Lamin Sanneh

Lamin Sanneh
Born 1942 (age 73–74)
Gambia
Occupation Scholar of missions and religious studies
Known for History of the African Christianity and a pioneer in the academic field of world Christianity
Religion Roman Catholic
Spouse(s) Sandra Sanneh
Academic work
Discipline Missiology, religious studies
Institutions University of Ghana, University of Aberdeen, Harvard, Yale University, Yale Divinity School

Lamin Sanneh (born 1942) is the D. Willis James Professor of Missions and World Christianity at Yale Divinity School and Professor of History at Yale University.

Life and work

Sanneh was born and raised in Gambia. After studying at the University of Birmingham and the Near East School of Theology, Beirut, he earned his doctorate in Islamic History at the University of London. Since then, he has written many books and articles on the relationship between Islam and Christianity (titles include Faith and Power: Christianity and Islam in “Secular” Britain, The Crown and the Turban: Muslims and West African Pluralism, and Piety and Power: Muslims and Christians in West Africa).[1] Sanneh converted to Christianity from Islam and is now a practicing Roman Catholic.[2][3]

Another major area of Sanneh's academic work is in the study of World Christianity. He writes extensively about the translation of the Christian message, challenging a good deal of the accepted history of mission in the modern academy. In his 1989 Translating the Message, he writes:

In time, Christianity expanded from Europe into Asia and Africa, among other places, and was able to break out of its Western cultural confinement by repeating the process by which the church's missionary center shifted from Jerusalem to Antioch and beyond. In some important respects, however, the modern shift was unprecedented, for it was the extraordinary multiplicity of mother-tongue idioms that became the subject of Christian mission rather than the cosmopolitan values of an ascendant West. Nonetheless, mission maintained continuity with its apostolic past. In examining the modern missionary phase, however, we should highlight important signposts in the indigenous culture, especially in the local encounter with the modern West. The translation role of missionaries cast them as unwitting allies of mother-tongue speakers and as reluctant opponents of colonial domination.[4]

He extends these historical reflections further in his 2008 Disciples of All Nations.

As a professor, Sanneh has taught and worked at the University of Ghana, the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, Harvard, and (since 1989) at Yale. He is an editor-at-large of The Christian Century, and serves on the board of several other journals. According to the Yale University Website, "He is an Honorary Research Professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies In 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." Sanneh is also a Commandeur de l'Ordre National du Lion, Senegal's highest national honor. He is a member of the Pontifical Commission of the Historical Sciences and of the Pontifical Commission on Religious Relations with Muslims. Sanneh is a naturalized United States citizen.[5][6]

His wife, Sandra Sanneh, is a professor of isiZulu at Yale University. Their son, Kelefa Sanneh writes about culture for The New Yorker.

Books

References

  1. ↑ Yale Faculty Page
  2. ↑ Bonk, Jonathan J. (October 2003). "The Defender of the Good News: Questioning Lamin Sanneh". Christianity Today: 112–113.
  3. ↑ Fatima Harrak, Piety and Power: Muslims and Christians in West Africa by Lamin Sanneh, "Journal of the American Academy of Religion" Vol. 68, No. 3 (Sep., 2000), pp. 668-670
  4. ↑ Lamin Sanneh, Translating the Message, 2nd ed. (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis, 2009), 94-5.
  5. ↑ Yale Faculty Page
  6. ↑ Interview in Christianity Today

External links

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