A Problem of Presence presents an ethnographic study of the Masowe weChisanu or Friday Masowe Church of Zimbabwe. The Friday Masowe Church traces its origins to the Prophet Johane Masowe or “John of the Wilderness,” who saw himself as Africa's John the Baptist. Johane Masowe, born Shoniwa Peter Masedza to Anglican parents, prophesied in what was then the British colony of Southern Rhodesia from 1932–1938, before government pressures forced him and his followers to begin a series of peregrinations, first to Port Elizabeth (South Africa), then Lusaka (Zambia), and lastly Nairobi (Kenya), where he died in 1973. While the author, Engelke, spends a chapter discussing Masowe and his background, Engelke's real interest is actually one of the churches that emerged from Masowe's movement. The Friday Masowe Church takes its name from the fact that it follows Masowe's original teachings and practices the Sabbath on Friday, as opposed to Saturday, the day Masowe later chose to make holy. What interests Engelke about the “Friday Apostolics,” as they are known, is their rejection of the sanctity of the Bible. In a memorable passage used to open the book, one of the prophets who followed in the footsteps of Johane is quoted as suggesting that the pages of a Bible might be used as toilet paper (2).

Engelke traces the rejection of the Bible back to Johane's struggle with the materialism of colonial era Christian (mission) churches. As Engelke argues, these struggles reveal a problem central to the Christian experience, the problem of accessing the divine through things, that is, objects, rituals, and gestures. The problem of presence, the problem of reconciling “God's simultaneous presence and absence” in the world (12), has been there since Adam and Eve's expulsion from paradise. Since then, believers have struggled with the tasks associated with locating the divine, that is, that which is spiritual, in the material. Protestant Christianity has sought to resolve the problem through the affirmation of the sanctity of the Bible. Yet for some Christians, the status granted the Bible gets in the way of faith. Can any object, even Scripture, truly mediate contact with God? For Engelke, this question is the point of departure for understanding the Friday Apostolics. As he explains, the Friday Apostolics seek to keep their faith “live and direct from God” (3), meaning that they are determined to keep the Christian experience they share as “vibrant and alive as when Christ walked the earth” (3). And Engelke shows that they do this through the maintenance of a church life that nurtures prophets. Prophets are individuals with the capacity to be “filled with” (not possessed by) the spirit of angels. Angels are for the most part spirits first incarnated in the Bible, such as the spirit written about in the Bible as John the Baptist who chose the body of Shoniwa Peter Masedza as his vehicle for communicating with Africans. Church services are built around the interaction between prophets and congregants. Some congregants have structured roles in the proceedings. These included the mumiriri, “human megaphones” who use their voices to broadcast the words prophets filled with the Holy Spirit whisper; the vaimbi, a group of members chosen by the Holy Spirit to offer a kind of choral commentary to the events and developments of the service; and the elders placed in charge of guiding the many people, both members and non-members, seeking help with spiritual afflictions. Other congregants, though lacking a structured role, as the Spirit moves them still felt free to interject themselves into the proceedings through word and song.

Engelke's theoretical instincts go in the direction of semiotics, and he is concerned to show through the example of the Friday Apostolics the power of the spoken word as a platform for the construction of a religious experience. What particularly intrigues him is how church members eschew any sort of institutional memory other than the oral commentaries of the older members, and yet, through verbal strategies, still uphold a sense of mutemo, a word best translated as (religious) “knowledge” of the true way. Mutemo, which is maintained by the congregation, stands in opposition to the ambitions of the prophets, who, it seems, invariably confused the power of the Holy Spirit with their own charisma, and as such, “get off track.” Johane got off track, rejecting the guidance of the Holy Spirit in his decision to repudiate Friday worship. For this reason he figures very little in the faith practiced by Friday Apostolics.

As just suggested, the ethnographic observation in A Problem of Presence is rich and well worth perusal. Engelke's thesis, however, suffers from two lacunae. More generally Engelke may be charged with not doing his homework concerning church history. Obviously, if the problem of presence has been there since the beginnings of Christian history, there should be a history of how various Christian churches have tried to resolve it. Engelke ignores this history, offering instead an eclectic mixture of musings drawn from theology and philosophy. More specifically, Engelke may be charged with not placing the phenomenon he studied in a broader cultural (Christian) context. Did the Friday Apostolics offer a free-standing, autonomous religious experience, or a religious experience best conceived as part of a larger whole? Other than an observation that the Masowe weChisanu Church could claim about 100,000 participants across Zimbabwe, Engelke offers no demographic or social data. It is impossible to determine how many of these people spend the entirety or even a significant part of their religious lives in the church. As Engelke notes, a significant number of members first came to the church with spiritual afflictions, and then stayed around after these afflictions were cured. But as he also shows, after a while these people drift away again. How central the rejection of the Bible is to church members is likewise problematic. As Engelke acknowledges, the ranks of the Friday Apostolics are filled with “those coming from main-line (i.e., mission) and other denominations” (198). Could the church survive without the often highly detailed knowledge of the Bible these people bring with them? Engelke concedes that it could not. The Masowe weChisanu Church does not reject the authority of the Bible. It takes for granted the Bible's pervasiveness in the lives of its adherents. The question can be asked how many members of the church, after they join, continue to find spiritual life without the safety net of the Scriptures satisfying and how many eventually, like Johane himself, return to a Bible-centered faith.