David Lindenfeld is Professor of History at Louisiana State University. Trained as a Europeanist, he has published The Practical Imagination: The German Sciences of State in the Nineteenth Century (University of Chicago Press, 1997), and coedited with Suzanne Marchand Germany at the Fin de Siècle: Culture, Politics, and Ideas (LSU Press, 2004).

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction. Beyond Conversion and SyncretismDavid Lindenfeld & Miles RichardsonPART I. CONVERSION AND ITS COMPLEXITIESChapter 1. Conversion, Translation, and Life-History in Colonial Central IndiaSaurabh DubeChapter 2. Conversion at the Boundaries of Religion, Identity, and Politics in Pluricultural GuatemalaC. Mathews SamsonChapter 3. Christian Soldiers, Christian Allies: Coercion and Conversion in Southern Africa and Northeastern America at the Turn of the Nineteenth CenturyElizabeth ElbourneChapter 4. Horton’s “Intellectualist Theory” of Conversion, Reflected on by a South AsianistRichard Fox YoungPART II. SYNCRETISM AND ITS ALTERNATIVESChapter 5. Santa Barbara Africana: Beyond Syncretism in CubaJoseph MurphyChapter 6. Inculturation, Mission, and Dialogue in Vietnam: The Conference of Representatives of the Four ReligionsAnh Q. TranChapter 7. Concentration of Spirituality: The Taiping and the Aladura ComparedDavid LindenfeldChapter 8. Acculturation and Gendered Conversion: Afro-American Catholic Women in New Orleans, 1726-1884Sylvia FreyChapter 9. Colonial Constructs and Cross-Cultural Interaction: Comparing Missionary/Indigenous Encounters in Northwestern America and Eastern AustraliaAnne KearySelected BibliographyNotes on Contributors

“Through its historical exploration of the conceptual trajectories of conversion and syncretism, this book is an important theoretical addition to the library of any specialist or student of religion. Furthermore, the empirical examples on which the different contributions are rich, varied and amply engage the reader with a wide variety of historical and geographical contexts. This is a great book to delve into, especially for those interested in conversion.”  ·  Social Anthropology/Anthropologie sociale“…offers some interesting and useful ethnographic material on the diversity of the missionary experience. It certainly proves its point that ‘conversion’ and ‘syncretism’ cannot be assumed to occur at all, let alone to occur in the same way in all times and places.”  ·  Anthropology Review Database“The volume delights by its broad geographical and denominational range…[it] offers a wealth of material for those interested in missionary and cultural encounters, conversion and the processes of domestication of Christianity. It also forms thought-provoking reading for scholars and students of historical and present-day Christianity.”  ·  Anthropological Notebooks"Meticulously researched, impeccably learned, and lucidly written, these essays push us to revisit the notions of ‘conversion’ and ‘syncretism’ as historical and theological interpretative categories of missions history. Thanks to the editors' and the contributors' labor we can now see why these two categories are much more complex and multidimensional than commonly assumed. No future history of Christian missions can afford ignoring this volume.”  ·  Peter C. Phan, Georgetown University“This is an excellent collection on topics of considerable current interest to scholars in history, anthropology and religious studies…a fine, nuanced collection of highly focused essays.”  ·  Norman Etherington, University of Western Australia