An evangelical church leader in Papua New Guinea says people will in time realise that the Speaker of Parliament was right to remove carved wooden heads at the tops of totem poles from Parliament House.
Joseph Walters, a prominent evangelical church leader in Papua New Guinea, says the Speaker did the right thing, and there are many people who support what he did.
He said ,”Papua New Guinea has basically originated from an animistic society and a lot of ancestral worship and those things that we used to pay homage and respect to were unmystically, paganistically-based and that’s where our argument is that carvings and statutes and other stuff that people with their hands actually have connotations and connections through the spirit world that are just as painful.”
The speaker, Theo Zurenuoc, removed carved panels from the front of the building, despite a call from prime minister, Peter O’Neill, to stop.
The Post Courier reports that he said he will not be sitting down for a discussion with the PNG Council of Churches over the objects that were removed from the Parliament House.
“I do not want to sit with them, it’s not necessary,’’ he said, adding that this was because some of them had strong beliefs in some cultures that were not appropriate.
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