This excellent and theoretically innovative volume extends and critically complicates the fast expanding literature on the Pentecostal revival in Africa. Its Nigerian variant has been the focus of several strong studies, notably the volumes by Matthews Ojo (Reference Ojo2006), Asonzeh Ukah (Reference Ukah2008) and Ruth Marshall (Reference Marshall2009); and one key achievement of the present volume is the way in which the author traverses this emergent scholarly landscape – nimbly, surefootedly, and with an impressive awareness of the argumentative landmarks. The language of analysis, even if intermittently baroque, is never less than erudite and incisive. Nimi Wariboko, a theologian by training, unleashes all the philosophical apparatus of his training, and the result is an interdisciplinary miracle (you get the point) in which insights from philosophy, epistemology, sociology, history, theology, cultural studies, psychoanalysis and political science are interpolated in the service of an overarching intellectual project: securing the elements necessary for a Pentecostal theory of knowledge.

Reminiscent of Marshall, his declared Foucauldian sparring partner, Wariboko takes Pentecostalism seriously as an always ongoing noumenalist adventure, and in this regard, the current work amounts to a robust refutation of the lingering suspicion that beyond ‘style’ or ‘aesthetics’, African Pentecostalism offers little by way of theological substance. To achieve this, Wariboko, himself a born again Christian since 1993 (see p. 104) fundamentalises the Pentecostal assumption that ‘the spiritual is the inner dynamics (sic) of politics in all spheres of society’ (p. 9), and salvation is the unfailing telos of the Pentecostal quest. In the noumenalist quest, not only is the ‘invisible world‘ taken for granted, it is implicitly hypothesised as the instigator of the ‘visible world’, a fundamental and all-pervading ‘rationality’ structuring the totality of human life, from man's inaugural yelp to his terminal gasp.

Nevertheless, what is being articulated here is more than a simple defence of the Pentecostal ethos. For one, there are, to adopt a Pentecostalist locution, too many ‘spirits’ at war throughout the text, and in any case Wariboko is too listless not to trouble the noumenalist reading of reality, which he does by entertaining the nagging incommensurabilities between noumenalism's claims and social reality. One of the unexpected joys of this volume is the presence of little ‘think boxes’, scattered nuggets of philosophical contemplation which serve as sides to the main intellectual dish. Here, the author, in a refreshing change of analytic gear, muses randomly, wrestling with the ghosts (incidentally, one of the boxes actually takes on the subject of political spectrology!) of ideas previously elaborated. Part of the beauty of these little boxes is that they also work as episodic iterations, tasty appetisers for the eager reader who cannot wait to dip into the entrée.

If one of the many strengths of this book is its thematic and philosophical breadth, it is also one of its few, if significant, failings. Wariboko's eagerness to attend to every insight on the way to his intellectual destination should be commended, but he tends to stray into disputations which might have been fruitfully avoided. As a result, some parts of the book come across as overwritten. Second, for a work on the ‘religious production of knowledge’ generally and Pentecostal theory of knowledge specifically, there ought to have been more attention to the myopias of this imaginary. Wariboko himself regrets the ‘epistemological crisis that has engulfed Nigerian Pentecostals as (sic) a wild savannah bush fire’ and ‘a relentless rejection of reason and reasoning where they should matter most’ (p. 56). But he does not tell us how that crisis can be resolved within a Pentecostal paradigm with its core emphasis on ‘the otherworldly’ and how reason and reasoning can be made coherent with the ‘noumenal’. Third, while I find the discussion on excremental vision intellectually titillating, I am dubious as to its overall analytic utility. For one, by what logic do we exceptionalise the excremental as a religious experience? Furthermore, the discussion on excrement (not unlike how the real thing tends to behave) scatters in too many directions for my liking, and by and large omits the ‘real’ shit in Nigerian social life, which is the flagrant absence of physical infrastructure. Fourth, while the book is strong on philosophy and psychoanalysis, key aspects of the argumentation might have been strengthened with anthropological data. For instance, confident allusions to the ‘moral excellences’ of contemporary Pentecostal practices may have been readily surrendered in the face of such data.

None of these shortcomings is life threatening. Wariboko has written an absorbing and philosophically rigorous book, one that is destined to become a major point of reference in Pentecostal studies for years to come.