What is African Christianity?
Contrary to what many people today might think (Africans included), Africa has had a long involvement with Christianity. It is noteworthy that the list of nations mentioned in the Biblical account of the coming of the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts includes Egypt and Libya; the Evangelist Mark is traditionally believed to have established the church in Egypt in AD 42; in the first seven centuries of the Christian era, the northern third of Africa, as well as Ethiopia and much of Sudan was predominantly Christian, and this early involvement gave the Christian religion African saints such as Clement, Augustine, Origen, Athanasius and Tertullian. However, the spread of Christianity to sub-Saharan Africa (which is where it is now thriving in Africa, much of the north having converted to Islam) has mainly been the work of Western missionaries. The big expansion took place in the nineteenth century, which is sometimes called “the Age of Mission”. One imagines that many Africans are grateful to these missionaries for that, but it has also become clear that the missionaries got some things wrong.
Many European and American missionaries to sub-Saharan Africa adopted a “blanket” condemnation of all aspects of African culture rather than trying to understand the African way of thinking. For example, in Tanzania, many missionaries
proscribed important elements of African culture and practices, describing them as anti-religious…So that becoming Christian always meant, in part, setting oneself off from the inheritance of the past.
Similarly, among the Chaga of the Kilimanjaro (also in Tanzania), missionaries branded many aspects of the community’s life as “primitive”, “pagan”, “heathen” or “savage” and sought to eradicate them.
