Book Review: African Gifts of the Spirit

My book review on African Gifts of the Spirit: Pentecostalism and the Rise of a Zimbabwean Transnational Religious Movement by David Maxwell has appeared in African Studies Quarterly. The book, published by Ohio University Press in 2006, traces the history of the Pentecostal sect Zimbabwe Assemblies of God Africa (ZAOGA), which now has branches on several continents and in a handful of countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. The book is well-sourced and the comparative methodology the author uses to explain Pentecostalism's rise in apartheid South Africa and Southern Rhodesia is illustrative. As the book's narrative progresses into independent Zimbabwe, institutional aspects of the authoritarian and conservative ZAOGA begin to blend in with political aspects of Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe. The book summarizes Pentecostalism's place in Zimbabwean society, as a means of social mobility and protection in the face of political instability.

The review is available here (pdf).