| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.4

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Sub-Saharan Africa

Dorothy L. Hodgson. The Church of Women: Gendered Encounters Between Maasai and Missionaries. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 2005. Pp. xvii, 307. Cloth $65.00, paper $24.95. Kari Miettinen. On the Way to Whiteness: Christianization, Conflict and Change in Colonial Ovamboland, 1910–1965. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. Bibliotheca Historica, 92. 2005. Pp. 370. €29.00.
Although Dorothy L. Hodgson and Kari Miettinen both have produced books about missionary proselytizing and Christian conversion in Africa, their books are strikingly different. Focusing on the Maasai of Tanzania, Hodgson investigates the work of American Spiritan (Catholic) missionaries in three communities, from the 1950s to the present. Miettinen, in contrast, focuses on the work of Finnish Lutheran missionaries among the Ovambo in Namibia from 1910 to 1965.	1
Even more significant than these ethnic, geographic, religious, and temporal differences is the dissimilarity in approach. Both authors make extensive use of government and missionary archives. Hodgson, however, complements these sources with interviews with American missionaries, Tanzanian catechists, and 175 ordinary Maasai women and men. Living among the Maasai converts she studied, her primary method of research was participant-observation. Miettinen, in contrast, conducted only a few interviews with elderly Ovambo pastors and teachers, but none with ordinary Ovambo congregants. These divergent research methods dramatically affected the authors' findings.	2
Hodgson's clearly focused, tightly written study approaches the question of conversion from the inside out, privileging Maasai over missionary perspectives. Her aim is to get to the bottom of a central paradox. Although Spiritan missionaries have concentrated on converting men, far more Maasai women than men have been attracted to Catholicism. Despite the best efforts of male missionaries to teach and baptize men, the Catholic Church has become a "Church of women." How and why, Hodgson asks, could this situation come to pass?	3
Investigating the internal dynamics of Maasai culture, Hodgson notes that historically, Maasai women have had significant powers in the religious/spiritual domain. They are believed to be more spiritual than men, which is manifest in their constant prayers. They have a special relationship with Eng'ai, the most important Maasai deity, who, like Maasai women, is responsible for creating and supporting life. Through their relationship with Eng'ai, women protect and ensure the prosperity of their families and herds and serve as the primary guardians of the Maasai moral order.	4
During the colonial period, the spiritual and secular realms, once united, were separated. While women were marginalized economically and politically, they grew more powerful in the spiritual domain. When the Spiritan missionaries arrived in the 1950s, with the hope of converting Maasai men, the men were indifferent—even hostile—to the new religion. Catholic teachings undermined what it meant to be "Maasai men" but reinforced, and even enhanced, women's preexisting spiritual roles. As the men turned their attention to the increasingly masculinized economic and political realms, women were drawn to the new spiritual one. They flocked to the Catholic Church despite official discouragement.	5
Thus, Catholic missionaries, who came to form male leaders among the Maasai, developed female leaders instead. In their attempt to reinforce the power of male elders, they actually subverted it, providing a means for women to escape men's control. In fact, Maasai women used the new platform of Christianity to critique men, their alleged moral inferiority, and their material corruption. They used Catholicism to defend their view of a moral order in which the sacred and secular are one and where women and men respectfully complement one another.	. . .

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