African Christianity, Dance, and Lived Faith: A Conversation with Yang Visiting Scholar Ludovic Lado

Ludovic Lado, one of this year’s two Yang Visiting Scholars in World Christianity, is a Jesuit priest and, until 2025, was associate professor of anthropology at CEFOD Business School in N'Djamena, Chad. He is the newly appointed dean of the School of Arts and Science at Hekima University College in Nairobi, Kenya. His research focuses on Christianity in Africa, with a particular focus on African Catholicism. Lado is the author of The Politics of Gender Reforms in West Africa (University of Notre Dame Press, 2023).  

Lado’s current research sits at the intersection of anthropology and religious studies. During his time at Harvard Divinity School (HDS), his work has explored aesthetic expressions of Christianity specific to the African context, particularly dance. At HDS, Lado also taught the course, “Anthropological and Sociological Perspectives on African Christianities.”

HDS Communications recently spoke with Lado about his research on African Christianity and how his experience at HDS has informed his scholarship.

What drew you to the Yang Scholars Program here at HDS?

I was drawn to the Yang Scholarship in World Christianity because the program is both a research and teaching program. I came in August, and the first semester was spent mostly doing research. This semester I continued with that research, but I also got to teach one course, an introductory course to African Christianity from an anthropological perspective. The program is a very interesting experience, a way of both doing research and giving students a taste of lived Christianity in the context of Africa.

How has your research evolved over the course of your time at HDS?

There have been two main areas in which I've been doing this research. The first is the aesthetic expression of Christianity in Africa, which means looking beyond doctrines and texts to how Christianity is expressed in the arts—in visual arts, music, and dance. That's actually the focus of my research here, because I've come to realize that although dance features prominently in African liturgies, it has been neglected in scholarship.

I've been analyzing, through video footage and pictures, how dance features in African liturgies. I’ve also been trying to understand why that particular aspect of African Christian expression has been neglected. Is it related to the fact that it’s much more a Global South phenomenon than one found in the Northern Hemisphere?

You hardly see Christian liturgies in the West where dance features prominently. Exceptions are African American churches and liturgies, which maybe says something about the Africanness of this sensitivity to using one’s body in a rhythmic way. I'm focusing on the African context because dance is a major dimension of how Christians pray in Africa. I have just spent a few weeks in the field in the Virgin Islands to witness how Easter liturgies are conducted in a Caribbean setting. For a researcher in World Christianity, it is always an enriching experience to be exposed to other ways of expressing the Christian faith.  

The second aspect that I have been looking at is the pushback from some of the local constituencies who feel that Christianity is still a foreign religion imported into Africa, who feel that Christianity may be occupying too much space in Africa, and who want to have their own, non-Christian spaces. My final talk, at the end of April, will be on this “neo-traditional” resistance to the expansion of Christianity in Africa today.

How does your research intersect with the course you're teaching at HDS?

In my class, we cover a number of topics, including African Christianity and the issue of conversion, African Christianity and issues of culture, how Christianity has engaged local cultures, and African Christianity and gender and politics. There is also a specific session on aesthetic expressions of African Christianity, where I show some of the dances and the way they occur in African liturgy.

The richness of the study of World Christianity is about this dialectic and tension between the universal claims of the Christian faith and its local expressions. What I try to do in my course is to show what is both universal and specific to the context of Africa. This is because, at the end of the day, one may have some general or universal claims about what it means to be a Christian, but they are always expressed through local idioms, local arts, and local music, and so on.

What has been the most impactful part of your experience at HDS this year?

Harvard Divinity School and Harvard University are wonderful places of learning. The mere fact of having been selected for this experience is in itself a dream come true. While it’s a very busy place with very busy people, people have generally been very hospitable, and I have not felt out of place here.

What has really impressed me, though, is the quality of the libraries, and the number of resources from all over the world, including Africa—even resources I never thought could get to Harvard. That they managed to collect those resources and bring them here for learning is striking. I don't think I've looked for a resource for my work and not found it.

The third aspect of the experience is the opportunity it presents for networking with colleagues, faculty, and even exploring venues for further collaboration. Beyond the one-year program, there are possibilities of keeping in touch and collaborating, which has also been a very interesting aspect of the experience. It’s also so enriching to see that HDS is such an interreligious place, and that people manage to communicate across those religious differences.

What’s one takeaway you hope students leave your class with?

My approach to religion, given my background, is social-scientific, which means it's very empirical. You make your arguments or your reflections based on data you have collected and analyzed in such a way that you can argue, “I'm making this point based on this data that I've collected and analyzed scientifically, methodologically.”

I'm hoping that my students will become interested in this interaction between the empirical and theoretical, which is central to anthropology in general, but also to my specific study of the anthropology of religion and Christianity. I’d also like for students to come to appreciate the variety of expressions of Christianity in the world, and in Africa as a continent.

I want students to learn to approach whatever concepts they use in their thinking, writing, or research with a critical perspective. As an African, I have come to appreciate the necessity of using critically the concepts inherited from Western scholarship, which means allowing some margins for deconstruction and reconstruction.  

What advice do you have for future Yang Scholars?

Come with an open mind and enjoy the experience. You will find a variety of colleagues who are interested not only in Christianity, but also in other religions. If you come here with a research topic in which you're really interested, you will definitely find the resources you need. As a Yang Scholar, I found what I needed for my program here.  

Banner photo: Alex Bayer