Synopses & Reviews
This study focuses on the United Brethren in Christ, an important churchtradition which began as a pioneering movement of interdenominationalrevitalization in the decades immediately following the first Great Awakening ineighteenth century America. Its ministry in Sierra Leone West Africa isgenerally recognized as establishing the most influential and vital Christianpresence in that former British colony that had been a key cog in the eighteenthcentury British slave trade.Jeremy Smith's treatment of his subject comes from a quite different angleof interest from previous scholarship on the subject. Drawing from thephilosophical pragmatism of William James and the phenomenology of Husserl, among others, he probes the dynamics of what it means to inculcate a sense ofthe life of living beings around us from within, as seen in the context of themissionary work of Lloyd Mignerey, an early twentieth century American UBmissionary to Sierra Leone. Here is the first treatment of this key mission in the development of indigenous Christianity among West African tribal society that approaches its subject from an epistemological perspective. In doing so, ithonors the faithful missional efforts of Mignerey and the hundreds of others whoserved in that important UB mission field for almost 160 years. Yet, in additionto that, it also contributes to a larger discussion of what religious dynamics are involved in the deeper quest for God that transcends the limitations of religiouslanguage and social ethos. Viewed in the ethos of the United Brethren in Christ, this was also a quest for the new humanity that is formed out of the Christianexperience of Pentecost-a theme to which the United Brethren explicitlyappealed in their missional self-understanding. Viewed from that perspective, this sensitive study also contributes to the deeper meaning of Christianrevitalization.