Themes in the Christian History of Central Africa

By T. O. Ranger and John Weller

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1975.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Release date: Mar 29, 2024
• ISBN: 9780520312630

T. O. Ranger

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THEMES IN THE CHRISTIAN HISTORY

OF CENTRAL AFRICA

Themes

in the Christian History of Central Africa

edited by T. O. RANGER

and JOHN WELLER

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

BERKELEY AND LOS ANGELES 1975

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

ISBN: 0-520-02536-9

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 73-83051

© T. O. Ranger and John Weller 1975

Printed in Great Britain

Contents 1

Contents 1

List of Illustrations

List of Maps

Acknowledgements

JOHN WELLER Preface

PART ONE Christianity and Central African Religions

TERENCE RANGER

Introduction

MATTHEW SCHOFFELEERS The Interaction of the M’Bona Cult and Christianity, 1859-1963

IAN LINDEN Chewa Initiation Rites and Nyau Societies: the Use of Religious Institutions in Local Pol itics at Mua HYPERLINK \l noteT_1_4 1

TERENCE RANGER The Mwana Lesa Movement of 1925

SALATHIEL K. MADZIYIRE Heathen Practices in the Urban and Rural Parts of Marandellas Area and their Effects upon Christianity

PART TWO Christianity and Colonial Society

TERENCE RANGER Introduction

DAVID J. COOK The Influence of Livingstonia Mission upon the Formation of Welfare Associations in Za mbia, 1912-31

ROGER PEADEN The Contribution of the Epworth Mission Settlement to African Development

MURRAY STEELE ‘With Hope Unconquered and Unconquer able.. Arthur Shearly Cripps, 1869-1952

ADRIAN HASTINGS John Lester Membe

JOHN WELLER The Influence on National Affairs of Alston May, Bishop of Northern Rhodesia, 1914-40

PART THREE Christianity and Contemporary Society

TERENCE RANGER Introduction

An Aspect of the Development of the Rel igious Life in Rhodesia

NORMAN E. THOMAS Inter-Church Co-operation in Rhodesia’s Towns, 1962-72

FARAI DAVID MUZOREWA Through Prayer to Action: The Rukwadzano Women of Rhodesia

Index

Thematic Index

List of Illustrations

i A fully dressed Nyau dancer in the village of Khate, Chikwawa district.

2.A Nyau mask from the chiefdom of Chapananga in southern Malawi.

3.Tomo Nyirenda.

4.Nyirenda after his arrest and the amputation of his arms.

5.A group of contrasting religious officers in Marandellas district. From left to right: Father Salathiel Madziyire; a member of the Mothers’ Union; the medium of the spirit Mbuya Chigutiro; and seated, her son, Stephen, shown in his role of mbira player for the spirit.

6.The Broken Hill Welfare Association in 1935. Mr Tom Manda is in the centre of the middle row. Mr Abel Kashell is on the extreme right of the front row.

7.Epworth Mission in 1908.

8.Arthur Shearly Cripps outside his mission buildings near Enkel- doom, 1912.

9.A. S. Cripps with E. Ranga, an evangelist, 1941.

10.John Lester Membe in Cape Town, 1934.

11.John Lester Membe in Kitwe, 1970.

12.African contemplatives: the Poor Clares, Lilongwe.

13.African sisters celebrate: the Poor Clares, Lilongwe.

14.Women of the Rukwadzano association of the United Methodist Church of Rhodesia protesting against the banning of the bishop, Abel Muzorewa, from entry to the Tribal Trust Lands in which most rural Africans live (5 September 1970, in Umtali).

List of Maps

Page 15

M’BONA SHRINES AND CHRISTIAN MISSIONS

Page 31

MUA MISSION: VILLAGES AND SHRINES

Page 46

THE AREA OF TOMO NYIRENDA’S ACTIVITIES IN 1925

Page 137

SALISBURY DISTRICT IN 1892

Page 146

SALISBURY DISTRICT SHOWING WESLEYAN STATIONS C. 1929

Page 154

MARONDA MASHANU 1929

Page 176

MAP TO ILLUSTRATE THE CAREER OF JOHN LESTER MEMBE

Page 219

MAP OF THE CATHOLIC DIOCESES OF RHODESIA

Acknowledgements

The editors gratefully acknowledge the generosity of the Theological Education Fund, which made the grant for the costs of the Chilema conference at which most of these papers were given. The Ford Foundation grant for the development of African religious history has provided funds for the sub-editorial expenses of this book. Finally, we should like to thank Cynthia Brantley who has acted as sub-editor with unruffled courtesy and competence.

