Additional information
by Naomi Haynes (Author)
How Zambian Pentecostal activists worked to transform their country into a self-styled "Christian nation"
In 2015, Zambia began an ambitious program to "actualize" the country's constitutional declaration that it was a "Christian nation." For Pentecostal Christian nationalist activists, this was a "divine season," an opportunity to change their country by submitting it to God's control. In this book, Naomi Haynes examines these efforts at national transformation, offering a careful ethnographic exploration of Christian nationalist theology, ritual, and policy initiatives. Drawing on her extensive fieldwork in Lusaka, Zambia's capital, Haynes describes how activists promoted Zambia's Christian identity, whether by writing books and newspaper articles, posting on social media, building new monuments, praying for the nation, or lobbying for constitutional changes. By tracing Zambian Christian nationalism's internal contradictions and tensions, Haynes charts its ultimate failure, which she ascribes in part to institutional opposition from the civil service and Catholic and mainline Protestant denominations. She also points to what she terms its fatal theological flaw, going beyond the usual secular analysis in anthropology to engage with theological critiques of Christian nationalism. The example of Zambia offers the most fully realized expression of Christian nationalism outside the West, demonstrating what this movement can look like when given free political rein. With this book, Haynes provides an instructive account of an increasingly influential global movement.Author Biography
Naomi Haynes is senior lecturer and Chancellor's Fellow in Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. She is the author of Moving by the Spirit: Pentecostal Social Life on the Zambian Copperbelt and coeditor of Hierarchy and Value: Comparative Perspectives on Moral Order.
Number of Pages: 208
Dimensions: 0.48 x 9.21 x 6.14 IN
Publication Date: August 18, 2026
