Aunt Tena, Called to Serve: least as catechists) and the emergence of
Journals and Letters of Tena A. grassroots organizations (notably, Base
Huizenga, Missionary Nurse to Christian Communities) also earned the
Nigeria. church many plaudits, even when such
initiatives were sometimes treated with
Edited by Jacob E. Nyenhuis, Robert P. suspicion by the hierarchy back in the
Swierenga, and Lauren M. Berka. Grand Old World. The church also championed
Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009. Pp. xxxii, 944. $49. human rights, acted as a peacemaker,
and did much to lay the seedbed of Latin
Tena Huizenga was a missionary nurse The third point to be made is that these American democracy. Such contributions
working under the auspices of the materials collectively offer a most helpful reaped rich rewards, and Cleary reveals
Christian Reformed Church of America picture of social life on a mission station that, among the region’s institutions, the
(CRC) from 1937 to 1954, mostly at and the interpersonal dynamics between Catholic Church ranks higher in opinion
the Lupwe mission station in British missionaries and African Christians, polls than the government, the media, the
colonial Nigeria. Aunt Tena, Called to Serve expatriates and indigenes. Coming from police, or the military.
reproduces an extensive selection of her a thickly layered social universe in Dutch Cleary sees Catholic spiritual life in
correspondence during her career. Aunt Chicago, Aunt Tena endured a loneliness Latin America as brimful of confidence
Tena was an energetic letter writer with a that was palpable in her early writings. in its popular religiosity, encounters
Yet the book has very few missives from with indigenous faith traditions, and
the last stages of her career. Perhaps this more recently the Catholic charismatic
is because as matron (some of her African movement. The region’s theology has
OMSC’s free online database, compiled in coop- correspondents addressed her “Mother”) also matured beyond all expectation: forty
eration with Yale Divinity School Library, lists to an equally complex social universe in years ago it was “derivative” (p. 106);
over 6,100 doctoral dissertations in English Nigeria, she found little time to write. today it is one of the engines of Catholic
on mission and world Christianity. Search by —Andrew E. Barnes thought. Cleary is sometimes a little too
author, title, subject, keyword, and institution dismissive of the Pentecostal challenge,
at www.internationalbulletin.org/resources. Andrew E. Barnes, Associate Professor of History, and occasionally too devoted to past
Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, is the victories, but he amply demonstrates that
author most recently of Making Headway: The rumors of Latin American Catholicism’s
sharp eye for the pathos of everyday life Introduction of Western Civilization in Colonial impending demise have been greatly
and some real skills at narration. She was Northern Nigeria (Rochester Univ. Press 2009). exaggerated.
also someone who (as the letters to her —Jonathan Wright
attest, especially those from her Afri