The Ogbu Uke Kalu Centre for Christianity and African Culture will be inaugurated at Abia State University on June 20, 2019. In a statement made available by Edward Kalu, a planning committee member, said the late Ogbu Kalu was Nigeria’s preeminent scholar of Christianity. The Inauguration will also be marked by an international conference with speakers from different parts of the world. According to Kalu, the Keynote address would be delivered by Professor Toyin Falola, the distinguished scholar of humanities from the University of Texas at Austin. Other notable speakers are Professor Afe Adogame of Princeton Theological Seminary and Professor Chima Korieh of Marquette University, Wisconsin, USA. Speakers will address various themes such as the intersection of popular and traditional culture, African problems with traditional modernisation methods, Linguistic identities and culture in Africa, Cosmopolitanism, hybridity, and African pluriversalism, Globalisation, Afropolitanism, and African religious futures. “In his keynote Address, Professor Falola will tie all the themes together as they relate to the works of Professor Kalu, while also explaining what the Center stands for as well as its future goals and contributions to Nigeria.
Falola will show how Kalu created many ideas of his own that involved the “unsung heroes” from five perspectives which are his account of the African agency is what makes his work so revolutionary and significant”.
He explained further that the late Professor Kalu was one of the world’s seminal scholars, focusing mostly on African Christianity, Global Missions, and Global Pentecostalism. Kalu argued that, historically, African Christianity grew out of African cosmology and primal religion.
