Adrian Hastings

Adrian Hastings (23 June 1929 – 30 May 2001) was a Roman Catholic priest, historian and author. He wrote a book about the Wiriyamu Massacre during the Mozambican War of Independence and became an influential scholar of Christian history in Africa.

Early life

Hastings, a grandson of

In Uganda, Hastings served in pastoral and teaching functions and was charged with interpreting the documents of the Second Vatican Council to priests in Africa. His notes on these documents were later published. He also agitated for a relaxation of the discipline of clerical celibacy in the African context, attributing the low numbers of African clergy to the cultural alienness of this requirement.^{[citation needed]}

In 1966, after bouts of

The Portuguese army at the time denied the massacre in an official investigation but the Portuguese government commissioned another investigation, by Jorge Jardim, who located the former village, photographed the remains and delivered a full report to the Portuguese government proving the existence of the massacre and advising that it be acknowledged and explained. Marcelo Caetano and his ministers discussed the report on 18 August 1973 and instead decided to appoint another military investigation which once again alleged that Wiriyamu did not exist.[1]

Portugal's growing isolation following Hastings' claims has often been cited as a factor that helped to bring about the Carnation Revolution coup which deposed Marcelo Caetano, the leader of the Estado Novo regime that ruled the Portuguese Empire, in 1974.^[2]

Academic career

In 1976 Hastings was appointed to a lectureship in the theology faculty of the University of Aberdeen. He was an authority on nations and nationalism.^[3] In his 1997 book, The Construction of Nationhood, he traced the origins of European nations back to the Middle Ages, arguing for the centrality of Christianity to European national identities. According to Hastings, the biblical idea of the ancient Israelite polity, with its fusion of land, people and religious polity... was almost monolithically national" and spread through Europe.^[3]

The Construction of Nationhood, La construcción de las nacionalidades: Etnicidad, religión y nacionalismo was published in Spanish in 2002.^[4]

From 1982–85, he was Professor of Religious Studies at the

]

Death

Hastings died in Leeds on 30 May 2001, aged 71, and was interred in St Mary's Roman Catholic Church, East Hendred, Oxfordshire. The Adrian Hastings Africa Scholarship Fund was founded in 2001 at the University of Leeds in his honour.

Works

Hastings wrote more than forty books, including:

• Church and Mission in Modern Africa. London: Burns & Oates, 1967.
• A Concise Guide to the Documents of the Second Vatican Council. 2 vols. London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1968–69.
• Wiriyamu. London: Search Press, 1974.
  ISBN 0-85532-338-8
• In Filial Disobedience. Great Wakering: Mayhew-McCrimmon, 1978.
  ISBN 0-85597-249-1
• A History of African Christianity, 1950–1975. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979.
  ISBN 0-521-29397-9
• A History of English Christianity 1920–1985. London: Collins, 1986.
  ISBN 0-00-627041-7
• The Church in Africa, 1450–1950. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994.
  ISBN 0-19-826399-6
• The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
  ISBN 0-521-59391-3

See also

References

1. ^ Gomes, Carlos de Matos; Afonso, Aniceto (2010). Os anos da Guerra Colonial: Wiriyamu, De Moçambique para o mundo. Lisboa: Quidnovi. pp. 683–687.
2. ^ "Adrian Hastings". Telegraph. 26 June 2001.
3. ^
   doi:10.1111/1469-8219.00073
   .
4. ISBN 9788483230886
   .
5. ^ Gifford, Paul (15 June 2001). "Adrian Hastings: Radical Catholic theologian who fought colonialism and oppression from Africa to the Balkans". Guardian. Retrieved 1 February 2018.

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to Adrian Hastings.

• Obituary in Douai Magazine 164 (2001)
• Obituary by Ingrid Lawrie in Leeds African Studies Bulletin, 64 (2001), pp. 6–8.
• Ingrid Lawrie in the Oxford DNB (by subscription)
• The Adrian Hastings Africa Scholarship Fund
• The African Activist Archive Project website has a photograph of Reverend Adrian Hastings at the United Nations at a press briefing on 20 July 1973. Reverend Hastings testified before the UN Special Committee of 24 on decolonization about the massacre of civilians in Tete Province in Mozambique by the Portuguese army in what became known as the Wiriyamu Massacre and other atrocities committed by the Portuguese army.