Dr. Jonathan J. Bonk, Executive Director, Overseas Ministries Study Center,
New Haven, USA.
E-mail: Bonk@omsc.org
Abstract
Ecclesiastical Cartography and the Problem of Africa:
Christian Maps and the Invisible Continent
Among the most astonishing religious phenomena of the twentieth century has been
the growth of Christianity in Africa. In 1900 Muslims outnumbered Christians by
a ratio of nearly 4:1, with some 34.5 million, or 32 percent of the population.
In 1962 there were about 60 million Christians, with Muslims at about 145
million. Forty years later, the number of Christians in Africa had multiplied by
six to nearly 380 million, overtaking the Muslim population to comprise an
estimated 48.37 percent of the approximately 800 million total population.
Between 1900 and 2000, the Catholic population in Africa increased a phenomenal
6,708 per cent, from 1,909,812 to 130,018,400. Catholic membership has increased
708 per cent over the last fifty years.
Yet, strangely, even the most recent attempts by mainline church historians to
help seminarians and church leaders locate themselves and find their way in the
terra firma of contemporary world Christianity take scarcely any note of Africa.
This paper tells and illustrates the story (so far) of the Dictionary of African
Christian Biography, an attempt to generate a non-proprietary, multi-lingual (English,
French, Portuguese, Swahili, Arabic) memory base of key African figures (catechists
and evangelists, for example) chiefly responsible for the peculiar nature and
extraordinary dynamism of Christian churches across Africa.