Andrew Finlay Walls (1928-2021)

Andrew Walls, a pioneering historian of Christian missions, was the architect of the study of world Christianity. Trained as a patristic scholar, he went to Sierra Leone in 1957 to teach at Fourah Bay College. There and at the University of Nsukka in Nigeria (1962-66) he became a student of the growing churches of Africa. At the universities of Aberdeen and Edinburgh, where he taught between 1966 and 1996, he became a scholar of renown, establishing the Centre for the Study of Christianity in the Non-Western World, and supervising students who became leaders in church and academy. His legacy is preserved in institutions across the globe, a host of articles, and his former students.