Lamin Sanneh
Lamin Sanneh (May 24, 1942 – January 6, 2019) was 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. He wrote 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"). Sanneh converted to Christianity from Islam and was a practicing Roman Catholic. Another major area of Sanneh's academic work was in the study of World Christianity. He wrote 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. He extended these historical reflections further in his 2008 "Disciples of All Nations". As a professor, Sanneh taught and worked at the University of Ghana, the University of Aberdeen, Harvard, and (from 1989–2019) at Yale. He was an editor-at-large of "The Christian Century", and served 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 was also a Commandeur de l'Ordre National du Lion, Senegal's highest national honor. He was a member of the Pontifical Commission of the Historical Sciences and of the Pontifical Commission on Religious Relations with Muslims. Sanneh was a naturalized United States citizen. In 2018, a new institute was created in his name, the Sanneh Institute at the University of Ghana. Sanneh suffered a stroke and died on January 6, 2019. He was supposed to present his keynote paper "Themes in Reconciliation and Harmony  with Reference to Contemporary Africa" at the International Harmony Conference organized by Bishop Prof. Dr. Dennis T.W. Ng in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on 7 January 2019. It turns out to be his last paper and was read out at the conference after a moment of silence and prayer. His widow, Sandra Sanneh, is a professor of isiZulu at Yale University and their son, Kelefa Sanneh, writes about culture for "The New Yorker".