Memories in Tension – The Collateral Activities of Missionaries in Southern Africa between Exploration and Exploitation in the 19th Century (original) (raw)
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Histories of the modern missionary movement frequently assert that converts were more successful missionaries than Europeans yet details of their work remain sparse. This article examines influential factors in the spread of Christianity in Sub-Saharan Africa in two ways. It explores the complex and variable processes through life sketches of African missionaries, Bernard Mizeki, Leonard Kamungu and Apolo Kivebulaya, who worked with the Anglican mission agencies SPG, UMCA and CMS, respectively. It identifies common elements for further scrutiny including the role of travel, translation and communication, and the development of continental centres of Christianity and the trajectories between them and local hubs of mission activity. The transnational turn of contemporary history is employed and critiqued to scrutinize the relations between the local and global in order to comprehend the appeal of Christianity in the colonial era.
The Anglo-Catholic Church of England’s Universities’ Mission to Central Africa, led by Bishop Charles Fredrick Mackenzie in 1861 did not last long in Central-Southern Africa. Due to his involvement in the liberation of slaves, Mackenzie’s ministry was considered a scandal in England. After his death on January 31, 1862, his successor Bishop William George Tozer abandoned Central-Southern Africa and moved the mission to Zanzibar in 1864. Accepting that many issues led to the abandoning of the mission, the article argues that Mackenzie’s mission was driven by the plight of slaves—and therefore in line with some models of Christian social engagement. Recognizing the ethical and theological dilemma of violent liberation struggles, the article argues that Mackenzie’s ministry reveals the risky nature of Christian social witness. The article provides a brief background of Mackenzie’s life, discusses his ministry of liberation in Central-Southern Africa, his moral conflicts about violence, and finally how his actions can still inform Christian social witness in Africa today.
CHRISTIAN MISSIONS AND COLONIAL RULE IN WEST AFRICA
The purpose of this paper is to determine the correlation between the nineteenth century missionary enterprise and colonial occupation of Africa. European missionaries entered Africa simultaneously at the very beginning of colonial conquest and domination of Africa. What was the relationship between missionaries, traders and administrators in the colonial era? What can we identify as the predetermined objective of colonialism visa -vis missions in Africa? These are some of the questions that the present study will attempt to answer from the perspective of the historiography of European expansion in Africa.
Christian Missions and Colonial Rule in Africa: Objective and Contemporary Analysis
European Scientific Journal, 2014
The purpose of this paper is to determine the correlation between the nineteenth century missionary enterprise and colonial occupation of Africa. European missionaries entered Africa simultaneously at the very beginning of colonial conquest and domination of Africa. What was the relationship between missionaries, traders and administrators in the colonial era? What can we identify as the predetermined objective of colonialism visa -vis missions in Africa? These are some of the questions that the present study will attempt to answer from the perspective of the historiography of European expansion in Africa.
Missionary life stories in the contact zone
European Social Science History Conference (ESSHC) Belfast, 2018
Protestant missions were an essential global movement in the era of European imperialism. Generally, it has been stated that the missionary encounter and the relationship between the missionary movement and indigenous populations was far more complex and ambiguous than previously recognized. My research concerns Swedish missionaries and their relations with the population and political power in the Congo Free State, from the early 1880s to 1908. The total of 124 Swedish missionaries working in the country during this period belonged to Swedish Missionary Society (Svenska Missionsförbundet), a denomination that had left the national Lutheran church in 1878. The evangelical popular revival was part of a larger movement in Swedish society together with the temperance and labour movement: It attracted mainly followers from the lower strata of the population, of which the majority came from the countryside. The popular movements functioned as channels for popular protest against traditional authorities. The importance of a personal conversion and close relation with God, the absolute authority of the Bible and an universalistic view of mankind were fundamental ideas among the revivalists. Accordingly, the idea of universal brotherhood was central to the evangelical structure of thought in Swedish Missionary Society. Even though the missionaries had been raised in a popular movement with strong emancipatory features, they were also influenced by the more or less clearly expressed racist ideas of the time. In the Congo Free State – infamous for its brutality and abuses against the population – the missionaries inevitably, and by definition, became part of the prevalent circumstances favouring white supremacy. This positioning entailed an interesting paradox, which constitutes the point of departure for my study. I have used a biographical approach to analyse the contact zone between the Swedish missionaries and the local population, bakongo. Reading of private diaries and similar records reveals a complex image, with numerous ambiguous conflicts and contradictions. These ambiguities existed within the missionary organization as a whole, but also inside individual missionaries. The encounter was sometimes shocking and posed physical challenges in addition to cultural and psychological ones. Through examination of life stories of individual missionaries, also power hierarchies of gender, race and class within the mission are reflected. In my paper, I will discuss these issues based on the examples of a few individuals.
Journal of Religion in Africa, 2021
In 1925 the Vatican Missionary Exhibition took place, presenting thousands of objects sent by Catholic missions around the world. Resulting from substantial efforts by the Church, the exhibition had a significant public impact, with an estimated one million visitors. It marked a critical moment in the international affirmation of the Church, as well as the reformulation and expansion of its missionary policy in the aftermath of the Great War. Catholic missions and congregations in the Portuguese colonial empire participated in the exhibition. This article focuses on the Angolan case, where the Congregation of the Holy Spirit was the main protagonist of Catholic missionisation. I examine the organisation process, the circulation of norms and objects across imperial borders, and their exhibition at the Vatican. I discuss the tensions between the pontifical message and Portuguese missionary politics, as well as the intermediary position that the Spiritans occupied.
Mind and Body The missionary and the construction of the African
This article elaborates on the way in which catholic missionaries in the Congo, through their stories on sexual seduction, construct an image of themselves as strong catholics and of Africans as childlike persons not capable of controlling their passions. This topic of sexual seduction in a new, non-European environment (and resistance to this temptation), will form the starting point for a broader view on (post) colonial mythmaking about Africa and the role of the missionary in this process. The cliché image of the unrestrained (sexual) vitality of the African serves as the "Other" against which the Belgians can construct an image of themselves as patient people that are in control of their feelings and passions, and in that way "more civilised.