This chapter addresses developments in Late Antiquity, which witnessed a partial shift to more land-based conceptions of both ownership and rulership. The prior literature has pointed to two explanatory factors: the decline of classical polis culture amidst the deurbanization of Late Antiquity, and the rise of Christianity. The chapter draws together the threads of this literature, in order to develop an account of late antique cultural change. Classical Roman property law, it argues, had its context in classical cities. The relative decay of urban dominance and the rise of Christianity tended to undermine the classical foundations of the law of both ownership and rulership. The Empire was reconceived in more territorial terms, while classical conceptions of elite power faltered. The resulting shifts did not result in any decisive and thoroughgoing transformation of the understanding of ownership and rulership, but they set the stage for later developments of great significance.

This chapter explores Pentecostal conversion as both an affective and a political process. It considers the kind of subjects young urban Pentecostals are called upon to become: organised, enterpreneurial, armed not only with a transformed heart but with a ‘vision’ for their future and a ‘strategic plan’. This subject both converges with and diverges from the RPF’s attempts to create ‘ideal’ subjects who are able to participate in the country’s post-genocide development. While some young Pentecostals benefited from such self-making, others became disillusioned. Instead, they highlighted the limits of the Pentecostal project and its inability to deliver the bright future they felt they had been promised.

This chapter considers gender dynamics within the new Pentecostal churches and the role of young women within them. It explores Pentecostal gender constructions and how they conflict with the RPF’s more ‘progressive’ gender policies. The chapter foregrounds young women’s timework and how their actions are oriented towards leaving a Christian legacy for imagined heirs in the future. Here legacy is related to notions of urwibutso (memorial), with the concept taking on new meanings in Pentecostal churches. This chapter continues the discussion of Christian ubwenge, arguing that it becomes particularly important for young Pentecostal women.

Chapter 2 explores Pentecostal ethics, and how urban Pentecostal churches in Rwanda attempted to Pentecostalise ubwenge, a traditional concept often translated as ‘intelligence’, ‘wisdom’, or even ‘cunning’. It traces discursive attempts on the part of Pentecostal pastors to show that the ‘spirit of intelligence’ (umwuka w’ubwenge) had divine origins. Moving from discourse to practice, the chapter also considers how young Pentecostals employed ubwenge in their own lives, using it to navigate relationships both within the church and with the state.

Chapter 4 examines in detail a Christian crusade called Rwanda Shima Imana or Rwanda Thanksgiving Day. It explores the controversies that arose from it, in particular a conflict between a well-known Pentecostal pastor and the Catholic singer Kizito Mihigo. The conflict was in part about power: who has the right, ability, and authority to interpret the Bible and, by extension, Rwanda’s history and collective memory. This chapter also complicates the process of transformation, as some hearts were considered unable to transform, a situation which was often related to ethnic identity.

This chapter introduces the main arguments of the book by exploring the case of Kizito Mihigo, a well-known popular singer who was imprisoned, was released, and later died while in police custody. It discusses the idiom of the heart – or, more particularly, the need to transform the heart – as key to understanding post-genocide social life and urban young people’s attempts to navigate a difficult political terrain. Instead of reproducing theoretical binaries – resistance–domination, sound–silence, past–present – this chapter proposes looking to popular culture and Pentecostalism in order to understand the different ways young people in Kigali attempt to assert agency and make ‘noise’ despite a wider context of silence.

This chapter focuses on the new sound economy that Pentecostalism brought to Rwanda after the genocide. It considers a wide range of Pentecostal sound practices – from noise-making to praise and worship to Pentecostal radio – and shows how sound was understood to be key to inner and outer transformation. Pentecostals drew a distinction between ‘godly’ and ‘secular’ media, which allowed some young singers to become ‘gospel stars’. This chapter equally focuses on the materiality of Pentecostal sounds – the work that sound does outside of its discursive properties – and places this within the wider sonic context of post-genocide Rwanda. The RPF state has increasingly cracked down on noise – associated both with the new churches and nightclubs – and in 2018 closed thousands of chruches across the country. Perhaps ironically, despite their differences, the new Pentecostal churches and the RPF state share a conviction of sound’s transformative power.

The Conclusion returns to the case of Kizito Mihigo and his tragic death in February 2020. It considers how his music reveals a certain politics of humanity, and the ways in which the RPF state tries to define who is and is not to be considered human. Returning to the theme of sound, noise, and silence, it sugggests the importance of taking sound seriously in Rwanda. Thinking more closely about sound – not only its discursive properities but its material ones as well – opens up new avenues for scholarship.

