20: Christianity in Sub-Saharan Africa

Cush is roughly the modern nation of Sudan, Egypt is, of course Egypt and Put is likely the area of modern Libya. Of those three, only Cush is what we’d call today sub-Saharan Africa.

By the way, some have attempted to connect this geographical reference pointing out Ham’s descendents with the so-called “curse of Ham” due to his sin against Noah recorded in Genesis 9:22-25, however there’s nothing to suggest that connection. The curse in fact is on the nation of Canaan, which is not in Africa. So, the idea that the dark skin of Africans is due to a curse is unbiblical nonsense.

We learn about a specific King of Cush called Tirhakah. King Tirhakah is mentioned in the Book of Isaiah and also in the book of II Kings.

If you remember, when the city of Jerusalem is under threat from Sennacherib, King of Assyria, King Hezekiah of Judah is all upset about what might happen. During all this, Sennacherib hears a rumor that King Tirhakah of Cush is coming to Judah’s rescue:

Latter in II Kings 19:9 “Now the king heard concerning Tirhakah king of Cush, “Behold, he has set out to fight against you.” So he sent messengers again to Hezekiah, saying,...”

So, he sends word to Hezekiah saying don’t relay on this guy, he won’t help you. Of course if you remember the rest of the story it was not Tirhakah who saved Jerusalem but an angel of the Lord who killed 185,000 Assyrians.

SLIDE (Statues found buried in Sudan in 2003 now in the Kerma Museum in Sudan)

Most importantly, we see that Cush is among the nations from whom God’s people will come:

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Isaiah 11:11 “In that day the Lord will extend his hand yet a second time to recover the remnant that remains of his people, from Assyria, from Egypt, from Pathros, from Cush, from Elam, from Shinar, from Hamath, and from the coastlands of the sea.”

In the New Testament:

In Acts 8, one of Jesus’ Apostles runs into a kingdom official from Ethiopia. Phillip opens the Scripture and tells the man about Jesus, and baptizes the African official, who then goes on his way, presumably to his homeland. History doesn’t tell us if he was the first African convert, but he certainly went home to what would become one of the oldest Christian communities on the African continent, that of the nation of Ethiopia.

Today, I want to give you a 30,000 foot view of the story of Christianity in Africa. Time doesn’t permit us to dig too deeply, but my purpose to to provide a broad framework for understanding African Christianity and how it developed. We don’t, admittedly, have as much information on the growth of the church in Africa, especially in earlier times, as we do some other places but we can piece together some things that show us how the Lord has worked there even from very early on.

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Ancient African Christianity

As we mentioned, of all the African nations in the sub-Saharan region, the one with the oldest Christian history is the nation of Ethiopia.

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FRUMENTIUS OF TYRE

“Christianity in Ethiopia can be traced back to the early fourth century with the missionary activities of Frumentius.” (1) Sometimes called Frumentius of Tyre. Frumentius is a saint in both the Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church.

“In the early 4th century, a ship filled with Roman traders from Syria landed at an Ethiopian port for fresh water and supplies. The locals were hostile to Roman citizens, so they massacred everyone on the ship except for two people, including a Christian boy named Frumentius.

Frumentius was brought before the king at Aksum. He found favor with the king, who made the boy an administrator in his court. Frumentius heard about other Christians living in the kingdom, so he got permission to hold Christian worship services in the capital. According to church history, Frumentius led many people to Jesus Christ.

When the king died suddenly, he left his infant son as heir to the throne. Frumentius served as regent of the kingdom until the young prince was old enough to rule. In that time, Frumentius led his young ward, King Ezana, to faith in Christ.

Once King Ezana came of age and took over kingdom duties, Frumentius traveled north to Alexandria, Egypt, to connect with the large Christian community there. In the fourth century, Alexandria was one of the world’s foremost centers of the Christian faith. While visiting the region, Frumentius established a relationship with the Bishop of Alexandria — Athanasius.

Athanasius, the Patriarch of Alexandria during much of the fourth century, was a towering figure in early Christianity—a theologian, church father, and chief defender of doctrine. In time, Frumentius asked Athanasius to send missionaries to Aksum since the people there were ready for the Gospel.

You know what they say in church, be careful what ministry you suggest because you might be asked to lead it.

