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

1459 Pages·1996·3.72 MB·English
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title: author: publisher: isbn10 | asin: print isbn13: ebook isbn13: language: subject publication date: lcc: ddc: subject: 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 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogotá Buenos Aires Calcutta Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Paris São Paulo Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw with associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Adrian Hastings 1994 First issued in paperback in 1996 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer 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

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Covering five centuries--from the rise of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church in the 15th century and the early Portuguese missionaries right through to the Church and its key role in Africa today--this major new volume is the first complete history of the Christian Church in Africa. Written by a leading
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