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Abstract

Viewing missionary Protestantism and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) ascarriers of transnational institutional innovation, this article compares their successesand failures at creating self-sustaining institutions in distant societies. MissionaryProtestantism and NGOs are similar in that they attempt to establish formal organiza-tions outside kinship, lineage, and ethnic forms of solidarity. Focusing on institutions asways to create collective capacities that organize social life, we trace the route wherebyProtestant missionaries established congregational religion in Africa and identify socialpractices that made this enterprise successful but are comparatively absent in currentNGO attempts to transform organizational life. Largely ignored by sociologists inter-ested in institutional transformation, the history of congregational religion offersvaluable sociological lessons about the conditions for radical institutional innovation.Its success was rooted first, in colonial missionaries’ability to enforce new ways of lifeon small exemplary communities; second, in local adaptations (African propheticmovements, Pentecostalism) that deepened and widened the social reach of congrega-tional principles; and third in the incentives Protestantism created for propagating thecongregational form.