The editors are also grateful to the following for permission to use illustrations as follows: Illustrations 1, 2, and 3, from the collection of Dr J. M. Schoffeleers; illustration 4, first appeared in The Rhodesia Herald, 22 January 1926 (Rhodesian Printing and Publishing Co.); illustration 5, first appeared in Parade, September 1956 (Parade Publications Pvt Ltd); illustration 7, photograph kindly lent to John Cook by Mr Kashell; illustration 8, The Foreign Field, Vol. 5,1908-9, p. 314; illustrations 9 and 10, by courtesy of L. Mamvura and the National Archives of Rhodesia.

JOHN WELLER

Preface

In the century and more since they arrived in Central Africa, the Christian churches have inevitably come into contact with a wide variety of other institutions. These range from socio-religious ones, such as the Nyau societies and M’Bona cult of Malawi, to political ones, such as the Colonial Administration of the former Northern Rhodesia, and the settler régime in Salisbury. In each case, the churches have had to work out their attitudes, and to a greater or lesser extent have influenced the other institutions, and been influenced by them. These interactions are important for historians, and, indeed, for all who wish to understand society and the churches as they exist today. As the list of its contents shows, this book consists of a number of case histories, describing the encounters mentioned, and others besides.

A glance across to the list of the authors themselves shows that the churches are now in contact with yet another group of institutions. Half our contributors are employed by the churches, half by the universities, and there is an editor in each category. Publication is the climax of a project which included a Workshop held at Chilema Lay Training Centre, Malawi, in August 1971, giving ample opportunity for dialogue between the two groups. The universities are among the most recent institutions to be set up in Central Africa, but it already seems clear that the churches’ contacts with them will prove no less important, at least for local Christianity, than the earlier encounters which are described in this book. It is possible to suggest some of the ways in which it seems likely that this influence will operate.

Firstly, the universities are likely to make the churches look very much more carefully at the way in which they write their own history, and teach it. It may be useful to set out the ways in which previous methods seem to require improvement; each is a challenge to seek a more adequate balance.

1.Geographical Balance

A Seminary teacher who has received his own training in the West, as most have done, is tempted to pass on what he has learnt, taking his students through events which occurred at Nicaea, Chalcedon, Wittenburg, Geneva, and Trent, and then adding a short appendix at the end about the evangelizing of Central Africa. Even if he feels the necessity to give greater prominence to local Church History, the lack of adequate textbooks is likely to discourage him. A recent survey of the teaching of Church History in the seminaries of Central Africa¹ showed that scarcely any have yet begun to devote a really significant part of their course to events which occurred in their own areas. The colleges which give most attention to local events are those which are required to do so because they are preparing their students for the Central Africa Diploma in Theology. Even this syllabus, however, only devotes the last of its nine terms to Central Africa, though it adds a further three terms for an optional, unexamined Research Project.²

In East Africa, the situation is entirely different. Most seminaries have for some time followed a syllabus laid down by Makerere University,³ and this devotes one of its two Church History papers entirely to African Church History, requiring a full year of study. The syllabus even includes a statement justifying the presence of non-African Church History as the subject of the other paper. So the universities will certainly challenge the churches to give a very much greater prominence to Africa in the teaching of Church History.

2.A Balance of Periods

Not surprisingly, the churches have devoted a large proportion of their attention to the period when the first missionaries were bringing the Gospel to the people of the area. Their heroism made stirring reading in books produced primarily for the attraction of funds and recruits for the Missionary Societies, and provided much of the material when the first serious historical studies began to appear. Easily the most widely used book on African Church History in local seminaries is Groves’s four-volume work with the significant title The Planting of Christianity in Africa⁴ Yet much has happened since Christianity was planted, and much happened before it was planted; as my fellow-editor has pointed out,⁵ it is not difficult to find examples of distortion arising from an inadequate timescale.

3.A Denominational Balance

The time is mercifully drawing to a close during which the different denominations have been maintaining separate seminaries, and studying and writing Church History in isolation from one another. Not every church body has gone as far as the one which in 1945 produced a book entirely devoted to its own denominational history, and entitled it The Church in Southern Rhodesia⁶ yet many of the earlier books confined themselves to a single Mission. The present-day historian has the task of combining these sources in order to present a balanced and coherent picture, and his task is by no means easy; some denominations have written more about their history than others have done about theirs, and it is not always easy to fill gaps from primary sources, which may be inaccessible, or in a language not at the command of the historian, or both.

