Covering five centuries--from the rise of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church in the 15th century and the early Portuguese missionaries right through to the Church and its key role in Africa today--this major new volume is the first complete history of the Christian Church in Africa. Written by a leading authority on Church history who has spent many years in Africa, it looks at all aspects of Christianity in Africa, including its relationship to traditional values and customs, politics, and the comparable rise of Islam in Africa during the period.

Christianity is the most global of religions. However, most books on the subject fail to do justice to the history of Christianity outside Europe and North America. This prodigious work provides the first genuinely global one-volume study of the rise, development, and impact of the Christian faith.
Written by an international team of specialists, this comprehensive volume covers the full breadth of Christian history while also taking seriously the geographical diversity of the story: extensive chapters cover North America, Latin America, Europe, Africa, India, China and its neighbors,...

The churches in Africa probably constitute the most important growth area for Christianity in the second half of the twentieth century. From being a number of rather tightly controlled 'mission fields' zealously guarded by the great missionary societies, Catholic and Protestant, they have emerged across the last decades in bewildering variety to selfhood, a membership of close on a hundred million adherents and an influential role both within their own societies and in the world Church. This book surveys the history of Christianity throughout sub-Saharan Africa during the third quarter of...