History department msu

African Views of the Universe

-Africans believe that God is the origin and sustenance of all things. The idea of God is found in all African societies. African knowledge of God is expressed in proverbs, short statements, songs, names, myths and religious ceremonies.

-It is believed all over Africa that the universe was created. The creator of the universe is God. There is no agreement of how and when the creation of the universe took place. In many African languages, the name of God means creator.

-The universe is divided into the visible and the invisible parts or the heavens and the earth. According to Mbiti, Africans have a concept of time with the past and the present but not the future. He argues that African past only exists in so far as it is a past which can be remembered.

-Ancestors are referred as the living dead. African concepts of God are greatly influenced and colored by their historical, geographical, social and cultural background or environment of each group of people. Contact with the outside has however influenced such beliefs but general beliefs across the continent can be deduced.

-In a number of African societies, God is considered to be omniscient (ie know all things), to be simultaneously everywhere (omnipresent) and to be almighty (omnipotent). By saying he is omniscient, they are giving him the highest honour and they are at the same time limiting their knowledge.

-To the Zulu and Banyarwanda, God is known as the wise one and to the Akan, ‘He who that knows or sees all’. He is said to be able to see and hear everything. The Barundi call him the Watcher of Everything while the Ila say his ears are long. Others visualize him as the great eye. The Barundi and Kono say he is everywhere, while the Silluk and Langi liken him to wind.

-Among the Yoruba, Ngobe, Akan and Ashanti,he is described as the All-powerful or the Almight- omnipotence. The Kiga refer to him as the one who makes the sun sets and the Gikuyu make prayers and sacrifices for rain.

God is described as so far yet so near. God is thought as dwelling far away in the sky or above, beyond the reach of men. All African people associate God with the sky. The Bakongo say he is made by no other and no one beyond him is.

-He is simply omnipresent or unexplainable. He is supreme. The Gikuyus believe that God has no father nor mother, no wife nor children, he is neither a child nor an old man. They go on to point out that he does not eat. He is referred to as great and supreme. The Zulu name for him is Unkulunkulu.

There is no indication that anyone has ever seen God. Among the Shona, he is the one who piles up the rocks to make mountains, causes branches to grow and gives rain to mankind. Some even say his proper name is unknown.

Moral Attributes-He has pity. He is kind and powerful. Credited with doing good to his people. The Akamba, Bakongo, Herero, Igbo Illa among others say that God does them only that which is good. He averts calamities by bringing rain. God is not evil.

GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY IN THE 19^TH CENTURY
-Christianity came to Africa as a foreign religion.

-Before its coming, Africans had their own religions which today appear to have been subdued by Christianity.

-Baur has indicated that the spread of Christianity depended on the methods of evangelization.

-Hastings has emphasized that all missionaries shared the same motive- that of developing local churches as part of the universal church of Christ.

-They all looked forward to self-governing, self-supporting and self-extending churches.

-according to Baur, these became people’s churches.

-the same approach was accepted by protestant churches. Protestant churches were more self-reliant than Catholic Churches.

-Lutherans put emphasis on using the vernacular and correspondent to the general protestant aim of translating the bible into innumerable African languages.

-Translation of the bible enabled Africans to read the bible on their own and hence the spread of Christianity.

-According to Baur, the basic aim of church building was in 2 different ways approached- civilization and evangelization.

-The 2 relied on education to be achieved.

-it also aimed at converting the whole society and the entire people.

-Approach was again used by Catholics as well as Protestants.

-Baur advances that dissatisfaction with their own religion made a few people to turn to Christianity especially after military defeats. For example, after the 1896/7 war, many Shonas turned to Christianity because their own religion had failed to protect them in the war.

-Kalu says that Africans could have turned to Christianity out of curiosity especially when the new religion was presented together with new skills of reading and writing and these new skills provided the means of earning money.

-once in school, the young’s ears were also touched by the message.

-the African holistic approach to life led the old generation to the conclusion that in order to come to terms with the new way of life, it would be necessary for their children to also follow the European religion and this led to the growth of Christianity in Africa.

-according to Hastings, the acceptance of European culture by African rulers eg in Madagascar also played a role in the acceptance and spread of Christianity in Africa.

