Dana L. Robert, director of the Center for Global Christianity and Mission, Boston University School of Theology:
Professor Lamin Sanneh was a giant in the field of World Christianity. His loss sends a tidal wave across multiple fields, institutions, and continents. He will be sorely missed by those of us who worked with him and called him friend, as well as by people who knew him only from his powerful writings.
As an African, a superb scholar, and a convert from Islam, Lamin Sanneh saw from the outside what those raised on the inside could not. His 1989 book Translating the Message showed how the gospel could become part of every culture, through being translated into the language and worldview of the people. He challenged the assumption that Christianity was merely a tool of western colonizers.
Through his founding of the annual Yale-Edinburgh conferences on mission history, his publications, his editorship of the Oxford University Press World Christianity Series, his leadership of the Dictionary of African Christian Biography, and many other important projects, Lamin Sanneh collaborated with others to transform the study of mission history, African religions, and World Christianity.
Read it all (emphasis mine).
Lamin Sanneh was a Gambian convert from Islam to Christianity, whose scholarship shaped contemporary discourse around world Christianity and missions in Africa.
He died on Sunday at age 76.https://t.co/pc4sKJDLIO
— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) January 8, 2019