By analyzing the ways that people beyond the Western world shaped the development and expansion of Christian faith, the field of World Christianity challenges us to reconsider the historiography of mission work. David Emmett takes up that challenge in his new study of William F. P. Burton and the Congo Evangelistic Mission (CEM). Burton cofounded this mission in a central region of the Belgian Congo in 1915 and remained affiliated with the CEM until 1964. Emmett highlights Burton's long-term interest in indigenous church leadership and complicates previous portrayals of Burton's British Pentecostal mission. The book shows that the debate over African pastors involved more than a missiological strategy or the identification of non-white supporters. The debate was an essential part of how this set of British missionaries defined their goals and their beliefs.

While W. F. P. Burton can be compared to other histories of Protestant mission organizations in central Africa, the argument is centered on analyses of the three-self principle. Wilbert R. Shenk traced the missiological goal of “self-supporting, self-governing, self-propagating” indigenous congregations to Baptist outreach in the early 1800s (“The Origins and Evolution of the Three-Selfs in Relation to China,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 14, no. 1 [January 1990]: 28–35). Though the principle became associated with China primarily, evidence in Emmett's book supports more recent scholarship focused on the domestic and international expansion of independent African Pentecostalism.

Emmett contributes to scholarship on missions by tracing the church leadership debate beyond the transition to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The historical context of the 1960s through the early 1970s helps to solidify his argument that resistance to the initiatives of African evangelists made this British Pentecostal mission less distinctive over time. Without delving into many political details, the final two chapters highlight the rise of violent resistance to European and American presence in the first decade of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Other missions in the region closed and evacuated the staff shortly after the former colony gained its political independence. Emmett explains why some of the CEM staff remained in place throughout this period and how African ministers and church members reacted to this decision.

This is the first academic study about Burton and the first to incorporate the histories of Ngoloma and Shalumbo, two of the evangelists who helped to establish local churches. The historical narrative reaches a climax in chapter 6 with Burton's public declarations that African leaders should oversee the Eglise pentecôtiste du Congo (Pentecostal Church of Congo) after 1964. Earlier chapters build to this point with evidence regarding Burton's assertive personality, his ideals regarding indigenous ministry, and his collaborations with British and African Pentecostals. The defining moment for Burton, as well as for the other British missionaries, depended on their willingness to acknowledge that “indigenous principles” could become practical realities without their continuing intervention (297). The book characterizes Burton as “frustrated” in part because the CEM did not adopt a permanent directive for all European staff to leave the Democratic Republic of the Congo (38). Emmett's experience with the topic was facilitated by the work that some CEM missionaries (including his parents) continued to do in the country after the 1960s.

Emmett does not oversimplify the variety of perspectives among the CEM missionaries, the African evangelists, and the local villagers. The incorporation of interviews with Congolese Pentecostals also highlights relevant details about the African evangelists’ goals and accomplishments that were not included within missionary records. Evidence from these African voices bolsters Burton's arguments that the Pentecostal Church of Congo was prepared to practice administrative independence while the nation established its political independence.

Emmett also heightens the stakes of his argument by linking Pentecostal theology to the topic of indigenous leadership. Belief in miraculous healing and sudden guidance by the Holy Spirit added immediacy to the early goals of the CEM. Burton's support for African pastors included arguments that widespread evangelism would happen without the long-term need for institutional infrastructure or foreign reinforcements. His colleague David Womersley's counterarguments to continue staffing CEM schools and hospitals with younger British missionaries implied an alternate perception of divine intervention and its reliability. Could Pentecostal faith be reconciled with qualifications about the types of people assumed to be capable of exercising spiritual gifts? References to relevant publications by Kwame Bediako, Ogbu Kalu, Lamin Sanneh, and Grant Wacker represent some ways that Emmett connects historic Pentecostalism with the flourishing of African-led Pentecostal movements.

The book's abundant details about theological and interpersonal affairs at the CEM could be strengthened with additional political context from the 1910s through 1964. Emmett notes that the Belgian government outlawed African religious gatherings that were not supervised by European or American missionaries. He also cites the missionaries’ continued legal recognition as a reason given for continuing the CEM after the former colony gained its independence. Brief historical background about the delay in extending legal recognition to the Pentecostal Church of Congo would help readers understand how the religious debate intersected with the complicated political transition.

Additional descriptions of the labor conditions in the Belgian Congo would also help Emmett present a fuller analysis of the African evangelists and their perspectives. He mentions cotton cultivation and remote mining work with few explanations of how and why local ministries changed in reaction to these types of colonial labor requirements. The corporal punishment that officials used to sustain forced labor seems relevant to the rift between the CEM and Shalumbo, one of the most fruitful Pentecostal ministers of either nationality. The brutal legacies of the infamous Congo Free State regime and previous centuries of slave trading echoed in this African evangelist's “humiliation” when a missionary whipped his brother (219). By minimizing his references to the political context, David Emmett keeps readers engaged with the religious priorities of the CEM until the 1960s when the religious implications of Congolese independence seemed impossible for the missionaries to avoid. This approach feels accurate to most of his source material, which tended to compartmentalize the African Christian influences that Burton championed during his career. Future research on Protestant missions to the Belgian Congo will benefit from Emmett's style of incorporating African voices as it indicates options for complicating and even decentralizing the missionaries’ perspective.