-Some ruler welcomed missionaries as political assets eg Mutesa of Buganda and Lewanika of Barotseland.

-resistance against Christianity was strong where it was associated with an intruding group eg Creoles of Sierra Leone and Liberia.

-Christianity was difficult to spread among nomads because they were not fixed.

-Missionaries needed to settle down so as to allay fears of mistrust.

-locals had to be trained as catechists to help convert fellow Africans.

-Migrants in South Africa especially the Sotho came with the bible in their hands and were eager to share good news with their people at home.

-Catechist was more than a teacher, he was pastor to his small Christian community.

-Baur argues that proper missionaries to Africa were these catechists.

-Hastings adds that 90% of all conversions may be the fruit of their instructions though later on they were helped, and partly supported by primary school teachers.

-training of African priests also played an important role eg Holy Ghost Fathers strongly believed in that ideology.

-According to Hastings, each African region had a seminary by the 1930s.

-African bishops were also consecrated.

African nuns promoted womanhood beyond their immediate work in school and hospital.

-they enhanced the human dignity of the African woman and hastened her emancipation.

-brothers and nuns also contributed to church growth through their active life- teaching, nursing, religious instruction and service at mission stations.

-Kalu adds that the opening of mission schools helped Christianity- missions became centers of indoctrination and changing the mindset of Africans.

-Skill of reading was taught using the bible.

-In church schools, service was held daily before the beginning of lessons.

-Baur is convinced that 80-90% of conversions took place at school.

-Medical services clearly occupied a second place in missionary activity.

-Healing diseases seemed to have been an activity used mostly to support the teaching mission.

-For the pioneer missionary, his medicine chest was like a magical box working miracles of healing and winning people’s confidence.

-in remote areas, simple medical care was a missionary’s daily routine. Since the 1920s, there were special courses in tropical medicine for European missionaries.

-at hospitals, prayer was insisted. Prayer was done in the morning and all workers were expected to be Christians and in some cases, doctors were ordained ministers.

-through charitable assistance, missionaries were regarded as an answer to the challenge of underdevelopment. People could flock to church in order to get food and clothes. Missionaries also introduced cash crops which soon became money spinners.

-Missionaries were also great employers eg in Southern Tanzania.

Sources

Baur J, 2000 Years of Christianity in Africa, Nairobi, Paulines, 1994.

Bhebe N, Christianity and Traditional Religion in Western Zimbabwe, 1859-1923, London, Longman, 1979.

Hastings A, A History of African Christianity, 1950-1975, London, Cambridge University Press, 1979.

Hastings and Tasie, Christianity in independent Africa, Southampton, Camelot Press, 1978.

Hastings A, Oxford History of the Christian Church in Africa, 1450-1890, Oxford University Press, 2004.

Kalu O U, Africa Christianity: An African Story, 2005.

Zvobgo, A History of Christian Missions in Zimbabwe, 1890-1939, Gweru, Mambo Press, 1991.

Christian missions in Zimbabwe
Sources: Ndlovu-Gatsheni S J, Re-thinking religious encounters in Matebeleland region of Zimbabwe 1860-1893, African Journal of History and Culture, Volume 1 (2), June 2009.

Zvobgo C J M, A History of Christian Missions in Zimbabwe, 1890-1939, Gweru, Mambo Press, 1996.

-Aspects of the interaction between Christianity and African culture in colonial Zimbabwe, 1893-1934, ZAMBEZIA (XIII) (1).
-The first to come were the Jesuits who entered Mutapa state.

-Were not successful and Father Gonzalo da Silveira was killed on the night of 15/16 March 1561. He had baptized the chief and his mother. Instigation came from the Moslems/Arabs at the court who convinced the chief that Gonzalo was a witch.

-From then, second encounter was that of Robert Moffat. He first visited Mzilikazi at Mosega Bay in 1829. He then visited him again in 1836 as a result of Ndebele envoys led by Mncumbatha Khumalo sent by the king.

-It is crucial to note that concerning Mzilikazi what is available are impressions of Moffat on the Ndebele king and not the other way round. Moffat was literate and Mzilikazi was not. However, he was not a passive recipient of the white man’s ideology. He wanted to use missionaries to secure and repair guns as well as inoculate his cattle, open trade routes and prevent colonizers from taking his land.

