Church organization, the notion of person, and the charismatic discourse on value in Pentecostal denominations deeply influence gender relations among church members. In turn, gender relations influence the ways in which the charismatic discourse is received and concretised. My analysis explores this complex process of mutual transformations of gender roles and conversion meanings among Pentecostal Christians in an illegal settlement on the outskirts of Honiara, Solomon Islands. In particular, I focus on how husband and wife in Pentecostal households change the way they look at each other as they undertake a process of charismatic renewal. My aim is to illustrate how the statement of a Kwara'ae man reveals the meaning of conversion as a long‐term process that takes place relationally and under the influence of gendered values.

We can only discuss the death of a man according to the culture of that man. Culture of man, decision of man. (Nathan)

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his article analyses the case of Sikret Fren, a like-forlike gift exchange ritual organised by the members of the Anglican church of Gilbert Camp, an illegal settlement on the outskirts of Honiara, Solomon Islands. he objects exchanged, the people involved, and their relationships are discussed according to Gregory's analytical opposition between Gift and Commodity. he resulting categorization of people, objects, and relationships is looked at from the perspective of the Domestic Moral Economy developed by Peterson & Taylor. he article locates Sikret Fren in relation to the cultural, historical, geographical, and socioeconomic context in which it was developed; illustrates the rationale behind the reciprocal transactions of identical gifts between ritual friends; and suggests that urban and peri-urban settlers use their cultural creativity in reaction to the moral and economic challenges caused by the incompatibilities between their values and their material conditions.

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Kingdom tok is an expression that is increasingly used in Honiara. It describes a set of ideas and practices related to what Solomon Islanders see as a recent ‘season’ in their history. Such a season is characterised by the reappropriation of particular meanings of their faith that they perceive as influenced by recent historical processes such as the colonial era, the introduction of Christianity, and the first few decades from independence. In terms of ‘Kingdom’, they envision the possibility to challenge political hierarchies, social stratification, and issues of governance, as well as to re‐define their identities in relation to a general state of empowerment. In Honiara, Pentecostal churches and groups with a strong identification with Judaism make use of Kingdom tok discourses. I claim that they experience the actualisation of Kingdom tok as concrete projects of social action and service provision, which they see as concrete alternatives to historical churches, the state, and the ‘way of the waitman’.

In November 2015, protests erupted in Oxford in response to the decision of the Oxfordshire County Council to cut, among other things, forty-four Children’s Centres and seven Early Intervention Hubs. The debate about whether these centres could be considered as disposable or not did not get to an agreement. I argue that the main cause of this outcome is that the opposing arguments were based on moral positions that were not only incompatible but fundamentally incommensurable. Those in favour of reducing deficit spending argue that cuts to social services (including family and children services) are unavoidable. Parents, however, refuse to accept austerity measures that will undermine the rights of their children to access services that will improve their chances in life. Neither position is based on incontrovertible evidence. On the one hand, the decision to cut a given service always involves the arbitrary evaluation of that service against other services that will not be cut. On the other, the demand to fund those services is based on the hope that early intervention initiatives will benefit children, even if the evidence that early intervention works is unconclusive or thin. On the basis of a thematic analysis of twenty-seven stories written by Oxfordshire parents, I interpret this conflict using the notion of moral economy, and argue that such an approach allows an appreciation of the link between health economics, perinatal mental health, the morality of parenting, and the early intervention discourse.

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