David Chidester is Professor of Comparative Religion at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, author of Christianity: A Global History (2000), Savage Systems: Colonialism and Comparative Religion in Southern Africa (1996), and Salvation and Suicide: Jim Jones, the Peoples Temple, and Jonestown (revised edition, 2003), and coeditor of American Sacred Space (1995). Savage Systems and Salvation and Suicide are winners of the American Academy of Religion Award for Excellence in Religious Studies.