4.A Balance of Viewpoints

The early missionaries were articulate people who wrote letters, magazine articles, and Annual Reports, kept diaries, and thus produced much material of great value. Few of their converts did any of these things. The consequence is that the historian is tempted to base his work on the sources that are most readily available, with the result that the missionary, not the convert, is the key figure. Yet it is what the convert heard, rather than what the missionary thought he had said, which really determined subsequent events. A good deal of oral research needs to be done before the impact of Christianity can be described with real accuracy.

5.Sacred and Secular

The missions have constantly affected, and been affected by, the societies in which they have operated, so that Church History cannot be compartmentalized; it is interwoven with political history, economic history, educational history, in such a way that it cannot satisfactorily be studied in isolation from them. This fact has been well understood in East Africa. The syllabus for the Makerere Diploma in Theology includes the statement: ‘Church History is not the history of Christian institutions, denominations, ideas, and doctrines. It is world history on which the Gospel through the Church is making its impact.’ This syllabus goes on to spell out what this means in practice by listing thirteen themes which are likely to interest the examiners, and the first five are all concerned with the Church’s impact on the world, not its domestic affairs. They are: ‘Encounters between the Church and different cultures’, ‘Church-State relations’, ‘The Church and Social Problems’, ‘The Church and the Economic Order’, and ‘The Church and Nationalist Movements’. This ‘outward-looking’ emphasis is a feature of much Christian thinking today, with many people questioning the relevance and importance of interminable discussions of liturgical and ecumenical affairs; so the seminaries which adopt the Makerere syllabus will find a salutary pressure from a secular university towards reflecting this trend in their presentation of Church History.

Once the churches have accepted the challenge to seek an improved balance of historical writing and study along the lines described, a good deal of light can be shed on problems that have previously seemed baffling. Anybody who has been brought up on the type of literature that stresses the missionaries’ heroic sanctity will be somewhat puzzled when he comes to read passages like the following extract from an article in the Times of Zambia by Dr Daniel Kunene, based on a lecture that he had given a few days previously at the University of Zambia:

The missionary’s primary purpose was to tell the African that the God of Europe was superior to the Gods of Africa, that most African customs and ways went contrary to their [the missionaries’] religion and that, to be saved, the African had to abandon them all… Many Africans rejected the Christian religion with contempt. Others tried it and found it wanting …⁷

This charge of cultural and religious arrogance, delivered with greater or lesser degrees of bitterness, is one that is very commonly made. It is tempting to dismiss it, pointing out that Jesus warned the Apostles that they could expect to offend those who, for one reason or another, refused to accept the Christian message. Yet the fact that the charge is so widely made, and often repeated by those who have accepted the Christian faith, should warn us that the criticism needs to be taken seriously.

The professional historian can help us to reach a verdict. He may describe events which involved arrogant missionaries, but he will also give examples of Christian workers who treated Africans and their customs with genuine respect. For example, Mabel Shaw of Mbereshi, Zambia, movingly describes how she learnt from David Livingstone: ‘Already Africa is God’s. God did not wait for me to bring him here. I found Him here in every village …‘.⁸

The task, however, is a very much more complex one than the mere addition of examples to each side of the scales, in order to make possible a judgement about the past. Searching questions have to be considered about the extent to which Christianity in the present day can, and should, accommodate itself to local customs. This requires a comprehensive knowledge of Theology as well as of relevant History and Social Anthropology, and seems to cry out for an interdisciplinary approach. For example, the question whether polygamists should be required to send away all but one of their wives before baptism has often been the subject of debate. It can hardly be settled until the anthropologist has given his account of the likely social and economic effects of such a regulation, the historian has described comparable occasions when the issue has arisen in the past, and the theologian has given his account of the attitude to polygamy which he finds in the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the history of the church.

The papers which form Part I of this book all adopt the historical, descriptive approach. Two of the writers, Ranger and Schoffeleers, give examples of the failure of U.M.C.A. missionaries to accommodate themselves sufficiently to what they encountered,⁹ but the complexity of the issues soon emerges. As Ranger rightly points out, the story of Tomo Nyirenda shows that it was possible to be ‘too vulnerable to the pressures of Lala society’, and that to be so can be even more disastrous in its consequences than not being vulnerable enough.¹⁰ The Christian churches are constantly having to decide upon the attitude to adopt to the customs and religions of the societies they encounter; the descriptions of past confrontations, and discussions about them, which make up this part of the book, are offered as a contribution towards ensuring that such decisions are well-informed ones.