Realizing Frumentius was already fluent in the language of the Ethiopian people, Athanasius ordained Frumentius as the first bishop of the Ethiopian Church in 330 AD and sent him back to Aksum with a number of Coptic Christian missionaries. From that point forward, the Gospel began spreading throughout Central Africa. In turn, King Ezana declared Christianity the official religion of the Aksumite Kingdom of Ethiopia.”

Source: The Story of Frumentius Drive Thru History® : "Ends of the Earth"

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National Geographic says of Aksum:

“This wealthy African civilization thrived for centuries, controlling a large territorial state and access to vast trade routes linking the Roman Empire to the Middle East and India. Aksum, the capital city, was a metropolis with a peak population as high as 20,000. Aksum was also noteworthy for its elaborate monuments and written script, as well as for introducing the Christian religion to the rest of sub-Saharan Africa.”

Source: The Kingdom of Aksum | National Geographic Society

The people of Ethiopia, however, like to trace their Christian heritage back to Phillip and the Ethiopian Eunuch in Acts 8.

This may, in fact, explain where the Christians came from that Frumentius encountered.

Though there were legends widely circulated during the middle ages of a Christian kingdom in Africa, we don’t have much other information on Christianity in Africa during the time before European contact beginning about the fifteenth century with the Portuguese. In an account of a Portuguese traveler named Francisco Alvarez he says that while he was in Ethiopia he encountered Christians from the land of Nubia which would be northern Sudan today:

“…six men from (Nubia) came as messengers to the (king of Ethiopia). They asked him to send them priests and monks in order to teach them. He decided not to send them. They said these people had received everything from Rome (probably Constantinople) and that it is a very long time since (the bishop died) whom they had received from Rome. And because of the wars of the Moors (Muslims), they could not get another one, and so they lost all their clergy and their Christianity and thus the Christian faith was forgotten.” (3)

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Early African Christians

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King Nzinga Mbemba of Congo

By 1506, as a result of the work of Catholic missionaries, when King Nzinga Mbemba became the king of the nation of Congo, he was already a Christian and ruled Congo as a Catholic monarch with close ties to King Alfonso of Portugal, even writing him one time to complain about the quality of the priests they’d been sent.

At first the relationship between Congo and Portugal was mutually beneficial. Portugal sent missionaries, teachers and craftsmen and Congo sent them things like copper and ivory. King Mbemba even sent his son Henry to Portugal to be trained as a priest.

But sadly into this mix of missions and trade came the specter of slavery.

At first King Mbemba was willing to provide the Portuguese with captives of war to be sold as slaves. However, this was not sufficient to meet the Portuguese demand so they began to kidnap people from the Congo and sell them into slavery.

As a reminder, the scriptures condemn this harshly:

Exodus 21:16 “Whoever steals a man and sells him, and anyone found in possession of him, shall be put to death.”

As a result, King Mbemba became an early advocate for ending the slave trade in Africa. He wrote a letter to the king of Portugal protesting this where he said:

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“Our country is being completely depopulated, and your Highness should not agree with this, it is our will that in these Kingdoms, there should be no trade of slaves nor outlet for them.”

Source: Nzinga Mbemba Of Kongo: The King Who Fought To End Slavery In Kongo. (iloveafrica.com)

He also wrote letters to the Vatican protesting the Portuguese actions. Neither the king of Portugal nor the pope, however, came to his aid.

In 1526, Mbemba created a commission to investigate the origin of any individual taken as a slave (presumably to determine if they were a war captive or someone taken against their will).

His opposition was not appreciated by the Portuguese. On Easter Sunday, 1540, a group of Portuguese tried to assassinate him while he was at church. He died in 1542 leaving the kingdom to his son, Pedro.

“Afonso (another name for Mbemba) was remembered as an icon, both in Europe and Africa. He sent one of his sons, Henrique Kinu a Muemba, to be trained as a priest. Henry ended up as one of the first, if not the first African bishop in 1518. Afonso is one of the few recognized during the precolonial era for his strategic moves to maintain Portuguese and Christian influence in the Kongo Kingdom. King Afonso’s articulate letters to the Vatican and the Portuguese are some of the most important records of precolonial Africa.”

