Engaging Modernity: Methods and cases for studying African Independent Churches in South Africa, edited by Dawid Venter. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004. 240 pp. $54.95. ISBN 0-275-96903-7 (hardback).

Abstract

Engaging Modernity contains a collection of essays by four different authors who purport to open up new perspectives in the study of African Independent Churches (AICs) in South Africa. This is done largely by providing a detailed discussion of research methodologies and established theories. This methodological approach is supported by extended case studies, offering conceptual, community, national, and global perspectives. The book concludes with an epilogue about the possible future of AICs in South Africa. Engaging Modernity seeks new ways to resolve the modernity/tradition dilemma that has long beset the academic debate on AICs. The question is how successfully this is done. Although the book contains a lot of useful information, especially for those who want to familiarise themselves quickly with AICs and the difficulties in studying them, what we get is a rather disparate set of research stories, themselves interesting but not really advancing existing scholarship on AICs much beyond what we know already. Rather than helping overcome the tradition versus modernity debate, this volume perpetuates it, with different authors coming to contrasting conclusions. This seems largely due to the fact that there is no overarching or unifying approach that drives the argument and no consensus on how to operationalise the concept of modernity. Naturally enough, we therefore get very different answers to the question of whether and how AICs engage modernity. It also raises the question of how useful ‘modernity’ is as an analytical concept.