Jacqueline Ryle's My God, My Land: Interwoven Paths of Christianity and Tradition in Fiji uses the lens of contemporary Christianity to examine the interconnectedness of the Fijian people to the land, each other, and to God or the power of the ancestral spirits through space and time—past, present, and future. Ryle employs the perspectives of the followers of the Methodist Church, the Pentecostal Church, and charismatic Catholicism to understand how people come together in shared social, cultural, and faith communities. She also examines the ways in which the Methodist and Pentecostal churches used these communities strategically and politically to exclude others (especially Indo-Fijians), while charismatic Catholics and liberal Christians employed their faith communities inclusively to build bridges across differences.

Ryle begins with the Fijian concept of the Three Pillars, the overarching ideology of Fijian society that connects people to the land, God, and chiefly authority/government. During the colonial period (1874–1970), the Methodist Church embraced the Three Pillars for its own purposes, inserting itself into this structure in order to prop up its authority. While the Methodist Church saw success during much of the colonial period, by the latter part of the twentieth century it no longer met the needs of many Fijians plagued by modernization, poverty, urbanization, and increasing class differences. While the Methodist Church remained associated with the governing elite and the status quo, the Pentecostal Church made converts by rejecting the traditional Three Pillars and, instead, emphasizing the individual's relationship with God. Despite their differing ideas about the individual's relationship to God and the land, both the Pentecostal and Methodist churches sought to have Fiji defined constitutionally as a Christian State. In this continuing effort, they worked together to effectively deny Indo-Fijian citizenship.

Ryle uses these three religious perspectives—Methodist, Pentecostal, and charismatic Catholic—as a lens for understanding Fijians reactions to the coups of 1987, 2000, 2006. With their enduring ideology of the Three Pillars, many Methodists saw the 1987 coup and its violence against Indo-Fijians as propping up traditional Fijian culture, authority, and identity. Likewise, the 1987 coup emphasized their connectedness to each other, God, and the land, while creating boundaries between themselves and those they viewed as other. The coups of 2000 and 2006 revealed the tension among Fijians over issues poverty, urbanization, modernization, and the waning authority of the chiefs, as well as their continuing problems with Indo-Fijians. As a result of the coups, charismatic Catholics and liberal Christians sought to find ways to heal the pain and upheaval by listening to one another, admitting fault, seeking redress, and, most of all, embracing difference. While both Methodist and Pentecostal Fijians understood the need for healing, both groups found it difficult to accept difference when their religions taught them to go out and convert the world to Christ.

Ryle's work relies on both primary and secondary sources, including interviews and observations made during her many trips to Fiji between 1997–2005. Her use of secondary sources is both broad and masterful; she employs the theories of sociologists, anthropologists, theologians, and other academics throughout her work as a means of making sense of the Fijian culture, perspectives, words, and actions. Moreover, she includes the words of songwriters, poets, and writers as another lens for understanding Fijians. Most of all, she privileges the Fijian peoples’ own perspectives, descriptions, and analyses of their history and culture. She does this by using extensive quotations so as to “give people as much ‘voice’ as possible,” (xxxiv) while recognizing that her own voice and experience permeates each page of the book (xxxv).

My God, My Land is an important contribution to the fields of Pacific history, anthropology, and religious studies. Ryle demonstrates the continuing significance of culture—even in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries—for understanding Pacific peoples, their relations to one another and to the land, as well as their religious and political praxis. Ryle's argument is complex and nuanced in a way that is difficult to show in a short book review. In her conclusion, Ryle states that she hopes that her work will be of value to academics and non-academics in Fiji and the Pacific Islands when “discussing relations between faith, tradition and politics” (230). While her work will undoubtedly be of value to academics, her writing tends to be convoluted and, at times, awkward, making her book less accessible to the average Pacific Islander. Nonetheless, her work is a must read for anyone interested in Pacific history and culture.