ABSTRACT
The Nigerian scholar Ogbu Kalu (1942–2009) was one of the leading writers on African church history, especially African Pentecostalism. His works addressed a wide array of topics including mission, politics, economics, education, culture, gender, ecology, inter-religious violence and immigrant African Christianity. This chapter examines Kalu’s approach to church history as a theological and ecumenical exercise, an ‘empowerment project’ for the whole ‘people of God’. It analyses his Africanist perspective which privileged the contribution of African protagonists, and his insistence upon a contextual reading of the history of evangelicalism and Pentecostalism in Africa.
