Around the World in 80 Faiths

Episode 1

Australasia and the Pacific Ring of Fire

59 mins

Anglican priest Simon Owen-Jones starts his comparative studio of religions -especially minorities- in Australasia. In largest Muslim country Indonesia, he meets the Bougie people, which also maintains its animism with transgender mediums, and the pure animism of the isolated Tora, where corpses are kept in their room and treated as if alive during the years of preparation for extremely elaborate funerals, the family's priority and community-building. On the mainly Catholic Philippines, he enjoys a church festival incorporating a bull ride as symbol of the submitting paganism, which thus survives culturally. In Australia, he meets Aboriginals, where much of the dream world paganism gets lost, but immigrants find a new home for persecuted religions mistaken for devil-worship, like dualism, and the urban revival of nature-cult witchcraft. Finally to Tanna island in Vanuata, isolated enough for tribal religion to survive in its original form, volcano worship and hallucination-inducing plant extract, and spring new cults founded by modern prophets, one anti- and one Christian-inspired.