-LMS entered Matebeleland in 1859. They opened Inyati Mission in the same year and Hope Fountain in 1870.

-Between 1859 and 1880, the LMS could not realize a single convert.

-Jesuits came again in 1879. Opened Empandeni Mission under Fr Peter Prestage in 1887.

-LMS eventually baptized 12 converts between 1881 and 1883.

-Father Prestage commented that “until the Matebeles are put down by brute force----they will never improve.”

-Rev Charles Helm acted as Lobengula’s interpreter in the signing of the Rudd Concession. Missionaries needed the company’s protection and material support.

-When the Pioneer Column came in, a Jesuit missionary, Father Hartmann, accompanied it as chaplain. Canon Balfour of the Anglican Diocese of Bloemfontein also accompanied it as chaplain. For their expenses in Masholanaland, Rhodes gave Anglicans 600 pounds.

-Catholics were generously rewarded with Chishawasha area, Salvation Army- Mazowe, Methodists-Epworth and Anglicans-St Mary (Chitungwiza).

-Missionaries brought with them African evangelists eg Bernard Mizeki at Mangwende and Ziqubu in Makoni.

-Mother Patrick Cosgrave accompanied Dominican sisters namely Francis Condon, Amica Kilduff, Ignatious Haslinger and Constantine Frommknecht. Mother Patrick founded the first hospital in Salisbury.

-DRC of SA were led by Mr A A Louw. They founded Morgenster Mission.

-Methodist pioneers were Owen Watkins and Isaac Shimmin.

-Dominican Convent School was opened in 1892.

-During the Anglo-Ndebele war, Fr Prestage urged the destruction of the Ndebele kingdom. Commenting on the Ndebele raid of Victoria, he said

I trust the Matebele kingdom will be smashed up. It was founded upon a basis of injustice- a powerful military organization set in motion for the self-aggrandizement of the king and his advisers at the expense of the denial and violation of the natural law to his subjects and his tributaries who were deprived security to life, security of property and sanctity of the family-----.
-Father Prestage went on to telegraph Rhodes that the company was justified in attacking the Ndebele. On 2 August 1893, he wrote, ‘we must put down the Matebeles and then go on with our work as if nothing had happened.

-Shimmin also pointed out that most whites including missionaries supported violence against the Ndebele. Bishop Knight Bruce Anglican Bishop of Matebeleland and Mashonaland accompanied the forces to Matebeleland and went up burning the town of Bulawayo.

-LMS missionary David Carnergie was optimistic that missionary work would go on peacefully after the destruction of the Ndebele.

-Interaction between African and missionaries according to Zvobgo should be explained as a clash of cultures. Institution of polygamy and belief in ancestral spirits was strong among Africans.

-the Ndebele were generally suspicious of missionaries who had aided their defeat in the 1893/4 war. They suspected that missionaries had been sent by their white bosses to divorce African from their culture and traditions. The Ndebele disbelieved the teachings of the missionaries.

-According to a missionary at Empandeni, most of them did not believe in the existence of an immortal soul. Death to them was the end of all things hence hell or heaven had no meaning to them. They had no intention of giving up their traditional habits for the sake of future happiness/punishment which they did not believe in.

-Fr O’Neil wrote in 1905, ‘With regard to older pagans, there does not seem much hope of converting them to Christianity. Polygamy prevents them all, and about the last thing a man could be persuaded to do would be to give up any of his wives.’

-Jesiut missionary Rev Richard Sykes noted that, ‘the man who has a plurarity of wives is practically hopeless as a prospective Christian convert. The hope lies with children.’

-Polygamy was due to sex balance and the institution of polygamy.

-Missionaries mistakenly thought that lobola reduced women to commodities.

-Father Prestage regarded polygamy as the purchase of a wife by a man for the purpose of begetting children. Jesuits advocated for the outlawing of polygamy by law. Unfortunately, government refused to cooperate for fear of another unrest.

-They thus resorted to opening Christian villages eg by Fr Loubiere at Chishawasha and Kutama.

-In 1902, Jesuits expelled polygamists from Empandeni mission.

