African Christianity Homepage
Christianity in Africa South of the Sahara
AICs
African/Ethiopian Churches
Christianity in Africa South of the Sahara Homepage
Roman Catholic Missions 1450-1890
Kongo Christianity
Roman Catholic Missions 1890-1960
Roman Catholicism since Vatican II
Protestant Missions 1700-1890
Sierra Leone
Southern Africa
Xhosa
Interior Missions
Buganda
Mary Slessor
Protestant Missions 1890 - 1960
African Independent Churches
African/Ethiopian Churches
Aladura
Zionists
William Wade Harris & Harrists
Simon Kimbangu & Kimbanguists
Note: This page is, in some ways, merely a placeholder for a more substantive discussion of the "Ethiopian" Churches. I would be grateful for references to research on or descriptions of any of the "Ethiopian" Churches. Please e-mail me at n-lettinga@bethel.edu.
The "Ethiopian" churches which began in the last years of the 19th century were the first steps into independency. These churches, which grew up in Nigeria and in South Africa represented a conflict, not over theology, liturgy, practice or polity, but rather over control of the churches.
By the 1890s the churches in West Africa and South Africa were well into the second generation. These second generation Christians were ready to step into leadership positions in the church just as a new generation of aggressively westernizing missionaries began flooding an Africa which was being carved up by European colonial powers in the Scramble for Africa. The new missionaries were often not impressed by the work that hand been done in the previous 50 years, and were determined to keep control of African Christianity in the same way the colonial authorities intended to control the land.
To the extent that ambitious and able African Christians were thwarted in the mission churches, they started native or "Ethiopian" Churches, patterned after the western mission churches they had left, but under African control. Many of these churches admired the Christian nation of Ethiopia, which had never been colonized. Anti-colonialism and African nationalism were not far below the surface of the "Ethiopian" churches.
In Nigeria the collapse of Bishop CrowtherÕs Niger Episcopate led to unhappiness with the CMS and the subsequent establishment of independent churches. The prominent role given to African clergy in West Africa both encouraged and limited the development of the African churches, encouraging it by raising then frustrating hopes, but limiting it by giving able African Christians a focus for ambitions within the mission churches.
In South Africa the case for "Ethiopian" churches was much stronger, since South African settler racism prevented African Christians from attaining any kind of positions in leaderships in the mission churches. Here it was much less a case of hopes raised and then thwarted than it was of outright suppression of all hope for African leadership in the African churches.
This page was based on the following sources, which you can consult for more detailed information:
Adrian Hastings, The Church in Africa: 1450-1950. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994. pp. 478-86, 493-539.
Elizabeth Isichei, A History of Christianity in Africa from Antiquity to the Present. London: SPCK, 1995, pp. 124-7, 215-6, 179-82.
Lamin Sanneh, West African Christianity: The Religious Impact. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1983, pp 168-78.
Hennie Pretorius and Lizo Jafta, "A Branch Springs Out: African Initiated Churches" in Christianity in South Africa, edited by Richard Elphick and Rodney Davenport. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997 pp. 212-16