19th Century Xhosa Christianity

Christianity in Africa South of the Sahara

19th Century Xhosa Christianity

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Crushed between the Zulu and the British, the Xhosa suffered major religious, social and political crisis in the opening years of the nineteenth century. The crisis prompted by the collapse of effective traditional political power, cut three ways and led to three successive and very different responses to essentially the same set of stimuli.

Nxele:

Nxele grew up learning Christianity and Dutch on a Boer farm. He took his Chritianity home, but in 1812, a year after the war between the Xhosa and the British borke out, he went through the ecstatic experience of a traditional Xhosa prophet and led his people to a war in which he viewed the real battle as one between the God of the whites and the God of the blacks. The God of the blacks, he said, "should be worshipped in dancing, the enjoyment of life and in love, so that blacks would fill the earth, and not Ôto sit and sing MÕde-e, MÕde-e all day and pray with their faces to the ground and their backs to the Almighty." [quoted in Isichei, p. 109)

Nxele, who promised that the Xhosa ancestors would rise from the dead to help them in their battle, was captured in the attack and imprisoned on Robbins Island. He drowned while trying to escape.

Ntsikana:

Ntsikana began with a Xhosa mystical experience, then turned to become a Christian, though he had minimal contact with missionary Christianity.

The impetus for his conversion was a mystical vision, which first prompted him to step into the river and ceremonially wash off the red ochre that symbolized his prophetic office. A little later he declared that "This thing that has entered me, it says ÔLet there be prayer! Let everything bow the knee! And then he called his two wives to him and said to them "It does not agree with this thing which has entered me that I have two wives." He then sent one away with a share of his property to support her family. [Isichei, 118]

Ntsikana was a pacifist and spoke out against the preaching of Nxele, holding himself and his followers aloof from he war when it came. The core of NtsikanaÕs belief consisted of the sovereignty of God, the holiness of Sunday, river baptism, rejection of red ochre, monogamy and prayer. When he later encountered the missionaries, he attended services, but refused their baptism having had his own already, and also refused to take on an additional Christian name.

Ntsikana composed a set of four hymns, which were quickly taken over by the mission community and have become part of the core of Xhosa Christianity. One of them reads:

Ulin guba inkulu siambata tine

He who is our mantle of comfort,

The giver of life, ancient on high

He is the creator of the heavens,

And the ever-burning stars:

God is mighty in the heavens,

And whirls the stars around in the sky.

We call on him in his dwelling-place.

That he may be our mighty leader,

For he makes the blind to see;

We adore him as the only good,

For he alone is our sure defense.

Near death, he instructed his family to bury him in the Christian manner. When they proved reluctant he turned the first sods himself and supervised the digging of his grave. He then addressed his people:

I am going home to my Father. Do not, after I die, go back to live by the customs of the Xhosa. I want you to go to Buleneli (Brownlee) at Gwali. Have nothing to do with the feast, but keep a firm hold of the word of God. Always stick togetherÉ Should a rope be thrown around your neck, or a spear pierce your body, or be beaten with sticks, or struck with stones, whatever persecution comes upon you, on account of the word of God donÕt give way, keep it and stick to it and to each other. To my two sons I say, Kobe, you will be my backbone, and Dukwana, you will be my walking-stick. Do not allow the children to return to the red clay.,...

Improvers:

In contrast to the two prophets, the Improvers recognized that it was hopeless to overthrow white rule, but hoped that western education, farming methods, and technology would gain them equality. The Improvers were the Africans who had absorbed Livingstone's ideals of "Christianity and Commerce." Unfortunately the white settler community viewed economically successful black people as a threat; all they wanted black people for was cheap labor, so the colonial governments took pains to prevent the Xhosa from gaining economic and commercial equality with white settlers

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. 197-221.

Elizabeth Isichei, A History of Christianity in Africa from Antiquity to the Present. London: SPCK, 1995. Ch 4.

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