What do you think?
Rate this book
Summond from the Margin: Homecoming of an African
Summoned from the Margin tells the story of Lamin Sanneh's fascinating journey from his upbringing in an impoverished village in West Africa to education in the United States and Europe to a distinguished career teaching at the Universities of Yale, Harvard, Aberdeen, and Ghana. He grew up in a polygamous household in The Gambia and attended a government-run Muslim boarding school. A chance encounter with Helen Keller's autobiography taught him that education and faith are the key to overcoming physical and personal hardship and inspired his journey. Burning theological questions about God's nature and human suffering eventually led Sanneh to convert from Islam to Christianity and to pursue a career in academia. Here he recounts the unusually varied life experiences that have made him who he is today.Watch the trailer:
304 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2012
21 people are currently reading
158 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
January 10, 2020
Lamin Sanneh was an incredibly important historian/theologian. I really love the work of his that I’ve read and think it should be read widely. I was so sad when he recently died. I’m glad I read his autobiography. I have to say, it’s not great reading as far as autobiographies go. He’s clearly an academic who is better at and more interested in describing his research than telling really enthralling stories. Still, his story was good to read. So so interesting. Wildly different perspective on so many things. The way he was so frequently rejected amongst fellow Christians is infuriating and baffling to me. And, I fear, all too common. Not an entertaining read, but a good one.
May 6, 2019
Lamin Sanneh died in January this year (2019) have an extraordinarily rich life, culturally and intellectually. His two children had been urging him to write an account of his journey from rural Gambian poverty in a polygamous Muslim home (albeit one that could trace its roots to Mandinka royalty) to culminating as Professor of World Christianity at Yale University. It is quite the transition. Academically, he set out to study Islamics, which he did to post-doctoral research, but he found himself changing tack to world Christianity because he had to teach a course in it to fill in for someone else. This memoir outlines the inevitable twists and turns, in the course of which, several things stand out:
- Sanneh's ability to comprehend and critique the cultures in which he finds himself is unique. this book brims with insights and provocations.
- The early church experiences he had as a new convert from Islam, both in the Gambia and in the USA & Europe, are pretty depressing. It is remarkable he stuck at it - a point he notes at the end.
- Sanneh's outsider status has meant that he has little truck with received orthodoxies or assumptions, even (especially?) if it dominates like the western liberal post-enlightenment consensus. This is what lay behind the insight for which he is perhaps most known: namely, the fact that it was Christianity's missionary endeavours to inculturate the gospel during (for example) British Imperialism, that did more to validate and prosper indigenous cultures than anything else. Indeed, he noted how imperial policy, far from propagating missionary activity, sought to prevent or limit it. As one with his background, Sanneh could then follow the logic through to a further insight - this was in contrast to Islam's approach to mission. He notes this not to score points but to state realities. This is elaborated in his brilliant Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture.
- He has been a key player in inter-faith dialogue which he resolutely distinguishes from capitulation. This has elicited a valuable articulation of misunderstandings between representatives of the religions.
- He has been unfailingly careful and generous, both in acknowledging where others have played important roles in his own formation and in fairly articulating any opposing views in his dialogue partners. He is resistant to all forms of Christian tribalism, which is why he has probably struggled to find his place in any one church denomination or grouping--this does explain in part his final reception into the Catholic church, narrated in the book's final pages. None of this is surprising given his unique testimony.
- His prose is beautiful and fluid; it avoids the dense obscurity of so much academic writing. Instead, his is peppered with personal incidents and regular quotations from his favourite poetry (of which his knowledge is extensive).
- The book's conclusion, however, seemed strangely diffident, coming as it does after his account of the circumstances behind some of his most brilliant work. He doesn't quite seem to be able to articulate his personal belief positions clearly. This is not to suggest that this needs to be done in crass soundbites or Christian tribal shibboleths. Far from it. It just struck me as quite surprising, although, to be fair, he seems to acknowledge this fact himself.
Nevertheless, this makes the book a joy to read: stimulating, challenging, inspiring.
- Sanneh's ability to comprehend and critique the cultures in which he finds himself is unique. this book brims with insights and provocations.
- The early church experiences he had as a new convert from Islam, both in the Gambia and in the USA & Europe, are pretty depressing. It is remarkable he stuck at it - a point he notes at the end.
- Sanneh's outsider status has meant that he has little truck with received orthodoxies or assumptions, even (especially?) if it dominates like the western liberal post-enlightenment consensus. This is what lay behind the insight for which he is perhaps most known: namely, the fact that it was Christianity's missionary endeavours to inculturate the gospel during (for example) British Imperialism, that did more to validate and prosper indigenous cultures than anything else. Indeed, he noted how imperial policy, far from propagating missionary activity, sought to prevent or limit it. As one with his background, Sanneh could then follow the logic through to a further insight - this was in contrast to Islam's approach to mission. He notes this not to score points but to state realities. This is elaborated in his brilliant Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture.
