For four reasons it is thrilling for me to review this work: I am a German Lutheran theologian. I have served as a missionary and taught at the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania-Northern Diocese (ELCT-ND) between 1992 and 2000. I did field research in the same geographical and church area (for my PhD in 2000). And, finally, I remember Erasto N. Kweka as ‘my bishop’; at first I was not very close to him, but eventually we developed a warm personal relationship.

Pragmatic Faith and the Tanzanian Lutheran Church utilizes the theoretical framework of pragmatic faith to overcome the limiting binaries found in two fields: that between transcendental experience and pragmatic struggle in social anthropological studies of Christianity; and the dichotomy between religious revival as rupture or continuity in missiology. Stambach concentrates on the concrete figure of Erasto Kweka as an actor. She proceeds strictly inductively, avoiding any of the otherwise frequently used rubrics, such as ‘transcendental’ versus ‘pragmatic’. Subjects covered include Christianity, Lutheran denominationalism, Pentecostal and charismatic religiosity, and African religions.

The study offers unique and valuable research into the international social work engagements of a mainline Protestant church (p. 5), with a primary focus on analysing the impact and development work of the ELCT-ND. The book focuses on the church’s system of religious practice and leadership and its development of an original theology ‘in relation to domestic and world politics and economics, both moral and financial’ (p. 3). According to the authors, the book’s ‘key analytic agenda … is to illuminate how a church retains the organizational and ritual forms of a European mission church and “became” culturally localized over time’ (p. 6).

The book is structured around six chapters. The introduction lays out the theoretical and conceptional foundation for the whole monograph. It elaborates on the ELCT-ND within the broader context of ‘mainline Christianity, asking after the practical work of the Lutheran church’ (pp. 1–22). The authors also define what they mean by ‘pragmatic faith’, their key analytical concept and a means to ‘theorize how transcendent “spiritual” aspects of Lutherans’ callings resonate with their practical actions’ (pp. 13–14).

The following five chapters delve into the entangled fields of social anthropology and mission theology. The lengthier Chapter 2, ‘Vocational calling: education, colonialism, and Christianity’, discusses the dialectic tensions between the church’s self-given task to develop a people in an ethically Christian way and the deconstruction of its colonial past. It also details Kweka’s decision to become a clergyman and introduces the importance of his wife, Shichanaisaria Kweka, their marriage and their family. This chapter focuses mainly on family life, drawing from interviews conducted in June 2018. Chapter 3, ‘Political philosophy: connecting the church and the state’, transports the reader to the period of Tanzanian nation building during the regime of Julius K. Nyerere, the country’s charismatic first president. As the authors explain, ‘the Tanzanian Lutheran church largely supported Nyerere’s policy of Ujamaa socialism’ (p. 52), operating in a multireligious state with a constitution that was, on the one hand, laicist and, on the other, respectful of the various religions within the nation. Chapter 4, ‘Church challenges: ethnicity and nationalism’, explores Kweka’s conflict management style as he was challenged by aggressive ethnic- and secessionist-minded Lutheran hardliners from the area of Mount Meru, who demanded their own independence as a Lutheran diocese. As a result, two dioceses came into existence in 1992: one was established by the separatists, while the numerically much larger following of mainline Lutherans under Kweka’s diplomacy created their own diocese (ELCT-Meru). Chapter 5, ‘Evangelical prophecy: procedure, power, and diplomacy’, shows how Kweka developed a personal as well as a public spirituality in the midst of a church revival, which was spearheaded by the American Baptist evangelist Billy Graham during his campaign in Moshi in 1960. As a result, Kweka adopted a more traditional Lutheran theology, supporting a messianic vision of Jesus as the Messiah who would return to earth and fulfil God’s prophecy. Chapter 6 explains how Kweka was a ‘bishop of projects: stewarding church resources’ (p. 104), revealing his impact on diaconal, educational and social church projects.

Finally, the epilogue concludes with the insight that Kweka’s legacy was not without critique. One of his opponents was Boniface Mwamposa, ‘a chief antagonist to the Tanzanian Lutheran church’ (p. 96), who represented the challenges posed by prosperity-preaching Pentecostal theology. On the other hand, Kweka’s teaching and practice of ‘pragmatic faith’ seemed to offer an alternative to the Pentecostal demands for immediate healing, prosperity and social change. The various institutions founded during Kweka’s leadership (in the fields of diaconia, social service, theological education and self-reliant developmental projects) seem, all together, to have been more sustainable than the unfulfilled demands of some Pentecostal-Charismatic preachers such as Mwamposa.

For me, the most important impact of this highly recommendable monograph is its key analytic agenda, qualifying its validity on a theoretical basis by its practical results. The book shows how a church that incorporated the organizational and ritual forms of a European mission church managed to culturally localize while also simultaneously (and paradoxically) ‘existing’ from precolonial times onwards.