Chapter 4 continues the theme of the European Mythology of the Indies (II), exploring the intellectual framework employed by Europeans (specifically Spanish, French, and British) to situate native peoples within a European worldview, taking the narrative from the sixteenth century, through the seventeenth century, and into the early eighteenth century. The chapter considers the use of the terms “civilization” and “barbarism” to characterize indigenous peoples, traditions of millennial thought and prophecy among the Franciscan friars, theories of demonology and witchcraft as applied to native inhabitants, and the myth of the so-called pre-Hispanic evangelization of the Americas and the identification of the Christian St. Thomas with the Mesoamerican god Quetzalcoatl, the myth of indigenous peoples as descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel, and finally the myth of the noble savage.

This chapter probes the powerful presence of Greek epic in the world of late antique Christianity. The chapter begins by exploring the dynamic variety of uses to which hexameter verse was put by late antique Christians, including poems on surprisingly salacious themes. It then turns to consider hexameter poems on specifically Christian topics. First it examines the earliest examples of such texts, the Sibylline Oracles and the poems in the Codex of Visions. He then analyses the group of poems all composed in the fifth century CE: the Metaphrase of the Psalms of ps.-Apollinaris, the Homeric Centos and Martyrdom of St Cyprian of Eudocia and the Paraphrase of John’s Gospel by Nonnus. Each of these is, in a different way, a transcription into hexameter verse of a pre-existing Christian text — a striking development in the history of Greek poetry. Whitmarsh shows how this shift enacts, and indeed puts pressure on, the distinction between form and content. Yet for all that they have in common, each of the three fifth-century poets has a different agenda, and reflects a unique poetic vision and aesthetic.

This chapter explores the history of urbanization in Nigeria, focusing primarily on the colonial era and, to a lesser degree, precolonial Nigeria in areas that hosted large, Indigenous urban centers like Ibadan or Kano. This chapter will argue that the primary factor that pushed Nigeria toward urbanization was colonialism, driven primarily by economic interests. This development was informed by Nigeria’s unique geographic, social, and political conditions, the specifics of which will be showcased through the exploration of Nigeria’s most prominent cities. Finally, the chapter will detail the urban policies of colonial officials and the actual development of these cities, along with the challenges that arose from uneven, exploitative practices. These issues would mire Nigeria’s urban landscape with poor planning, crime, poverty, and numerous other challenges which continue to plague the nation today.

Once Christian Europe’s most paradigmatic internal Other, Jews are now mostly seen as a well-integrated and successful religious minority group. For centuries, Jews faced political, social, and legal exclusion. Now, politicians proudly invoke the West’s shared ‘Judeo-Christian’ heritage. Compared to the past, public expressions of antisemitism have become increasingly taboo. Jews have seemingly moved from being paradigmatic outsiders to accepted insiders. Despite this undoubted success, there are still moments when this position can become suddenly unsettled. There are not only the terrible attacks on Jewish life, such as the synagogue shootings in Halle in 2019 and a year earlier in Pittsburgh, the still alarming rates of antisemitic violence, the groups of white supremacists chanting in the streets that Jews will not replace them, or the flourishing antisemitic conspiracy theories in the online and offline worlds. Uneasiness with Jews and Judaism also still manifests in less extreme and less overtly hostile ways in the midst of society on the terrain of liberal law.

Lucian of Samosata emerges as a complex character through his writings, showcasing a deliberate engagement with ambiguity and boundary transgressions. From his caustic and comedic attitude towards Olympian deities to later categorisations as an enemy of Christianity in the tenth-century Suda lexicon, Lucian remains elusive in his spiritual allegiances as well. Similarly, the diverse reception of his theocentric writings prompts a valid inquiry into the best approach to understanding his work. Situating Lucian within the context of the Greco-Roman author’s perceptions of the divine and scholarly inquiries into Greco-Roman religion, this chapter considers his stance regarding religion in general and Christianity in particular. The chapter suggests viewing Lucian as a social anthropologist studying human perceptions of the divine. By delving into the socio-pragmatics of religious practices, Lucian verbalises long-standing debates, shedding light on the realities of belief and disbelief in the contemporary pagan and Christian divine systems.

