Special Forum • Curatorial Challenges 11

of texts as lived and performed in their midst.23 Pitts’ collection is interwoven with the religious, political, and social lives of ecclesial communities, and thus they are theological, not only in content but in function. Jeschke grasped this point well. He described the changing global reality of the church as “a world made small and fragile,” foreseeing tenuous diversifications and social changes to which today’s theological educators and ecclesial leaders struggle to adapt.24 He perceptively identified texts that would with time leave traces of Christianity reconceived and practiced as a global faith comprised of multiple centers of belonging.25 So, he bent his strategic attention to theological purposes, prioritizing a future and unknown church nascent within African and African diaspora communities as one of the rudders steering his course.

Excavating the collection in order to curate the exhibition revealed the tenacity and extent of efforts made by Jeschke, his staff, and an international network of scholars, librarians, and ecclesial leaders to collect, catalogue, and generate bibliographies of sources otherwise lost or forgotten. The further labor of publicizing the collection, developing funding that supports visiting scholars to work in the publication’s languages, as well as partnering with researchers and institutions in the communities where these documents originate, remains to be undertaken in order to fulfill Jeschke’s vision.

23 I am indebted on this point to the work of Derek Peterson and Emily Callaci whose African intellectual historical scholarship influenced (and influences) my reflections on the exhibition and collection. See Derek Peterson, Cre-ative Writing; Emily Callaci, Street Archives and City Life: Popular Intellectuals in Postcolonial Tanzania (Duke University Press: Durham, NC, 2017).

24 Jeschke, 1986, 86.

25 Klaus Koschorke, “Transcontinental Links, Enlarged Maps, and Polycentric Structures in the History of World Christianity,” Journal of World Christianity 6, no. 1 (2016): 34.