Title: Evangelical Christians in the Muslim sahel /
Authors: Cooper, Barbara MacGowan.
Publisher: Indiana University Press,
Year: 2006
Subjects: Sudan Interior Mission.; SIM (Organization); Missions Niger.; Christianity and other religions Islam; Islam Relations Christianity; Christianity Niger.; Islam Niger.
Abstract: Barbara M. Cooper looks closely at the Sudan Interior Mission, an evangelical Christian mission that has taken a tenuous hold in a predominantly Hausa Muslim area on the southern fringe of Niger. Based on sustained fieldwork, personal interviews, and archival research, this vibrant, sensitive, compelling, and candid book gives a unique glimpse into an important dimension of religious life in Africa. Cooper's involvement in a violent religious riot provides a useful backdrop for introducing other themes and concerns such as Bible translation, medical outreach, public preaching, tensions between English-speaking and French-speaking missionaries, and the Christian mission's changing views of Islam. - Publisher.
Contents: Introduction: fundamental differences -- Anatomy of a riot -- Love and violence -- From "Satan's masterpiece" to "the social problem of Islam" -- A Hausa spiritual vernacular -- African agency and the growth of the church in the Maradi Region, 1927-1960 -- Disciplining the Christian : defining elderhood, Christian marriage, and "God's work," 1933-1955 -- "An extremely dangerous suspect" : from Vichy-era travails to postwar triumph -- Impasses in vernacular education, 1945-1995 -- Handmaid to the gospel : SIM's medical work in Niger, 1944-1975 -- The tree of life : regenerating and gendering the garden after the fall, 1975-2000 -- Ça bouge : Hausa Christian practice in a Muslim milieu -- Epilogue: SIM's successors and the Pentecostal explosion.