African Christian Biography: Stories, Lives and Challenges

Abstract

In the wake of the Dictionary of African Biography (2011) and the Dictionary of African Christian Biography (DACB), the present volume, African Christian Biography, emerges as another important contribution to scholarly discourse at the intersection between “African,” “Christian,” and “Biography.” Dana Robert, the editor, argues that at the heart of the volume is the affirmation of biography as an important form of historical writing that broadens the sources and methodologies for reading Africa’s Christian history. Through biography, she claims, “people become . . . subjects of their own history” (viii). In corroboration, Emmanuel Egbunu, in one of the chapters, laments that the absence of biographical writing has fueled the pervading conception of African Christianity as “a late comer within Global Christianity” (63). Robert’s and Egbunu’s assessments provide a clear trajectory toward understanding the purpose and organization of the book as well as its invaluable contributions to the field of World Christianity. The volume consists of papers presented at a conference marking the twentieth anniversary of the Dictionary of African Christian Biography held at Boston University in 2015.The book’s seventeen chapters are divided into four parts. The first, “The Importance of African Christian Biography and the Role of the DACB,” earmarks the vision and historical trajectory connecting this volume to its parent publication, the DACB. Authors in this section respond to the question of why such a scholarly enterprise should matter in the first place as well as how the DACB sought to awaken this consciousness in view of the new phase of world Christianity as captured in World Christianity studies. According to Jonathan Bonk,Bonk’s vision is clearly expressed in the second and third parts of the volume. While the second, entitled “Biographies of Christian Leaders,” focuses on biographical histories of male and female Christian religious leaders, the third, “Retrieving Women’s Lives,” focuses specifically on the biographical renderings of herstorical characters. Christian leaders such as Krәstos Śämra of Ethiopia, King Afonso I of Kongo, Queen Njinga of Angola, Kgosi Sechele and Seth Mokitimi of South Africa, John Chilembwe of Malawi, Bernard Mizeki of South Africa and Mozambique, and the itinerant prophet William Wade Harris, who transversed across Liberia, Côte d’Ivoire, and Ghana, were all engaged alongside female figures such as Nokutela Dube of South Africa, Sikhawulaphi Khumalo and Nellie Maduma Mlotshwa of Zimbabwe. Their biographies are constructed with a view toward the complexities of lived experience at the intersection of Christian and African identities and the colonial and patriarchal powers-that-be.In the last part, “Challenges in Writing African Christian Biography,” the authors return to the core question of reading African Christian history through biographical interpretations and draw out the factors militating against a more robust engagement with this form of historiography. For example, Paul Grant explicitly examines the problem of rupture in the biographical construction of people who endured dehumanization as enslaved persons, colonial subjects, victims of genocide, famine, poverty and other forms of violence. Shining a spotlight on Catherine Zimmerman, who was stolen from the streets of Angola, survived enslavement in the West Indies, and died in Ghana while serving as a missionary with Switzerland’s Basel Missionary Society, Grant examines the various levels of rupture in her lived experiences vis-à-vis his own obligations as a researcher, concluding that “the real problem is moral: it is the problem of historians’ appropriate humility towards the horrible experiences of the African past and the witness offered by the survivors to their heirs” (294). Grant’s observation poignantly underscores the underlying message of faithful interaction with historical sources and resources in the re-enactment of the humanity of biographical figures.African Christian Biography must be praised for its contribution to making scholarship on African Christianity more open to the often-neglected role of biography and oral history using a bottom-up approach. Although most of the contributions come from Southern Africa, the book’s rich collection of remarkable but little-known African Christian figures who helped create Christianity on the continent and beyond, makes it an invaluable resource for scholars of world Christianity, African religions, and African colonial history.