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Welcome to the first Exchange issue of 2026. This issue includes three articles and concludes with book reviews. Missionary Bibles have had a large impact on African Christianity. Michael Wandusim's article calls the reader to consider the role of the translation process in impacting the missionary Bibles and, by extension, Christianity in Africa. Wandusim focuses on the inter-cultural background processes involving missionaries and indigenous translators that informed the formation of two missionary Bible translations: the Ga Bible (1854-1866) of the Basel Mission and the Ewe Bible of the North German Mission. Through a close reading of archival material, he argues that these background processes ultimately shaped the biblical texts that in turn shaped the Christianity of the African converts who received and appropriated these texts. In Postcolonialism and Christian Theological Reasoning Najib George Awad takes a critical look at some trends within contemporary postcolonial theology. Awad argues that despite the broad recognition of binarism as a central feature of colonial thought, some post-colonial theologies inadvertently fall into a 'trap of recolonization' by a continued reliance on binarity. This is demonstrated, through an interrogation of three central areas: (i) the discourse concerning the shifting center of gravity in Christianity, (ii) contemporary narratives about 'post-Christendom,' and the development of hybrid Christologies. Consequently, the essay argues that instead of liberating theology from binarity, these postcolonial orientations end up mimicking this colonial binarism in their attempts to rid theology of it. In the final article of the issue, Anna Kirchner addresses the religious identity of Arabic-speaking evangelicals in Israel, and their struggle for recognition as an official religious community. Through interviews with evangelicals in Nazareth, Kirchner explores how the legal system, partially inherited from the Ottomans, continues to shape the formation of Christian identities in the region. She argues that the importance of legal recognition sets up an interesting dynamic where evangelicals who tend to view religion in terms of individual conviction, nevertheless, are forced to navigate a legal terrain which emphasizes religion by birth. This dynamic illustrates the negotiations, and pragmatism of Arabic-speaking evangelicals in Israel. We conclude the issue with book reviews.

Abstract This article examines the complex negotiation of religious identity among Arabic-speaking Evangelicals in Israel, focusing on their struggle for official recognition as a religious community. In Israel, religious communities are responsible for personal status law, making affiliation with a recognized religious community essential. Civil marriage is unavailable. While Evangelicals theologically reject the notion of being Christian by birth rather than by personal faith, they must navigate a legal system that fundamentally contradicts their self-understanding. Through fieldwork conducted in Nazareth, this study analyzes how the Convention of Evangelical Churches in Israel, established in 2005, pursues official recognition while grappling with theological tensions. Despite distancing themselves rhetorically from “traditional” Christianity, Evangelicals pragmatically adopt many of its elements. This reveals how the prevailing religious framework in Israel – a reinvention of the Ottoman millet system by British colonial authorities, and continued by Israel – continues to shape Christian identity beyond individual faith convictions.

Abstract Recent studies in world Christianity have established that the missionary mother-tongue Bibles contributed essentially to the rise of indigenous forms of Christianity and its meteoric growth in Africa. However, these studies hardly give attention to the background processes that advanced missionary Bible translations. Yet attention to these background processes will provide a more holistic and nuanced account of the incalculable impact of missionary Bible translations on African Christianity. Using a case study approach and through a close reading of archival data on two missionary Bible translations in West Africa: the Ga Bible (1854–1866) of the Basel Mission and the Ewe Bible (1858–1913) of the North German Mission, this article reconstructs the multi-step background processes that produced these pioneering translations in the nineteenth to early twentieth centuries. Through this longitudinal approach, the article widens and nuances existing understanding of the creative nexus between the Bible and Christianity in Africa by arguing that the impact of missionary-translated Bibles on African Christianity was co-determined by intercultural background processes which defined the kind of biblical texts that African Christian converts read/heard and appropriated in their mother tongues.

Abstract As a central component of Moravian identity, both culturally and spiritually, music- making flourished in the settlement communities of North America, continuing the musical legacy established in Europe. Often within just a few years of settlement, a collegium musicum would be formed to train musicians and provide a “wholesome” pastime for the performers. This paper explores the collegium musicum as a continual site of cultural exchange within the North American Moravian communities that served to both internally and externally define the community. This became progressively more important as German-speaking immigration grew in the nineteenth century and Germans increasingly saw themselves as the people of music. Swept up in the ensuing debate over Germanness and the place of these new immigrants in the United States, Moravians foreshadowed what would happen to other German-speaking communities as they used music to create a shared sense of identity, while also interacting with those outside.

Abstract Building on recent research in early modern Moravian history, this article introduces the term “Moravian Churches” to emphasise the diversity of the Moravian Church. Scholars of Moravian studies usually underline the group cohesion of a single global “Moravian Church”. Drawing on concepts such as the “network”, they privilege the cohesiveness of Moravians over the considerable inner-Moravian plurality. By contrast, this contribution explores how the global Moravian Church was a community that comprised distinct Moravian Churches. Indeed, by examining church discipline in the Moravian mission to the Black enslaved people in the Danish West Indies, it highlights the Moravians’ entanglement with the surrounding slave society. Moreover, White eighteenth-century Moravians themselves stressed that the Danish West Indian Moravian Church was dependent on several different centres, further highlighting the significance of polycentricity as an analytical tool in the study of religious plurality.

Abstract Using mission diaries and sheet music preserved in the Genadendal Music Archive, the article explores how Moravian music was adapted and transformed in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century mission community of Genadendal in the South African Cape Colony. On the one hand, the article argues that Moravian practices of musical teaching and music-making in the mission of Khoisan populations must be understood as a forced cultural transfer which operated under colonial circumstances, which included claims of ‘white supremacy’. On the other hand, it documents an active role of the Khoisan in adopting Moravian music practice. Considering the example of choral singing by Khoisan children and the enduring tradition of the “ Posaunenchor ”, the article invites the reader to consider to what extent music practised by the Genadendal community can be seen as an African music tradition.

Abstract This article discusses two letters from the formerly enslaved Euro-African Moravian evangelist Rebecca Protten (1718–1778) to her second husband, Christian Protten (1715–1769), a Euro-African of Ga-Danish descent. It argues that these seemingly trivial letters shed light on the daily life and experiences of ordinary Moravians and as such can inform theory. In doing so, this article aims to make a methodological contribution to the growing body of literature that reflects on Moravian text production and the role the circulation and communal reading of texts played in the community, focusing specifically on private letters, written by ordinary Moravians. Annotated transcriptions and translations of Rebecca’s letters are included in the article to illustrate the argument.