This study of the conversion of tribal peoples to Christianity combines case studies with the contributors' theories, challenging anthropologists and sociologists to reassess the varieties of religious experience and the convergent processes involved in religious change.

Robert W. Hefner, Introduction Howard Clark Kee on the Early Church Terence Ranger on Southern Africa Robert W. Hefner on Java William L. Merrill on Mexico Donald K. Pollock on Amazonia John Barker on Papua, New Guinea Aram A. Yengoyan on Australia Charles F. Keyes on Thailand David K. Jordan on China Peter Wood, Afterword

"Contributes as much to advancing contemporary social theory as it does to understanding conversion."—Dale Eickelman, Dartmouth College

"These rich and rewarding essays problematize a process central to Western notions of the making of modernity—the reformation of peripheral worlds under the impact of global religions. [The authors] challenge established disciplinary boundaries, providing sensitive accounts of the interplay of world-transforming movements and accounts of specific cultures and histories. In doing so, they cause us to rethink the ethnocentric, developmentalist assumptions often built into the very notion of "conversion" itself as a concept in our own scholarly tradition."—Jean Comaroff, University of Chicago