Page 66 - SoMJ Vol 74 - No 1, 2021

56 The Society of Malaŵi Journal

Book Review

Kenneth R. Ross and Klaus Fiedler, A Malawi Church History.
Mzuni Press, Mzuzu, Malawi, 2020, pp. 493 with maps and
illustrations, ISBN 978-99960-60-74-8, eISBN 978-99960-60-75-7.
Outside Malawi available from African Books Collective, Oxford.
U.K.
David Bone

In this book, Kenneth Ross and Klaus Fiedler, two scholars with seventy
years of experience between them of teaching, researching and publishing in
Malawi, have set themselves the ambitious task of covering ‘The church history
of Malawi from beginning to end, considering all its component parts and seeking
to take account of its every dimension.’ Given the number and diversity of the
thousand or so churches in Malawi and the hugely significant part churches have
played in so many aspects of the nation’s history, this is a massive undertaking,
all the more so in that it has not previously been attempted.
In order to make such a huge subject comprehensible they have divided
their history into four eras. The first, from 1860 and David Livingstone to a major
Missionary Conference in 1910, deals with the coming of the first missionaries,
what motivated them, what their aims and strategies were and how they were
received by various peoples in Malawi. The second era, from 1910 till the dawn
of political independence in 1960, has its focus on the expansion and consolidation