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Zionists
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Zionism is a South African, (largely Zulu and Swazi,) Protestant Christianity which has mission origins, but found itself so much in tune with and parallel to African ways of thinking that it blended itself into traditional African culture within a generation. The Zionist churches have become virtually indistinguishable from churches which have formally broken away from their mission foundations, especially since the Zionist churches are entirely under African leadership and no longer refer back to the American Zionist church.
The Zionist churches are characterised by a commitment to faith-healing, to river-baptism (in a ÔJordanÕ river or sea) and to the Pentecostalist gift of speaking in tongues.
The Zionist churches were founded by the missionary PL Le Roux, an Afrikaner who had become committed to faith healing. In 1903 Le Roux left the Dutch Reformed church to join a group dependent on the Christian Catholic Apostolic Church which had been founded in the USA by John Alexander Dowie and was focussed on the city of Zion, Illinois, near Chicago. Le Roux had a close and happy relationship with Africans, and easily conveyed the tenets of Zionism to the African Church he served. They called themselves the Zionist Apostolic Church. A few years later Le Roux moved on from Zionism to Pentacostalism, carrying his flock with him from faith-healing to speaking in tongues, but retaining their name.
The Zionist Apostolic church developed an African leadership very early. Daniel Nkonyane replaced Le Roux as the principal leader of the Zionist Apostolic Church in 1908 when Le Roux went on to join the newly formed Pentecostal church.
Structurally Zionist churches stand half way between the "Ethiopian" churches and the prophetic churches. Like the "Ethiopian" churches they have clear missionary roots, but they are even more fully enculturated than the Ethiopian churches, openly accepting polygamy and fitting in to the structures of African traditional religions in terms of spirit-possession, faith-healing, manifestations of spiritual power and the like. Like the prophetic churches, they share the same basic assumptions about the reality of witchcraft and the spiritual dimensions of reality, while rejecting witches and spirits as evil beings to be cast out.
By the 1920s the Zionist churches began to share the look of prophetic churches, donning distinctive white robs, carrying prophetic staffs and observing the same kind of food taboos as the prophetic churches did.
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. 499-505, 520-1, 537-8.
Elizabeth Isichei, A History of Christianity in Africa from Antiquity to the Present. London: SPCK, 1995, pp 313-17.
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. 216-224.