Christianity plays a central role in the political identity of the Kadazan-Dusun community in Sabah, Malaysia, tracing back to the arrival of Mill Hill missionaries in 1881. These missionaries established Catholicism in Papar and Penampang, near the urban center of Jesselton, granting Kadazan Catholics access to administrative, media, and political networks. This facilitated the rise of a Kadazan political consciousness intertwined with Catholicism, particularly among the literate Kadazan intelligentsia in the 1950s and 1960s.
Given the agricultural roots of most Kadazan-Dusun communities, ancestral rice-related rituals were integrated into Catholic practice. A key moment was the first official Kaamatan (Harvest Festival) in 1960, aligned with Corpus Christi and held at St. Michael’s Church in Penampang. This paper examines how the Kadazan intelligentsia shaped Catholic practice within agricultural traditions and used mass media and political platforms to spread this religious-political consciousness throughout rural Sabah.