SOURCE: Nzinga Mbemba Of Kongo: The King Who Fought To End Slavery In Kongo. (iloveafrica.com)

A Portuguese priest named Rui d’Aguiar wrote of the king:

The Church in Africa, 1450–1950 iv. Kongolese Catholicism under Afonso I and His Immediate Successors

His Christian life is such that he appears to me not as a man but as an angel sent by the Lord to this kingdom to convert it, especially when he speaks and when he preaches … better than we, he knows the prophets and the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ and all the lives of the saints and all things regarding our Mother the Holy Church … He does nothing but study and many times he falls asleep over his books; he forgets when it is time to dine when he is speaking of the things of God. So delighted is he with the reading of the Scripture that he is beside himself … He studies the Holy Gospel and when the priest finishes the mass he asks for benediction. When he has received it he begins to preach to the people with great skill and great charity … he punishes with rigour those who worship idols and he has them burned along with these idols

Next we’ll move on to an early African Protestant Christian.

Protestant missionaries first went to Africa after the destruction of the Spanish Armada in 1588. Several missionaries were sent to Gold Cost (modern Ghana) by Scandinavian Lutherans during the early to mid seventeenth century. (4)

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Jacobus Capitein

Jacobus Capitein is significant because he’s the first native African to receive a formal theological education and return to his homeland to teach. Capitein was from Gold Coast (modern day Ghana) probably from the Fante tribe (Interestingly, the same tribe as Kofi Annan, the former UN Secretary General). While a young boy of perhaps seven or eight, he was sold as a slave to a ship’s captain named Arnold Steenhart. But Steenhart treated him differently than most people then treated slaves. Rather than send the boy to the West Indies, the captain took him back to the Netherlands.

He was later given to a man named Jacobus Van Goch who gave him his name and took him to the Hague to receive the best education possible. Jacobus graduated from the University of Leyden in 1742. Ironically, his graduate dissertation was an assertion that slavery was not contrary to Christian freedom.

He was ordained later that year as a Dutch Reformed Minister and returned to Gold Coast to minister. Once there, he created a writing system for the Fante tribal language and published the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments, part of the catechism of the Dutch Reformed Church and other Christian literature in that language. He was one of the forerunners of creating written forms of African tribal languages.

He also started a school in the Dutch settlement of Fort Elmina which was quite successful for a while. However, he did not receive the support of the dutch authorities that he felt he needed, particularly in establishing an orphanage for the young men of the school who had no families. Capitein accomplished a lot in his short life but died in 1747 at the age of 30.

Source: Capitein, Jacobus (A) - Dictionary of African Christian Biography (dacb.org)

Next we’re fast forwarding more than a century to talk about a group of young men collectively known as...

The Uganda Martyrs

These young men were from the nation of Baganda in what is now Uganda. Baganda was among the richest and most advanced tribes in central Africa. Beginning in 1860 Baganda was ruled by a king named Mutesa who had a reputation for great cruelty. Upon his ascension to the throne, he had all of his brothers buried alive to eliminate the competition for the throne. However, King Mutesa was tolerant of Christians, welcoming Christian missionaries to his realm in 1877. From that contact, many of his people became Christians - which became problematic for them.

According to one source:

“Conversion to Christianity among the Baganda meant a rejection of the traditional religions. It also implied a setting aside of some of the traditional ways of life, an adherence to a new set of moral and religious standards, and, often, the establishment of a new set of alliances, based on religious belief. As a result, the group of new believers (called abasomi, or readers) came to be regarded with suspicion by other Baganda as a dangerous rebel faction. During the reign of Mutesa, however, these suspicions were kept under check.”

Source: The Story of the Ugandan Martyrs | America Magazine

Doesn’t it mean that in every culture?

Romans 12.2 “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

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However, when he died in 1884 and his son Mwanga became king, that tolerance of Christianity ended. The ruler in Baganda was an absolute monarch who essentially owned his subjects could use them in any way he wished and demand of them anything he wanted and they had to obey. So, as with all tyrants, those whose first loyalty was to Christ and not him, became his enemies. He demanded, as so many in history before him had, that there were no other gods before him. This is why the communists hate Christians, because they put God above the state and they believe the state is to be above all.

In January, 1885, King Mwanga had three Bagandan Christians dismembered and their bodies burned. Later that year in October, he had the new Anglican bishop, James Hannington, murdered as well. One of the king’s senior advisors, a convert to Catholicism, admonished him for this. He pulled a John the Baptist, speaking truth to power and got the same earthly reward as John, beheading.

Here’s where we get to the Uganda martyrs.

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The king had a retinue of royal pages, young men, to do is bidding and many of them had become Christians. One of the things the king demanded of his young male pages is that they have sexual relations with him. These young men, one as young as fourteen, refused to do this because it was against their Christian beliefs.