-Among the Kalanga, resistance came from adherence of the Shumba cult which usually possessed girls. They then went under the tutoring of senior women who were strongly opposed to Christianity. They made sure that these girls would not be converted.

-Only Chief Gampo Sithole welcomed missionaries but he did not become a convert himself.

-Even among the Shona, polygamy was one major hindrance to conversion. Fr Richartz of Chishawasha complained that, ‘with regard to the older Mashonas, there is generally speaking, but little chance of converting them. Confirmed polygamists as they are and wedded to the superstitions of their ancestors, it is scarcely to be expected that they will consent to live according to the Christian Law.’

-At Chishawasha, polygamists could not be baptized because of the requirement that they put away all their wives except one.

-Among the Karanga at St Joseph near Chief Hama, the Karanga put up a stubborn resistance. According to Fr O’Neil, the adults at Gokomere mission were worse than those living near Hama.

-Solution lay in destroying African traditions.

-They also resorted to using African evangelists such as Njamlope, Peter Mantiziba and Andria Khumalo Mtshede.

-Opened medical missions because healing was an important part of the ministry of Jesus. Medical Missions were also an evangelizing agency.

AFRICAN INDEPENDENT CHURCHES: THE FORMATIVE YEARS

Reasons for rise

-missionaries were not Africanizing the church

-there was reluctance in ordaining African priests let alone consecrating them bishops

-period of training was too long for many Africans.

-celibacy was a discouraging factor.

-accommodating polygamy.

-mission churches accused of lacking prophecy.
Malawi

-ICs were a form of resistance.

-they were a mechanism of protesting against land seizure, land companies, hut tax, forced labour etc.

-independency in Malawi was led by Charles Domingo, Elliot Kamwana, John Chilembwe and a European Joseph Booth.

-the later was deported to Malawi where he continued to influence through correspondence and migrant workers.

-that way, beliefs like the Watchtower and sabbatarianism spread.

- Kamwana was stationed at Livingstonia mission which he left in protest against the introduction of school fess. He spread Wachtower.

-had about 10000 followers.

-deported to Southern Malawi. Was there between 1909 and 1937.

-Watchtower spread to Zambia, Zimbabwe and Tanganyika.

-Domingo belonged to the Church of Scotland. His church was licensed in 1902.

-he joined the Watchtower in 1908 and then became a seventh day Baptist in 1910.

-His new church rejected monogamy.

-church expanded through building of schools independent from missionaries.

-Chilembwe had been taken by Booth for further education in the USA.

-returned to Malawi as an ordained minister in 1900.

-devoted energy to his own Baptist mission.

-built a church and schools.

-forbade alcohol.
West Africa

-When Germany took over Cameroon in 1884, the British Baptists withdrew.

-One section of the church refused to submit to German missionaries and formed the United Native Church.

-In 1888, African Baptists seceded from the American Baptist Mission in Lagos when they felt the independency of the local congregation severely challenged.

-the United Native Church was formed in Nigeria out of breakaways from Anglicans and Methodists who supported polygamy.

-disagreements over government of the church led to the formation of the Bethel Church from the Anglican Church in Lagos (1901).

-Another important breakaway was Agbebi.

-He is said to have wanted an African church based on African culture and expressing African personality.

-from 1894 until his death in 1917, he never wore European clothes even when in Britain or USA.

-he wanted hymns and tunes in vernacular

-Wade was another important IC African leader.

-he claimed to have been influenced through a vision of Archangel Gabriel.

-came to Ivory Coast to convert those who had already rejected French Catholic missions.

-tolerated polygamy.

-not quite opposed to French rule.

-he had about 60000-100000 converts.

-he was expelled when some of his followers began to have nationalistic feelings and spreading rumor that the French were about to leave. His church survived all the same.
South Africa

-Nehemiah Tile Thembu Church in Eastern Cape was rooted in the Wesleyan Methodist’s opposition to his involvement in the Thembu chieftaincy.

-he was advisor to Ngangelisewe, the Thembu paramount chief.

-broke away in 1883.

-Church also opposed European rule, hut tax, pass laws and settlement of Boers to the north of Thembuland.

-He died in 1891 but the church flourished and spread further.

