Volume 44, Issue 2 p. 230-250
SPECIAL ISSUE ARTICLE

J. Casely Hayford’s Social Imaginary of “Church Universal” in William Waddy Harris the West African Reformer: The Man and His Message (1915)

First published: 01 June 2020

Jennifer L. Aycock is a doctoral candidate at Laney Graduate School, Emory University, Atlanta, USA.

Abstract

A close reading of J. Casely Hayford’s tract William Waddy Harris The West African Reformer: The Man and His Message (1915) provides insight into the political considerations accounted for in writing histories of world Christianity during the colonial period. Hayford centres Africa and William Waddé Harris in a social imaginary that critiques Europe as the exclusive centre of religious reform and renewal. I argue that Hayford employs methods of analysis, rhetorical devices, and literary interlocutors that reflect his African positionality within the early colonial period. To this end, I argue that Hayford’s tract reconceives a history of world Christianity that predates the organised study of missions, ecumenics, and world religions. Without dismissing the contributions of these fields to the emergent field of World Christianity, Hayford’s colonial positionality lends him a contrasting and precarious double consciousness with which to the re-imagine a discourse of universal Christianity through and out of West Africa.

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