Lausanne World Pulse – The Dictionary of African Christian Biography: What it is, How it Began and Where it is Going
By Jonathan Bonk
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Faculty at Makumira University College in Tanzania |
Maverick economist E. F. Schumacher once stood on a street corner in Leningrad, Russia, trying to understand the map his Russian hosts had given him. He was confused. While there was some correspondence between what the map registered and what he could see with his own eyes (the names of parks, intersecting streets, etc.), several enormous churches looming in front of him were nowhere on his map. His guide soon pointed out that while the map did indeed include some churches, they were only on the map because they were museums. Those that were not museums were not shown. “It is only the ‘living churches’ we don’t show,” he explained.1
Among the most astonishing religious phenomena of the twentieth century has been the growth of Christianity in Africa. As Lamin Sanneh recently observed,
“Muslims in 1900 outnumbered Christians by a ratio of nearly four to one, with some 34.5 million, or thirty-two percent of the population. In 1962 when Africa had largely slipped out of colonial control, there were about sixty million Christians, with Muslims at about 145 million. Of the Christians, twenty-three million were Protestants and twenty-seven million were Catholics. The remaining ten million were Coptic and Ethiopian Orthodox.”2
Forty years later the number of Christians in Africa had multiplied by six to nearly 380 million, overtaking the Muslim population to comprise an estimated 48.37 percent of the approximately 800 million total population.3 Between 1900 and 2000 the Catholic population in Africa increased a phenomenal 6,708 percent, from 1,909,812 to 130,018,400. Catholic membership has increased 708 percent over the last fifty years.4
Yet, even the most recent attempts by mainline Church historians to help seminarians and church leaders locate themselves and find their way in the terra firma of contemporary world Christianity take scarcely any note of Africa.
Eleven years ago, while I was still a seminary instructor in Canada, the Dictionary of African Christian Biography5 (DACB) was an inchoate idea, little more than the agenda for a modest scholarly consultation convened from 31 August to 2 September 1995. Funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts and hosted by the Overseas Ministries Study Center (OMSC), this invitation-only event explored the need for an International Dictionary of Non-western Christian Biography, with Africa as the particular focus.
In 1999, two years after my arrival at OMSC, I embarked on the first of what would become annual DACB-related trips to Africa. Since 2000 Ms. Michele Sigg has served as the very effective project manager, and I have visited universities, seminaries and research centers in Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, Zambia, Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Namibia, Tanzania, Malawi and Egypt. Today more than one hundred seminaries, universities and research centers in many African countries are registered as official participating institutions, with designated liaison coordinators, and contribute to a steady flow of biographical materials for the dictionary. Biographers in Ethiopia compete to have their stories read publicly at the annual Frumentius Lectures in Ethiopian Church History. The top three researchers/writers are further honored with a gift of books.
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Dr. Jonathan Bonk is executive director of the Overseas Ministries Study Center in New Haven, Connecticut, USA. He is editor of the International Bulletin of Missionary Research and a member of the Lausanne Theology Working Group. |