Twenty-six young women and one anthropologist listenattentively to Mrs. Ginting, who is teaching ‘GoodBehaviour’ (etika) inthe Christian Women’s School (Kursus Wanita Kristen, KWK) in Berastagiin the regency of Tanah Karo, North Sumatra. Mrs.Ginting is a lively and rhetorically gifted lady ofabout 50 years and – as the wife of the owner of thebiggest private hospital in the regency – a memberof the local elite. Today she explains the moralintricacies of sex. The prospect of an opendiscussion about sex is the cause for the audience'sbreathless attention, as in local discourse, sex ismostly framed in terms of control, avoidance andprohibition. ‘Is it already immoral to talk aboutsex?’ Mrs. Ginting thus asks. She answers her ownquestion: ‘Definitely not! Morally good behaviour isthe result of our Christian faith and firm knowledgeon the subject’ She also explains the need to know:‘Men always and everywhere lust after women, so wehave to know about sex in order to resist them’.‘What was morality like in earlier times, whenChristianity had not reached our highlands yet?People did not know how to lead an orderly life.There was no entertainment in the evenings. Peoplecame home from their fields, took a shower, had ameal, blew out the candle and – started to shag.Today, we have other things to do. We now haveelectricity and can watch TV for example’ (fieldnotes, 30 August 2001).

This discursive link between Christianity, modernityand gendered morality was a recurrent theme duringmy fieldwork in Berastagi in 2001/2002. Development,progress and Christianity, people told me, hadenabled them to leave behind an uncivilized lifethat had been characterized by a general disorder insocial, political and moral matters. Christianityand modernity had brought highly valued knowledgeabout how to lead an orderly life. They could betraced back to the times of colonial rule in theKaro region: Colonialism had not only broughtChristianity to the highlands at the beginning ofthe 20th century but also a firmintegration into the wider administrative andpolitical structures and the idea of modernity as agoal to be reached by progress.