Description: One of the important contemporary but unexplored themes for Christianity in Africa today is its ongoing connections to a broader Christian and non-Christian world. This is quite apart from the idea of mission connections or reverse mission from Africa to elsewhere, or any mission-themed global connection. In much existing scholarship, Africa seems to only have recently been drawn into the orbit of global relations, but there is a long-standing relationship with the wider world, people linking from different regions at different times for varied reasons. This volume explores the theme of two thousand years of connections--and how the global sensibility has shaped Christianity on the continent for two thousand years.
Brief description:
Mark A. Lamport has been a professor for nearly forty years at theological schools in the United States and Europe. He is coauthor of Nurturing Faith: A Practical Theology for Educating Christians (2021), coeditor of the seven-book series The Global Story of Christianity, and coeditor of Emerging Theologies from the Global South (2023). He works from Grand Rapids and Fort Myers.
Review Quotes: "This fascinating book supplies a critical, comprehensive, vivid, and nuanced account of how, through a long history of multiple connections and entanglements, Christian faith has come to shape identity and spark imagination across the continent."
--Kenneth R. Ross, professor of theology, Zomba Theological University
"As a missiologist, I know that the story of Christianity in Africa is told differently depending on who is doing the narrative. Globalizing Linkages is just right and timely, helping us to draw the intermingling linkages. It is true that Christianity was not first brought to Africa by the Western missionaries. On the flip side, the story of African Christianity will not be complete without the Western missionaries."
--Seyram Amenyedzi, postgraduate supervisor, South African Theological Seminary
"An insightful retelling of the entangled tales of Christians who have graced African soil since the dawn of the faith. This volume serves as a much-needed primer for Christian Africans, affirming the continent as a midwife to confessional, Christocentric, Bible-believing, and ethically rich Christianity."
--Cornelia van Deventer, senior lecturer in New Testament, South African Theological
Seminary