The article by Dr Kunene, mentioned above, goes on to make a second major charge against Christian missionaries: ‘The involvement of most missionaries with the military conquest and political subjugation of the African is well attested’.¹¹ This, too, is a criticism which is frequently made, and throughout Central Africa the Christian churches are widely held to have been badly compromised by their encouragement of the setting up of colonial régimes, and their failure to support moves to dismantle them. (The one exception is found among the white community in Rhodesia, where the diametrically opposite belief is held with equal conviction.)

Significantly, this subject, of the political effects of Christianity, forms the second major theme of this book. All the contributions in Part II, and indirectly those in Part III, are case histories which add to our knowledge of the ways in which Christian influences have operated. While they make no pretence of giving a complete picture, they give a strong indication that, as the colonial period recedes (north of the Zambesi) and more dispassionate judgements become possible, the popular image of a church blind to injustice and tamely accepting the status quo will need to be revised.

Of more immediate importance than the rather sterile task of ‘saving face’ about the churches’ past, is that of giving to Christian leaders the information they need in order to make their contribution to the present-day affairs of their nations. Amongst those who have recognized the need for such a contribution is President Kaunda, and it is interesting to note how he includes the universities alongside the churches in what he writes:

We need the uncommitted intellectual whose mind is able to range widely and to occupy himself with ideas which, though not immediately germane to the business of nation-building, stimulate free thought and dialogue on every matter of human concern. I would expect such cross-fertilization of ideas to come from two directions, our institutions of higher learning and the Churches. In particular, the ministry of the Churches comprises the largest single group of uncommitted intellectuals, charged by the Gospel they proclaim to deal with ultimate questions, and by definition required to see society in the widest possible context — against the unchanging Laws of God. Let me be frank and state that I am disappointed in the failure of the clergy, with certain exceptions, to discharge this prophetic function.¹²

As the studies included in Part II of this book indicate, there are a number of ways in which this function can be discharged. It is possible to emulate the Old Testament prophets directly, by making withering denunciations of the political establishment. An alternative is to take the advice contained in one of Aesop’s fables, and use the same policy of gentle persuasion as the Sun, who managed to make the Traveller undress. He achieved this, it will be remembered, with his ‘genial rays’ after the North Wind had only succeeded in causing the object of his fury to wrap his cloak more tightly around him. A third method, less direct and requiring much patience, is to educate a generation in ideals which will cause them eventually to secure political change. All of these methods have been used in Central Africa, and there seems to be a good deal of value in the comparisons which are made possible by the juxtaposition of descriptions of their use and effects in Part II.

In considering the means by which the churches carry out their prophetic function, we are dealing with problems confronting church leaders; in considering the content of the message, we are giving attention to the problems which concern political leaders. It is to issues of this second type that President Kaunda very reasonably wants the churches and the universities to apply their brains, and the study of national problems could well be a main item on the agenda for the next project which scholars from the two institutions carry out together.

For Part III of this book, we move on to what seem to be even more exclusively domestic affairs. Yet closer examination shows that here, too, ‘sacred’ and ‘secular’ are closely interwoven. Inter-church co-operation in the towns has had a political dimension from the start. The Rukwadzano is well on the way to becoming ‘a formidable religious force … upon national life’.¹³ Most strikingly of all, spiritual renewal among members of Religious Orders is said to be likely to ‘make the sisters more sensitive to the social, economic, and political needs of their neighbours’.¹⁴ Church and Society are interacting through these organizations, and academic studies throw light upon the processes.

Such, then, are the themes which attracted the attention of the writers from churches and universities as they collaborated in this venture. The value of such co-operation has long been recognized by the directors of the Theological Education Fund, and it was money kindly granted from this source which made the project possible. We are grateful, too, to all the twenty-one people who produced papers. The twelve contributions which were not selected for this publication all stimulated valuable discussions at the Workshop, and many were recommended for circulation in other forms. The remainder, together with three others previously unpublished, but known to the editors, constitute this book. While we cannot claim that they all satisfy the stringent conditions for historiography set out above, we have every hope that they will prove of value to those interested in the study of Christian influence in Central Africa.

NOTES

1 . J. C. Weller Adapting the Study of Church History: A Survey of Progress in the Seminaries of Central Africa Paper contributed to the Workshop in Religious Research, Chilema, Malawi, 1971 (not published).

