The first four essays in Mission in Malawi reassess the meaning, nature and place of mission in a postmodern world. Subsequent essays examine various issues that missionaries and the Church in Malawi have and continue to struggle with. These range from the problem of administering church discipline, the challenge of Bible translation, the question of how to deal with corruption in the corridors of power to the challenges of dealing with initiation rites, HIV/AIDS, patriarchy, gender inequality, the exercise of the Church's prophetic role, lack of contextualized theology, and the difficult task of creating an inclusive church and society. The last three essays are an attempt to describe a contextual theology appropriate for the African church, construct a theology for Malawi and project a future for mission in Malawi in the context of a changing world. These essays offer a rare window into the life and struggles of the Malawian Church even as it faces the postmodern future. The essays are not only informative but also challenging and thought-provoking. Scholars, students and other readers who share an interest in mission and the life of the Church in Malawi will find this collection of essays indispensable in the many years to come.

Martin Pauw was born in 1940 at Madzimoyo Mission, Eastern Zambia, where both his grandparents and parents had served as missionaries. After completing his theological studies at the University of Stellenbosch, he was ordained in Malawi in the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian (CCAP) in 1965. Like his great grandfather, grandfather and father, he became a “missionary” – the fourth generation! He served as youth pastor and lecturer at the CCAP Theological College at Nkhoma until 1973. From 1975 he lectured at Justo Mwale Theological College of the Reformed Church in Zambia in Lusaka and from 1983 to 2001 he was lecturer and eventually professor in Missiology in the Faculty of Theology at the University of Stellenbosch (where he also had previously completed his doctoral studies with a thesis on the history of the CCAP Nkhoma Synod). Over the years Prof Pauw acted as study leader to a large number of under- and post graduate students, authored a considerable number of publications and served in various leadership positions in the church. After retiring as lecturer, he served the Western Cape Synod of the Dutch Reformed Church for a further six years as Secretary for Witness and focussed on building partnerships between the DRC and sister churches in various countries in Africa. His vast experience in, knowledge of and passion for humbly serving the churches in Southern and Central Africa, is remarkable.

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.

The volume constitutes Klaus Fiedlers crowning contribution to scholarship. Essays in the first half of the book focus on Malawian Christianity and how contrasting Powers, Gospel and Secular, engage each other, creating social, political and cultural conflict in the process. In the second half, Fiedler examines general missiological themes. These essays provide a broader missiological background, offering a theoretical framework necessary for appreciating the essays in the first half. He concludes with a chapter that reviews selected seminal books on themes under study. Throughout the volume Fiedler applies the restorationist revival theory he constructed in The Story of Faith Missions, an earlier 1994 work putting emphasis on non classical missions and churches, not systematically covered in earlier scholarship. This volume, the first of its kind on Malawian Christianity, will long remain an indispensable text for those interested in Missiology and Malawian Christianity.

Christianity in Northern Malawi deals with the interaction of the missionary methods of the Scottish missionary Donald Fraser and the traditional culture of the Ngoni people of northern Malawi in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It looks at Ngoni origins and culture prior to first contacts with the missionaries, at the early life and ideas of Fraser, and at Fraser's disagreements with some of his Scottish colleagues. There are also sections on Ngoni interactions with the early colonial government, and the development of a genuinely Ngoni Church. The book uses primary and oral sources, some of which were not previously available.

When a thousand leading members of the Nyasaland African Congress were detained under the emergency regulations imposed by the Federation government in 1959, the Presbyterian chaplains who ministered to them at Kanchedza Camp in Limbe were the late Rev Jonathan Sangaya and Rev Andrew C. Ross. They soon discovered that around 700 of the thousand men were members of the Church of Central African Presbyterian. This raised a question in the mind of the recently arrived Scottish missionary: how may we account historically for the fact that so many national leaders were Presbyterians? The quest to answer that question led him to produce the thorough examination of the foundation and early history of the Blantyre Mission of the Church of Scotland which is found in this book. Written in the mid-1960s, it remains today an indispensable work of reference for understanding the history of both church and nation in Malawi.

This study explores the historical realities of the religious and political activities of John Chilembwe and the Providence Industrial Mission (PIM). It covers the early period of the mission; the approach to conversion and expansion; membership of the PIM church; PIM's Ministry of Justice; the 'dark period' of the PIM Ministry - post 1915; and the mission's legacy for national liberation discourses.