African Church History: Martyrs in Madagascar and Uganda, Prophets in Kongo and Liberia

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During the colonial era the young Africans who were among the first to encounter the Christian faith brought in home to their villages where in spread in local ways. Colonial powers may have been the first to bring the message, but they were not the only or the most effective messengers.

Willingness to Suffer

“Just how deeply, and how quickly, the new Christians appropriated the religion can be illustrated from the many stories of zeal in the face of persecution. In Madagascar in the 1850s, perhaps 200 Christians were ‘speared, smothered, starved or burned to deal, poisoned, hurled from cliffs or boiled alive in rice pits.’

“We can also look at the British colony of Uganda, where Anglicanism was established in 1877 and African clergy were being ordained by the 1890s. Also in this decade, Roman Catholic missionaries started making their own converts. From its first days Ugandan Christianity has produced its share of martyrs, whose stories demonstrate how firmly the faith has rooted itself in African soil.

“Some of the worst persecutions occurred in the kingdom of Buganda, which was later absorbed into the British colony. Christianity made rapid progress at the royal court to the horror of the king. Among other things he found that his Christian male courtiers now refused his sexual demands. He ordered his subjects to renounce the new faith upon pain of death, and hundreds of native Bugandans were executed in 1885 and 1886. On a single day, thirty-two Christians were burned alive.

“With such examples in mind, it was ludicrous to claim that the new religion was solely for white people, and the faith spread quickly in both Uganda and Madagascar. In the 1890s, Buganda experienced a mass conversion of astonishing speed. Today, perhaps 75 percent of Ugandans are Christians, as are 90% of the people of Madagascar.”

Philip Jenkins, The Next Christendom, p. 44.

Fringe Movements and Prophetic Voices

While much of the early church growth was in Protestant and Catholic communities, is sometimes broke out in independent movements that appear to be quite different. Consider the former witchdoctor Kimpa Vita, baptized “Beatrice” by Catholics in the kingdom of Kongo. In 1703 she had a vision of St. Anthony who told her that the Colonial churches were mistaken, that Jesus was in fact a black Kongolese and born in the capital city, Sao Salvador. African Christians needed to find their own path to God even if that meant practices condemned by the other churches.

William Wade Harris was another charismatic, prophet-type figure, this time in Liberia. After seeing a vision of the angel Gabriel he abandoned his European-style clothing, put on a white robe and turban, and began preaching across West Africa carrying a bamboo cross, a Bible and a gourd. Jenkins describes his message as “largely orthodox Christianity, teaching obedience to the Ten Commandments and demanding strict observance of the Sabbath” (p. 48-49).

Recognizing the spiritual powers in the popular fetishes and pagan shrines he encountered (scorned or dismissed by European missionaries), he dealt with them directly, taking on the spiritual powers and combating their power.

He also traveled in the company of several wives.

Philip Jenkins suggests more and more the global church is going to be characterized by things that seem strange or foreign to Western Christians. And why not? We’re no longer the majority.