2 . The syllabus for this Diploma may be obtained from the Registrar, Central Africa Diploma in Theology, PO Box 3566, Salisbury, Rhodesia.

3 . The syllabus for this Diploma may be obtained from the Registrar, Makerere Diploma in Theology, Dept of Religious Studies, Makerere University, PO Box 7062, Kampala, Uganda.

4 . C. P. Groves The Planting of Christianity in Africa 4 vols (London 1954-58).

5 . T. O. Ranger Christianity in Central Africa An unpublished paper presented to the Workshop on the teaching of Central and East African History, held in Lusaka, August 1970. This paper contains a most valuable summary and critique of the state of the historiography of Central African Christianity: much use has been made of it in writing this part of the Preface.

6 . H. St John T. Evans The Church in Southern Rhodesia (London 1945).

7 . D. Kunene, ‘Missionary Education and our Writers’ Times of Zambia (24 April 1969).

8 . Mabel Shaw God’s Candlelights (London 1932).

9 . Below, pp. 65ff and i8f.

10 . Below, p. 67.

11 . Times of Zambia (24 April 1969).

12 . K. D. Kaunda A Humanist in Africa (London 1966) p. 100.

13 . Below, p. 268.

14 . Below, p.235.

PART ONE

Christianity and Central African Religions

TERENCE RANGER

Introduction

THE NEED FOR ‘INWARD-LOOKING’ HISTORY

This book begins in paradox. In its Preface John Weller recommends that historians of the Central African church should turn away from narrowly ‘religious’ themes. They should no longer concentrate on dogma and liturgy. Instead they should turn outwards and study the involvement of the church with politics and the State, with the economic order, and with protest. Such outward-looking themes are abundantly reflected in the papers that make up this first section. Thus, in his account of the M’Bona cult in southern Malawi Matthew Schoffeleers shows how the history of the cult has been inseparably linked with the development of Mang'anja chiefdoms and with the economic and social pressures experienced by the Mang’anja people. Ian Linden emphasizes that the Chewa initiation rites which he describes in his paper must be seen as economic, political, educational, and cultural institutions as well as religious ones. I myself discuss the connection between the millenarianism and fear of witchcraft of the Lala people of Zambia in the 1920s and the development of migrant labour and of rural impoverishment. All three of us discuss African religion also in terms of protest.

But at the same time these papers make an implicit argument for the importance of continuing to turn inward, for continued examination of the religious or ideational aspects of Central African history. The M’Bona cult of the Mang’anja, the Nyau societies of the Chewa, the Mwana Lesa movement among the Lala — these things are important to the political history of their societies not only as factions or foci of political power in themselves but as sources of ideas and symbols. it is the developing dogma and liturgy of these movements which makes certain protest responses — or certain adaptive responses — possible. For this reason all three papers discuss the interaction of the ideas and symbols of Christianity and African religion. Schoffeleers explores the significance of the similarities in myth and ritual which make possible the exchange of ideas between the M’Bona cult and Christianity. Linden describes the starkness of the confrontation between Nyau and Catholic ideas about the fate of men after death. I myself make the interaction of Lala and Christian millenarianism the core of my analysis of the Mwana Lesa movement, which I see as a movement of ideas first and foremost and as a political movement only secondarily.

In short, these papers by implication state a proposition which it seems useful to make explicit here — that we must review and explore afresh the ‘inward- looking’ Christian history of Central Africa at the same time as we explore out- ward-looking themes. We cannot safely assume that we know all that there is to be known about the dogmatic and liturgical history of Central Africa; that it is stale stuff no longer requiring study. On the contrary, there is great need to sharpen our understanding of ideas and symbols.

This need is plain even if we restrict our attention to the inward-looking history of Central African Christianity itself and before we go on to study the interactions of Christianity and African religion. Of course, we possess many accounts of missionary theology and of missionary liturgical experiments. We are beginning to have very valuable accounts of the theology and ritual practice of African independent churches in Central Africa. Yet we still have only the most shadowy outlines of the inward history of the Central African church as a whole and remain largely ignorant of many very important themes. We know too little of the existential theology and ritual which was produced by the actual practice of missionaries and especially of African catechists. We have no adequate treatment of the dogmatic and symbolic content of the Revival movements inside missionary Protestantism. Little is available about the ideas and ceremonies of the various American and South African fundamentalist missions. Above all, perhaps, the whole topic of Pentecostalism in its widest sense has hardly been treated. How important for the implantation of Christianity in Central Africa has been what one missionary called ‘a new Pentecost’, accompanied by healings and exorcisms? What is the significance of the dominance of the idea of the Holy Spirit in so many African independent churches? Faced with questions like these we realize that our grasp of the inward history of the Central African church — the very topic which should be at the core of the curricula of seminaries and theological colleges — has been limited to a very generalized sense of the most obvious changes which have taken place in the ‘classical’ missionary societies.