On May 26, 1885 they were called before the king and given the choice so many martyrs for the faith have been given over the centuries - recant or die.

They chose to die.

From an account of their martyrdom by eyewitness Denis Kanyukas:

“When all the victims had been laid on the pyre, the executioners brought more wood, which they piled on top of them. While this was being done, I heard the Christians each reciting the prayers which came to mind at that supreme moment. When Mukajanga saw that all was ready, he signaled to his men to station themselves all round the pyre, and then gave the order ‘light it at every point.’ The flames blazed up like a burning house and, as they rose, I heard coming from the pyre the murmur of the Christian’s voices as they died invoking God.” (5)

Twenty young African men heard “Well done good and faithful servant” from their Lord on that day. Martyrs’ Day is still celebrated in Uganda every June 3 in honor of these young men who gave their life rather than renounce Christ.

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David Livingstone

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A couple weeks back we talked about Hudson Taylor in China. Last week we learned about William Carey and India. The African counterpart to them is probably David Livingstone.

David Livingstone was born in 1813 in Blantyre, Scotland into a poor family. He began working at the age of only ten in a cotton mill. He heard the gospel and was converted at the age of twelve. By the time he was twenty, he’d decided to become a medical missionary to China. However, as we saw in the video, the Lord changed his mind and he went to Africa instead. He finished his medical studies and in 1840 was sent to South Africa by the London Missionary Society. While there, he became burdened for the people in the northern interior of Africa who’d never heard the gospel.

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Who’s Who in Christian History Livingstone, David

In 1852 Livingstone sent his wife and children home before he embarked on a four-year, six-thousand-mile journey that took him to Angola’s Atlantic coast, then east to the Indian Ocean at Mozambique. During long weary journeys, debilitating illnesses, danger from wild animals and hostile tribes, he never relaxed his self-imposed discipline, but made observations, studied languages, kept his famous Diaries, and prepared scientific reports that brought him fame. He retained his humility, writing in 1853: “I will place no value on anything I have … except in relation to the Kingdom of Christ.”

He was also incensed by the slave trade.

Livingstone took a two-pronged approach to evangelism. He wanted to see people converted to Christ but he also wanted to bring trade and commerce to central Africa believing that was the best way to end the slave trade, by replacing it with something more profitable.

Christian History Magazine—Issue 56: David Livingstone: Missionary-explorer in Africa Discovering Livingstone (Alvyn Austin)

Yet Livingstone’s primary desire was to expose the slave trade and end it by cutting it off at the source. The strongest weapon, he believed, was Christian commercial civilization. He hoped to replace the “inefficient” slave economy with a capitalist economy: buying and selling goods, like beeswax and ivory, instead of people.

Britain had, by this time banned the slave trade and was enforcing that ban in the Atlantic using the Royal Navy. However, the Arab slave trade was still flourishing.

What Livingstone observed was that:

“Africans in the interior were trading slaves to the Portuguese, who sold them to Swahili and Arab traders in Mozambique, who in turn sent them to markets throughout the Arab world.”

Source: David Livingstone and the Other Slave Trade, Part I. – Smithsonian Libraries and Archives / Unbound (si.edu)

“David Livingstone’s first book, Missionary travels and researches in South Africa, published in 1857, was a huge success, not only because of the harrowing adventures it related but because it alerted the British public to the existence of the Arab slave trade flourishing along Africa’s east coast. The book, along with Livingstone’s many lectures and letters, provoked a call for action once again, and finally, in 1873, a few weeks after Livingstone’s death, Parliament outlawed this trade, too (the West Coast trade had been outlawed in 1834). The Royal Navy sent ships to Africa to enforce the ban.”

Source: David Livingstone and the Other Slave Trade, Part II: The Arab Slave Trade – Smithsonian Libraries and Archives / Unbound (si.edu)

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The biggest driver of the Arab slave trade was the massive slave market on Zanzibar, an island off the coast of Tanzania. By 1873, when the British parliament outlawed the slave trade in East Africa, Zanzibar was the last open slave market in the world.

The sultan of Zanzibar was given an ultimatum: “Consent immediately to the terms of the slave-trade-suppressing treaty, or face a blockade by British naval forces” (215). A little over a month after Livingstone’s death, the Zanzibar slave market closed forever. Queen Victoria announced the success to parliament: “Treaties have been concluded with the Sultan of Zanzibar . . . which provide means for the more effectual repression of the slave trade on the east coast of Africa”

Source: The Brave Stunt That Brought Down Slavery | Desiring God

On the site of the former slave market in Zanzibar now stand and Anglican church.

