The Church in Africa, 1450-1950 (Oxford History of the Christian Church)

1459 Pages·1996·3.72 MB·English

by  Adrian Hastings

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Page i
The Oxford History of the Christian Church
Edited by
Henry and Owen Chadwick
Page iii
The Church in Africa:
14501950
Adrian Hastings
Page iv
OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
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Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the
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Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New
York
© Adrian Hastings 1994
First issued in paperback in 1996
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
The Church in Africa: 1450-1950/Adrian Hastings.
(The Oxford history of the Christian Church)
1. ChristianityAfricaHistory. 2. Christians, BlackAfrica
History. 3. Church and stateAfrica. 4. Missions
AfricaHistory I. Title. II. Series.
BR1360.H364 1994 276dc20 94-5677
ISBN 0-19-826399-6 (Pbk)
3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4
Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd., Guildford
and King's Lynn
Page v
PREFACE
Limitations are inevitable. A work of history must have its frontiers
and yet it is often impossible to adhere to them very rigidly without
cutting into a flow of interacting developments unduly. This book is
about the Churches within black Africa. The history of Churches on
the Mediterranean coast or in the south when composed principally of
white people is excluded except in so far as it forms part of the story
of a black Church. I have also, with regret, excluded Madagascar. Its
Church history is exceptionally interesting but it stands essentially on
its own and to do it justice would have required more space than I
could afford.
The frontiers in time have been more elastic: 14501950 provides a
clean 500 years but it is inevitably rather arbitrary and I have not
forced myself to feel constrained by these dates. Medieval Ethiopia is
the right place to start but it seemed sensible to review, at least briefly,
the earlier history of Christianity in Africa. Moreover, fifteenth-
century Ethiopia cannot make sense without quite detailed discussion
of developments, monastic and royal, of a century earlier. At the other
end, 1950 is no less unsatisfactory, as a sharp point of conclusion:
1960, 'the Year of Africa', is a better cutting-off point, beyond which I
have not gone. Nevertheless, I have kept to 1950 in the title for two
reasons beyond that of neatness. The first is that a very great deal was
happening in the 1950s, a time when the Churches were growing very
rapidly in societies conscious that their political future was about to
see great changes. I have not had the space to focus on these
developments in adequate detail. In many ways they can, anyway, be
better studied with the 1960s. My second reason is that I have already
done this in A History of African Christianity 1950-1975, published in
1979. Having had more space to deal with these decades there, I did
not think it sensible to repeat it, except rather briefly, here. The
intention of the book is to end with some account of where the
Churches had reached on the eve of colonialism's collapse, but not to
chart in detail the way they were beginning to respond to a new
predicament. A history of African
Page vi
Christianity 196090 could be of exceptional interest but at present the
material is not available.
My indebtedness is, above all, to a small army of scholars who, over
the last forty years, have made this book possible. It rests wholly on
their shoulders, its special contribution being the attempt to make of
so many different stories something of a single whole. Writing it has
made me see clearly what very big gaps remain. On topic after topic,
from sixteenth-century Ethiopia to the nineteenth-century missionary
movement, there is not a single, wide-ranging, reliable modern work.
I have to thank the British Academy for a grant in 1990 to support
study at Yale, and Yale Divinity School for a research fellowship both
then and in 1988. The Overseas Ministries Study Center at Yale
provided me on both occasions with hospitality and assistance of
every sort for which I am particularly grateful. The librarians at the
Divinity School and the Sterling Library at Yale were always
immensely helpful, as have been those at Rhodes House, Oxford, and
in the Brotherton here in Leeds. My wife has throughout supported
and encouraged me in a work which has often seemed too dauntingly
vast, since I agreed to undertake it in 1980. She has also improved its
English at many points. I must also thank the Department of Theology
and Religious Studies at Leeds not only for a generous grant towards
the preparation of this book but also for providing a community of
friendship, pleasure, and shared learning of a sort not these days so
easily found in our harassed and over-competitive university world.
Last, but first in the debt I owe, Ingrid Lawrie, whose commitment to
the book has been throughout no less determined than my own. She
has typed and revised every line, checked it for inconsistencies,
struggled to meet deadlines by working late at night. For such
professionalism, joined to affection, there is no adequate way of
saying thanks.
ADRIAN HASTINGS
LEEDS
AUGUST 1993
Page vii
CONTENTS
A Note on Names xi
List of Abbreviations xiii
Part I. 14501780: A Medieval Environment
1. The Ethiopian Church in the Age of Zara Ya'iqob 3
i. Introduction: The Council of Dabra Mitmaq 3
ii. Coptic and Aksumite Origins 5
iii. Ethiopia's Hebraic Character 11
iv. Monasticism and Monarchy in the Fourteenth 17
Century
v. The 'House of Ewostatewos' and Sabbath 28
Observance
vi. The Policies of Zara Ya'iqob 34
vii. The Age of Baida Maryam 42
2. Africa in 1500 and Its Christian Past 46
i. Society, States, Statelessness, and Religion 46
ii. African Islam 54
iii. The Christian Past of North Africa and Survival 62
in Egypt
iv. Nubia 67
3. The Kongo, Warri, Mutapa, and the Portuguese 71