Chapter 10 begins by summarising the conclusions from the case studies in terms of the model of ruler conversion, but its main aim is to adopt a global perspective on ruler conversions and on conversion more generally at times. It first underscores how vanishingly rare ruler conversions between Islam and Christianity are in the historical record and yet how open to monotheism immanentist regions, such as the Pacific and, to a lesser extent, Africa have been. Some scholars have already noticed the resilience of Buddhist, Hindu and Confucian societies to the proselytising drives of Christianity and Islam. The chapter summarises why this makes sense in terms of the mechanism of transcendentalist intransigence. It then offers a brief overview of how this affected Eurasian history by reference to the Ottoman, Mughal, Manchu and Mongol empires. The second half of the chapter offers a more detailed appraisal of the fortunes of Christianity and Islam in attempting to secure ruler conversions in South Asia, East Asia and both maritime and mainland Southeast Asia. Even though missionaries developed some of their most sophisticated strategies in these regions, the result was largely a failure. The conclusion to the chapter, and the book, reflects on the role of culture and the question of scale in historical analysis.

This chapter explores the relationship between Christianity and ecology in Clare’s poetry, letters, and biblical paraphrases. Critics tend to secularize Clare’s writing and so overlook its biblical, religious, and metaphysical content. The chapter redresses this by assessing Clare’s early Christian faith, his relationship to Wesleyan Methodism and the Ranters, his distrust of organized religion, and his divine ecology as an expression of rural Christianity. Clare looks beyond pantheism and natural religion to identify an interwoven and sacred creation inseparable from the parish. As such, Clare valued Christianity as a ‘religion that teaches us to act justly to speak truth & love mercy’, a social and ecological politics embedded in prayer, mystery, scripture, and faith.

This chapter explores the interplay between Christian ambivalence and the law from the late Middle Ages to the period of emancipation. I begin my discussion by exploring how theological arguments about Jewish inferiority and difference entered both canon law and secular laws during the late medieval period, turning Christian supersessionism into Christian domination in the sociolegal realm. I also consider the increasing racialisation of Jewish difference through the purity of blood doctrine that solidified boundaries between Jews and Christians in Spain at a time when large numbers of Jews had converted to Christianity. Focusing on the crucial period of Jewish emancipation, I then trace how Christian ambivalence further seeped into the secular legal imagination, shaping ideas about what constitutes a proper ‘religion’ in the modern secular nation state. Throughout this chapter, I explore some of the shifting dynamics of conversion and assimilation and their intersections with the racialisation of Jewish difference, which cast doubt on the possibility of Jewish equality.

This chapter examines René Depestre’s epic poem Un arc-en-ciel pour l’occident chrétien. It contextualizes Vodou as a cultural and spiritual lieu de mémoire that was a major turning point leading to the Haitian Revolution. It analyzes the monumental role that the Vodou religion played in creating a sense of collective identity and consciousness that would eventually lead to the Ceremony of Bois Caïman. I argue that Vodou was at the heart of the resistance movement and provided agency for the enslaved. This agency allowed them to question the colonized Christian white god and embrace their own African spirituality. In so doing the enslaved were able to come together to create community and affirm their identity/ies. I then argue that the five sections of the poem depict Vodou as a framework for denouncing racism in the US South, as various lwas travel to Alabama, where lynching was commonplace, to decry the US’s political and religious hypocrisy and to avenge the enslaved and their families in the face of the wickedness and hatred associated with slavery. Depestre decries the hypocrisy of the white god and suggests to readers that the lwas show true humanity.

In 2012, a German district court in the city of Cologne decided that male circumcision for non-therapeutical reasons amounted to criminal assault that could not be justified by parental consent. Over a period of several months, between the decision and the drafting of the amending legislation, the German public and academy became embroiled in a remarkably heated and emotional debate about the future of the practice. But this time, the resentment did not just appear in the notorious online world but became woven into medical and legal arguments against circumcision. Even though critics of circumcision were eager to stress that their concerns were children’s rights alone, the Cologne debate sent a signal to Germany’s Jews that the law could easily turn them into strangers again. Through a close reading of this legal controversy, this chapter examines how contemporary secular legal responses to religious infant male circumcision reproduce Christian ambivalence and rely on a supersessionary logic that renders Jews as stuck in a backward past, while constituting the majoritarian secularised Christian culture as a superior locus of equality and progress.