Reexamines the first twenty years of the East African revival movement in Uganda, 1935-1955, arguing that through the movement African Christians articulated and developed a unique spiritual lifestyle.

Reexamines the first twenty years of the East African revival movement in Uganda, 1935-1955, arguing that through the movement African Christians articulated and developed a unique spiritual lifestyle.

From the 1930s the East African Revival influenced Christian expression in East Central Africa and around the globe. This book analyses influences upon the movement and changes wrought by it in Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Kenya, Tanzania and Congo, highlighting its impact on spirituality, political discourse and culture. A variety of scholarly approaches to a complex and changing phenomenon are juxtaposed with the narration of personal stories of testimony, vital to spirituality and expression of the revival, which give a sense of the dynamism of the movement. Those yet unacquainted with the revival will find a helpful introduction to its history. Those more familiar with the movement will discover new perspectives on its influence.

In this pioneering study, historian Andreana Prichard presents an intimate history of a single mission organization, the Universities’ Mission to Central Africa (UMCA), told through the rich personal stories of a group of female African lay evangelists. Founded by British Anglican missionaries in the 1860s, the UMCA worked among refugees from the Indian Ocean slave trade on Zanzibar and among disparate communities on the adjacent Tanzanian mainland. Prichard illustrates how the mission’s unique theology and the demographics of its adherents produced cohorts of African Christian women who, in the face of linguistic and cultural dissimilarity, used the daily performance of a certain set of “civilized” Christian values and affective relationships to evangelize to new inquirers. The UMCA’s “sisters in spirit” ultimately forged a united spiritual community that spanned discontiguous mission stations across Tanzania and Zanzibar, incorporated diverse ethnolinguistic communities, and transcended generations. Focusing on the emotional and personal dimensions of their lives and on the relationships of affective spirituality that grew up among them, Prichard tells stories that are vital to our understanding of Tanzanian history, the history of religion and Christian missions in Africa, the development of cultural nationalisms, and the intellectual histories of African women.

A vivid portrayal of Kivebulaya's life that interrogates the role of indigenous agents as harbingers of change under colonization, and the influence of emerging polities in the practice of Christian faiths.

This book shows how cosmopolitan Christian converts and east African patriots struggled to define political community in the mid-twentieth century. Derek Peterson traces the history of the East African Revival, an evangelical movement that challenged patriots' effort to root people in place as inheritors of a cultural heritage.

An analysis of the relationships between law, custom, gender, marriage and justice among northern Tanzania’s Maasai communities. When, where, why, and by whom is law used to force desired social change in the name of justice? Why has culture come to be seen as inherently oppressive to women? In this finely crafted book, Dorothy L. Hodgson examines the history of legal ideas and institutions in Tanzania—from customary law to human rights—as specific forms of justice that often reflect elite ideas about gender, culture, and social change. Drawing on evidence from Maasai communities, she explores how the legacies of colonial law-making continue to influence contemporary efforts to create laws, codify marriage, criminalize FGM, and contest land grabs by state officials. Despite the easy dismissal by elites of the priorities and perspectives of grassroots women, she shows how Maasai women have always had powerful ways to confront and challenge injustice, express their priorities, and reveal the limits of rights-based legal ideals. “This is a book that only Dorothy Hodgson could have written, with her decades of work in Tanzania, vast networks in Maasailand, and deep ethnographic knowledge, combined with her deftness in working through more theoretical work on gender and human rights. Closely argued, conceptually sharp, and engagingly written.” —Brett Shadle, author of Girl Cases: Marriage and Colonialism in Gusiiland, Kenya, 1890-1970 “Dorothy Hodgson asks a number of important and clearly articulated questions, and provides thoughtful answers to them using a hybrid of historical and anthropological methodologies that combine in-depth case studies with more empirically-informed macro-level reflection. A concise and useful resource in the undergraduate as well as the graduate classroom.” —Priya Lal, author of African Socialism in Postcolonial Tanzania: Between the Village and the World “Gender, Justice, and the Problem of Culture makes a significant contribution to the study of law in East Africa and elsewhere among colonized peoples, and it should be required reading not only for academics interested in such matters but for activists and policymakers.” —American Anthropologist “Hodgson’s book is both rich in detail and broad in its implications for understanding struggles for justice for marginalised groups. It deserves the attention of students and scholars of African studies, anthropology, history, political science and women’s and gender studies.” —Journal of Modern African Studies