In the late eighteenth century, at the beginning of extensive European intervention in the region, Oceanic peoples spoke more than twelve hundred languages and lived out their lives in tens of thousands of mostly highly localized political units. Religious beliefs and activities were correspondingly diverse, although one can detect very broad regional patterns. In traditional Oceanic societies, people lived in intimate relationship to spiritual forces and entities. Notions of the spiritual reinforced the social order that governed community relationships, informed understandings of leadership, and underlay the external politics of warfare and alliance-building. In the past two centuries, the region has moved from intermittent encounters between Pacific Islanders and Europeans through colonization to the emergence of independent nations. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the overwhelming majority of the indigenous citizens of the twenty-eight states and dependencies in the region are Christians...