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Who’s Who in Christian History Livingstone, David

When Livingstone’s wife died in 1861, he threw himself fiercely into his work. He disappeared from sight; and when found by Henry Morton Stanley of the New York Herald in 1871, Livingstone refused to go home. Stanley’s kindness probably saved Livingstone’s life for another eighteen months until at Ilala (now in Zambia) he was discovered dead, kneeling by his bedside.

Such was their love for him that native assistants bore his body fifteen hundred miles to the coast. One of them was among the huge crowd at the funeral in Westminster Abbey.

They removed his heart and buried it in Africa before sending his body back to the UK because they said Africa was where his heart had always been.

He was so well thought of that Queen Victoria sent a wreath to the funeral which was placed on his coffin and buried with him.

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On his gravestone is written:

BROUGHT BY FAITHFUL HANDS OVER LAND AND SEA HERE RESTS DAVID LIVINGSTONE, MISSIONARY, TRAVELLER, PHILANTHROPIST, BORN MARCH 19. 1813 AT BLANTYRE, LANARKSHIRE, DIED MAY 1, 1873 AT CHITAMBO'S VILLAGE, ULALA. FOR 30 YEARS HIS LIFE WAS SPENT IN AN UNWEARIED EFFORT TO EVANGELIZE THE NATIVE RACES, TO EXPLORE THE UNDISCOVERED SECRETS, TO ABOLISH THE DESOLATING SLAVE TRADE, OF CENTRAL AFRICA, WHERE WITH HIS LAST WORDS HE WROTE, "ALL I CAN ADD IN MY SOLITUDE, IS, MAY HEAVEN'S RICH BLESSING COME DOWN ON EVERY ONE, AMERICAN, ENGLISH, OR TURK, WHO WILL HELP TO HEAL THIS OPEN SORE OF THE WORLD"

You’ll also notice on the left side is:

John 10:16 “And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.”

Source: David Livingstone | Westminster Abbey (westminster-abbey.org)

Conrad Mbewe a pastor in Zambia and one of the founders of African Christian University there has said that Livingstone is still highly revered in Zambia today. He points out that after independence in 1964 Zambians changed the European place names in the country with one exception, the city of Livingstone, reflecting the regard with which he is held there.

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The Church in Africa Today

“While every day in the West, roughly 7500 people in effect stop being Christians every day in Africa roughly double that number become Christians . . .” - J.O. Mills in 1984 quoted in:

Isichei, Elizabeth. A History of Christianity in Africa: From Antiquity to the Present (p. 1). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Kindle Edition.

She also says: “more Anglicans attend church in Uganda than in England” and this was in 1995!

Historian Mark Noll, highlighted the changes in Christian adherence around the world. In Africa the numbers are telling: in 1900 there were only 8.8 Million Christian adherents. In 2008 that number jumped to 423.7 million (or roughly 47.7%) of the population. What this reflects is a significant shift in the population center of Christian adherence. No longer is the population center in North America or Europe, but in Africa and South America.

I’m reminded of Paul’s words in Romans 1:16

Romans 1:16 ESV

16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

The power is not in the individuals who bring it. All are flawed men and women, some more so than others. The power is in the Gospel. It matters not that the bringers of the Gospel to Africa were from nations who exploited the continent and its people, at least it matters not from the perspective of the efficacy of the gospel. As Joseph told his brothers who mistreated him, you intended it for evil, God intended it for good that many would be saved.

And not only that, lives in the here-and-now were improved by these missions efforts.

There was a fascinating article in “Christianity Today” back in 2014 called “The Surprising Discovery about those Colonialist, Proselytizing Missionaries.”

It’s an overview of the findings of a sociologist named Robert Woodbury. What he found was that in former colonial areas, those nations where Protestant missionaries had been most active had higher levels of education and more freedom than those areas where that had not been the case. He says:

“Areas where Protestant missionaries had a significant presence in the past are on average more economically developed today, with comparatively better health, lower infant mortality, lower corruption, greater literacy, higher educational attainment (especially for women), and more robust membership in nongovernmental associations.”

(1) A History of Christianity in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, 1450 - 1990, Koschorke, et al, p.139

(2) ibid

(3) ibid, p.142

(4) ibid, p. 172

(5) ibid, pp. 201-202

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