The need for sharper understanding is equally plain from the point of view of the secular historian, whose interest in Christian history in Central Africa is in its interaction with social and intellectual change. Anthropologists who have worked in Central and Eastern Africa have shown that social change is accompanied, articulated, and perhaps even made possible, by symbolic change in the realm of myth and ritual. It would be peculiar if this interest in ‘liturgy’ on the part of anthropologists were to be accompanied by a general abandonment by historians of the subject of the church!

But above all, the need to review the inward-looking ‘religious’ history of Central Africa arises in the context of the sort of issues to which the papers in this section are devoted. In general there has been an extraordinary imbalance in the treatment of inward-looking history. The process of interaction between Christianity and African societies was for a long time thought of as ‘religious’ on one side only. Accounts of the faith and practice of the missionaries were indeed given and were held to explain missionary motivation. But the response to missionaries by African societies and individuals was rarely treated inwardly.

Early missionaries often denied that Central Africans had a religion. Much missionary history tended to explain African reactions exclusively in terms of political or economic motivations, or else in terms of a conspiracy of functionaries — witch-doctors, diviners, etc. — to protect their vested interests. The result was a history which was badly distorted on both sides. As John Weller points out, its treatment of the missionaries and of Christianity was too narrowly ‘religious’; its treatment of African response was not ‘religious’ enough.

Of course, things have changed very greatly. So, far from saying that Central Africans had no religions we now commonly say that Africans are peculiarly religious. Books like J. V. Taylor’s The Primal Vision have set out to explore, with an intense sympathy, the insights which African religion can contribute to a Central African Christianity. But from the point of view of a sound history of the Central African church this sort of work has merely discredited the earlier interpretations without being able to replace them with a satisfactory account of the dynamics of the interaction between Christianity and African religions.¹

For this failure there have been two main reasons. First, these missiological studies have characteristically been very generalized. They have sought to discover the quintessential common themes of African religious experience and to provide guidance which will be valid throughout Central Africa; they have sought to promulgate, in fact, a single Bantu Philosophy. At the same time they have rarely had room to make many fine distinctions between the different types of Christianity which have interacted with Central African societies. The resulting simplification — an essential African religion confronting an essential Christianity — is in many ways attractive, especially to teachers and students in seminaries and theological colleges where generalization of some sort is essential. Nevertheless, this sort of generalization is dangerously misleading.

A valid ‘inward’ history of the Central African church in its encounter with African religions will have to be much more particularist. There was no essential Central African religion. There were the widest variations between societies and within societies in the extent to which men took ritual seriously; there were the widest variations in the extent to which a developed body of myth was available; there were widely different concepts of God and of Sin; in some Central African societies there were markedly millenarian ideas and in others not; in some places there was a strong prophetic tradition but not in others. And if we add to this the markedly different character of the ideas and symbols presented to Africans by different forms of missionary Christianity it is obvious that we are dealing with a very complex situation.

This does not mean to say that no generalizations are or will be possible. What it does mean is that they will be generalizations of a different sort, based on comparison and contrast of situations rather than on a notion of quintessential identity. These more valid generalizations can only be arrived at through detailed case studies, such as the handful presented in this book.

If the first weakness of missiological studies has been over-generalization, the second weakness has been a lack of interest in time, in process, in short a lack of interest in history. Of course, all missiological writing is very well aware of the historical character of Christianity. Such writing emphasizes the Christian focus on a specific event in time; it emphasizes the Christian idea of salvation history and the Christian tradition of prophecy; it emphasizes the Christian vision of the future millennium. It recognizes the connection between these ideas and the rapid pace of change in Europe. All these senses in which Christianity is a historic religion combine to make most people think that it is the historic religion. At any rate, most missiological writing in Africa presents us with a dynamic, historic Christianity on one side, and with a ‘timeless’ and unchanging African religion on the other.

