Why have large numbers of the Bajju people of the Middle Belt of Nigeria become Christians? The first conversions occurred in 1929 and today almost one hundred percent of the Bajju claim to be Christians, so this people movement happened within a relatively short period. McKinney details the various contexts in which religious change took place among the Bajju: in traditional Bajju culture, in their relations with the Hausa-Fulani, in the British colonial context, and in the missionary context. She presents the results of an in-depth interview schedule administered in 1984 and 2011 to respondents in both a rural village and a Kaduna suburb. This longitudinal study, together with the author's involvement in participant observation, personal language learning, and archival records research, help provide answers to the questions of why, and to what degree, a worldview paradigm shift has occurred among the Bajju. The author also discusses some traditional religious beliefs retained by Bajju Christians, and charts traditional religious beliefs with biblical texts. Bajju Christian Conversion in the Middle Belt of Nigeria will be essential to anthropologists specializing in conversion studies, and be of interest to missiologists, and to the Bajju people themselves. It is a companion volume to Baranzan's People: An Ethnohistory of the Bajju of the Middle Belt of Nigeria, published by SIL International(R) 2019.

Based on in-depth fieldwork, research, and personal interviews, this comprehensive ethnographic study of the Bajju people of southern Kaduna State in Nigeria covers their origins, history, culture, religious beliefs, and practices. Bajju precolonial political-religious organization, economy, legal system, social organization, and values are described. Also included are chapters on the Hausa-Fulani, the colonial context, the Christian era, and cultural change. Ethnologists, missiologists, development personnel, and the Bajju themselves will find this a rich resource. For me as a Bajju scholar, this study is as important as E. E. Evans-Pritchard’s classic study, Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande (1937). For that reason, all Bajju sons and daughters must read this important work (from the foreword by Dr. Samuel Waje Kunhiyop). Baranzan’s People: An Ethnohistory of the Bajju of the Middle Belt of Nigeria is a companion volume to Bajju Christian Conversion in the Middle Belt of Nigeria, published by SIL International® 2019.

This reference collection presents academic reviews of more than twelve-hundred contemporary Africa-related publications relevant for informed Christian reflection in and about Africa. The collection is based on the review journal BookNotes for Africa, a specialist resource dedicated to bringing to notice such publications, and furnishing them with a one-paragraph description and evaluation. Now assembled here for the first time is the entire collection of reviews through the first thirty issues of the journal’s history. The core intention, both of the journal and of this compilation, is to encourage and to facilitate informed Christian reflection and engagement in Africa, through a thoughtful encounter with the published intellectual life of the continent. Reviews have been provided by a team of more than one hundred contributors drawn from throughout Africa and overseas. The books and other media selected for review represent a broad cross-section of interests and issues, of personalities and interpretations, including the secular as well as the religious. The collection will be of special interest to academic scholars, theological educators, libraries, ministry leaders, and specialist researchers in Africa and throughout the world, but will also engage any reader looking for a convenient resource relating to modern Africa and Christian presence there.

How did two very different language communities encounter and make early choices about Christianity? This book is a historical record of the Dagomba and Konkomba people groups of Northern Ghana as they embraced the Bible translated into their mother tongues. Author Dr. Sumani Sule-Saa employs Professor Lamin Sanneh’s groundbreaking hermeneutic of ‘mission as translation’ as a grid to examine the effect of Bible translation on the lives of these two very important language groups. Sule-Saa first presents a brief history of the Dagomba and Konkomba and describes their very different societal structures. He analyses early Christian mission involvement and documents the role of two Bible translation agencies among these people groups. Through a number of case studies he illustrates the positive impact of the Bible in their mother tongues. Woven throughout, Dr. Sule-Saa discusses to what degree the Christian faith has been indigenised into the ethos and behaviour of the Dagomba and Konkomba. Theological students and those interested in missions will find this book relevant as it deals with missiological issues and serves as a reference on the establishment of Christianity among the Dagomba and Konkomba. Its multi-disciplinary approach will also appeal to a wider audience.

As governments, corporations, and settlers race to take the world’s forests for their own, what happens to the indigenous peoples who live there? Are they at the mercy of overwhelming forces, destined to lose livelihood, identity, and respect as they are dispossessed and assimilated? This account of the Dulangan Manobo—an indigenous people of the Philippines whose rainforest homeland is being appropriated by loggers and settlers from the country’s dominant society—explores how one embattled society is changing its social organization to withstand outside forces. Environmental Invasion and Social Response examines the evolution of coordinated action among the Manobo, from its roots in religious response, through the development of numerous civil organizations, to its culmination in the emergence of indigenous land rights organizations. Despite government favoritism toward loggers and settlers—longstanding enemies of natural forests—the Manobo have continued to develop new social structures for cooperation in pursuit of rights to their ancestral homeland. The success of their efforts will play a large part in determining the forest’s future—destruction at the hand of outsiders, or effective and sustainable management by those who have always lived there.

World Christianity and Interfaith Relations makes the case that religion is not partitioned off from the secular in the Global South the way it is in the Global North. Rather, religion is deeply integrated into the lives of those in the Global South, even though secularism officially predominates.

Why does religion become a fault line of communal violence in some pluralistic countries and not others? Under what conditions will religious identity - as opposed to other salient ethnic cleavages - become the spark that ignites communal violence? Contemporary world politics since 9/11 is increasingly marked by intra-state communal clashes in which religious identity is the main fault line. Yet, violence erupts only in some religiously pluralistic countries, and only in some parts of those countries. This study argues that prominent theories in the study of civil conflict cannot adequately account for the variation in subnational identity-based violence. Examining this variation in the context of Nigeria's pluralistic north-central region, this book finds support for a new theory of power-sharing. It finds that communities are less likely to fall prey to a divisive narrative of religious difference where local leaders informally agreed to abide by an inclusive, local government power-sharing arrangement.

"“Chinese people should consume Chinese products!” This slogan was the catchphrase of a movement in early twentieth-century China that sought to link consumption and nationalism by instilling a concept of China as a modern “nation” with its own “national products.” From fashions in clothing to food additives, from museums to department stores, from product fairs to advertising, this movement influenced all aspects of China’s burgeoning consumer culture. Anti-imperialist boycotts, commemorations of national humiliations, exhibitions of Chinese products, the vilification of treasonous consumers, and the promotion of Chinese captains of industry helped enforce nationalistic consumption and spread the message—patriotic Chinese bought goods made of Chinese materials by Chinese workers in factories owned and run by Chinese. In China Made, Karl Gerth argues that two key forces shaping the modern world—nationalism and consumerism—developed in tandem in China. Early in the twentieth century, nationalism branded every commodity as either “Chinese” or “foreign,” and consumer culture became the place where the notion of nationality was articulated, institutionalized, and practiced. Based on Chinese, Japanese, and English-language archives, magazines, newspapers, and books, this first exploration of the historical ties between nationalism and consumerism reinterprets fundamental aspects of modern Chinese history and suggests ways of discerning such ties in all modern nations."