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This study aims to understand how the nineteenth-century African agent of mission appropriated change without losing cultural integrity. Drawing essentially from the contexts that produced the man, from Sierra Leone to the Yoruba country, the study shows Samuel Johnson as embodying the opportunities and ambivalence that progressively accompanied Yoruba contact with Britain in the people's war-weary century of change. Largely influenced by German missionaries in the British mission environment of Yorubaland, Johnson had confidence in the bright prospect the missionary message held for his people. This propelled him into a struggle to relieve the distressed country from its woes and to preserve the fading memory of its people. In an age of renewed cultural ferment called globalization, could Johnson offer a lesson in how to appropriate change? This is the concern of this volume.
List of contents
Contents: Looking Back - An Unpromising Beginning - Reorientation - Back to Base -Encountering Other Faiths - Homecoming - Redeeming the Land - Racing against Time - Change and Decay - The Making of the Mission Agent.
About the author
Kehinde Olabimtan studied theology at the Akrofi-Christaller Institute of Theology, Mission and Culture, Akropong-Akuapem, Ghana, and the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. He is on the faculty of the Ghanaian institution and the Baptist College of Theology, Lagos, Nigeria. He is based at the Institute of Mission and Society, Lagos.
Report
«Kehinde Olabimtan s biographical perspective brings fresh and robust insights into African church historiography.» (Dr Afe Adogame, Senior Lecturer in World Christianity School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh, Scotland)
«Dr Olabimtan's new book makes interesting reading. It is remarkable for its wealth of information, breath-taking in its detail and scholarly analysis, and admirable for its maturity of style and range of vocabulary. It is an indispensable resource for the researcher and the general reader alike.» (Prof. Robert Addo-Fening, Formerly of Department of History, University of Ghana, Legon, Accra, Ghana.)
«... as Dr Olabimtan makes clear in this valuable study, Johnson's own life, and those of his family and antecedents, provide lenses through which we can get a closer view of a critical period of the history of West Africa ...This is a rich book, revealing and thought-provoking.» (Prof. Andrew F. Walls, Liverpool Hope University, Liverpool, UK, and Akrofi-Christaller Institute, Akropong-Akuapem, Ghana)
