Much good academic work has been done on the mainline churches in many African countries. But less so on the "smaller" missions and the churches that they founded. This book describes the history of one of the "smaller" churches the Zambia Baptist Association with its roots in Malawi (1905) and its missionary connections to England, South Africa, Sweden, Australia and finally to the Liebenzell Mission in Germany. It is thus one of the many contributions needed for the writing of a history of the Evangelical churches of Africa.

It was not the European and American churches which evangelised Africa, but the mission societies. The missions from the Great Awakening such as the London Missionary Society and Church Missionary Society, or the Holy Ghost Fathers and the White Fathers, which started the process of Sub-Saharan Africa becoming a Christian continent are well known and documented. Less known, and less documented are the interdenominational faith missions which began in 1873 with the aim of visiting the still unreached areas of Africa: North Africa, the Sudan Belt and the Congo Basin. Missions such as the Africa Inland Mission or Sudan Interior Mission gave birth to some of the big churches like ECWA in Nigeria and Africa Inland Church in Kenya. It is the aim of this book to describe faith missions and their theology and to present an overview of the early development of faith missions insofar as they touched Africa.

"Kusadziwa Nkufa Komwe"(Lack of Knowledge is as Being Dead) is a Nyanja maxim, African Philosophy that is true the world over. A person who lacks knowledge is as good as dead, inactive and insensitive. A dead person does not contribute to good life. Lack of knowledge leads to destruction, but having knowledge leads to informed decisions and freedom. Setting the Record Straight is about correction wrong understanding and replacing it with liberating knowledge, to the benefit of both church and society.

Baptists are keen to go directly to the New Testament in all major issues of faith. If the Bible is the first argument, then history (and therefore tradition) is another line of argument, that both promoters and opponents of women's ordination can and do use. This book is largely concerned with not just the history of women's ordination, or even of Baptists and women's ordination, but offers perspectives from history that may be useful for the discussion of this issue. The thrust of the arguments are aimed at highlighting that differing biblical interpretations are possible, and it must be admitted that Baptists have their own history, over which, much diversity has developed.

In 1859 the British "imported" 445 German settler families to strengthen the colonial borders in British Kaffraria (now Eastern Cape) in South Africa. Three of these settler families were Baptists, they evangelized their fellow Germans and anyone else they met. In 1867 Johann Gerhard Oncken of Hamburg, the founder of the Baptist Churches in Continental Europe, sent Hugo Gutsche to take care of the new Baptist community there and evangelize the native population. The author of this book, Fritz Haus, the last of Gutsche's German successors, wrote his PhD on the life and work of Hugo Gutsche, graduating from the University of Stellenbosch at the age of 80. Haus describes his ministry to White and Black over half a century and he does not forget Mrs Mary Gutsche, whom her husband called his "co-pastor."

This is the first attempt to comprehend the whole of Malawi's church history in a single volume. The focus of this book is about documenting the religious experience which was at the centre of founding the new nation of Malawi as we have come to know it. The book strikes a balance in covering issues pertaining to both mission activities and African agency. In many instances interesting pieces of evidence have been marshalled to corroborate or emphasize some of the conclusions reached.