Book reviews / Religion 40 (2010) 6280

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doi: 10.1016/j.religion.2009.04.005
Deidre Helen Crumbley, Spirit, Structure, and Flesh: Gendered Experiences in African Instituted Churches among the Yoruba of Nigeria.
Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2009, xv D 180 pp., $50 (hardback), ISBN: 0 299 22910 6.
The rst half of the 20th century witnessed the emergence in Africa of numerous dynamic Christian movements broken free from the
paternalistic mission churches that, for the most part, had planted Christianity in much of Africa during the century before. Collectively
referred to as African Instituted Churches (or African Initiated Churches; African Independent Churches AICs), they were founded
by prophets, prophetesses, and organic theologians, from South African to Nigeria, who creatively reinterpreted the Bible in light of the
deep ancestral wisdom and healing traditions of their own people, the fruit of a uniquely African Christian vision. Along with the Kimbanguist Church of the Congo and the Zionist churches of South Africa, the originally Nigerian and largely Yoruba Aladura churches are the
most successful of the hundreds of AICs that responded creatively to the moral contradictions of mission Christianitys imbrications with
a racist colonial project and to a whole host of physical and supernatural crises, from the inuenza epidemic of 1918 to indigenous witchcraft. The spread of AICs has been nothing short of staggering: by the 1970s they counted well over 10 million members and soon surpassed
mission churches as the continents leading evangelizing force, growing to 54 million adherents by 2000, making up 14 percent of the
African Christian population (p. 18) and nearly 40% of Nigerias as Deidre Helen Crumbley explains in this excellent new book on women
in the Aladura church movement.
The Aladura churches have long sparked keen interest among scholars of African religion, and no other AIC movement has received as
much coverage in scholarly literature (nor, interestingly and perhaps for similar reasons that I cannot explore here for that matter, has
any ethnic group in Africa been as researched as the Yoruba, the originators of Aladura). Two landmark studies of the Aladura were published in 1967 and 1968 respectively, Harold Turners History of an African Independent Church (London: Oxford University Press, 1967)
and J.D.Y. Peels Aladura (London: Oxford University Press, 1968). Both Turner and Peel devote some attention to the role of women in Aladura churches, a subject that is the sustained focus in much of Rosalind Hacketts subsequent work on Nigerian AICs (Religion in Calabar: The
Religious Life and History of a Nigerian Town, New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1989; Women and Religion in New Religious Movements in
Africa, in Ursula King (ed.), Religion and Gender, Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell, 1995: 257290), and the subject of an edited volume looking
at AICs more broadly, edited by Bennetta Jules-Rosette (The New Religions of Africa, Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1979). More recently still, Afe Adogame has published groundbreaking books and articles on Aladura in West Nigeria and the African diaspora (Celestial Church of Christ: The
Politics of Identity in a West African Prophetic-Charismatic Movement (Frankfurt-am-Main: Peter Lang, 1999; Clearing New Paths in an Old
` r`sa
` Devotion as World Religion: The Globalization of Yo
ru
` ba
Forest: Aladura Christianity in Europe, in Jacob K. Olupona and Terry Rey (eds.), O
Religious Culture, Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2008: 247262)). Combining feminist and sociological theory with historiography and ethnography, Crumbleys book builds upon this earlier scholarly literature, while paying careful attention to the pastoral and
institutional writings of Aladura church leaders. The result is an original and important scholarly contribution, written in a clear and
engaging style.
Spirit, Structure, and Flesh employs a case study analysis of three of the leading Aladura institutional churches, Christ Apostolic Church
(CAC), Church of the Lord-Aladura (CLA), and Celestial Church of Christ (CCC). In tracing the histories, sketching the structures, and
describing select rituals of each, Crumbley deftly weaves through her analysis demonstrations of how these histories, structures, and rituals
are, variously, gendered. In her own words, the book seeks to answer centrally the following question: Given revolutionary and global
changes associated with female ordination in global Christianity, what roles do women play in these churches? Crumbley proposes
a compelling and layered answer based upon her lucid exploration of the symbols and rituals surrounding the constraints and opportunities
that faithful Aladura women navigate as they experience leadership in their churches (pp. 45). Although they played roles in the establishment and growth of each of the three churches under analysis, there are political and ritual constraints on women that are seemingly
cemented in the constitutions of each institution.