- He has been a key player in inter-faith dialogue which he resolutely distinguishes from capitulation. This has elicited a valuable articulation of misunderstandings between representatives of the religions.
- He has been unfailingly careful and generous, both in acknowledging where others have played important roles in his own formation and in fairly articulating any opposing views in his dialogue partners. He is resistant to all forms of Christian tribalism, which is why he has probably struggled to find his place in any one church denomination or grouping--this does explain in part his final reception into the Catholic church, narrated in the book's final pages. None of this is surprising given his unique testimony.
- His prose is beautiful and fluid; it avoids the dense obscurity of so much academic writing. Instead, his is peppered with personal incidents and regular quotations from his favourite poetry (of which his knowledge is extensive).
- The book's conclusion, however, seemed strangely diffident, coming as it does after his account of the circumstances behind some of his most brilliant work. He doesn't quite seem to be able to articulate his personal belief positions clearly. This is not to suggest that this needs to be done in crass soundbites or Christian tribal shibboleths. Far from it. It just struck me as quite surprising, although, to be fair, he seems to acknowledge this fact himself.
Nevertheless, this makes the book a joy to read: stimulating, challenging, inspiring.
December 28, 2012
The story of one man's journey from his roots in Islam into Christianity, finally resting in Roman Catholicism. As an African convert, the road was a long and winding one. This isn't a breezy memoir, but it is a fitting read. For those who are engaged in interfaith conversations and wonder about the whole issue of conversion, this is a compelling story that might run counter to expectations. Sanneh's story includes his move to America for college, and experiencing the early stages of the Civil Rights movement, wherein he didn't fit anyone's expectations, to study in Europe and the Middle East. Though a convert from Islam to Christianity, his graduate work took him back into the world of Islam, and then in the end to a call to teach world Christianity.
It is a story with many twists and turns. Because Sanneh is an academic by training and disposition, this book has a scholarly flavor to it. But, it is a compelling read.
It is a story with many twists and turns. Because Sanneh is an academic by training and disposition, this book has a scholarly flavor to it. But, it is a compelling read.
August 14, 2021
It was interesting reading his accounts as a Muslim background believer to his conversion to Christianity and how challenging it was. He is so brilliant I would have to reread pages to fully get what he was saying, but he has so many thought provoking things to say about our culture and viewing it as an outsider.
October 15, 2021
This is a fascinating account. Sanneh's life story from young boy in the Gambia to renowned church historian in the US is inspiring. He's not the clearest of writers, but the insights he gives are invaluable. The story of his conversion and the opposition (by missionaries) to his desires for baptism and theological study are the things that stand out for me.
September 3, 2022
Lamin Sanneh’s book is a memoir about a Gambian man who converts from Islam to Christianity through a remarkable progression from believing in one religion and then another through spiritual inquisitiveness. Though inspirational, I had difficulty with his transitions from his life’s story to his reflections on spiritual matters.
April 19, 2015
This is a densely woven account of Sanneh's life journey: how his experience and scholarly pursuits , driven by his obsession with religious seeking, brought him from childhood on an island in Africa to Europe and to the U.S., finally finding a home in New Haven.
Straddling three cultural streams--the traditional African cyclical worldview of his mother's tribe, the Islamic school attended from age five, and simultaneous English school where he learned that movement forward (change) is constant. How integrate these ideas?
By the time he graduates high school, his family has broken. No longer having a home at 'home', he goes to the nearest city to find work. He is a practicing Muslim, but eventually seeks Christian baptism. He cannot find a church that will baptize him.
Since he is educated, he has opportunities. He gets a scholarship to college in the U. S., arriving during the 60's Civil Rights struggles.
This is a puzzling situation, so different than his experience of colonialism in Africa.
Eventually he travels to Europe, to various African countries, and back to the U.S. which means he is always an outsider, and this is both a sadness and an advantage. He can see things from that perspective that someone not so 'different' might find harder to perceive. An example is his experience of European colonialists in Africa favoring Islam for natives over their own professed Christianity. Christian missionaries may open schools and clinics, he says, but they were not there to convert the people. One of the questions he explores as a result is how the State so often trumps religion. Whether you study Islam or Christianity or traditional religions, that tension between State (jihad) and religion is contentious.
I found his comments on the use of language in Islam as contrasted with Christianity insightful. Christianity is vernacular, or incarnational. It's center is belief in the active, living presence of God, interpreted ever anew by its people, with guidance of its Scripture--which itself is vernacular and always has been. By contrast, Islam requires one to learn ancient Arabic in order to access the word of Allah, which is not truly translatable. The result is a different understanding of who Allah is and how Allah and people relate than in the Christian understanding of the same.
