The rise of the African independent/indigenous/initiated Churches (AICs) at the beginning of the twentieth century changed the face of Christianity on the continent. These Churches, as Marko Kuhn's published PhD thesis shows, are by no means a monolithic phenomenon. Their nature, shape and character have been determined by the particular African religious and cultural contexts within which they emerged. In spite of the differences in their nature and appearance it is possible to refer to them collectively as AICs because of their common ecclesiology. These AICs account in part for the current phenomenal growth of African Christianity. Thus Allan Anderson's foreword rightly describes the AICs as ‘a major force in African Christianity today, living radical experiments of a Christianity that has consciously rejected or at least adapted western ecclesiastical models and forms of being Christian’ (p. xi). Kuhn's book has six main chapters and quite an extensive bibliography. The primary data used enables us to understand the multiplicity and complexity of religious innovation in Africa. The movements range from the early nineteenth-century classical AICs with their emphasis on healing rituals and prophetic ministries to the new mostly urban-centred Pentecostal/charismatic ministries with their contentious theologies of prosperity.

There is a reason for the popularity of AICs. The commendable efforts made by western missionaries to study indigenous languages rarely culminated in constructive engagements with African worldviews of supernatural causality (p. 24). The result of the negative attitude towards indigenous worldviews was the drift of people from the historic mission Churches such as the Roman Catholic Church into AICs. The latter took those worldviews seriously and created ritual contexts for dealing with the fears and insecurities that arose out of them. In all this, as Kuhn points out, the aim of the African Churches was not necessarily to be African but rather to be biblical. The fight against demons and witches which is so much a part of the African world of thinking, he writes, ‘is much closer to the Biblical world than to the Western world’ (p. 49). Kuhn serves us well in drawing attention to the importance of charismatic figures to the rise, shape and character of AICs and the continuities that these early African Churches share with the modern Pentecostal/charismatic ministries and Churches.

This book could be read as illustrative of the character of independent indigenous Christianity in Africa. For those who are familiar with such African movements, there is not much that may be too new in the work. The history of the North American classical Pentecostal movement (pp. 232ff.) could have been left out. There has also been very little attempt to transform the work from a PhD thesis into a more reader friendly book. The formatting lacks finesse. The contents are excellent nevertheless, and the weaknesses should not detract from the fact that this is a useful exercise in the study of African religious innovation of the Christian kind.