This impressive book has much to recommend it. A collection of papers drawn from a conference held in South Africa in 1992, the book gives empirical information on the history of different churches and the history of Christianity in various communities in South Africa. More importantly, the book jolts the standard narrative of South African twentieth century history which has tended to be conceptualized as a story of the rise of racial capitalism, as a story of the triumph of Afrikaner ethnicity, or as a story of the mobilization of black nationalism and the radicalization of black South Africans. In accordance with the editors' claim in their introduction, some chapters convincingly make the case that in order to fully grapple with politics (perhaps especially in twentieth century South Africa) one has to appreciate the important role Christianity played in the lives and beliefs of politicians and their followers, both black and white.

The book is divided into five sections: The Transplanting of Christianity; The Churches of Modern South Africa; Christianity in South African Subcultures; Christianity and the Creative Arts; and Christianity, Power and Race. Since this is an edited collection, various sources are used including architecture, musical scores, indigenous poetry and oral tradition, as well as primary and secondary missionary and other written archival sources. The first section recounts the establishment of Christianity from the seventeenth through the nineteenth century in what became South Africa. Chapters deal with the rise of Xhosa prophets, Christianity among the Tswana and Sotho, the Zulu and Swazi, as well as the spread of Christianity in Transorangia.

Jonathan N. Gerstner's chapter offers insights into the ways in which the theological underpinning of reformed Christianity helped foster white ethnicity. He argues that the Dutch Reformed Church drew on a belief in "internal holiness" which conceptualized all children of believers, that is Europeans, as being redeemed but which viewed indigenous inhabitants as unredeemed, indeed possibly beyond redemption. The chapter by Elizabeth Elbourne and Robert Ross examines different strands of missionary activity in South Africa. The authors demonstrate the success of the mission enterprise to the descendants of slaves and Khoi in the Cape, but point to the failure or inability of the missionaries to offer more than spiritual incorporation. Irving Hexham and Karla Poewe's discussion of Transorangia interestingly discusses the similarities between Boer folk religion and some indigenous African religious concepts. This consideration of the influence of indigenous religion on Christian communities, rather than only the imposition of Christianity on African communities distinguishes this chapter from others in the book and points to very fruitful areas of further enquiry.

Part Two discusses different churches and theological tendencies in twentieth century South Africa. Its chapters cover the Afrikaans churches and apartheid, English-speaking churches and their imperial cultural heritage, Lutheran activity, the Roman Catholic Church, the African Initiated Churches and, finally, the Pentecostal churches. All provide solid and useful empirical information on the specific church under review, but Johann Kinghorn's excellent chapter does more. It most fully realizes the aims of the editors to demonstrate the intersection of Christianity and wider political culture in South Africa. Kinghorn argues and demonstrates through consideration of various Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) texts that the DRC adopted a "racially defined nationalism" which helped unify different "currents of thought: nationalism, the neo-Calvinism of Abraham Kuyper, and racism" (p144; p142).

Part Three draws the reader into fascinating discussions of Christianity in mining communities, Indian communities, women's Christian organizations, and of relations between Jews and Christians. Robert Shell discusses slaves and freed peoples' relationship to Islam and Christianity in the Cape Colony during slavery and under emancipation. Shell's sensitive study draws careful distinctions between the experiences of slaves and free in town and countryside and argues that while Islam was a prime site of resistance to slavery, it declined in importance as emigration and Christian prosletyzing successfully made South Africa a Christian country.

In a chapter on white and black women's Christian organizations, Deborah Gaitskell demonstrates that even within patriarchal religious organizations, women could forge organizations which gave them much autonomy. Tshido Maloka's chapter, which starts Part Three, illuminates both the cultural worlds of the mines and the reasons why miners responded ambivalently to missionaries: on the one hand some miners resented missionaries' attempts to ban liquor and dancing; on the other, learning to read at a missionary literacy class promised a better job and greater security on the mines.

Part Four is short, only three chapters. Jeff Opland discusses the potency of Christian symbols within poetry in South Africa. While Opland might over stress the "unfettered" quality of African oral speech, the chapter introduced this reader to poems and literature I intend to introduce into my African history courses.

In Part Five the stated aim of the book to show the centrality of Christianity to a study of South African history and politics is most fully realized. Wallace Mills asserts that postmillennial thinking--the optimistic belief that the world is progressing and getting closer to God--significantly influenced the non-racial and liberal trends within African nationalism, at least until the shock of Sharpeville.

In what is probably the best chapter in the book, Richard Elphick argues along similar lines, that belief in the ideology of the Social Gospel--the belief that elites should actively work for social justice in the service of eventual equality between people--powerfully shaped African nationalism and white liberal politics for much of this century. Elphick demonstrates that the ideas of Booker T. Washington of the Tuskegee Institute, which asserted black people's power to organize and educate themselves as well as the importance of cooperation between the educated black elite and liberal whites, influenced both the African National Congress and white liberals, although the power of the Social Gospel had waned by the 1970s. Elphick argues, convincingly, that the philosophy of the Social Gospel " did inspire a dissenting tradition of faith in human equality ... that, once purged of its paternalism, inspired powerful strands of resistance in the era of apartheid" [p369].

Elphick and Davenport should be proud of their achievement. They have produced nothing less than a standard reference book on Christianity in South Africa as well as an excellent academic discussion of the significance of Christianity to South African history. Certainly there are other ways such a book might have been organized. This reviewer found the organization of some of the chapters around seemingly unproblematic or ahistoric ethnic categories of Indian/English-speaking whites etc. a little too simplistic. Chapters which analyzed how Christianity helped produce certain ethnic identifications and communities, or could borrow from indigenous religious concepts pave a way forward. But this is a very good book, well suited to both a popular audience interested in religious life and history as well as students and scholars of African and South African history.

Pamela Scully
Department of History
Kenyon College