This is often done very sympathetically. Writers point out the strengths of continuity and of organic relationship with nature which the ‘timeless’ character of African religion is supposed to ensure.² But however sympathetically made the contrast remains a distortion. Certainly, there is a real contrast to be made. The type and rate of change to which Christianity adapted, and in some cases stimulated, in Europe was very different from the type and rate of religious change in Africa. But the contrast has been greatly overdrawn.

CENTRAL AFRICAN RELI Gì ONS AND NINETEENTH-CENTUR Y CHANGE

African religions have their histories — though we do not know enough about them yet to be able to tell whether, and in what ways, a Christian theologian would find them to have had salvation histories. Some African religions refer back in their founding myths to events which are fully historic — as in the case of the martyrdom of the M’Bona priest by Lundu. Some African religions have a developed prophetic tradition — as once again with the M’Bona cult and with the Shona spirit mediums who are described in this book by Father Madziyire. Sometimes there are strongly future-oriented ideas of a millennium, as I describe for the Lala in my paper in this section. In short, the ideas and roles of African religions can adapt to, and sometimes precipitate, change.

The study of the changes in African religion is a growing one.³ We need to know very much more, but we already know quite enough to show that there was little that was unchanged about Central African religions — little that was ‘timeless’ — when the missionaries entered the area in the nineteenth century. It is plain that change had been going on for centuries, but the evidence for the nineteenth century is especially good. We can be quite certain that the modern missionary movement entered Central Africa at a time when African religious institutions were undergoing sharp stresses and strains almost everywhere, and experiencing rapid redefinition in many places. Many Europeans thought that African religions were on the point of collapse because their inflexible and timeless nature could not cope with change. But in fact they were changing, often painfully and with tension.

Some of these changes had been precipitated by developments within Central African societies themselves. The incursion of the Matabele, the Gaza, the Ngoni, brought about important religious changes. These groups often challenged pre-existing rituals and concepts, as the Ngoni challenged Chewa initiation rites and secret societies. In the interest of creating a new society they attacked religious institutions which helped to maintain older identities. At the same time, the Ngoni diaspora groups were themselves extraordinarily permeable by religious ideas and techniques. They were made up largely of captives picked up along the line of march and these captives introduced a wide variety of new ideas, rites, and techniques, so that the religion of each Ngoni group was a new composition. Moreover, the subject and raided communities were often able to take religious initiatives against the Ngoni. The Ngoni feared the witchcraft powers of the indigenous peoples and respected their prophetic figures. The Matabele came to be profoundly influenced by the Mwari cult of the western Shona. The raided Shona in their turn developed, in response to the Matabele threat, some aspects of their own religious institutions and not others. In short, a whole variety of religious changes took place out of tension between the Ngoni diaspora and the other peoples of Central Africa. Sometimes the missionaries came right into the middle of such a situation of tension and in these circumstances the history of missionary Christianity cannot possibly be understood in isolation from this wider context of conceptual confrontation. Schoffe- leers’s paper, with its emphasis upon the Mang’anja defence of their culture against the Kololo and other intruders, and Linden’s paper, with its emphasis upon Ngoni pressure on Chewa ritual, provide admirable case studies of this sort of situation.

Many other internally generated changes were also taking place. Many people of Central Africa came to live in much more concentrated and larger settlements during the later nineteenth century, and this gave rise to new fears and tensions and to ritual innovations designed to deal with them. The development of the slave trade and particularly of internal slavery produced many changes in religious concepts. Slaves assimilated into African societies sometimes brought religious ideas with them which were assimilated also. The process of supplying slaves sometimes gave rise to serious distortions of the chief’s role in protecting his people against witchcraft, and a ‘proven’ accusation of witchcraft could lead to the enslavement of whole family groups. The desire that people had for protection against witchcraft was increasingly accompanied by a feeling that the price paid for control of witchcraft had become too heavy. Movements arose with the intention of eradicating witchcraft, once and for all. Missionaries sometimes entered a Central African society just at the point of such a moment of cleansing and their message was interpreted in the light of the general desire for purification. In such a situation the novel rites and symbols of missionary Christianity did not in themselves present any difficulty. Indigenous movements of witchcraft eradication derived much of their power from ritual and symbolic innovation.

