Reviewed by: Faith in Flux: Pentecostalism and Mobility in Rural Mozambique by Devaka Premawardhana Daria Trentini Devaka Premawardhana, Faith in Flux: Pentecostalism and Mobility in Rural Mozambique. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018. 232 pp. Faith in Flux provides an ethnographic analysis of religious and social change in MaĂșa, a rural district in the Niassa province of northern Mozambique, which is inhabited by the Makhuwa people. Anthropologist Devaka Premawardhana focuses on Pentecostalism in a region that was embroiled in Islamization and Catholic missionary evangelization, and where indigenous religions remain prominent in the lives of local residents. What Premawardhana found puzzling was the ease with which many Makhuwa not only joined but also left these churches, in some cases only to return again. In fact, the majority of those who remained in the churches were not local Makhuwa, but immigrants from other regions. Faith in Flux is therefore motivated by this central question: Why do Makhuwa in MaĂșa defect from Pentecostal churches? Premawardhana encountered similar trajectories in the migration stories of young Makhuwa, who left their villages for the opportunities of urban living, eventually returning again to their villages and peasant life, confronting delusions of economic and social progress. These decisions, though, were never definitive, as these young men often left their villages yet again for urban life, wafting back and forth. How to make sense of âthese circular migrations,â both religious and spatial? Premawardhanaâs engagement with this question generates a work that not only contributes to the literature on Pentecostalism and social change, but also offers a sophisticated exploration of the complexities of the Makhuwa people of MaĂșa. [End Page 1319] Migration and conversion overlap throughout the book, as conversion is locally conceptualized more as a migratory experienceâothama meaning âto moveââthan as an inward transformationâopittukuxa murima, âto change heart,â an expression that the Makhuwa rarely use (23â24). Faith in Flux, however, understands mobility as more than just spatial movement. Drawing on Ghassan Hageâs (2005) definition of existential mobility, Premawardhana sees mobility, above all else, as having a direction, as ânot being stuckâ (17). Each chapter is structured around a story of mobilityâmen and women who flee after an unexpected, mysterious death; fervent Christians who resort to healers and sorcerers in times of illness; young men who temporarily leave Pentecostal churches to embark on rituals of initiation; and women who move between churches, mosques, and spirit ceremonies, as they confront sicknesses and abusive husbands. There are also stories about those who remain, like Diniz, an old sugarcane harvester who decides to stay on his land despite the fact that his crops are continuously threatened by the invasions of elephants, since, as he laments, âThere is no place without elephants. There is no other possibilityâ (68). For Premawardhana, this story of perseverance is also one of existential mobilityâan example of agency in the face of the forces that impinge upon oneâs life. Nonetheless, Faith in Flux does not interpret Makhuwa mobility merely as a resource to confront the hardships of life, the suffering of illness, and the unpredictability of the world. Nor does it reduce mobility solely to external and global forces, as is often the case with literature about social change in Africa and elsewhere. Rather, Premawardhanaâs central point is that movement and transformation are intrinsic to Makhuwa tradition. Being Makhuwa is to be on the move, open to change, in a constantly kinetic state of being. Premawardhanaâs ethnographic investigation of mobility occurs in three parts, each of which refers to a local concept that illuminates the centrality of mobility in the Makhuwa ethos: Othama (âto moveâ), Ohiya ni Ovolowa (âto leave and to enterâ), and Okhalano (âto be withâ). The first partââTo Moveââbegins by exploring mobility within Makhuwa history, myth, and social and economic structures. Chapter 1, âA Fugitive People,â shows how the history of the Makhuwa is marked by continuous flights and migrations, the extent to which the Makhuwa can be defined as a seminomadic people. In this respect, [End Page 1320] mobility functioned as a strategy upon which the Makhuwa drew to avoid slave-trade raids and the civil war. Nonetheless...