Missionairies In Africa Essay, Research Paper

European Missionaries in Africa

At the beginning of the 19th century, Christianity was bounded to the coastal countries of Africa. At this clip in Western Africa, there were a sum of three missional societies runing in western Africa. There was the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel ( SPG ) , the Wesleyan Missionary Society ( WMS ) , and the Glasaw and Scottish Missionary Society ( GSMS ) . In the southern part of Africa, the Morovian Missionary and the London Missionary were dominant. There was merely one society in eastern Africa and there were none at all in northern Africa. However, by 1840 the figure of missional societies had increased to more than 15 in western Africa, eleven in southern Africa, five in eastern Africa in 1877 and there were six in northern Africa in 1880. Not merely were these societies active in the coastal part of Africa, but they besides started stretching inland to lands where they haven Ts reached before. Around the twelvemonth 1860, these societies in southern Africa had traveled as far north as present twenty-four hours Botswana, Lesotho and Zambia. ( Boahen

15 ) Famous names of this clip include David Livingston and Robert Moffat. ( Gordon 285 )

Possibly it is good to look at how these missionaries spread and shared their thoughts to all four corners of Africa. When the Europeans landed in Africa in the beginning, they had no cognition of the type of people that they were covering with. They knew nil of their civilization, linguistic communication, faith or anything of that nature. So the Europeans had to happen person or something to state them about the people they were covering with. The Europeans looked no further than the slaves chiefly in the United States. The United States exported freed slaves back to Africa in order to assist the colonisation procedure run smoother. After all, these people knew about African civilization and linguistic communication and the people of Africa would likely listen to person of their ain colour before a white European whom they knew nil approximately.

The Christian Africans were most successful around the Guinea seashore around Sierra Leone, Liberia and Nigeria. ( Gordon 44 ) In fact, most African Catholics owe their transition to black catechists. Catechists were Africans who were largely untrained and unordained, but preached the Gospel and put up Catholic communities all over Africa.

These catechists were the chief people responsible for the immense addition of Christians in Africa, peculiarly in the Nigerian country. ( Hastings ) Samuel Adjai Crowther was the most celebrated among these African missionaries. Crowther was really popular amongst his people and subsequently became the first African Anglican bishop. ( Gordon 285 ) Crowther had a steadfast belief that Africa could non be evangelized by Europeans, but merely by Africans themselves. He argued that the presence of Europeans endangered the manful independency and the bravery and courage of Africans ( Boahen 22 )

Even though white missionaries did topographic point force per unit area on some parts of Africa, take for illustration southern Africa, there is small uncertainty that those in the bosom of Africa were confronting great danger in being subjected to the Zulu, Boers, or Ndebele people and saw the white missionaries as a Jesus and embraced them. ( Boahen 16 ) This could be a ground why the Africans tolerated and welcomed the white adult male to get down with, when they could hold fought them out of their lands.

In add-on prophesying the Gospel and change overing the African people to Christianity, these European Missionaries besides translated the Bible into several African linguistic communications.

The Missionary Societies besides promoted agribusiness every bit good as learning certain accomplishments such as printing and tailoring. They besides set up trading stations and assorted points to assist trade

flourish, although these stations were more than probably set up for their ain benefit. But possibly the greatest thing that the European missionaries tried to implement on the Africans was the educational system. ( Boahen, 16 )

The Europeans saw the Africans as uneducated barbarians who needed the white adult males help to work as a society. All missional societies set up simple schools and some even had preparation colleges and secondary schools. They besides had teacher preparation colleges, seminars and proficient schools. By 1894, the Protestant missionaries claimed to hold had a entire registration of 137,000 pupils go toing their schools. ( Boahen 16 )

However things were non all Prunus persicas and pick. Very seldom did a pupil stay in school a whole session and the sum of schools, peculiarly the preparation and secondary schools, was really scarce. Even if the pupil managed to acquire into the school, he was frequently sent off to work in the Fieldss or the mines to do money to pay revenue enhancements imposed by the Europeans. ( Boahen 104 ) Even the Africans who had entree to school and stayed in them long plenty weren T

acquiring a quality instruction. The books, instructors, and methods of learning were all second-class. New thoughts that were in the large metropoliss countries ne’er reached the smaller towns. There were really few schools in which scientific discipline was even taught. ( Rodney 246 ) Whatever history of Africa that was taught in school merely went back every bit far as they foremost Europeans landed on the continent. A premier illustration of this is that Europeans purportedly discovered Mount Kenya and the river Niger. ( Rodney 247 ) In the terminal, the spread of Western instruction in the African elite is what finally started the overthrown of the colonial system every bit good as representing the centre of the civil service in independent African provinces. ( Boahen 104 )

The missionaries surely had an impact on African society as the criterion of life had been changed, for the better and for the worse. Some Africans started have oning European manner vesture, and there were besides some modern manner houses built in Africa. The Africans gained entree to modern medical specialty. They besides began practising monogamous matrimonies. Equally far as societal Africa goes, the largest impact the missionaries had was the stratification of African societies into a little educated elite. ( Boahen 16 ) Members of the elite were given occupations such as instructor,

reverends, physicians, civil retainers, jurisprudence clerks, and journalists. In the long tally, this stratification was non a good thing. Members of African society were split up into two groups. There were the school people, and so there were the ruddy people, which chiefly comprised of the workers and the poorer citizens of Africa. The consequence of this was, of class, much societal tenseness and turbulence.

Even though the people of Africa were given a steady diet of Christianity and Christian philosophy from the missionaries, there were still many that had no purposes of change overing. Most Africans held true to their ain traditions, there ain faith, and their ain imposts. It besides didn Ts take a piece for the Africans to recognize that the missionaries and colonisation went manus in manus. The missionaries help the colonisers work up pacts that cheated Africa tribes out of their land and their resources. Kenyan nationalist leader, Jomo Kenyatta, was quoted stating When the missionaries came the Africans had the land and the Christians had the Bible. They taught us to pray with our eyes closed. When we opened our eyes we saw that they now had the land and we had the Bible. ( Gordon 286 )

This is the sad truth. The missionaries did utilize Christianity as a manner to command the Africans and do the colonisation procedure easier. These people were making rather good without holding Christianity in their lives believe it or non.