-other reasons for independency were color bar, loss of land and disruption caused by labor migrancy.

-This is in addition to Black diaspora and events in Ethiopia as an empire and a Christian community showing that Africans could run their own affairs.

-By 1913, there were 30 different Ethiopian churches in SA and such divisions continued to multiply.

African Independent Churches, also known as African Indigenous Churches, African Initiated Churches, African Instituted Churches, or just AICs, represent well over ten thousand independent Christian denominations in Africa. The African Independent Churches (AICs) according to Kealotswe are a major form of Christianity in Africa¹.Much emphasis on these churches is that that they are established and led by Africans that is, their formation is solely credited to Africans. Turner postulates that an African Independent Church is a church which has been founded in Africa by Africans and primarily for Africans². All AICs place emphasis on the biblical warrant to include African cultural norms into their modes of worship, theology, and practice, though to varying degrees. AICs are multifaceted, and the origins and causes of these initiatives are multiple, complex and differing from church to church. This paper has categorized AICs in Southern Africa into three distinct categories: Nationalist/Ethiopian, Spiritual/Zionists and Neo-Pentecostal/African Pentecostal or Charismatic Churches. It is therefore in the context of these three categories that the rise of AICs in Southern Africa shall be discussed paying particular attention to AICs in Zimbabwe, Botswana and South Africa.

A debate among scholars continues to unfold on the issue of how African Independent Churches (AICs) relate to politics. Bompani argues that African Christianity treats politics, like other aspects of the realities of religious communities, as integral to religious discourse.³ In this line of thought by Bompani one can link the formation of Nationalist or Ethiopian churches with the rise of nationalism in Southern Africa. Many scholars argue that mainline churches failed to comprehensively deal with the issue of equality mainly because they were headed by white missionaries who were heavily sponsored by colonial governments. Black and white congregants were not treated equally in mainline churches hence the bible emphasized on equality of all men before God.

Also among other injustices that it did the colonial occupation eclipsed African peoplehood. Colonial presence, domination, ignorance and arrogance plus certain amount of missionary teaching projected an attitude towards Africans as though they were no people for example in apartheid South Africa. According to Chitando in Southern Africa, Africans experienced racism in the mission churches as they were discriminated against and regarded as junior brothers and sisters.⁴ In contrast the bible acted as a mirror through which Africans viewed themselves as having anthropological refugee and protection giving only God greater authority over all mankind.

It is the bible that defines African people and gives them an indelible identity as persons. Austnaberg argues that the indigenizing principle stems from the fact that God accepts us as we are.⁵ Therefore AICs consists of a desire to live within the cultural conditioning that makes people feel at home in a certain society and to be fully members of the group to which they belong. When Africans discovered their justified presence on earth through the verses of the bible, African independent churches began to mushroom. Therefore charismatic men and women like Isaiah Shembe in South Africa, Johane Masowe in Zimbabwe, Alice Mulenga Lenshina in Zambia and others felt compelled to spread the gospel to Africans.

The term ‘Ethiopian’ emanate from a strong Africanist thrust that AICs have. Empowered by the passage in the bible that reads, “Let Ethiopia hasten to stretch out her hand to God” (Psalm 68:31), the message of African emancipation became the core foundation of Ethiopianism in AICs. Chirenje argues that Ethiopianism should be acknowledged as one of the key guiding ideologies in the struggle for liberation by blacks on the continent and in the diaspora.⁶ Therefore AICs sought to equip their followers to affirm their dignity and value rejecting the Hamitic myth of perpetual black subservience and inferiority to whites.

Mbiti examines the way the Old Testament (Jewish Bible) plays a major role in the formation of AICs. He argues that the founders and followers see numerous points of contact between the life of the Jewish people in the bible and their own.⁷ These points of contact are African perceived historical presence in the bible, taboos and customs, worship and spirituality, mountains and sacred places and the land. After the publication of the Jewish bible in local languages Mbiti further argues that independency becomes increasingly more probable as more of the scriptures became available in a tribe’s language.⁸ Asamoah-Gyadu adds that mission endeavors that translated the Bible into various vernacular languages helped to facilitate the process of the expansion, leading to what some have called “Africa’s Christian century.”⁹

