4.1. Historical factors behind liberation
4.1.3. The Missionary involvement and Western ethno-centricism
To Africans, all Europeans coming to Africa in the nineteenth and twentieth century were viewed as forces of imperialism, which had come in order to invade and conquer.
Mugambi builds on this view when he writes:
To Africans there was no obvious distinction between missionaries, administrators, settlers, merchants, soldiers and specialised professionals such as doctors,
The first country to achieve constitutional nationhood in tropical Africa was Ghana, formerly called Gold Coast (to emphasise its value for Europe). Under the leadership of Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana became a republic within the British Commonwealth in March 1957 (Mugambi 1989c:84).
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engineers and architects - they were all Europeans. After all, despite the provision in the Berlin Treaty (which was reaffirmed in 1919), a missionary society was not expected to undermine the commercial and political interests of the colonial power controlling the territory where their society operated. Conversely, any society which facilitated effective colonisation was more likely to receive reciprocal co- operation from the colonial administration. It was therefore in the interests of most missionaries not to antagonize the colonial administrators by appearing to take sides with the colonial subjects who were their prospective converts. Many Africans viewed this missionary attitude as hypocrisy, much to the discredit of the modern missionary enterprise (1989b: 23).
Mugambi's explanation holds several important implications for missionary expansionism in Africa and western ethno-centricism. First, for many, missionary expansionism and ethno-centricity are inseparable from the colonial project. Second, the motives of Christian missionary societies were at best questionable. Third, some of the methods employed by Christian missionary societies were at best questionable. Fourth, missionary societies carried with them negative images of Africa. These factors led Ngugi wa Thiong'o, the renowned Kenyan novelist, to refer to western Christian missionaries as "the colonial spiritual police" (1972: xvii). As the study progresses, it will examine each of these factors in seeking to unveil the historical factors behind the need for liberation.
Several writers from non-Christian as well as Christian traditions have attempted to articulate the link between missionary work and colonialism. They represent various interrelated disciplines including, historical anthropology (Comaroff and Comaroff 1991), post-colonial biblical criticism (Dube 2000), African theology (Bediako 1992) and Christian Missiology (Bosch 1991). With regard to the colonisation of the Tswana of South Africa, Comaroff and Comaroff classify the London Missionary Society {Hereafter, LMS) among the "earliest foot soldiers of British colonialism" (1991: xi). The same can be applied to other colonial situations in Africa; as David Bosch explains:
As it became customary for British missionaries to labour in British colonies, French missionaries in French colonies to be regarded as both vanguard and rearguard for the colonial powers... Whether they liked it or not, the missionaries became pioneers of Western imperialistic expansion (1991:304).
This perception was strengthened by the missionaries themselves who, at times, petitioned the governments of their home countries to extend protectorates to the areas where they were operating, "often with the argument that unless this happened, a rival colonial power might annex the territory" (Bosch 1991:305). As Mugambi has implied, western missionary societies understood that to colonise meant to missionize and vice versa. This meant that the ideals of propagating the Christian faith and pursuing colonial rule became
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so intertwined that it was often hard to distinguish between them. Second, the images that the missionaries brought with them to Africa were misleading and often had long lasting psychological effects on the African. In particular, it made them serve the African society with ethno-centrism.6 These images affected both their motives and their methods. As Bediako explains, the missionaries who came to Africa were already conditioned by the fact that until the nineteenth and twentieth century missionary era the West's experience of Africa had been in the context of the slave trade (1992:225-228). This in itself had fixed, in the missionary mind, an inferior image of the African. The belief in the Great Chain of Being had placed Africans in the lowest category of human beings following the "White,"
"Red" and "Yellow" races (: 227). Hence, their "racial, social and cultural inferiority to European peoples" (: 226) was clearly taken as a matter of divine design.
In terms of religious orientation, Bediako explains, a fourfold division placed Africans in the lowest category, thereby providing a good historical foundation for the quest for liberation. As Bediako can further state:
In the fourfold division of "Christian, Jewish, Mahometan (sic), Pagan" the fourth category was in a class of its own for being devoid of monotheism, a major consideration in the test of religion. From what was known of the peoples of Asia and Africa, they came within the category of pagan. However, whilst the Indians and the Chinese could be accounted "civilised" pagans by virtue of being literate, Africans were believed to be without literature, arts, sciences, government, laws, and also cannibalistic and naked, and so were reckoned to be savage and barbarous pagans, "... as destitute of civilization as they are of true religion." These ideas formed part of the stock of knowledge and persisted in the intellectual climate of Europe well into the nineteenth century, when they became fused with evolutionary and racial theories of human achievement, civilisation, history and progress (: 229- 230).
