Andrew Barnes to Speak on the Christian Black Atlantic & Ethiopianism
Dr. Andrew Barnes, Professor of History at Arizona State University, will give a virtual lecture entitled “The Christian Black Atlantic: Orishatukeh Faduma and the Ethiopianist Appropriation of Evangelization through Poor Relief.” The lecture will take place on Tuesday, October 20, from 2pm-3:15pm. If you would like to attend, please contact mcrago@bu.edu to request the Zoom link.
Dr. Barnes argues that many Europeans saw Africa’s colonization as an exhibition of European racial ascendancy. African Christians saw Africa’s subjugation as a demonstration of European technological superiority. If the latter was the case, then the path to Africa’s liberation ran through the development of a competitive African technology.
Barnes will chronicle African Christians’ turn to American-style industrial education, particularly the model developed by Booker T. Washington at Alabama’s Tuskegee Institute, as a vehicle for Christian regeneration in Africa. Over the period 1880-1920, African Christians, motivated by Ethiopianism and its conviction that Africans should be saved by other Africans, founded schools based upon the Tuskegee model.
Though the attempts by African Christians to create industrial education schools ultimately failed, Barnes will highlight the success of transatlantic black identity and Christian resurgence in Africa.
See the flier here.