More generally it seems that nineteenth-century Central African societies were becoming increasingly aware of what some historians have called ‘enlargement of scale’. People had to deal with a wide variety of aliens — as raiders, or caravan porters, or trading partners. A first step to dealing with them seems often to have been the creation of a dramatic stereotype, expressing what were held to be the essential qualities of the alien group, and acted out through rituals of spirit possession. People also had to deal with a growing realization that they did not command the processes of change but that they were caught up in a much wider movement of transformation. It seemed important to retain a sense of comprehension of what was going on; even so far as was possible a sense of control of it. For this reason, among others, the latter part of the nineteenth century in Central Africa was a high period of prophecy. Spokesmen from within the cults of Central Africa commented upon the new peoples and the new events, advising their own people how to respond and explaining how these changes fitted in with the dispensations of God. Often missionaries came directly into this sort of situation and in such a case their message was seen as part of the fulfilment of the prophecy, whether for good or ill.⁴

Of course, many of these religious changes were precipitated by the outward, external pressures of political, military, and economic development. But, essentially, most of these changes were inward-looking efforts to understand what was happening and through understanding to generate clusters of myth, and ritual, and prophecy which might affect what was happening. In this way, the missionaries entered Central Africa at a time of intense mythical and symbolic — or dogmatic and liturgical — development. It is only in this context that missionary interaction with Central African societies can be fully understood.

At the moment this understanding can only be built up through specific and historic case studies. A handful of such case studies is presented here. They are hardly enough to get us very far, even taken in conjunction with other studies presented elsewhere. But they do allow for some initial and tentative generalizations.

SOME INITIAL GENERALIZATIONS

One place to begin is with an old stereotype of missionary historiography — the stereotype of confrontation. In its crudest — and probably still its most influential form — the notion of confrontation can still be found on the bookstalls of Central Africa in little pamphlets like Uncle APs Missionary Adventures, which show the heroic missionary locked in mortal combat with the ‘witch-doctor’ for the minds and souls of the people. The assumption, which in a more subtle form is easy enough to make, is that there was only one response possible for an African religious official to make to the missionaries — the response of total opposition.

Now, the papers in this section do in fact provide us with some Uncle Al- style confrontations. Schoffeleers describes how the missionaries of the Universities Mission to Central Africa were driven off Thyolo mountain by worshippers of the M’Bona cult; Linden describes the persistent defiance of missionaries by Chewa Nyau societies; Madziyire describes how a young shave spirit medium denounced him and his church on the bus to Marandellas.

At the same time though, the papers offer us other instances in which the leaders and followers of Central African religions appear much more sympathetic to Christianity. Schoffeleers shows how very differently Joseph Booth was received by the priests of M’Bona and the dialogue that was established between them; Madziyire describes the great medium of the ‘tribal’ spirit, Kasosa, who offered his protection and hospitality to the missionaries; my own paper argues that the Lala people were eagerly ready to make use of certain Christian ideas and that they made demands both on the missionaries and on Tomo Nyirenda, demands that really produced the Mwana Lesa movement. And one could add to this from other recent work in Central Africa and elsewhere a stream of instances in which African prophets advised a sympathetic hearing for the missionaries or, in some instances, sent their sons to learn in missionary schools; and in which chiefs expressed their confidence that Christianity might help to cleanse society.

What, then, was going on? Clearly the old picture of relentless confrontation owes its force more to the missionaries’ uncompromising hostility to African religion than to the facts of African response. But with what are we to replace this picture? There will be some suspicion, I suppose, that in my use of the idea of African sympathy to Christianity I am seeking to capture the Central African past for Christianity; that I am seeking to suggest that the moral force and beauty of the Christian message was irresistible to religiously minded men; that I am seeking to undermine the reality of African resistance to an alien culture by stressing sympathy. And, in fact, there has been something of this in the changed emphasis of African religious studies, so that Christian writers now stress the deep religious nature of pre-colonial African society as a defence against secularism, and in order that Christianity may appear the logical continuation of the African past. None of this is my intention.

What I am concerned to argue is that the Central African response to the missionaries was variable, sometimes hostile, sometimes sympathetic, as a result of several factors operating in late nineteenth-century Central African societies. Of these factors four are the most important — or at least the most important in terms of conceptual encounter. I do not at all dispute the significance of purely political and economic factors which were often, indeed, crucially important in determining the immediate response to the missionaries. But, in addition, there were ‘inward’ factors.

There was, first, the general openness to new myths and rites, and symbols, and techniques. It is easy to overstate this and to imagine that all and every aspect of Central African religions coexisted in ideal harmony. In fact there were many instances of rivalry and sometimes of enmity between different African cultic forms within a single Central African society — the rivalry or at any rate distinctness of the M’Bona cult and the Nyau societies is a case in point. African religions were not just coexistent with the total society, as is sometimes slackly