Lamin Sanneh, one of my intellectual heroes, has just died at age 76. He was D. Willis James professor of missions and world Christianity at Yale Divinity School and a professor of history at Yale University, and a superb scholar of global Christianity, Christian-Muslim relations, and religion in Western Africa. His most recent book, “Beyond Jihad: The Pacifist Tradition in West African Islam”(2016), was pivotal to my understanding of Islam in Western Africa, particularly its capacity for peace and interreligious harmony.
This obituary in the New York Times tells his life history well.
It begins thus:
Lamin Sanneh, who was born into poverty in a tiny river town in Gambia and became a world-renowned scholar of Christianity and Islam, providing key insights into how each religion took hold in West Africa, died on Jan. 6 in New Haven. He was 76.
His son, Kelefa, said the cause was complications of a stroke.
Dr. Sanneh was born a Muslim but converted to Christianity as a teenager and became a practicing Roman Catholic, giving him experience in both Islam and Christianity and an unusual perspective for a scholar of religion.
Even more striking, he alone of his large rural family managed to migrate across continents and attend prominent universities. He ended up as a professor at Yale University, where he taught for 30 years. He was the D. Willis James professor of missions and world Christianity at Yale Divinity School and a professor of history at Yale.
His memoir, “Summoned From the Margin: Homecoming of an African”(2012), relates how, even as a youth, he was consumed with theological questions about the nature of God and human suffering; that passion led to his religious conversion and academic career.
One of the themes of Sanneh’s work is that Christianity spread to Africa not as a front for colonialism but through its capacity to adapt to African cultures – and a cultures.
Sanneh was endlessly inquisitive:
Dr. Sanneh was on an endless quest for knowledge. “He always described himself as a thorn in the side of his teachers and imams and professors — he just had so many questions,” his daughter, Sia Sanneh, said, and he was grateful for mentors who encouraged his curiosity. “He wasn’t from a place where you questioned doctrines and teachings.”
May he rest in peace.