A history of Christianity in Nigeria: a bibliography of secondary literature
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Abstract
INTRODUCTION
As long as scholars have been writing about the history of Nigeria, they have been writing about
Christianity. After more than sixty years, however, it is time to take stock of this vast body of
literature, and get a sense of where we have been and where we are going. It is my hope that the
compilation of this relatively comprehensive bibliography, and a brief discussion of some of the
gaps that need to be filled in the literature, will inspire scholars to take their historical research in
exciting and novel directions.
Based on a reading of this bibliography, I would like to suggest that future research into
the history of Christianity in Nigeria should be directed in three broad directions. First, historians
need to focus more research on the development of mainline mission churches following
independence, because the historiography remains skewed in favor of independent churches.
While the contribution of mission churches to the development of education, medicine, and
language standardization in Nigeria has certainly received its fair share of attention, historians
have neglected this research topic since nationalist scholars criticized them for not writing about
the creative activities of African Christians in the late nineteen-sixties. Little information is
known about Catholicism or the various Protestant denominations in Nigeria following the
Second World War even though the majority of Nigerian Christians remain Catholic and
Protestant. While this historiographical gap can partially be attributed to the lack of sources
following the destruction of archival materials during the Nigerian Civil War, it is perhaps... [TRUNCATED]
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African Studies Center Working Paper No. 269
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Copyright © 2017, by the author.