Bartolomé de las Casas

For scholars of world Christianity, Bartolomé de las Casas is a fascinating figure. A missionary to the New World, he struggled to express a theology that could address the extraordinary conditions that colonial expansion and colonization created. In Bartolome de las Casas, O.P.: History, Philosophy, and Theology in the Age of European Expansion, prominent scholars from […]

Anabaptists in Nigeria

In 1958 a group of congregations in southeastern Nigeria solicited affiliation with the North American Mennonite Board of Missions (MBM), declared themselves Mennonite, and sought missionaries and assistance. MBM responded by sending missionaries and by providing assistance to Mennonite Church Nigeria (MCN) and others in the region. The collaboration between MCN and MBM developed during […]

African Initiative and Inspiration in the East African Revival, 1930-1950

In the 1930s and 1940s, African revivalists in colonial Ugandan and Ruanda-Urundi appropriated Christian beliefs and practices to forge a distinctively African Christian spirituality that precipitated the moral and spiritual transformation of many people in East Africa. Daewon Moon, in his successfully defended dissertation, demonstrated that African revivalists had the support and sympathy of evangelical-minded […]

Lay and Ecclesiastical Travelers from Europe to China in the Long 18th Century

In Illusion and Disillusionment: Travel Writing in the Modern Age, Eugenio Menegon opens the edited volume with a chapter on “Desire, Truth, and Propaganda: Lay and Ecclesiastical Travelers from Europe to China in the Long  Eighteenth Century.” The introduction explains: “The letters written by this early modern eighteenth century traveler, the Italian Serafino da San Giovanni […]

Colonialism, Christianity, and Personhood in Africa

“Africans labor under the weight of a crisis of personhood, self-identity, and a split self that is a legacy of Christianity and colonialism,” Nimi Wariboko argues. In his recent publication, “Colonialism, Christianity and Personhood,” which appears in the Blackwell Companion to African History, edited by William H. Worger, Charles Ambler and Nwando Achebe, Wariboko explores the dual nature […]