This study is a sequel to A History of the Episcopal Church in Liberia 1821–1980 (1992). It is a narrative shaped by contexts—context of the Episcopal Church and its Christian witness through the episcopacies of Diocesan Bishops George Daniel Browne, Edward Wea Neufville II, and Jonathan B. B. Hart; the context of a modernizing Liberia plunged into unprecedented political violence by a military coup d’etat in 1980 and a devastating civil war that ensued and consumed the country for some 14 years; and the context of shifting external ties with the American Church, the Liberian Episcopal community in the United States, and the Church of the Anglican Province of West Africa. D. Elwood Dunn also examines what the church’s contemporary history uncovers about Liberia’s social history in its juxtaposition of national identity issues with religious syncretism (a mixture of African traditional religions, Islam, some elements of Christianity, and basic human secularism), while suggesting challenges for the Episcopal Church’s Christian witness going forward. All of this is done in four concise chapters successively addressing the episcopate of Bishop Browne, a critical interregnum period between Browne and his successor, Bishop Neufville, the episcopate of Neufville, and initiating the episcopate of incumbent Bishop Hart. This is followed by a general conclusion and assessment of the church’s work. The study ends with an epilogue on the Episcopal Church that was, the Church that is, and the Church of the future.

Because it was present at the creation of the Liberian state, the Episcopal Church was fully involved with national development. This study places the Church's work in the context of the Liberian society, documenting the complexities of the interactions involving black settlers, foreign missionaries

A Liberian academic and former government official accounts for and reflects upon half a century of work and experience. An important Liberian political memoir, the book is at once Dunn’s critical exposition on his country and an attempt to explain how Liberia came to be what it is today. In 26 captivating chapters he recounts careers as academic, and services as aide to slain Liberian President Tolbert and consultant to former President Johnson Sirleaf. Between government service in crisis times (late 1970s) and in hopeful times (early 2000s) is positioned more than three decades of University teaching and research.

First Published in 2002. This compelling book brings to light a disillusioned experiment of biracial missionary labours that were expected to carry the beliefs and cultural values of nineteenth century white Americans to the black continent of Africa.

This study examines the role of Christianity in Liberia under the corrupt regime of Samuel K. Doe (1980-1990). Paul Gifford shows that, in general, Liberian Christianity--far from being a force for justice and human advancement--diverted attention from the cause of Liberia's ills, left change to God's miraculous intervention, encouraged obedience and acceptance of the status quo, and thus served to entrench Doe's power. This Christianity, devised in and controlled from the United States, thus furthered regional American economic and political objectives, which were designed to support Doe's rule.

Originally formed to harbor freed slaves and Americans returning to Africa, Liberia once was a land of hope. That was shattered by a long Civil War that shook its very foundation. Today's Liberia is glimpsed in this second edition. Building on the first edition, this updated volume focuses on the personalities, from the founders of Liberia, to the soldiers who are responsible simultaneously for destruction and the hope of stability. Along with these people, various social and ethnic groups, political parties and labor movements, economic entities and natural resources are profiled in this updated work. A new chronology of Liberia is included, and a selected bibliography suggests further readings for the scholar.

Telling Blackness begins with two simple premises: conventional models of the ways people make meaning of the world fail to account for the particularities of Blackness; and accounts of Black life often miss the significance of the smallest and subtlest acts that sustain it. With this introduction of raciosemiotics, Smalls remaps the field of semiotic anthropology around the specificities of race and the body, and remaps contemporary Black diaspora through the embodied significations of a group of young Liberian women in the US. This transdisciplinary ethnographic account of their lives helps us reimagine their talk, twerks, and tweets as "tellings" that exceed our understandings of narrative and that potentially act on the world of meaning. And, with careful historical contextualization, we see how such acts reproduce, refuse, or powerfully disregard racial logics that have entangled the US and Liberia for two centuries. Led by Black feminist scholarship, Telling Blackness also provides a semiotic glimpse into ways of relating that help create complex diasporic intimacies and that sustain Black life beyond survival.