Healing and Power in Ghana

African Initiated Churches are not always chronologically postcolonial. Many of them started during the colonization process, and encountered the hostility of the colonizers. This is the case of the oldest Ghanean African Initiated Church, which has been studied by Paul Grant in this remarkable book published in 2020 (Baylor University Press).

In nineteenth-century Ghana, regional warfare rooted in profound social and economic transformations led thousands of displaced people to seek refuge in the small mountain kingdom of Akuapem. There they encountered missionaries from Germany whose message of sin and forgiveness struck many of these newcomers as irrelevant to their needs. However, together with Akuapem's natives, these newcomers began reformulating Christianity as a ritual tool for social and physical healing, as well as power, in a dangerous spiritual and human world. The result was Ghana's oldest African-initiated variant of Christianity: a homegrown expression of unbroken moral, political, and religious priorities.

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The Quest for Russia's Soul, Evangelicals and Moral Education

What were American Evangelicals doing in Russian public schools after the collapse of the USSR?

Actually, the Russian Ministry of Education had invited them. Faced with the need for new approaches to moral education after the demise of communism, the Russian Ministry of Education turned to a group of Western evangelical Christians called the CoMission for help. Oddly enough, a government that had promoted atheism, destroyed churches, and persecuted Christians for more than seventy years now found itself partnering with Christians to train their educators to teach ethics.

While a few books have described the changes in Russian public schools, this book, first published in 2002 and then in 2018 (new edition) provides the first in-depth case study of moral education in Russia after communism. Link