Introduction: the anthropology of Christianity / Fenella Cannell -- The eternal return of conversion: Christianity as contested domain in highland Bolivia / Olivia Harris -- Renewable icons: concepts of religious power in a fishing village in South India / Cecilia Busby -- Possession and confession: affliction and sacred power in colonial and contemporary Catholic South India / David Mosse -- Reading as gift and writing as theft / Fenella Cannell -- Materializing the self: words and gifts in the construction of charismatic Protestant identity / Simon Coleman -- The effectiveness of ritual / Christina Toren -- Forgetting conversion: the Summer Institute of Linguistics Mission in the Piro lived world / Peter Gow -- The Bible meets the idol: writing and conversion in Biak, Irian Jaya, Indonesia / Danilyn Rutherford -- Scripture study as normal science: Seventh-day Adventist practice on the east coast of Madagascar / Eva Keller -- Appropriated and monolithic Christianity in Melanesia / Harvey Whitehouse -- Epilogue: anxious transcendence / Webb Keane.