The history of Christian evangelical missions in Niger is the central theme of this thoroughly documented and well-written book, the recipient of the Herskovits Award in 2007. It focuses on the growth and influence of the fundamentalist North American Christian mission, the Sudan Interior Mission, nowadays known as SIM International. Cooper argues that American evangelical Protestantism has been a crucial influence in Protestant Christianity in Niger, and continues this role through the more recent wave of Pentecostal-oriented missions, such as Vie Abondante (p. 23).
Cooper suggests that the study of North American Christian missions has often been neglected – a consequence, on the one hand, of SIM's anti-intellectual stance and dearth of richly detailed missionary accounts (p. 91), and, on the other, of the assumption that Protestant Christianity has been a marginal phenomenon compared to Catholicism in Francophone Africa (pp. 15–16). Drawing on both ethnographic and archival work, she helps to fill this gap.
Cooper uses ethnographic material skilfully and sensitively, providing illustrations of contemporary life in Niger as well as insights when analysing historical data. She opens the book with an ordinary market day in Maradi, then gradually extends her scene to reveal the footprints left by SIM in serving and shaping Christian life in Niger. She then illustrates the tensions between Islam and Christianity as these are experienced in contemporary Niger. The fundamentalist approach to Christianity manifested in radio preaching by missionaries from Vie Abondante, for example, contributed to the tensions that underpinned the Muslim riots in November 2000.
Founded in 1893, and ecumenical in its conception, SIM focused its missionary efforts on the previously neglected area of the Sudanic Belt. Inspired by the ‘faith mission movement’, its aim was to bring a ‘new’ and more authentic vision of the mission enterprise that emphasized open preaching, prayer and church implantation. The objective was to convert ‘vernacular Christians’, who in turn would transmit the Word of God, without being influenced by the moral and materialist trappings of Western civilization (p. 6). There was a strong focus on Bible translation and involvement in social and development work, though the objective was primarily evangelical and had little to do with ideas about social transformation.
SIM missionaries often assumed, rather naïvely, that their work was intrinsically apolitical. However, they had to face and negotiate their relationships with the French and British colonial administrations. In Niger, although SIM managed to circumvent the French authorities for a long period, their presence became highly contentious with the outbreak of the Second World War. Through their development work, missionaries had to engage with micro-political dynamics and structures, and unintentionally reinforced Islamic conceptions of law and landed property. Moreover, SIM activities in domains such as education and health depended largely on American financial resources mobilized among businessmen in North America.
A central aspect throughout the book is the ambiguous relationship between Christianity and Islam. Islam constrained, but simultaneously helped define Christian practice and the language of belief. Cooper portrays the complex and changing relations between missionaries and Muslims, who at times demonized, yet at other times cooperated with each other. For example, Muslims played a crucial role as mediators in the translation of the Bible into Hausa, and facilitated the definition of the concepts of God and the spiritual world.
SIM's social work had successes as well as challenges. Its medical activities created a group of committed converts among the sick who adopted the new faith after spending long periods of time in SIM's leprosarium. However, SIM's education project, intended to train local missionaries to read and write Hausa, often clashed with converts’ aspirations. The system did not help them to acquire the language skills needed to thrive in a colonial setting. As the new church started to grow, tensions over leadership roles and the negotiation of gender norms emerged. Although women sometimes seemed to be invisible, they became the backbone of the church, especially when male disputes threatened its survival. Throughout this process, missionaries engaged in controversial disciplinary practices. In the end, Christian converts in Niger did not become the vernacular Christians that missionaries had in mind; instead, they engaged with Christianity on their own terms.
Cooper argues that SIM's work prepared the ground for the recent Pentecostal explosion in Niger. Former staff and converts from SIM have been the driving force of the new Pentecostal churches and evangelization. However, SIM regards these churches with suspicion. Pentecostal churches appear to provide converts with what they were denied from earlier missions: access to the charismatic gifts of the Holy Spirit and Western influence. Cooper's analysis of the popularity of more recent types of Pentecostal churches could have been enriched by incorporating the growing literature on Pentecostalism in Africa, specifically those works that deal with notions such as ‘the break with the past’. Nonetheless, this is a very rich and interesting work, which portrays the complexities of mission work and deepens the understanding of religious dynamics in West Africa.