For example, of the three churches under analysis, only CLA ordains women. Yet even female pastors in CLA are prohibited from presiding
over sacramental rites until they are postmenopausal. This prohibition, like so many others in Aladura churches in general, results in large
measure from a fusion of both traditional Yoruba and biblical menstrual taboos. In light of the contrasting dialectics of opportunity and
constraint for Aladura women, who themselves comprise a solid majority of these churches laities, Crumbley concludes that for all that
is wonderful and good about them and there is so much that is, as she sensitively afrms Aladura churches suffer from what the author
insightfully calls engendered discomfort: a certain unease sometimes subtle, sometimes glaring d with the female body as a conduit of
both divine power and procreative potential. This discomfort is intensied when the bearer of the female body approaches the highest
echelon of the institutional hierarchy (p. 136).
There is painful irony in this, for just as AICs throughout Africa represent on a fundamental level, as James Fernandez once wrote, a collective response. to malaise (Foreword, in Bennetta Jules-Rosette (ed.), The New Religions of Africa (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1979, pp. xviiixix)),
here we see an example of AICs creating yet another form of malaise, in this case in gendered form. Another painful irony is that Aladura
churches generally demonize traditional Yoruba religion in ways that the mission churches did before them, hence their valorization of
African culture clearly has its limits. One of two criticisms that I have to make of Crumbleys study is that this fundamental feature of Aladura
Christianity is somewhat glossed over in her analysis. She does note that Aladura churches preach to their adepts not to turn to the services
of traditional diviners like the babalawo, and that some of them prohibit the talking drum and even dancing in their communal ritual
services. Hence, whereas Aladura churches provide alternative healing spaces that supplement the inadequacies of the public health
system (p. 134), they also seek to limit access to others: for healing, Aladura churches rely on prayer alone; they are, after all, the owners
of prayer (ala owners; dura prayer). And whereas it is certainly true that Aladura Christianity provides an example of a unique reading of
biblical scripture that in some cases reinforces traditional Yoruba practices (p. 111), Aladura also draws upon the Bible to denounce the orisa
spirits and the living dead (revered ancestors) of Yoruba traditional religion as evil.
We do not read at all about this painful reality in Crumbleys account, and although there is truth in her assertion that (t)he interface
of Christianity and traditional religion provided a paradigmatic point of departure for Aladura (p. 54), it is thus equally true that mission
Christianity provided a paradigmatic platform for Aladuras attack on orisa cults. To offer but one from a veritable deluge of possible

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Book reviews / Religion 40 (2010) 6280

illustrations, I quote from a sermon by Moses Orimolade Tunolase, the founding prophet and evangelist of one of the earliest Aladura
churches, the Eternal Sacred Order of Cherubim and Seraphim a quotation which, according to Peel, represents the authentic attitude
of Aladura Christianity toward the orisa: Sango and Oya, igunu, eyo, adamuorise, gelede, egungun nmwawun (masqueraders) etc. Any
person still interested in the above is worshipping other gods contrary to the rst and second commandments. A live Christian must steer
clear of all these practices Evil communication corrupts good manners (in Peel, Syncretism and Religious Change, Comparative Studies in
Society and History 10 [1968], p. 132).
My one other criticism is surely much more arbitrary, and largely the quibble of a scholar who is quite interested too interested, some of
my students tell me in theory. As I read Crumbleys otherwise excellent book, I kept expecting her to theorize in a more developed or
sustained way at least two issues that lie very close to the heart of Aladuras impressive spread, which is now increasingly global: conversion
and embodiment. We do read about reasons for peoples entry into Aladura churches, although what these reasons suggest about conversion in Africa more broadly is left unsaid. It was to me quite surprising in this regard to see no reference in Spirit, Structure, and Flesh at least
to Robin Hortons landmark 1971 article on conversion and some of the centrally relevant debates that it has sparked more surprising still
for Hortons use of Peels book on the Aladura as a platform, as it were (see Horton, African Conversion, Africa: Journal of the International
African Institute 41 [1971]: 85108). As for embodiment, meanwhile, this is a central trope in Crumbleys analysis, yet she foregoes any sustained theorization of the function of embodiment in religion at large, and engages none of the impressive literature on the topic that has
emerged in recent years (the work of Sarah Coakley, Thomas Csordas, Meredith McGuire, and Philip Mellor come to mind in this regard).
