The stream of African Christianity studied in Ruth Marshall's Political spiritualities belongs to the category of contemporary Pentecostals that have burgeoned in Africa since the late 1970s. They have indeed, as the subtitle suggests, revolutionalised both the religious and political landscapes with their forceful presence and engagement with the public sphere. Politicians have been forced to take these new movements seriously for two reasons: first, they have the numbers on their side; and second, in a society in which the secular remains inseparable from sacred realities, they promise supernatural power that enables people to succeed within the natural order including in politics and business. To that end they are indeed movements of great socio-political significance in Africa and studying them within the Nigerian context helps to provide a good illustration of their significance and impact as new religious movements. In other words, Ruth Marshall's book is important on account of the fact that much of what is happening in sub-Saharan Africa, as far as this new Christianity is concerned, has been inspired by developments in Nigeria (p. 2). The focus of the study is aptly captured by the introduction in which Marshall notes that the ‘Born-Again’ movement, as she refers to the revival, ‘has as its principal aim a project of individual and collective renewal and regeneration through a process of conversion based on the idiom of new birth’ (pp. 2–3). After an elaborate introduction, the rest of the study is spread across six chapters. This is exclusive of the conclusion and a very important appendix consisting of a testimony from an insider that helps further to place the study in its right religious and experiential context. A major strength of this study is Marshall's methodology of studying religion and politics in Africa not through formal institutions but rather through how Pentecostalism, as a Christian new religious movement, positions itself as an alternative to a failing state and a hopeless society in the midst of enormous human potential and material resources. This is a sociological study that takes the religious orientation of the new Pentecostals seriously (chapter i). Marshall therefore rightly locates the attraction of the movement in its Born-Again programme in which embracing Pentecostalism constitutes rupture with both the individual and collective pasts (chapter ii). The movement, she points out, arises as a religious form in response to what is seen as a spiritual crisis (p. 52; italics in original). Consequently Born-Again religion, Marshall successfully demonstrates in the rest of the book, forms an alternative form of piety that responds to the crises – in all its forms – that have made Nigeria a virtual laughing-stock in the eyes of the world. Yet, the existence of this revivalist form of Pentecostalism brings fresh hope. Within the spiritually and physically precarious African environment it delivers – by the assertion of its proponents – ‘spiritual empowerment for personal and collective progress’ and ‘the possibility of controlling untrammelled powers through individual faith and prayer’ (p. 65). In an African world believed to be hyperactive with numberless benevolent and malevolent powers, the Born-Again Churches have attracted much patronage including within the political arena because of their offer of religious power of the Christian kind that engages with those worlds. The strong connection that they make between the sacred and secular realms of life, which is seen for instance in the transactional interpretations of tithes and offerings, are religious interpretations and practices that resonate with traditional religious ideas. This is a new religious movement with an existential orientation to salvation (p. 177) and therefore, as many Nigerian films reveal, takes supernatural evil seriously. The Born-Again project discussed in this book therefore attempts a religious response to supernatural evil in terms that connect with local religious sensibilities (p. 187). Unlike the classical Pentecostalism of the 1930s and 1940s which stayed away from ‘secular politics’, contemporary Pentecostalism of the types that are discussed in this volume has developed ‘authoritarian forms of pastoral power’ which act as a means of political influence within public space. There are a few historical inaccuracies in the book. There is one on page 68 where the Apostolic Church is said to have been established in Nigeria in the late 1920s but the correct date is 1931. On page 69, the Scripture Union is said to have been established in 1911 although it started in the UK in 1867 and was brought to Nigeria in 1885. These are minor corrections that do not affect the substance of the material. On the whole Political spiritualities is a well-researched and written book. This is a book that in my judgement must be carefully and slowly read because the theoretical framework, grammar and vocabulary appear too sophisticated at points. But those who are interested in an avowedly academic study of contemporary Pentecostalism and politics in Africa would find it a very useful read because it does interpret the interface between Pentecostalism and politics in contemporary Africa very accurately and innovatively.