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Epilogue: SIM’s Successors and the Pentecostal Explosion It is commonplace today to view the explosion of Pentecostalism in the past twenty years as a new and distinctive phenomenon. Certainly it has a number of features that are strikingly different from the evangelical Christianity SIM introduced into the region. However, despite the emphasis within Pentecostalism upon a distinct rupture with one’s past, as a historian I can’t help but be struck by how the Pentecostal explosion is an organic and in some ways logical outcome of the successes and failures of SIM (on the one hand) and of false promise of development discourses in one of the most marginal of spaces on the globe (on the other). When SIM’s agropastoral efforts of the mid-1970s drew it ever more deeply into relief and development work, missionaries chose to target parts of the region that had not already been affected by the medical work and in particular that could not be reached through the successful leprosarium at Danja. Focusing upon the north not only opened a way to work with nomads, it also enabled the mission to work in a sustained fashion with Arna Hausa-speaking populations who evangelists say “have no religion whatsoever, only sacrifice.”1 Since the 1980s, Christian evangelists in the region have also tended to look north, where the influence of Islam emanating from Nigeria is attenuated. During the two decades in which the mission worked closely in this region it had relatively little success drawing converts; some missionaries felt that the area was so strongly overtaken by satanic demons through Arna sacrifice and bori spirit possession that it was not much more promising than the areas that were strongly Muslim. In the late 1990s the mission began to reduce its relief and develop- Epilogue / 401 ment work in Niger because of political instability, the departure of Tony Rinaudo from the mission, and reduced contributions to mission efforts. Many local Christians felt that this was yet another example of how the mission unilaterally chose to abandon various institutions without much consultation with its national employees or the local church. Some in the mission and the local churches felt that the relief and development phase of the mission’s work was a failure. The sizable staff that was laid off and the reduced visibility of the mission in rural areas was noted with bitterness by those affected. However, if one steps back and looks at the larger picture, it is less clear that SIM’s relatively lengthy commitment to Arewa met with no success. The staff that was laid off shifted to other kinds of work where they used many of the skills, social networks, and strategies they had acquired while working for SIM. Some found employment doing development work in one of the most extravagantly funded of the evangelical Christian missions, World Vision. Others became engaged in contributing in a variety of ways to the Campus Crusades of Christ effort (in conjunction with the EERN) to show the film Jesus (a 1979 film rendition of the entire Gospel of Mark dubbed into Hausa and other local languages) in villages throughout the region. Yet others found a more congenial home in the emerging Pentecostal churches, taking their interest and social commitments in Arewa with them. The net result of the ongoing work of the successor institutions to SIM is an extraordinary explosion of conversions to Pentecostal Christianity in the Arewa region today. It was in reflecting upon how Campus Crusades shows the Jesus film that I came to the conclusion that the growth of Pentecostalism cannot be understood without knowledge of the history of SIM’s evangelicalism. I had asked if I could come along with Pastor Ayyuba Lawali of Campus Crusades for Christ for a showing so that I could find out more about this controversial yet highly successful contemporary strategy of evangelization . I knew that in some parts of Africa the film showings had been the occasion for riots and other violence; before I had met Pastor Ayyuba I thought of the film evangelism as unnecessarily confrontational, part of a range of aggressive activities Pentecostal and evangelical Christians engage in that infuriate Muslims and are therefore culturally insensitive . I was somewhat surprised to discover that I liked this gentle and good-humored pastor very much. Coming himself from an Arna background, he had converted to Christianity only after spending nine years in treatment at the Danja leprosarium. He still...

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