Page:Margaret Mead - Coming of age in Samoa; a psychological study of primitive youth for western civilisation.pdf/202

 setting for conflict. If such an attitude had been coupled with emphasis upon church membership for the young and an expectation of religious experience in the lives of the young, crises in the lives of the young people would very likely have occurred. As it is, the whole religious setting is one of formalism, of compromise, of acceptance of half measure. The great number of native pastors with their peculiar interpretations of Christian teaching have made it impossible to establish the rigour of western Protestantism with its inseparable association of sex offences and an individual consciousness of sin. And the girls upon whom the religious setting makes no demands, make no demands upon it. They are content to follow the advice of their elders to defer church membership until they are older. Laititi a'u. Fia siva ("For I am young and like to dance"). The church member is forbidden to dance or to witness a large night dance. One of the three villages boasted no girl church members. The second village had only one, who had, however, long since transgressed her vows. But as her lover was a youth whose equivocal position in his family made it impossible to marry, the neighbours did not tattle where their sympathies were aroused, so Lotu remained tacitly a church member. In the third village there were two unmarried girls who were church members, Lita and Ana.

Lita had lived for years in the pastor's household and with one other girl, showed most clearly the results of