Let it be said in conclusion, however, that my criticisms are not at all intended to suggest that Crumbleys book somehow lacks quality;
they are merely allusions to things that I felt were either left unsaid or that could have used further development (the text is rather short, so
I should think that her editors at UWP would have allowed for this?). On the whole, Im left very impressed by Crumbleys sensitive yet
critical reading of the gendered power differential in Aladura religion, and by her authoritative voice and compelling, respectful personal
entry into the story. She casts no ethnographic gaze on her subjects and constructs her narrative in an admiringly reexive manner, which
could only be the result of the 20 years of sustained interest that she has taken in Aladura spirituality on both the scholarly and personal
level, and by her living among Aladura believers in Nigeria for four continuous years and reaching out to them as a sister in Aladura diasporic
communities in places like her own hometown of Philadelphia. As part of her extensive research, Crumbley travelled to England to meet
with the venerable Professor Peel, who suggested to her that her own upbringing in an African American Pentecostal church could fruitfully
be brought to inform her study of Aladura, and this has proven to be remarkably true. As such, Spirit, Structure, and Flesh, while primarily
being a most welcome study of women in Aladura churches, will also be embraced enthusiastically by those of us seeking a deeper
understanding of African spirituality and its beautiful and far-reaching inuence throughout the world.
Terry Rey
Temple University (U.S.A.)
E-mail address: trey@temple.edu

doi: 10.1016/j.religion.2009.05.002
Rosalind I.J. Hackett, ed., Proselytization Revisited: Rights Talk, Free Markets and Culture Wars. London, Equinox Publishing Ltd.,
2008, xiv D 480 pp., $95 (hardback), ISBN: 9781845532277, $29.95 (paperback), ISBN: 978 1 845 53228 4.
Whether religious proselytizing is a right deserving legal protection, or an offense requiring regulation, is the subject of vehement
debates in many parts of the world. In recent decades, these debates have attracted the attention of scholars, whose research has denitively
challenged many assumptions about the private, interior or apolitical nature of proselytizing, conversion, or religion even in modern
secular societies. Jean and John Comaroff have shown that the Christian missionary enterprise was inextricably imbricated with European
imperialism; more recently, Gauri Viswanathan has demonstrated that religious conversion, far from a mere change in private belief, is often
a form of social and political protest. Proselytizing Revisited extends discussions about the public nature of proselytization by attending to the
role of law.
Inspired by the multi-volume series initiated by John Witte at the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University (Religion
and Human Rights, published by Orbis Books), Proselytizing Revisited seeks to identify the new actors/sources, areas, strategies, media, challenges, as well as new conicts stemming from proselytizing activity in our globalizing world, with an eye to the national and international
legal regimes that shape contemporary debates (Hackett, p. 13). Modern debates about proselytizing are rmly rooted in an international
language of human rights that includes the right to religious freedom. Proselytizing Revisited makes a valuable contribution to the literature
by bringing together in one volume the variety of arguments made for and against proselytization in different regions and contexts. As the
authors note, even opposition to proselytizing is now often argued in the language of human rights (Mayer, p. 44). This collection of essays
yields a very instructive demonstration of the manifold interests that rights talk can be made to serve.
The volume consists of 19 essays. Following the introductory essay by Rosalind Hackett, these are grouped into ve sections. Section I
consists of three theoretical essays, which together with the introduction present the themes and debates taken up by the authors, and
suggest some shared conclusions. Sections II through V gather the essays into geographical groupings, dealing with proselytizing activities
in Africa, Asia, Russia and Central Asia, and the United States. The merit of the volume, however, goes far beyond portraying regional variations in proselytizing practices or debates. When read side by side, the essays in this volume can provide renewed critical perspective on
the uses of rights talk in individual instances.
The rst two chapters introduce the reader to the problems that have inspired the essays. As Mayer tells us in Chapter 2, it is very clear
that conicts over proselytizing cannot be reduced to a matter of conicting religious beliefs (p. 48), but are more often a product of
perceived threats to group cohesion or national interests among targeted populations, fears that missionaries conduct has often reinforced.
Furthermore, even opponents of proselytizing tend to accept, rather than oppose, the principle of religious freedom (p. 44). Indeed, as