Shembe Part 2
OK, this information is gained second hand, so I'm not going to verify all of its accuracy. Well, my overall information about African Christianity is not second-hand, since that happens to be one of my areas of specialty but Shembe is brand new to me. (Well, not entirely. The Shembe church is also in Zimbabwe, and appears in one of my all time favorite children's novels, A Girl Named Disaster by Nancy Farmer.)
An overview of information first. In the 19th century, Christian missionaries were not very successful in their efforts to convert Africans. This had a lot to do with the perception (often times true, sometimes not) that their efforts went hand-in-hand with the colonists. David Livingstone, the famous missionary to Africa, called the Christian mission to Africa as needing to bring 3 things: Christianity, Civilization, and Commerce. Because Africans were perceived as inferior by Europeans in general, and by many of the missionaries who came specifically, the detrimental policies that colonialism perpetrated were often defended by missionaries. This certainly was not always the case. Bishop Colenso, who plays an important role in some of my research, appears to have been cut from a different cloth and worked as an advocate for Africans against unjust policies. I'm being pretty vague here but I'll try to send some links in another posting. You can look him up on the web but most of the links only gives basic information.
OK, I'm running out of time here at the internet cafe, so let me explain what happened to Christianity to make it the fastest growing religion on the African continent in the 20th Century. IN the late 19th century, Africans began to leave the mission churches in growing numbers. They started their own churches, which they called Ethiopian churches, taking the Bible verse, "God will stretch his hand to Ethiopia," as their impetus. Ethiopia, by the way, often symbolically stands in for the entire continent. As soon as Africans started leading their own churches, following a kind of Christianity that made sense with their own customs, and opposing colonialism vocally and dramatically, surprise, surprise, the churches started to grow like crazy, not without sometimes violent conflict with the colonial state.
Isaiah Shembe was one of those men. He started his church in the late 19th century in South Africa, encouraging Africans to keep many of their customs but to follow the teachings of Jesus. Currently, the church has passed down through 5 generations of Shembes as the head, and it seems like the power of each successive Shembe has grown exponentially. I have a lot more to say about that but will save it since I have 3 minutes of time left on my timecard and must go.
An overview of information first. In the 19th century, Christian missionaries were not very successful in their efforts to convert Africans. This had a lot to do with the perception (often times true, sometimes not) that their efforts went hand-in-hand with the colonists. David Livingstone, the famous missionary to Africa, called the Christian mission to Africa as needing to bring 3 things: Christianity, Civilization, and Commerce. Because Africans were perceived as inferior by Europeans in general, and by many of the missionaries who came specifically, the detrimental policies that colonialism perpetrated were often defended by missionaries. This certainly was not always the case. Bishop Colenso, who plays an important role in some of my research, appears to have been cut from a different cloth and worked as an advocate for Africans against unjust policies. I'm being pretty vague here but I'll try to send some links in another posting. You can look him up on the web but most of the links only gives basic information.
OK, I'm running out of time here at the internet cafe, so let me explain what happened to Christianity to make it the fastest growing religion on the African continent in the 20th Century. IN the late 19th century, Africans began to leave the mission churches in growing numbers. They started their own churches, which they called Ethiopian churches, taking the Bible verse, "God will stretch his hand to Ethiopia," as their impetus. Ethiopia, by the way, often symbolically stands in for the entire continent. As soon as Africans started leading their own churches, following a kind of Christianity that made sense with their own customs, and opposing colonialism vocally and dramatically, surprise, surprise, the churches started to grow like crazy, not without sometimes violent conflict with the colonial state.
Isaiah Shembe was one of those men. He started his church in the late 19th century in South Africa, encouraging Africans to keep many of their customs but to follow the teachings of Jesus. Currently, the church has passed down through 5 generations of Shembes as the head, and it seems like the power of each successive Shembe has grown exponentially. I have a lot more to say about that but will save it since I have 3 minutes of time left on my timecard and must go.
posted by Jessica Somewhere in the States at 5:20 AM
1 Comments:
I would like to refer you to a book called " The Man of Heaven and the beautiful ones of God" Edited and translated by Liz Gunner. ISBN 1-86914-053-2.
This might enlighten you a bit more about Shembe.
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