Philip Fountain. <i>The Service of Faith: An Ethnography of Mennonites and Development</i>. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2024.

The Service of Faith is an ethnographic study of the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC), a transnational, faith-based nongovernmental organization associated with Mennonite and Brethren in Christ (as well as Amish) churches that focuses on relief, develop ment, and peacebuilding (climate change has been added to the organization's core program).A worldwide ministry of Anabaptist churches, MCC is a renowned global service agency that has worked-in the name of Christ-for over a century to help with people's basic needs and building just peace.Headquartered in North America (the United States and Canada), MCC, which was estab lished in 1920, has offices in more than sixty countries worldwide, including Indonesia.Due to the organization's field-driven approach, MCC's programs and operations differ considerably from one country to another.This study focuses mainly on the works of MCC Indonesia, which began its activities (especially relief and medical programs) in Sumatra in 1948 after World War II, while exploring its foundational roots within North American Mennonite/Anabaptist commu nities.MCC is perhaps the first international service agency to have worked in Indonesia after World War II.More specifically, this book, a product of almost two years of ethnographic fieldwork in Indonesia (18 months) and North America (four months), examines the historical dynamics, trajectories, changes, developments, and everyday activities of the MCC organization and Indonesian MCCers and, to some extent, Mennonite communities as the prime backbone and supporters of this "service agency."It also highlights the significant roles played by actors or agency (without neglecting organizational structures, systems, and discourses), particularly MCCers in Indonesia, in managing, brokering, translating, negotiating, and bridging MCC's various programs within Indonesia's diverse and shifting sociopolitical, cultural, and religious