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African Churches
RACE, CUSTOM AND CHRISTIANITY
In the colonial administration, the senior
positions of power were held by Europeans. This racial divide was not
so easy to justify in the church. What was attractive about Christianity,
and Islam for that matter, was that these religions offered something
to everyone; they did not only serve the rich, the powerful, or those
of a certain race or from a certain region, clan or people. In practice,
however, the prejudices of Europeans led to double standards.
NIGERIA
In Nigeria, in Lagos, in the 1930's one
of the churches was reserved for Europeans only. The only Nigerian allowed
in was the composer, musician and organ scholar Fela Sowande. For obliging
the Europeans by playing the organ there, on several occasions he incurred
criticism from fellow Nigerians. The Sowande family were typical of the
Christian educated elite in Lagos; they put up with these racial slights
because they had their eyes set on prizes further afield. Fela ended up
composing music for the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ and his brother became a London based barrister.
 Listen
to Tunje Sowande describing a religious Sunday
THE GOLD COAST
In the neighbouring Gold Coast, Akans expelled
from the Methodist Church reacted by setting up their own church with
its own heavenly language, Musama Christo Disco or the Army of the Cross
of Christ. The Akan lay preacher and composer Ephraim Amu broke with Methodist
convention when he was refused ordination because he wore African cloth
in church. AMU, who died a few years ago in his nineties, also composed
music and lyrics for many hymns, as well as the national anthem.
Listen
to composer Ephraim Amu speaking about the creation of hymns
SOUTHERN AFRICA
In southern Africa, the increasingly segregated
Dutch Reform Church and the growing exclusion of Africans from social
and political life, led to a huge number of churches springing up, many
of them going under the name of Ethiopian (a tribute to Ethiopia's ancient
church).
Among these Ethiopian churches was Nehemiah Tile's founded in 1882 and
Mangena M. Mokone's Tembu National Church established in 1892. The other
important Christian movement was the Watchtower Movement, a precursor
of the Jehovah Witnesses. Their followers believed in the end of the colonial
rule and the end of the world. They were prominent from the late 19th
century onwards in Nyasaland (modern Malawi) and Northern Rhodesia (modern
Zambia).
The assertion of African identity was a driving force in many churches,
for example, The Church of Christ for the Union of the Bantu and Protection
of the Bantu Customs. The African-American Christianity also had great
weight in southern Africa, the main church being the African Methodist
Episcopal (AME). It was very influential in Zimbabwe, and South Africa,
as well as Liberia and Sierra Leone. Local churches continue to flourish
and be founded today; in times of war or famine their role becomes particularly
important.
THE HOLY SPIRIT
In East Africa a number of churches sprung
up. After the First World War, Ruben Spartas Mukasa, formerly with the
King's African Rifle, formed a church for 'the redemption of all Africa'.
In Kenya the concept of the Holy Spirit played a big role. Speaking in
tongues was a regular feature of the services of the Holy Ghost Church,
Dimi ya Roho, founded in 1927 and the Joroho Church, founded in 1932.
The Watu wa Mngu (People of God) were a Gikuyu religious group founded
between the World Wars. Their mode of praying inspired the title of Jomo
Kenyatta's social and anthropological book, Facing Mount Kenya.
"Their prayers are a mixture of Gikuyu religion
and Christian; in these they add something entirely new to both religions.
They perform their religious duties standing in a picturesque manner.
In their prayer to Mwene-Nyaga (God) they hold up their arms to the sky
facing Mount Kenya; and in this position they recite their prayers, and
in doing so they imitate the cries of wild beasts of prey, such as lion
and leopard, and at the same time they tremble violently.
The trembling, they say, is the sign of the Holy Ghost, Roho Motheru,
entering in them. While thus possessed with the spirits, they are transformed
from ordinary beings and are in communion with Mwene-Nyaga…
Some of their shrines were closed down by the Government, on the assumption
that they were used for secret meetings of a political character…It was
also stated that very offensive and unedifying attacks were made, in the
name of Christ, on the Christian neighbouring missionaries."
Taken
from Facing Mount Kenya by Jomo Kenyatta.
In Tanzania the African National Church
of Tanganyika was founded in the 1930's. One of its attractions was that
it tolerated polygamy.
PERSECUTION IN CONGO
In the Congo, the church had a strong anti-colonial
strand. Along with the Eglise des Noirs (Church of the Blacks) was Simon
Kimbangu's EJCSK (Eglise de Jesus sur la Terre par le Prophete Simon Kimbangu),
or Church of Jesus on Earth through the Prophet Simon Kimbangu. The latter
was founded in 1921 and its followers refused to pay taxes and witheld
their labour. Simon Kimbangu died in prison in 1951, but his church spread
in the Congo and Oubangui-Chari (modern Central African Republic).
| A CHURCH FOR AFRICA |
"We must seek to bring into the Native
Church the Chiefs and other men of influence. Do not expect of them
the perfection, which a narrow philanthropy exacts. Consider the conditions
under which Europe received the Gospel.
Had the hard conditions now imposed upon African Chiefs been required
of European sovereigns and chiefs, Christianity might never have been
permanently established on the West of the Bosphorus.
The first Christian Emperor, Constantine, was half a pagan to the
end. He erected in his new capital, Constantinople, a statue of himself.
At the base of this statue, it is said, he placed a fragment of what
he believed to be the true Cross.
In the same place he deposited the Paladium, the cherished relic of
Pagan Rome, which Aeneas was said to have rescued from the flames
of Troy, and which Constantine himself stealthily removed to his new
capital. This was his fetish, brought over from heathenism."
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| Liberian
thinker and writer, Edward W. Blyden. Excerpt from Proposals for a
West Africa Church. |
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