Revolt Against Christianity

On the small, barren island of Likoma in Africa's Lake Nyasa stands a great cathedral. Built by native Anglican converts a century ago, it was long the center of Anglican missionary work in Nyasaland and a showpiece of transplanted Christianity. Today, huge cracks threaten to bring down the remnants of its walls, and its stained-glass windows hang crazily from their worm-eaten wooden frames.

Witch doctors and nationalist prophets have confused and corroded the congregation. Recently, one of the local splinter-sect "messiahs" announced that he meant to establish headquarters on the island, and the missionary priests resorted to a theatrical gesture. They divided the nave down the center with a row of benches, then called on all who dared deny the church to remain on the far side of the barrier. For seconds no one stirred. At last some of the oldest members of the congregation moved to the other side, and slowly, most of the rest followed.

It was only a temporary victory. All over Africa there is a revolt against Christianity--sometimes as xenophobic nationalism, sometimes as a reversion to witch craft and tribal rituals, sometimes as a corruption of Christian teaching in splinter sects, often as an upsurge of Islam with its tolerance of polygamy and a theology far less demanding than Christianity's. Last week, in the monthly York Diocesan leaflet Dr. Arthur M. Ramsey. Archbishop of York and Primate of England,* published an alarmed eyewitness account of the crisis. Writing from the town of Lilongwe (pop. 350 whites and 5,000 Negroes) in Nyasaland, Archbishop Ramsey envisaged the loss of all Africa to Christianity, because to more and more black Africans it is nothing but the white man's creed. Warned the Archbishop: "The time is short."

It is shorter in some places than in others: Among the trouble spots:

In Nyasaland, nationalism runs so high that last year's Moderator of the Church of Scotland, the Rt. Rev. Robert H.W. Shepherd, not long ago found that he could not safely visit some of his own mission stations because he was associated with the unpopular Monckton Commission to study the federation of Nyasaland and Rhodesia. In the course of his investigations, Dr. Shepherd also learned that one of his lay preachers and elders was on trial for murdering a "witch" and that the house of his church's education secretary had been stoned.

In Rhodesia, various sects--such as the Watchmen, the Sacred Heart of Jesus Lumpa Church, the Church of God, the Bantu National Church--have broken away from the mission churches and are making considerable headway. One of the most successful new prophets is one Mister Wilson "Good," known as "Jesus"' to his followers, who wears a white robe and rides an ass instead of Rhodesia's customary bicycle.

In Nigeria, a national "church" that sprang up in the '40s has largely subsided, but natives flock to such offshoots as the Commercial Vision Seeing, the Father Divine Apostolic, and the Cherubim and Seraphim churches. Lagos has its local "Jesus" in one Emmanuel Odumosu, who insists on strict abstinence from alcohol but has seven wives and rides in a luxurious Pontiac car driven by a chauffeur.

In Kenya, Protestant missionaries have just about won back the 39,000 (out of 40,000) Kikuyu and Embu Christians who deserted the churches during the Mau-Mau uprising in 1952. Identification of mission Christianity with "imperialism" is the church's biggest problem; two years ago, nine parishes of the Anglican diocese seceded and have appointed their own bishop. Twelve splinter churches have been formed, including the African Israel Church (whose members wear turbans), the African Interior Church, the Church of Christ in East Africa, and the African Brotherhood Church.

Many feel that Christianity's greatest handicap in Africa is its record of tolerating segregation, notably in South Africa. Two such sworn enemies as South Africa's Premier Hendrik Verwoerd and Cape Town's Anglican Archbishop Joost de Blank agree that a crisis is at hand for Christianity on the continent. Said Verwoerd last week: "We are faced today by threats to the future of civilization, to the contribution of the white man in South Africa . . . Christianity is threatened in Africa more than anywhere else." His prescription: continued segregation and repression.

Archbishop de Blank sees the Christian church in South Africa "at a crossroads. Unless it openly and publicly repudiates the doctrine and practice of compulsory segregation, it is condemning itself to extermination--and the whole of South Africa will be wide open to secularism and non-Christian creeds."

*Second only to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of All England, a distinction established by Pope Innocent VI in the 14th century.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.