Page 59 - 2020 SoM Journal Vol 73 No 1 FINAL_Neat

Book Review 51

of his long and illustrious career.
The editors offer a biographical sketch that takes in his education at
Cambridge University, and his times in Salisbury, Dar es Salaam, Stirling and
Zomba. They also outline some of his main academic achievements in terms of
publication, mentorship and the organisation of conferences. John Lonsdale tells
of their shared and formative experiences as students in Cambridge and as
colleagues in Dar es Salaam. Megan Vaughan pays tribute not only to his breadth
of vision, sensibility and ability as a historian but also his personal qualities of
diplomacy, integrity, generosity, humour and shrewd intelligence. Kings Phiri
gives telling examples of what he found most memorable about him: the quality
and depth of his scholarship, the way he collaborated with colleagues, his love for
Malawi and Malawians, and his generous hospitality. Even those who knew John
well, he was essentially a shy and extremely modest person, are likely be surprised
by unsuspected facets of his personality and the extent of his achievements.
The three chapters that follow examine and assess John's influence on
the way Malawi's history has been and is being written. Wapu Mulwafu looks at
the manner in which McCracken has introduced new perspectives and opened new
themes of scholarship, many of which are engaged with in the chapters that follow.
Markku Hokkanen takes McCracken's 'Mission and Politics in Northern Malawi'
as the starting point for his own reflections on the historiography of Medicine in
Malawi. Klaus Fiedler assesses the importance of the same book for the overall
historiography of Christianity.
It is with this subject area that the largest number of chapters concern
themselves. One of McCracken's great strengths was his ability to analyse the
interplay between the people who first brought the religion and the people in
Malawi who made it their own. Harri Englund, by contrasting the attitude of two
prominent Blantyre missionaries to indigenous languages, reflects the different
ways in which they had been affected by their encounter with their African co-
religionists. Hendrina Kachipila explores the context in which DRCM women
missionaries and missionary wives and Malawian churchwomen interacted with
each other, and the dissonance between medium and message when the former
sought to promote western values about motherhood through publications in
Chichewa. Dorothy Tembo also has women as her focus, when she assesses the
role of Malawian women in the construction of social identities in both church
and political settings.
John Lwanda takes up John McCracken's theme of the relationship
between religious leadership and poverty and carries it through to the present day,
putting forward evidence that they are still positively correlated. Felix Nyika
examines the extent of African agency in the growth of a relatively new
phenomenon which he labels as the Neo-Charismatic churches and analyses their
significance for Malawi's present religious landscape. Macleod Salanjira, through
his study of the influence of Christian religious authority from 1975 to 2018,