Trajectories of Salvation tells a story of diverse and sometimes contradictory projects of salvation, both worldly and spiritual, as enacted upon, contested, and refashioned among various indigenous Christian denominations in Indonesian-occupied West Papua. It reveals how indigenous Christian communities of various denominations adopt, adapt, and transform Christianity, and mobilize it in combination with their own cosmologies to resist colonial development imposed by missions, the state, and corporate actors, all while pursuing a model of societal transformation on their own terms.
The book goes beyond examining conversion and its impacts in order to analyze the emergence of vernacular Christianities as a new way of understanding Christianity in a pluriversal world. It demonstrates not only the influence of Christianity on Indigenous lives but also how Indigenous politics have shaped Christian beliefs, resulting in the emergence of vernacular religious practices and indigenous political theology that works towards indigenous self-determination.