very popular among Vanuatu students, a small Y-shaped archipelago near the Fiji Islands. Every year, on John Fromm Day, thousands of devotees celebrate the American Christ John Fromm, who is believed to have appeared on the lands in the nineteenth century and promised to return Western goods to locals if they prayed for them. They sit waiting for radios, televisions, medicines, cold drinks and others. But since the war, barely any American has returned, not even John Fromm.

Many scholars, based on such accounts, suggest that merchandise denominations began to emerge in the nineteenth century. So, when Westerners arrived during World War II, they brought with them the first confirmation of these outrageous beliefs. Finally, strangers were falling from the sky with strangely shaped artifacts, just as they had predicted.

5. Unfulfilled Confessional Promises

These beliefs were as rooted in Christian beliefs as they were rooted in local rituals. Local tribesmen worshipped the gods believing that they would send new goods to earth from heaven. Some communities expected the shipment to arrive from Australia, or from the sky above it. In this theory, the sky was a place connected to the Earth by a ladder. Economic underdevelopment, cultural oppression and newly discovered greed are also central to these practices. Of course, when New Age goods arrived with whites, these ignorant tribes celebrated the end of famine. So what if the cargo is not intended for them or has never been shared with them?