What would the field of religion and literature look like if it were oriented toward African lifeworlds and texts? Decolonizing Christianities in Contemporary Nigerian Literature models a genuinely reciprocal dialogue between African religions and theology, on the one hand, and African literature, on the other. A distinguished scholar of religion in Africa, Adriaan van Klinken proves to be equally adept writing about literary texts. The book proceeds from the twin premises that Christianity has become an African religion and that African writers constructively imagine, not just critique, “Christian beliefs and symbols, practices and institutions” through their creative work (9). I appreciate that van Klinken elicits religious concepts from African theologians as well as the narrative worlds of novels. Scholars of African literature have not paid heed to titles such as Emmanuel Katongole’s Born from Lament: The Theology and Politics of Hope in Africa (Eerdmans, 2017), Agbonkhianmeghe Orobator’s Theology Brewed in an African Pot (Orbis, 2018), or Musa Dube’s Postcolonial Feminist Interpretation of the Bible (Chalice, 2000). Yet van Klinken illustrates why these theologians are valuable interlocutors for writers like Chris Abani, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Chinelo Okparanta. While cognizant of theology from across the continent, he has made a tactical decision to focus on writers from Nigeria, a globally recognized powerhouse for both literature and Christianity.

An outstanding example of van Klinken’s approach is Chapter Two, “Deliverance: Christianity, Sexuality, and Queer Embodiment.” The first section of the chapter catalogs scenes of attempted deliverance or exorcism in the poetry and fiction of no fewer than eight queer Nigerian writers. Van Klinken then moves into a patient reading of a single novel, Okparanta’s Under the Udala Trees (Granta, 2015). Narrated by a character named Ijeoma, a same-sex-desiring woman, Okparanta’s novel is primarily set in the late 1960s through early 1980s but with an epilogue set in 2014, mere days after the signing of the Same Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Act. Van Klinken proposes “reading for deliverance” (59) even as he boldly redefines deliverance—not deliverance from queer desire but deliverance into an affirmation of sexual diversity among people of faith. Characters who censure queer desire, such as Ijeoma’s mother, do so on the basis of the Bible rather than Igbo culture. But as van Klinken reads the novel, “Under the Udala Trees suggests that the hermeneutics of indigenous Igbo folktales provide a model for biblical hermeneutics, too” (71). In other words, orature leads Ijeoma to read the Bible with more sensitivity to its own literary characteristics, including genre, historical context, and ambiguity. Ultimately, Okparanta’s fiction “seeks to deliver Nigerian Christianity from its queerphobic tendencies” (76).

Taking theology seriously, van Klinken is not afraid to point out when literature risks trading in stereotypes. Chapter Six raises questions about charismatic leadership and the prosperity gospel by turning to Okey Ndibe’s novel Foreign Gods, Inc. (Soho, 2014). Van Klinken submits that Ndibe’s adoption of satire as his primary mode imposes certain limits. Neither the novel nor critiques of Pentecostalism in politics by scholars such as Ebenezer Obadare make enough of an effort, he writes, “to critically grasp the emotional, spiritual, and possibly even cognitive appeal of Pentecostal worship and charismatic leadership from the perspective of believers” (164). In his estimation, we still await a wholly convincing fictional portrait of Nigerian Pentecostalism.

The conclusion, “Nigerian Literature as African Religion and World Christianity,” oscillates between emphasizing the “plurality” (175) of Christianities, as in the book’s title, and treating Christianity as a singular abstraction, as when, according to van Klinken, writers narrate “how Christianity continues to cause division and disruption in communities” (179). What exactly does “Christianity” signify? In Colonialism in Question (University of California Press, 2005), Africanist historian Fred Cooper insists that “modernity” is never a singular actor or institution but a set of sometimes incoherent discourses and phenomena that could be put to different ends by different actors. Van Klinken’s reference to “hegemonic Christianity” (179) starts to hint at how Christianity, like modernity, might be unpackaged. But his language at times implies just two Christianities—one hegemonic, the other progressive. Might there be tactical reasons for insisting on Christianity in the singular, in order, for example, to claim feminist readings of the Bible or eco-theology as legitimate, rather than heretical, strands of an evolving faith?

How about pluralizing “literature” instead? As van Klinken recognizes, his analysis tends to equate literature with narrative fiction, mostly bildungsromane or coming-of-age novels, mostly broadly realist. In this respect, Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus (Algonquin, 2003), the earliest literary text that he discusses at length, is paradigmatic. There has been a persistent perception among some Nigerian critics that such novels are primarily written for markets and tastemakers in the Global North. One can assert that there are readers in and from Nigeria who value long-form fiction in English while also wondering how Christianity emerges in genres that circulate differently from the novel, like online short fiction or poetry, in languages other than English, and in literatures from other parts of the continent. Fortunately, the schema that van Klinken’s book develops—literature as representation, as critique, and as imagination of religion—is flexible enough to be appealing for religious and literary scholars working across genres, languages, and regions. Moreover, the thoughtful, transdisciplinary readings of fiction that it offers will remain worth revisiting for years to come.