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The Missionary and the Diviner: Contending Theologies of Christian and African Religions byMichael C. KirwenReview by: Irving HexhamThe International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 21, No. 4 (1988), pp. 707-708Published by: Boston University African Studies CenterStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/219755 .

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BOOK REVIEWS 707 BOOK REVIEWS 707

to any effort to grope with Islam in twentieth-century Africa. This is why during certain periods the ways in which men relate to God and the spiritual world change and earlier religious syntheses break down, both the traditional and some Islamic ones. In answering this question, it is important that we study the particular social and economic conditions in which change takes place, but it is also important to remember that religion is important because people have spiritual needs.

MARTIN A. KLEIN University of Toronto

THE MISSIONARY AND THE DIVINER: CONTENDING THEOLOGIES OF CHRISTIAN AND AFRICAN RELIGIONS. By Michael C. Kirwen.

Maryknoll, N.Y- Orbis Books, 1987. Pp. xxv, 134.

This delightful book introduces readers in a very enjoyable way to the complexities of African religion and cross-cultural communication. It does this through a series of dialogues between a Roman Catholic missionary (the author, a Maryknoll father) and an African diviner, whom the author explains is, in reality, a composite figure who represents various diviners encountered by Dr. Kirwen. As such it is an excellent introductory text for courses on African religion, theology and anthropology. It will excite students and make them aware of existential issues which could otherwise remain "dead" academic debates.

The book has a general introduction and five chapters written in dialogue form. Each chapter has its own introduction and several shorter sections which contextualize the issues discussed. The chapter titles indicate the major topics: "God in the Absence of a Messiah," "The Source of Evil: Divinity and Humanity," "Widow Identity: Individual or Communal," "Religious Ministry: Divination or Priesthood," and "Everlasting Life: Remembrance or Resurrection." Following each chapter Kirwen provides a short commentary summarizing his own reaction to the questions and arguments of the diviners and drawing theoretical and theological conclusions.

The book is well written in a conversational style that works. Unfortunately, it lacks an index and bibliographic references which would have greatly improved its value to academics. These failings can however, be forgiven because of the vividness and life which Kirwen brings to his subject.

Despite the fact that I strongly recommend this book and intend to use it as a text in my undergraduate class on African religion, I have several serious criticisms. In the introduction Kirwen tells the reader that "At the beginning of each chapter, I introduce the setting as a social scientist" (p. xxiv). This is simply untrue. His introductions are useful but they lack methodological sophistication and the rigor of the social scientist. For example he never really introduces the people he writes about and fails to explain such things as their history and kinship system in a systematic manner.

Second, the author repeatedly refers to an "African cosmology," which, he clearly believes, underlies African religions (pp. xii-xiii). In doing so he implies

to any effort to grope with Islam in twentieth-century Africa. This is why during certain periods the ways in which men relate to God and the spiritual world change and earlier religious syntheses break down, both the traditional and some Islamic ones. In answering this question, it is important that we study the particular social and economic conditions in which change takes place, but it is also important to remember that religion is important because people have spiritual needs.

MARTIN A. KLEIN University of Toronto

THE MISSIONARY AND THE DIVINER: CONTENDING THEOLOGIES OF CHRISTIAN AND AFRICAN RELIGIONS. By Michael C. Kirwen.

Maryknoll, N.Y- Orbis Books, 1987. Pp. xxv, 134.

This delightful book introduces readers in a very enjoyable way to the complexities of African religion and cross-cultural communication. It does this through a series of dialogues between a Roman Catholic missionary (the author, a Maryknoll father) and an African diviner, whom the author explains is, in reality, a composite figure who represents various diviners encountered by Dr. Kirwen. As such it is an excellent introductory text for courses on African religion, theology and anthropology. It will excite students and make them aware of existential issues which could otherwise remain "dead" academic debates.