And yet within both traditions there are in fact different interpretations: Sunni, Shite, Sufi, Suwarian; Protestant, Orthodox, Catholic.
Sanneh today sees that the future of Christianity is in the Southern hemisphere, with polycentric communities rather than in the Roman diocesan model with its dying European infrastructure. The so-called First World has much to learn form the so-called Third World.
In brief, Sanneh's actual travels across cultures inspire his particular scholarship and career. In the end, the many strands of his life are integrated. He finds at last not only the religious understanding he was seeking but belonging, a home.
Straddling three cultural streams--the traditional African cyclical worldview of his mother's tribe, the Islamic school attended from age five, and simultaneous English school where he learned that movement forward (change) is constant. How integrate these ideas?
By the time he graduates high school, his family has broken. No longer having a home at 'home', he goes to the nearest city to find work. He is a practicing Muslim, but eventually seeks Christian baptism. He cannot find a church that will baptize him.
Since he is educated, he has opportunities. He gets a scholarship to college in the U. S., arriving during the 60's Civil Rights struggles.
This is a puzzling situation, so different than his experience of colonialism in Africa.
Eventually he travels to Europe, to various African countries, and back to the U.S. which means he is always an outsider, and this is both a sadness and an advantage. He can see things from that perspective that someone not so 'different' might find harder to perceive. An example is his experience of European colonialists in Africa favoring Islam for natives over their own professed Christianity. Christian missionaries may open schools and clinics, he says, but they were not there to convert the people. One of the questions he explores as a result is how the State so often trumps religion. Whether you study Islam or Christianity or traditional religions, that tension between State (jihad) and religion is contentious.
I found his comments on the use of language in Islam as contrasted with Christianity insightful. Christianity is vernacular, or incarnational. It's center is belief in the active, living presence of God, interpreted ever anew by its people, with guidance of its Scripture--which itself is vernacular and always has been. By contrast, Islam requires one to learn ancient Arabic in order to access the word of Allah, which is not truly translatable. The result is a different understanding of who Allah is and how Allah and people relate than in the Christian understanding of the same.
And yet within both traditions there are in fact different interpretations: Sunni, Shite, Sufi, Suwarian; Protestant, Orthodox, Catholic.
Sanneh today sees that the future of Christianity is in the Southern hemisphere, with polycentric communities rather than in the Roman diocesan model with its dying European infrastructure. The so-called First World has much to learn form the so-called Third World.
In brief, Sanneh's actual travels across cultures inspire his particular scholarship and career. In the end, the many strands of his life are integrated. He finds at last not only the religious understanding he was seeking but belonging, a home.
December 24, 2012
Because Lamin Sanneh was my one formal teacher in my quest to learn about Islam and Muslims, I read his narrative eagerly (long before Christmas--it was to have been my present!). It is not your typical autobiography, but then Sanneh is not your typical person, especially not your typical academic. He uses the experiences of his life as springboards to the ideas that captured him and propelled him to an academic and inter-faith career. It is only a miracle of God that he persisted in his desire to find a home in the church that did everything it could to subvert his faith--from neo-colonial stances to protect African Muslim interests to garden variety racism.
Here are some intriguing quotes that keep me thinking:
"Can divine agency in Islam be subject to historical contingency so that personal and material motivation is scripture determines questions of truth? The difference here with Christianity, it seemed tome, could not be more stark." (p. 151)
"Realism requires the acknowledgment of difference while welcoming concrete opportunities of mutual understanding, building trust by taking on one task at a time. relations here should be based on relations among people, not on the truth claims of the traditions that happen to share a common world." (p. 183)
"You would think that an incarnate faith would require humble explanation and persona corroboration, not reliance on verbal inerrancy--which for Muslims is precisely the prerogative of the Qur'an anyway. If Jesus Christ is as the apostles taught, the bodies of believers ought to be where their mouths are.
Clearly it a difficult balance to achieve: Christians must engage with Muslims in terms they understand, but they must also witness in the way they live out the meaning of their faith. ... there is a lot to be said also for being straightforward and plan spoken, for not concealing your hand, thought that also means not thrusting it in the face of others. The open hand offered in respect and friendship is "presence" with a difference, and that difference in terms of mutual openness Muslims will often appreciate even where they do not agree. The cross is God's power, but it does not compel or threaten." (p. 193)
"The embrace of the local name of God is a ital difference between Christianization and Islamization, and the discrepancy has lessons for the history of religion generally." (p. 233)
Here are some intriguing quotes that keep me thinking:
"Can divine agency in Islam be subject to historical contingency so that personal and material motivation is scripture determines questions of truth? The difference here with Christianity, it seemed tome, could not be more stark." (p. 151)
"Realism requires the acknowledgment of difference while welcoming concrete opportunities of mutual understanding, building trust by taking on one task at a time. relations here should be based on relations among people, not on the truth claims of the traditions that happen to share a common world." (p. 183)
"You would think that an incarnate faith would require humble explanation and persona corroboration, not reliance on verbal inerrancy--which for Muslims is precisely the prerogative of the Qur'an anyway. If Jesus Christ is as the apostles taught, the bodies of believers ought to be where their mouths are.
