Isaiah Shembe's Prophetic Uhlanga: The Worldview of the Nazareth Baptist Church in Colonial South Africa, by Joel E. Tishken. New York, Peter Lang, 2013. x, 232 pp. $82.95 US (cloth). The Amanazaretha, or the Nazareth Baptist Church, one of the largest independent churches in Southern Africa, has held fascination for scholars since the time of Swedish Lutheran bishop Bengt Sundkler, in the 1940s. This fascination stems particularly from of its perceived syncretism with Zulu pre-Christian religion and its promotion of African traditional values within the context of an evangelical background. Scholars, particularly western theologians, have branded the Nazaretha post-Christian and a bridge to traditional religious practices of pre-colonial Africa. This view was seen especially in the earlier works of Sundkler and those of South African Dutch Reformed theologian G.C. Oosthuizen, but has permeated the literature on African independent churches ever since. Two books on the Church published recently, Joel Cabrita's Text and Authority in the South African Nazaretha Church (New York, 2014) and the one reviewed here, do not go in this direction and have broken new ground in the literature of this church. The Nazareth Church is arguably the most researched religious movement in Africa, certainly in South Africa, where there are thousands of African Independent Churches. One of the reasons this has been a ready subject for research is the Church's willingness to be examined by outside researchers, especially through its archives and copious sacred writings. The Church began in the early twentieth century, probably in 1910, with the remarkable ministry of its founder, Isaiah Shembe, in the eastern province now known as KwaZulu-Natal. This was also the time when and Pentecostal (Apostolic) churches were beginning to emerge in South Africa--churches that, like Shembe's, emphasized direct divine revelation and the practices of spiritual gifts like prophecy, healing, and speaking in unknown tongues. Shembe was undoubtedly affected by the evangelical revivalism of the time, particularly those practices found in the new movements of Zionism and Pentecostalism, but it is doubtful whether his church could be described as Zionist as Tishken does (7), for churches have very different histories and antecedents. Tishken's book, unlike that of Cabrita, focuses specifically on the life of Isaiah Shembe and his prophetic experiences subverting colonialism and oppression faced by Black South Africans at the time. …