This "fascinating historical account" of a Christian mission in Niger offers a personal and richly detailed look at religious institutions in the region (Religious Studies Review).
Barbara M. Cooper looks closely at the Sudan Interior Mission, an evangelical Christian mission that has taken a tenuous hold in a predominantly Hausa Muslim area on the southern fringe of Niger. Based on sustained fieldwork, personal interviews, and archival research, this vibrant, sensitive, compelling, and candid book gives a unique glimpse into an important dimension of religious life in Africa.
Cooper's involvement in a violent religious riot provides a useful backdrop for introducing other themes and concerns such as Bible translation, medical outreach, public preaching, tensions between English-speaking and French-speaking missionaries, and the Christian mission's changing views of Islam.
Autorentext
Barbara M. Cooper is Professor of History at Rutgers University. She is author of Marriage in Maradi: Gender and Culture in a Hausa Society in Niger, 19001989.
Inhalt
Acknowledgments
Acronyms
Introduction: Fundamental Differences
1. Anatomy of a Riot
2. Love and Violence
3. From "Satan's Masterpiece" to "The Social Problem of Islam"
4. A Hausa Spiritual Vernacular
5. African Agency and the Growth of the Church in the Maradi Region, 19271960
6. Disciplining the Christian: Defining Elderhood, Christian Marriage, and "God's Work," 19331955
7. "An Extremely Dangerous Suspect": From Vichy-Era Travails to Postwar Triumph
8. Impasses in Vernacular Education, 19451995
9. Handmaid to the Gospel: SIM's Medical Work in Niger, 19441975
10. The Tree of Life: Regenerating and Gendering the Garden after the Fall, 19752000
11. Ça bouge: Hausa Christian Practice in a Muslim Milieu
Epilogue: SIM's Successors and the Pentecostal Explosion
Glossary
Notes
Works Consulted
Index