A History of the Church in Africa

Abstract

"In 1900 the Christian population of Africa was estimated at 4 millions out of a total of 118 m. people. Roman Catholics were estimated at 1m., Protestants at 1m. and Coptic-Orthodox at 2 m. Today Christians amount to some 351m. out of 770m., of which 175m. are Roman Catholics and 110m. are Protestants. These figures from David Barrett's World Christian Encyclopaedia, 1982, must to some extent be speculative, but on any estimate the growth of the Christian Church in Africa in the last 100 years is spectacular. Now Bengt Sundkler (1909-95), the eminent Lutheran missionary bishop and church historian, has put flesh on these bare statistics in this magnum opus. The book has been edited by Christopher Steed, Sundkler's research assistant at the University of Uppsala"