Some of the formative reasons for the emergence of Spiritual or Zionist churches are connected with their engagement with African cultural believe of spiritual powers that control every aspect of the physically living. The missionary church in Africa is often accused of being hostile to African culture and tradition and demonizing it while imposing European culture on African Christians. Therefore Spiritual/Zionist churches are said to have created a bridge between traditional religious experiences and the Christian faith in Africa. They bridged the gap between African traditional worldview and Christianity by using the gospel to make suitable and practical responses to the existing needs of adherents and clients in contrast to the mainline churches. Oduyoye wrote that the missionaries told Africans what they needed to be saved from, but when Africans needed power to deal with the spiritual realms that they were real to them the missionaries were baffled.¹⁰

Africans before the introduction of Christianity by missionaries had the same belief that God existed and in whom they presented issues they believed needed spiritual interventions such as when there was a drought or any natural disaster. Contrary in mainline churches, the ancestors were to be ignored infant mortality and premature deaths were purely medical matters. Childlessness had nothing to with witchcraft nor was there any spiritual aspect to any other physical disorder or infirmity. Bennetta argues that healing became one of the main features of spiritual churches.¹¹ Wyllie adds that healing has remained a major attraction for new converts and clients.¹²Whilst in the established churches, medical practice has become so specialized that the ordinary pastor has become radically excluded from the service of the sick, healing and worship becoming separated, in the AICs there has been a reintegration of healing and worship.Chitando also adds that unlike the missionaries who interpreted salvation in a trammel-ling manner, AIC preachers had a holistic understanding of salvation.Spiritual churches diagnosis took account of the African world view with regard to the causes of ailment as spiritual, moral, involving sin or due to the influence of evil spirits. The prophet answered the traditional questions of why and how one got ill which is essential to the psychology andb spirituality of healing in the traditional culture.

Dance and drums are an important aspect in the African way of worshiping. Africans link drums and body movements with their devotion to whom they will be worshiping and these are worthwhile aspects to consider as far as the formation of AICs in southern Africa is concerned. Chitando argues that Africans also felt that the style of worship in the mission churches was too static and they endeavored to implement a lively style.¹³ Therefore Africans were used to a form of worship that isvisible and inherently attached to bodily action. The hymns and soft sounding pianos in mainline churches did not present to Africans what a whole act of worship should be.In an observation on a Lutheran congregation in Zululand Sundkler saw an elderly woman leaving the service and latter explained to him the reason why she had done so. Sundkler wrote that whilethey were singing a certain church hymn she had missed accompanying itwith a bodily movement. ‘Since many years’, she would complain, ‘we arenot allowed to shake in Church. So I had to walk away. I went to sit downunder that tree, singingandshaking’¹⁴. One can therefore relate the rise of AICs with their combination ofconviction and African rhythms contribute to the ‘treasure-house of theChurch Universal.

The rise of Charismatic churches is closely linked to the need for deliverance, baptism of the Holy Spirit and prosperity in the life of Christians. Dolvo postulates thatit is in the area of healing that there is an intercultural encounter the Christian faith and African culture in the charismatic churches.¹⁵The ritual that marks this cultural interface is deliverance. Dolvo adds thatstudies of the ritual of healingin charismatic churches reveal the traditional mindset about the cause of disease, misfortune and evil. While the ritual of deliverance frees from the past the prosperity gospel preached by charismatic churches is supposed to propel members into a better future.¹⁶ Scholars see this gospel as a response to the predicament of Africans caught at the disadvantage in a global economy. Prosperity is not however an alien theology in Africa, a cursory glance at traditional African prayer will reveal that it is at the heart of an African traditional prayer. Therefore the focus by charismaticleaders on liberation in the socio-economic context of Africans accounts for the rise of charismatic churches such as the Apostolic Faith Mission in Zimbabwe, ZAOGA, Assemblies of God and recent churches such as Prophetic, Healing and Deliverance Ministries and Spirit Embassy in Zimbabwe.

Conclusion

In a nut shell a number of factors led to the emergence of AICs in Africa as discussed in the essay above. These factors center on the African desire to Africanize Christianity so that it would suit the African way of life socially, politically as well as economically.