Join the IHE for a discussion of African Catholic: Decolonization and the Transformation of the Church (Harvard University Press, 2022) with author Dr. Elizabeth Foster, Father Gabriel Mmassi, S.J., and Dr. Daniel Philphott.
Watch the recording here.
African Catholic offers a groundbreaking history of how Africans in the French Empire embraced both African independence and their Catholic faith during the upheaval of decolonization, oversaw political transitions to independence, contributed to black intellectual currents as Catholics, and worked to create an authentically “African” church.
About the speakers:
Elizabeth Foster is Associate Professor of History at Tufts University and the author of Faith in Empire: Religion, Politics, and Colonial Rule in French Senegal, 1880–1940, which won the Alf Andrew Heggoy Book Prize from the French Colonial Historical Society, as well as African Catholic: Decolonization and the Transformation of the Church, which won the John Gilmary Shea Prize from the American Catholic Historical Society. Previously, Dr. Foster has been a Visiting Scholar at Harvard’s Center for European Studies and has received Fulbright, ACLS, and NEH Fellowships.
Father Gabriel Mmassi, S.J. is Associate Lecturer of Theology at the Gregorian University in Rome. His expertise includes eschatology, ecumenism, ecclesiology, and African Christologies. He studied at Saint Pierre Canisius in Zaire (present-day DRC), Hekima College, the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley, and The Catholic University of America before completing his Doctorate in Sacred Theology at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley.
Daniel Philpott is Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. He earned his PhD in 1996 from Harvard University and specializes in religion and global politics, focusing on religious freedom, reconciliation, the political behavior of religious actors, and Christian political theology. His monographs include Revolutions in Sovereignty, God’s Century: Resurgent Religion in Global Politics (coauthored with Monica Duffy Toft and Timothy Samuel Shah), Just and Unjust Peace: An Ethic of Political Reconciliation, and Religious Freedom in Islam: The Fate of a Universal Human Right in the Muslim World.
Speakers
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Daniel PhilpottProfessor of Political Science, University of Notre DameDaniel Philpott is Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. He earned his Ph.D. in 1996 from Harvard University and specializes in religion and global politics, focusing on religious freedom, reconciliation, the political behavior of religious actors, and Christian political theology. His monographs include Revolutions in Sovereignty (Princeton, 2001), God’s Century: Resurgent Religion in Global Politics (Norton, 2011, coauthored with Monica Duffy Toft and Timothy Samuel Shah), Just and Unjust Peace: An Ethic of Political Reconciliation (Oxford, 2012) and Religious Freedom in Islam: The Fate of a Universal Human Right in the Muslim World (Oxford, 2019). He has promoted reconciliation as an activist in Kashmir and the Great Lakes Region of Africa.
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Elizabeth FosterAssociate Professor of History, Tufts UniversityElizabeth Foster is Associate Professor of History at Tufts University and the author of Faith in Empire: Religion, Politics, and Colonial Rule in French Senegal, 1880–1940, which won the Alf Andrew Heggoy Book Prize from the French Colonial Historical Society, as well as African Catholic: Decolonization and the Transformation of the Church, which won the John Gilmary Shea Prize from the American Catholic Historical Society. Previously, Dr. Foster has been a Visiting Scholar at Harvard’s Center for European Studies and has received Fulbright, ACLS, and NEH Fellowships.
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Father Gabriel Mmassi, S.J.Associate Lecturer of Theology, Gregorian UniversityFather Gabriel Mmassi, S.J. is Associate Lecturer of Theology at the Gregorian University in Rome. His expertise includes eschatology, ecumenism, ecclesiology, and African Christologies. He studied at Saint Pierre Canisius in Zaire (present-day DRC), Hekima College, the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley, and The Catholic University of America before completing his Doctorate in Sacred Theology at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley.
