Faith in Flux: Pentecostalism and Mobility in Rural Mozambique by Devaka Premawardhana (review)

If all that Faith in Flux offered were an account of Pentecostalism in rural Mozambique, it would be a small but useful contribution to African religious studies. However, in the process of trying to understand why Pentecostalism has uncharacteristically struggled to find converts in the region, the book becomes much more than that. It is an existential ethnography of the Makhuwa people of Northern Mozambique, a meditation on colonialism, globalization, modernity and the nature of Pentecostalism, a critique of cultural theory, and a fascinating narrative of “snakebites and elephant invasions, chronic illnesses and recurring wars, disputes within families and conflicts with the state” (17). Elegantly and accessibly weaving these threads together, Faith in Flux operates in a “humanistic mode of anthropological research and writing” (15) that reflects “the epistemic openness of lived experience” (17). Just as much as its scholarly substance, this is the book’s strength: the fact that its respect for its subject is reflected in its form. It is beautifully and brilliantly written.

What binds the book’s diverse narratives into a coherent discourse is the concept of mobility. Makhuwa culture, Devaka Premawardhana argues, is “predisposed toward transformative mobile practices” (156) including circular migration, flight as a strategic alternative, the emphasis on return in rites of passage, and the reverence for Mozambique’s Mount Namuli as, mythically, “the place of origin, departure, and return” (46). So, conversion (to Pentecostalism for example) is consonant with Makhuwa practices—the Makhuwa word othama means both “to move” and “to convert” (50). Returning to traditional spiritual practices is also consistent with this “shape-shifting self” (91), so Pentecostal churches, which demand of the convert a complete rupture with the past, are beset by what they characterize as backsliding.

Faith in Flux takes issue with this characterization of Makhuwa mobility. For the Makhuwa, Premawardhana explains, conversion is “less a matter of continuity or change than of continuity of change” (8). And it is this insight that leads to what is, perhaps, the book’s most valuable contribution to its field. Moving beyond the concepts of hybridity and syncretism, which imply an irreversible fusion of two traditions, Premawardhana proposes seriality as a way to think about the practice of embracing Pentecostalism while also retaining traditional spiritual practices (100). He builds on Janet McIntosh’s use of the concept of polyontology in her study of the interaction between Islam and Giriama Traditionalism in Kenya. Polyontology eschews “the need for overarching coherence . . . [and] holds open plurality and fluidity without discarding the sense of distinct, compartmentalized essences” (100); Prehmawardhana argues that the Makhuwa’s “polyontological mobility” means that “[o]ffering praise to Jesus and offering makeya to ancestors are neither mutually incompatible nor simultaneously compatible. They are serially compatible” (100).

The anthropologist, who teaches at Emory University, locates the source of this polyontological mobility in the matrilineal structure of Makhuwa society and the culture’s traditional egalitarianism. This “affirmation of women” (127) is something that Pentecostalism shares, Premadwardhana argues, because its “stress on equal access to authority and, indeed, to salvation” empowers female converts and opens “a space to negotiate and reinterpret gender values” (127). Why this commonality has not led to more Pentecostal conversion in Northern Mozambique is the subject of the book’s final chapters. As Premawardhana says, “By attending to a part of the world where Pentecostalism has failed to grow explosively, we stand to learn something . . . about Pentecostalism itself” (138). What Pemawardhana finds is a paradox. Because within Pentecostalism “flexibility, dynamism, and kinesis” are emphasized, it “sustains even when it supplants” the traditional Makhuwa lifeworld (142). So, “Pentecostalism and indigenous traditions are corporeally continuous in ways that defy Pentecostalism’s rhetoric of rupture” (156).

The future of Pentecostalism among the Makhuwa, Premawardhana concludes, depends on whether or not it is able to come to terms with its own emphasis on “continuity of change” rather than “continuity or change.” He admits, “[T]he future of Pentecostalism among the Makhuwa looks...