Religion, History, and Politics in Nigeria is concerned with the problematic nature of religion and politics in Nigerian history. The book provides a lively and straightforward treatment of the relationship among religion, politics, and history in Nigeria, and how it affects public life today. By adopting various cultural, historical, political, and sociological perspectives, the text's contributors provide an excellent introduction to the volatile mix of religion and politics in Nigerian history, as well as a range of strategic choices open to religious adherents. The complexity of the relationship among religion, history, and politics is organized around four themes: indigenous values and the influence of Islam and Christianity, colonialism and religious transformation, the religious landscape of the post-colonial period, and the rise of evangelism and fundamentalism. The volume provides an insightful guide to contemporary history, contemporary religion, and contemporary politics, enabling the reader to reach informed and balanced judgments about the role in religion in Nigerian history and politics. This opens the door for serious examination and debate, and will be excellent for use by the general reader and in political science, history, and religion courses.

"Military dictators who held Nigeria to ransom for a total of 28 of the 42 years of independence were not only notorious for denying the citizens their fundamental human rights but also for destroying the Nations Educational System. The Catholic Church in Nigeria, represented by the bishops, has to act here as the conscience of the State by means of critique and work for the respect of the fundamental rights of the citizens and the well-being of the human person"--Back cover.

Nigerian Christians and European missionaries played a crucial role in the period of rapid political change leading up to Nigeria's independence. This was a time of intense political rivalry between religious and ethnic groups and minority communities. Most important of these were the Nigerian Christians, aided by European missionaries, who resisted what they saw as domination by the Muslim elite traditionally favoured by the British administration in Northern Nigeria. Thus there emerged a Christian, Westernized and bureaucratic elite - a new political class - opposed to the traditional Muslim rulers. This book, concentrating on Protestant churches in Adamawa Province between 1940 and 1960, is a study of the role of the missions and the churches, both European and African, in the history of Nigerian independence. In this period, Nigerian Christians began to take control of the churches from the missionaries, and simultaneously acquired greater political influence in the run-up to independence. Religious and political changes affected each other profoundly, the churches becoming regional political networks, and the Christian elite providing the leadership of the ethnic movements and political parties emerging in the 1950s. This book contains a detailed local study of Christianity and party politics in the Nigerian Middle Belt. Special attention is paid to the new Christian culture of politics, embedded equally in the ideas of Protestant Christianity and in reinterpretations of local cultural traditions.

Winner of the 2016 Lavinia Dock Award from the American Association for the History of Nursing Awarded first place in the 2016 American Journal of Nursing Book of the Year Award in the History and Public Policy category The most dramatic growth of Christianity in the late twentieth century has occurred in Africa, where Catholic missions have played major roles. But these missions did more than simply convert Africans. Catholic sisters became heavily involved in the Church’s health services and eventually in relief and social justice efforts. In Into Africa, Barbra Mann Wall offers a transnational history that reveals how Catholic medical and nursing sisters established relationships between local and international groups, sparking an exchange of ideas that crossed national, religious, gender, and political boundaries. Both a nurse and a historian, Wall explores this intersection of religion, medicine, gender, race, and politics in sub-Saharan Africa, focusing on the years following World War II, a period when European colonial rule was ending and Africans were building new governments, health care institutions, and education systems. She focuses specifically on hospitals, clinics, and schools of nursing in Ghana and Uganda run by the Medical Mission Sisters of Philadelphia; in Nigeria and Uganda by the Irish Medical Missionaries of Mary; in Tanzania by the Maryknoll Sisters of New York; and in Nigeria by a local Nigerian congregation. Wall shows how, although initially somewhat ethnocentric, the sisters gradually developed a deeper understanding of the diverse populations they served. In the process, their medical and nursing work intersected with critical social, political, and cultural debates that continue in Africa today: debates about the role of women in their local societies, the relationship of women to the nursing and medical professions and to the Catholic Church, the obligations countries have to provide care for their citizens, and the role of women in human rights. A groundbreaking contribution to the study of globalization and medicine, Into Africa highlights the importance of transnational partnerships, using the stories of these nuns to enhance the understanding of medical mission work and global change.

Missionary medicine flourished during the period of high European imperialism, from the late-1800s to the 1960s. Although the figure of mission doctor – exemplified by David Livingstone and Albert Schweitzer – exercised a powerful influence on the Western imagination during the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, few historians have examined the history of this important aspect of the missionary movement. This collection of articles on Asia and Africa uses the extensive archives that exist on medical missions to both enrich and challenge existing histories of the clinic in colonial territories – whether of the dispensary, the hospital, the maternity home or leprosy asylum. Some of the major themes addressed within include the attitude of different Christian denominations towards medical mission work, their differing theories and practices, how the missionaries were drawn into contentious local politics, and their attitude towards supernatural cures. Leprosy, often a feature of such work, is explored, as well as the ways in which local people perceived disease, healing and the missionaries themselves. Also discussed is the important contribution of women towards mission medical work. Healing Bodies, Saving Souls will be of interest not only to students and historians but also the wider reader as it aims to define the place of missionary within the overall history of medicine.