Christian churches control substantial areas of land in Africa. While intensifying struggles over their holdings are partly due to the increased pressure on land in general, they also reflect transformations in the relations through which churches' claims to land are legitimized, the increased association of churches with business, and churches' unique positioning as both institutions and communities. This article presents the trajectory of relations between church, state and community in Uganda from the missionary acquisition of land in the colonial era to the unravelling of church landholding under Museveni. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, the authors argue that claims to church land in contemporary Uganda draw on: 1) notions of belonging to the land; 2) views about the nature of churches as communities; 3) discontent regarding whether customary land owners gave churches user rights or ownership; and 4) assessment of the churches' success in ensuring that the land works for the common good. The article develops a novel approach to analysing the changing meaning of the landholdings of religious institutions, thus extending ongoing discussions about land, politics, development and religion in Africa.

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The AIDS pandemic has given rise to transnational connections through which ideas and resources in relation to HIV/AIDS flow between Western and African organisations, as well as between organisations on the African continent. This book argues that religious and faith-based organisations in Africa engage in these transnational connections, which have underlying, scripted, hidden, or rather explicit moral codes. In other words, there are strings attached. The Introduction outlines key strands of transnational theory and interrelations between religion, sexuality, and AIDS in Africa. It shows how matters of sexual morality have been at the centre of conservative political agendas and a central concern in religious and transnational public health interventions. It argues that this linkage between conservatism and a dominant trajectory in the flows of transnational resources, ideas, attitudes and expertise is deeply problematic, since it corroborates stereotyped ideas of what religion is doing in the context of AIDS and sexuality, while ignoring counter-movements among both Christian and Muslim organisations aiming to find other ways of approaching the moral dilemmas posed by HIV/AIDS. Moreover, this linkage raises the question of what exactly conservatism is in an African context.