Summoned From the Margin, by Lamin Sanneh

For the last three decades, Lamin Sanneh has been a reliable and perceptive guide for those of us trying to think through interfaith issues, rethink missions and understand Christianity in its global reach. When I discovered Sanneh, I found his angle on Islamic/Christian conversation to be a provocative and refreshing relief from some of the fluff we were getting on that topic. Sanneh’s was also the first voice I heard to renovate the commonly accepted negative view of Christian missions.

A major reason Sanneh has been so interesting to scholars in North America is that he is African, grew up Muslim and became a Christian as a young adult. His origins and life story give him a unique perspective among contemporary scholars in world Christianity and missions and enable him to say things about Christianity and Islam that few others can say.

Summoned from the Margin is a gentle, constantly engaging, irenic and revealing story of how North American theological education received the gift of Lamin Sanneh. He opens his story by quoting another African convert to the faith, St. Augustine, as Augustine marveled at the mystery of human memory. In many places in this autobiography, Sanneh’s way of recollecting his life reminds one of Augustine’s Confessions. Born into a polygamous home in Gambia, Sanneh recalls the joys and the challenges of growing up poor, African and Muslim—periods of horrible famine that tested the family, squabbles among his father’s competing wives, harsh Islamic schoolmasters and a resigned fatalism that explained all of life’s disappointments and injustices as what “God wills.” His description of enduring the months of “the hunger season” is unforgettable, a gripping account of famine through a hungry child’s eyes. Brace yourself for his gruesome account of his village’s circumcision ritual.