Lamin Sanneh

Lamin Sanneh (May 24, 1942 – January 6, 2019) was a Gambian American scholar who was the D. Willis James Professor of Missions and World Christianity at Yale Divinity School and Professor of History at Yale University.

Biography Sanneh was born and raised in The Gambia as part of an ancient African royal family, and was a naturalized United States citizen.

He was 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. In 2018, a new institute was created in his name, the Sanneh Institute at the University of Ghana. The Overseas Ministry Study Center (OMSC) at Princeton Theological Seminary created a research grant named in honor of Sanneh.

Much of his scholarship related to the relationship between Christianity and Islam, especially in Africa and what he understood as "African Islam." Another major area of Sanneh's academic work was in the study of World Christianity. In his Translating the Message (1989), Sanneh wrote about the significance of the translation of the Christian message into mother-tongue languages in places like Africa and Asia. Instead of the dominant view that Christian mission primarily propagated "cosmopolitan values of an ascendant West," he argues, "The translation role of missionaries cast them as unwitting allies of mother-tongue speakers and as reluctant opponents of colonial domination." He continued to develop these reflections in his Disciples of All Nations (2008).

Sanneh suffered a stroke and died on January 6, 2019.

Personal life. Sanneh converted to Christianity from Islam and was a practicing Catholic.

Selected books

(with Lesslie Newbigin and Jenny Taylor)

(Winner: Theologos Award for "Best General Interest Book 2004") (co-edited with Joel A. Carpenter)

(co-edited with Michael McClymond