"Christianity in Modern Africa": Book Launch and Lecture with Toyin Falola

Africa is rapidly becoming the most Christianized region of the world. While common narratives about Christianity tend to present Christianity as a set of ideas and beliefs imposed on Africa from the outside, such narratives hold little meaning for African Christians or for those seeking to understand Christianity in Africa as an indigenous faith. 

Falola’s talk will draw from the scholarship featured in the new book, co-edited by him and ASU professor of history, Andrew Eugene Barnes, "The Palgrave Handbook of Christianity in Africa from Apostolic Times to the Present", which is a collection of chapters that grant voice to the various strands of African Christianity on their own terms, and offers scholarly study of what these voices teach us about how the world’s most adhered to religion is practiced and understood on the continent of Africa.

About the speaker

Toyin Falola is the Jacob & Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities and University Distinguished Teaching Professor at The University of Texas-Austin. He is a fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Letters and the Historical Society of Nigeria. 

Dr. Falola is the author of numerous books and publications, including “Violence in Nigeria: The Crisis of Religious Politics and Secular Ideologies," “The Power of African Cultures” and “Nationalism and African Intellectuals.” He is the co-author of “A History of Africa” (Oxford University Press) and co-editor of “African Economic History” (University of Wisconsin Press). Dr. Falola is also series editor for the for the “Rochester Studies in African History and the Diaspora,” “Carolina Studies on Africa and the Black World” and the “Palgrave Handbooks in African History.”