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The history of Christianity in Africa south of the Sahara begins in the fifteenth century, with the arrival of the first missionaries carrying the gospel from Europe. The story of these missionaries is equally Catholic and Protestant, is equally the story of Liberal Christians and Evangelicals, is equally the story of women missionaries and men; but the story of the spread of Christianity in Africa during the last five centuries is far more the story of African Christians spreading the gospel in Africa than it is the story of European or American Christians spreading the gospel in Africa.
Unfortunately African Christians rarely recorded their stories, while European and American missionaries regularly sent letters to their relatives, mission boards and financial supporters in Europe and America. As a result we know far more about European and American missionaries than we do about the African catechists and evangelists whose role in bring Christianity all over Africa is far more significant. The least here on earth, they are assured of great honor in heaven.
Modern African Churches can, for the sake of convenience, be divided into three main groups, though there are far greater differences within each group than there are between the three, and that there are very important continuities from the one to the other.
•Roman Catholic Churches were founded by the Roman Catholic missionary orders. They have, by and large, retained the Roman Catholic Church’s stress on the unity and authority of the Church, and have, in the last half of the 20th century, taken their place as full and equal partners in the world-wide Roman Catholic Church.
•Protestant Churches were founded by Protestant missionaries and retain significant identification with European or American protestant churches. They tend to stress the authority of the Bible and the need for an individual relationship with Jesus Christ as a personal saviour. African Protestant churches range from the churches of the Anglican Communion, which have much in common with the Roman Catholic community to Pentecostal mission churches under African leadership, virtually indistinguishable from AICs, on the other.
•AICs are African Initiated Churches, African Independent Churches, or African Indigenous Churches, depending on who is describing them. They have typically grown out of a protestant mission context, but, often in frustration with the western missionaries, have gone their own way and function without reference to overseas churches. They range from independent versions of western protestant churches to highly syncretistic Christian versions of traditional African religions, which may use Christian language in reference to God, but have no real role for Jesus Christ.
Historically African Christianity, south of the Sahara Desert, has moved through three phases, or generations -- the pre-colonial generation[s], the colonial generation and the post-colonial generation.
Phase I: Precolonial Christianity (1450-1890)
Portuguese Catholics were the first Europeans to venture south of the Sahara desert in significant numbers. They took the sea route, exploring further and further down the coast through the course of the 15th century. Many of these seafaring explorers were accompanied by Christian missionaries, whose work bore good fruit when the Kingdom of the Kongo became a Christian kingdom in the 1490s, though similar efforts in Benin and Mutapa were less successful. Catholic mission work tailed off through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, to experience a resurgence in the 1840s, with the founding of the White Fathers and the Holy Ghost Fathers, just about the time that the Protestant missionary movement began to crest.
The earliest Protestant missionaries were former slaves, who were joined late in the 18th century by a thousand "boisterously Christian" former slaves who had settled in Nova Scotia Canada, after supporting the British side in the American war of Independence. They settled in Sierra Leone, and established a significant Christian community which formed the nucleus of West African Christianity.
Early in the 19th century Europeans and Americans began to arrive in Africa and set up mission villages and mission stations throughout Africa. These missionaries tended to be working class Christians with a pioneering spirit that led them to commit themselves to stay for the duration, to be very otherworldly in their view of salvation, and to be non-denominational in their view of the missionary enterprise, co-operating heartily with any other Christians for the furtherance of the gospel. Those who worked in the interior might take several months to travel from the coast to their station, and once there had no choice but to integrate themselves into the local culture as best they could.
| Precolonial Roman Catholic Church |
Phase II: Christianity in Colonial Africa (1890-1960)
As the European powers carved up Africa among themselves, they necessarily changed the nature of African missionaries and African Christianity at the same time. . Between 1890 and 1914 missionaries became more closely related to the various European powers, for good or ill, and whether in alliance or opposition. African rulers were no longer the primary political powers, missionaries now, whether they wanted to or not, became subject to and identified with the colonizing European powers. The colonial rulers in turn did not hesitate to use missionaries to help them subdue and control the colonies.
European education became one of the key elements in the new political reality and the interplay between convert, missionary and colonial government. Colonization led to a great demand for education and the proliferation of schools. Protestants had stressed literacy, education and reading the Bible from the beginning of their missions, but the advent of colonial power meant that literacy gained social, political and economic, not merely religious importance. Missionaries, both Catholic and Protestant virtually monopolized the African school systems, and schools became a major conduit for new mission converts. These new converts, however, did not usually stay in school. They fanned out across Africa in search of work, and in the process converted others, sometimes in astonishing mass movements.
The new generation of school educated Christians was quite different than the first generation of converts, who were largely ex slaves, refugees and social outcasts finding safe haven in mission villages. By the turn of the century Christians tended to be young, educated and powerful, though still often outsiders — traders, clerks, or migrant workers.
The growth of the church and the importance of African catechists and evangelists, however, did not lead to a corresponding stress on the preparation and training of native African clergy. The lack of African clergy and the shortage of missionary clergy led to a severe sacramental drought in Christian Africa. Sometimes as many as fifty congregations were served by a single ordained pastor or priest. The catechists may have in fact led the churches, but lacked formal authority and the ability to administer the sacraments.
Frustration at the failure of the missionaries to permit able and mature Christians to provide clerical leadership and the new generation of western missionaries’ racist insistence on maintaining control over the Christian community led many of the new generation of educated protestant Christians to break away from missionary control to form AICs.
| Colonial Roman Catholic Church | Colonial Protestant Churches |
Phase III: Post-colonial Christianity: 1960-the present.
The second great watershed in the history of the modern African Church came in 1960, when the African Churches, along with the nations that housed them, moved from a colonial world to independence.
Perhaps the most significant ecclesiastical event to effect African Christianity was the Roman Catholic Vatican Council II, which ended in 1968 [CHECK]. Vatican II greatly accelerated the development of African clergy and led to an African Catholicism dominated by African clerical and lay leadership, while at the same time sending African clergy throughout the world to form part of the great international mix of clergy.
Protestant churches have by and large lost their missionary connections, and have become far more like either Catholics or the AICs
The churches of the Anglican Communion have followed the same path as the Catholic Church, developing strong local African leadership within the various national Anglican provinces, and at the same time developing a stronger and stronger voice within the world wide Anglican communion. At the other end of the spectrum, European and American protestant church missions have turned to medical work and community development work, leaving the preaching and evangelism to African Christians. The preaching missions that remain have come to be dominated, not by churches, but by non-denominational or interdenominational parachurch organizations.
•Post-colonial AICs
AICs have continued to grow and flourish and proliferate, but have become far less concerned with integrating Christianity into traditional African culture. In part this is because the mission founded churches under African leadership are paying more attention to the strengths of traditional African culture, and in part it is because African people are becoming less traditional and more urbanized and western. AICs are increasingly coming to resemble western Christian churches, particularly those of the more fervent Pentecostal variety.
| Post Vatican II Roman Catholic Church |
As a result world wide Christianity has become increasingly African. African and Latin American Christians outnumber those of any other continent. There are now more practicing Christians in Africa than on any other continent, and by the second decade of the new millennium, Africa will overtake Europe as the continent with the greatest number of people who identify themselves as Christians, whether or not they practice their faith.