Modern Church History: whole libraries could be filled with published books on this subject. Yet this present volume has a distinctive feature: it is written from an African perspective. It may indeed be the first book written on this subject explicitly from this perspective. And for the author, it has been a life-transforming experience. He has found challenges at every turn: there has been for him a shaking of the foundations in relation to cultural norms, historical presuppositions, and spiritual stereotypes. It has been provocatively affirmed that the future of Christianity is African. The first aim of this book is, appropriately enough, to enable African readers better to understand the significance, for them, of the last half-millennium of global Church History. However, it is hoped that non-African readers will find, from this different perspective, new and creative understandings of the subject a subject which is becoming increasingly pertinent in todays global village.