The book has a general introduction and five chapters written in dialogue form. Each chapter has its own introduction and several shorter sections which contextualize the issues discussed. The chapter titles indicate the major topics: "God in the Absence of a Messiah," "The Source of Evil: Divinity and Humanity," "Widow Identity: Individual or Communal," "Religious Ministry: Divination or Priesthood," and "Everlasting Life: Remembrance or Resurrection." Following each chapter Kirwen provides a short commentary summarizing his own reaction to the questions and arguments of the diviners and drawing theoretical and theological conclusions.

The book is well written in a conversational style that works. Unfortunately, it lacks an index and bibliographic references which would have greatly improved its value to academics. These failings can however, be forgiven because of the vividness and life which Kirwen brings to his subject.

Despite the fact that I strongly recommend this book and intend to use it as a text in my undergraduate class on African religion, I have several serious criticisms. In the introduction Kirwen tells the reader that "At the beginning of each chapter, I introduce the setting as a social scientist" (p. xxiv). This is simply untrue. His introductions are useful but they lack methodological sophistication and the rigor of the social scientist. For example he never really introduces the people he writes about and fails to explain such things as their history and kinship system in a systematic manner.

Second, the author repeatedly refers to an "African cosmology," which, he clearly believes, underlies African religions (pp. xii-xiii). In doing so he implies

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708 BOOK REVIEWS

that "certain beliefs and customs are consistently found in most of the African traditional cultures" (p. xvi). Although he qualifies these statements by saying "the greater the similarity of customs, the greater the possibility of sharing these same insights," he never develops the significance of social "similarity" and leaves the uninitiated reader with the impression that such a thing as African Religion (as opposed to African religions) really exists.

In light of the fact that the people he is writing about are Luo, his reference to an overarching African religion is regrettable. Reading Kirwen one would never dream that the Luo scholar Okot p'Bitek had written a devastating attack on the tendency of Westerners to reduce all African religions to one generalized religion in his excellent book African Religions in Western Scholarship (Nairobi, 1970). Nor would one imagine that an African had already written an academic treatise on Luo traditional religion. (Okot p'Bitek, Religion of the Central Luo, Nairobi, 1971.) These omissions are all the more serious because many of the concepts used by Kirwen, such as the notion of a High God, are the very one's Okot p'Bitek criticizes in his books.

It could be argued, of course, that Kirwen is writing about an essentially different Luo group than that studied by Okot p'Bitek. This may well be true but, if it is, it simply reinforces the argument against Kirwen's tendency to generalize.

Further, I simply do not understand Kirwen's concept of "nominal reincarnation" (pp. xvi) which he seems to admit he got from a "Swiss anthropologist" (pp. 121-122). To import Hindu-sounding views of reincarnation, or perhaps one should say transmigration, into African religious thought reflects both nineteenth- century comparative religion and the western counter-culture of the sixties with its grandchild the so-called "New Age Movement" of the 1980s.

A more accurate understanding of the role of ancestors in the African traditions discussed, and the ability of ancestors to manifest themselves through living people, is probably to be found in an understanding of kinship and the function of "office" as shown by the late F. B. Welbourn in his excellent book Atoms and Ancestors (Bristol, 1968). To the extent that belief in reincarnation is found in contemporary Africa it is much more likely to have been introduced, even in quite remote areas, by groups like the Rosicrucians and other modern Western religious movements. This point has been well made by Rosalind I. J. Hackett.1

Finally, the major weakness of the book which requires that it be used in conjunction with other works, is that it lacks both historical and social perspectives setting the statements of the diviners in the context of traditional Luo religion. Instead the reader is given an ethnographic present which, while fascinating, distorts the analysis.

Notwithstanding these somewhat severe criticisms this is an excellent book which deserves to be widely read and discussed.

IRVING HEXHAM University of Calgary

1See her article, "Religious Encounters of the Third Kind: Spiritual Technology in Modern Nigeria," in V. C. Hayes, ed., Religion and Identity (Bedford Park, S.A., 1986).

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