Clearly it a difficult balance to achieve: Christians must engage with Muslims in terms they understand, but they must also witness in the way they live out the meaning of their faith. ... there is a lot to be said also for being straightforward and plan spoken, for not concealing your hand, thought that also means not thrusting it in the face of others. The open hand offered in respect and friendship is "presence" with a difference, and that difference in terms of mutual openness Muslims will often appreciate even where they do not agree. The cross is God's power, but it does not compel or threaten." (p. 193)
"The embrace of the local name of God is a ital difference between Christianization and Islamization, and the discrepancy has lessons for the history of religion generally." (p. 233)
July 26, 2013
Sanneh acknowledges that he wrote this book reluctantly, mostly at the urging of his son who did not want to lose his father's memories of growing up in the Gambia. I expected, then, a memoir. I expected to understand how a person raised in a remote, tiny West African village could emerge from his Muslim schooling to find faith as a Christian. He had almost nothing positive to say about the role of Christian missions. Methodists, Catholics and Lutherans all failed him, scared to participate in a Muslim getting baptized Christian. Except for the beginning chapters and the final chapter, this book was less memoir and much more theology of different themes Sanneh encountered. His critique of Christianity as found in the U.S. I found particularly interesting. Another chapter on the role the linguistics and the vernacular play in the spread of faith was interesting. This was much heavier reading than I anticipated, but worth the time. Just don't go in expecting memoir. He is reticent to reveal much about himself.
June 10, 2013
A while back I got into reading a bunch of books about world Christianity and global missions. One of the best authors in this regard is Lamin Sanneh. For those who like biographies, Sanneh has published his memoir: Summoned from the Margins: Homecoming of an African. In it we hear the story of Sanneh’s early life in Gambia and his eventual move from Islam to Christianity despite reluctance to accept him from all the churches he met. As he documents his later times in the academy, gaining degrees and publishing books, we read a lot of the conclusions from his studies. One of his main points is that Christianity is unique in translating the message into the language of the people. So this book is a memoir, but not just a memoir. For those who enjoy reading the lives of interesting people and for those who want to learn about religion from someone who not just practices Christianity but has a deep respect for Islam, this would be a book worthy to pick up.
December 20, 2013
Makes a funny and interesting comparison of university departments with polygamous families: “Departments are like co-wives in the university’s paternal embrace, with members of the faculty their consummated offspring, complete with sibling jealousy.” [224] Sanneh begins this multi-religious and multi-cultural memoir with stories of his childhood in Gambia in a Muslim polygamous home and returns to this play on the academy. A deeply thoughtful lightness in a “Coming to America” and de Tocqueville mash up. Through his eyes we see an American Christian caste system he experiences in the 60s when he attempts to enter the church and university circles. “We found out that being black was not the same thing as being African American almost in the same way as being African American was not the same as being part of white America.” [129] Yet, ultimately this is not about race but about interfaith dialogue, appreciation, and faith.
March 6, 2016
Fascinating account of a Muslim boy from rural Gambia who became a Christian and a leading scholar of Christian/Muslim studies despite the churchs reluctance to antagonize Muslims by baptizing him. This articulate memoir is full of insights into inter-religious dialogue, significance of the vernacular, World Christianity (as opposed to Global Christianity), race in America, and the various national, academic and religious communities this incredible scholar has called home. Far more than I could take in on a single read, I was tempted to start over as soon as I read the last page. That said, it may have been the scholarly approach that emphasizes theology, but I missed Jesus.
May 21, 2013
This one was a stretch for me! His cultural background (non-Western) made both his writing style and his framework for posing and evaluating questions difficult for me to follow at times. However, I feel like I gained some insight into the worldview of an intellectually and spiritually inquisitive person coming from a Muslim background. He offers quite a few challenges to the Westernized church while, at the same time, validating the unique power of the gospel worldwide.
April 1, 2013
This was an extremely interesting book, although I have to admit it was difficult to understand in places, owing to my ignorance about some of the more complex intellectual issues involved in understanding Islam and Christianity's respective world views.
July 28, 2015
I read this book for a reading group discussion. I found it hard going. It was just difficult for me to read. I think the subject matter has merit but the way the book was written left me uninterested. I felt it was too academic for the common reader.
Want to read
October 16, 2012I read where he is a Professor of history at Yale University. Historians almost always have a balanced outlook on the past, so I am looking forward to this book.
July 20, 2013
Beautifully narrated story of a profound and unusual spiritual journey. Inviting and thought provoking.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews