2005 Santa Clara Lecture

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Professor Sanneh will speak to us on the topic of: "Why is Christianity, the Religion of the Colonizer, growing so fast in Africa and what can Euro-American Christians learn from these Christianities?"

Lamin Sanneh is the D. Willis James Professor of Missions and World Christianity and Professor of History at Yale Divinity School. A naturalized U.S. citizen, Sanneh is descended from the Nyanchos, an ancient African royal house, and was educated on four continents. He went to school with chiefs’ sons in the Gambia, West Africa. He subsequently came to the United States on a U.S. government scholarship, and after graduating, he spent several years studying classical Arabic and Islam, including a stint in the Middle East, and working with the churches in Africa and with international organizations concerned with inter-religious issues.

He earned his Ph.D. in Islamic history at the University of London. He was a professor at Harvard University for eight years before moving to Yale University, where he is actively involved in Yale’s Council on African Studies. He is an editor-at-large of the ecumenical weekly, The Christian Century, and serves on the editorial board of several academic journals. He is an honorary research professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, and is a life member of Clare Hall, Cambridge University. He serves on the board of Ethics and Public Policy at Harvard University, and the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute in Birmingham, Alabama. He is the author of over a hundred articles on religious and historical subjects, and of several books. For his academic work he was made Commandeur de l’Ordre National du Lion, Senegal’s
highest national honor.