WRITING THE HISTORY OF AFRICAN CHRISTIANITY: REFLECTIONS OF AN EDITOR 1 by DAVID MAXWELL (University of Keele) ABSTRACT This article reviews the literature on African Christian Studies from the 1990s onwards and suggests new directions for research. The field has drawn great impe- tus from a series of historical/anthropological debates over conversion and the rel- ative significance of missionary imperial hegemony and African agency. But there is a great need for work on twentieth-century missionaries and their contribution to colonial science. And there are too few studies of African leaders within mis- sion churches, particularly in the era of decolonisation. Research on Pentecostalism has flourished but needs to be historicised. New areas for research are: African Christian diaspora and its impact on host communities; the impact of develop- ment and human rights agendas on the church; the effects of the AIDS pandemic. As the African Church becomes a more prominent part of World Christianity, scholars need to assess how African moral sensibilities are recasting the theology and politics of the historic mission churches. To mark Adrian Hastings’s retirement as editor in 1999, the Journal of Religion in Africa (30.1, 2000) published his ‘Reflections’. My attachment to the JRA has been a long and pleasurable one and I am pleased to help consolidate what will, I hope, become an important editorial tra- dition. Hastings’s piece had a valedictory tone, a survey beginning in the 1960s with the founding of African studies and the birth of the JRA and leading up to the 2000s. It was a review of a literature that had grown enormously throughout that period and one to which he himself had made an immense contribution. This reflection will review recent developments from the 1990s when my association with the JRA began, and look towards future directions for research. Although the JRA specialises in Islam, Christianity and African Traditional Religions, Hastings shrewdly chose to focus, in his reflection, on ‘African Christian Studies’. A survey of all three would have been difficult within the confines of a short article. Specialisation also made sense because it was in African Christian Studies that most (but by no © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2006 Journal of Religion in Africa, 36.3-4 Also available on line – www.brill.nl