Thoughtless for the Day

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"People have waited nearly 2,000 years for Christ to return, so we can wait a while longer for John Frum" - A village chieftain from Tanna

Happy John Frum Day! Look to the skies, gentle reader, because I've the feeling that this is the year in which John Frum's plane will descend...

What? You haven't heard the good news about John Frum? Well, get comfy, because have I got a story to tell you...

John Frum is not only an American G.I., but also the King of America. His prophets built a landing strip on the Pacific island of Tanna island where on day (February 15th - hence John Frum Day) his plane will land and shower his followers with milk and ice cream.

John Frum is the deity at the center of a cargo cult. Here's a wonderful, lengthy article about John Frum from Smithsonian Magazine that does a much better job of telling the John Frum story than I could here.

Like most of the more important things in life, I first learned about John Frum from the book Cows, Pigs, Wars and Witches, which devotes an entire chapter, Phantom Cargo, to the John Frum phenomenon and smarty refuses to dismiss it as just another wacky religion - because it's not. Look a little deeper and you'll realize that the John Frum Experience is an attempt to answer the question as to why some countries are wealthy and others are not. After all, "Why does the white man have so much cargo and the New Guinean so little" is the question which lead to the writing of Guns, Germs, and Steel.

Speaking of New Guinea and cargo, in 1933 a group of New Guineans took over a Lutheran Church. They were convinced that the the white man was hiding "the Secret of the Cargo" and that not only had the Bible been mistranslated (either by accident or design), but it was also missing its first page, which revealed the true name of God. As the New Guineans saw it, Jesus had given cargo to the Europeans, but not to them. In fact, the New Guineans were convinced that Jews and Christian missionaries were holding Jesus Christ captive in Sydney, Australia.

I'll leave you with this inspirational exchange between a John Frum believer, named Prophet Fred, and a somewhat stymied Anthropologist.

Anthropologist: What does John Frum look like?

Prophet Fred: He looks like an American.

Anthropologist: Have you ever seen him?

Prophet Fred: Yes, John comes very often from Yasur [the local volcano] to advise me, or I go there to speak with John.

Anthropologist: What does he look like?

Prophet Fred: An American!