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When we study the history of the church in twentieth-century Africa, we come face to face with that most exciting, fluid, and sometimes confusing thing: history in the making. Many of the stories of African Christianity in this period are just now being told—or have yet to be told. That is why the first resource we are recommending in this issue is not a book but a website; the Dictionary of African Christian Biography, at www.gospelcom.net/dacb/. There you will find the stories of many Christian leaders from throughout African history, browsable by country or alphabetically. These are written by scholars, missionaries, and eyewitnesses. An occasionally uneven writing style does not diminish the importance of this record of the lives of Africa's apostles, nor the fascination of the stories themselves.

Another enjoyable, popular entrée into the stories of these apostles is Frederick Quinn, African Saints: Saints, Martyrs, and Holy People from the Continent of Africa (Crossroad Publishing Company, 2002). Quinn provides a quick portrait for many of the most influential figures in African church history, stretching back to such early North African leaders as Anthony of Egypt and Augustine of Hippo.

Most Western readers have received a significantly "westocentric" view of church history. In recent years, church historians have been working to change this, beginning to produce what will doubtless prove a bountiful crop of global church histories.

This is a new animal—among its few precedents are Kenneth Scott Latourette's multi-volume History of the Expansion of Christianity, Christianity in a Revolutionary Age, and History of Christianity. For a profile of Latourette, see our issue 72, How We Got Our History.

Here are three of the best recent attempts to bring between two covers the spread of Christianity outside as well as inside the traditional Christian strongholds of the West:

Adrian Hastings, A World History of Christianity (Eerdmans, 2000). Particularly strong on how the church and the many cultures of the world have interacted and conditioned each other, this volume is both scholarly and very readable. This is not surprising, given its editor (see our mention below of Hastings's The Church in Africa: 1450-1950).

Dale T. Irvin and Scott W. Sunquist, eds., History of the World Christian Movement (Vol. 1): Earliest Christianity to 1453 (Orbis, 2001). This history was written, as most future efforts at global Christian history will have to be written, through a collaborative process. A series of consultations were held that involved scholars from Asia, Africa, Latin America, North America, and Europe; from Protestant, Roman Catholic, Pentecostal, and Orthodox communions; and experts in the disciplines of history, missiology, theology, and sociology.

Paul R. Spickard and Kevin M. Cragg, A Global History of Christians: How Everyday Believers Experienced Their World (Baker, 1994). More popular in flavor than the previous two volumes mentioned, and well illustrated, this book tackles the daunting task of describing how billions of ordinary Christians through the centuries experienced faith. The authors also pay particular attention to people and movements on Christian orthodoxy's outskirts.

A scholar of great erudition who can write sparkflng narrative when the story turns dramatic—as it so often does in African Christianity—Adrian Hastings has written perhaps the definitive African history in The Church in Africa 1450-1950 (Oxford University Press, 1994). That 500-year period saw African Christianity move from the fringes to the forefront of the continent's religious scene. Hastings also points out the parallels between the development of Islam and that of Christianity in Africa.

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