In other words, the image of Africa that western missionaries brought was one of uncivilised heathens, with no culture and with religion that lacked a monotheistic conception of God. Contemplation of pre-Christian Africa was therefore regarded as
"either harmful or at best valueless," and Africans who were to be converted from paganism would be taken as a "tabula rasa on which a wholly new religious psychology was somehow to be imprinted" (: 226).
Another consideration is that of missionary motive. Mugambi is right to assert that it was in the "interests of most missionaries not to antagonise the colonial administration" and
6 Ethnocentrism is the tendency to view people unconsciously by using ones own group and ones own customs as the standard for all judgements. It places the human self, ones racial, ethnic or social group at the centre of the Universe and rates all others accordingly.
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that the Africans viewed this missionary attitude as being hypocritical (1989b: 33).
Mugambi shares this view with Bosch who says that their motives included some that can be contested today, such as imparting to Africans a "superior culture" as a means of
"civilising" them. As Bosch explains:
Small wonder that, particularly in the nineteenth century, the adjective "poor" was increasingly used to qualify the noun "heathen"...The patent needs of the "poor heathen" became one of the strongest arguments in favour of mission. The glory of God as missionary motive had first been superseded by the emphasis on his love.
Now there was yet another shift in motivation - from the depth of God's love to the depth of fallen humanity's pitiable state. Love has deteriorated into patronizing charity (1991:290).
According to Bediako, the motives of "Christianising" and "civilising" became inseparable:
Since the technical and cultural achievements in Europe were now generally and confidentially identified as the fruits of Christianity, it seemed appropriate that to effect the salvation of Africa, Africans must be given the total package of Christianity and (European) civilisation (1992:228).
This further agrees with Bosch when he stresses that the project of "civilising" heathen Africans was considered part of the "manifest destiny" of Europeans, they being convinced that:
God, in his [sic] providence, had chosen the Western nations, because of their unique qualities, to be the standard-bearers of his [sic] cause even to the uttermost ends of the world (1991:298).
This reveals how the "cultural superiority" of Europeans became intermingled with western missionary notions of religious superiority. Consequently, the missionaries remained, "blind to their own ethnocentrism" (Bosch 1991:294) as they sought to reshape
"the entire world in the image of the west" (: 292).
The above discussion shows that the missionary project of the west included the desire to create docile subjects for the colonising powers for whom they worked hand in hand.
Furthermore, the colonial state enforced "physical obedience with the aid of punishment and laws" while the western missionaries secured, "the inward servility and devotion of the natives" (Bosch 1991:306). It is no wonder that the Zimbabwean theologian, Ambrose Moyo, sees the role of African theology as liberating the church from the foreign structures that it has unwittingly acquired, a view that is shared by other African theologians such as Mbiti, Idowu, Bediako, Nthamburi, and Mugambi. As Moyo confirms:
African Theology should work towards the decolonisation of the local church in Africa and rid it of its neo-colonial structures most of which were designed from
racist perspective... African theology... can only be born in the context of freedom, in a situation where people are allowed to express themselves through local available instruments, where people respect themselves, their culture and entertain no inferiority complexes (1983:100).
Comaroff and Comaroff (1991:6) have referred to the LMS as "the most active cultural agents of empire, being driven by the explicit aim of reconstructing the 'native' world in the name of God and European civilisation" and good at "colonising the consciousness" of the African people for whom they purportedly worked for. Waruta contributes to this idea when he describes how western missionaries approached the task of educating Africans from their own cultural perspective:
The missionaries developed an education system according to their own cultural, theological and philosophical backgrounds. Their educational systems were actually meant to create a new African in the missionary's own cultural, theological and philosophical image. Culturally, the missionaries believed that they represented a superior culture to be swallowed by their students in total. Everything African was regarded primitive, dirty or barbaric. Everything European was to be imitated as superior, progressive and noble (2000: 129).
Musa Dube is therefore correct when she states that "mission understood as a westernisation process in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was inseparable from European cultural imperialism" (2000:14), a view shared by Mugambi, as we have seen previously.
Although British indirect rule, or French assimilation policies were aimed at converting Africans into Europeans in terms of their manners, dress codes, language usage, eating habits, education and the general mode of life, it is important to note that western missionaries did an excellent job in creating a sense of oneness among Africans, even though they each possessed distinct languages. By emphasising western languages, that is, the language of the oppressor, they equipped the diversity of African peoples with languages that united them as their "new tool" in their quest for identity. Hence, it was later used as a means of agitating for freedom, human dignity and liberation. It is no wonder that Christian missionary project was one, calling for equality before God (although this was not practised as we have noted above) while the western values (which the missionaries brought with them) included prosperity through (the new) advancements in education. As Comaroff and Comaroff can rightly remark:
It is a process in which the "savages" of colonialism are ushered, by earnest protestant evangelists, into the revelation of their own misery, are promised salvation through self-discovery and civilization, and are drawn into a conversation with the culture of modern capitalism - only to find themselves enmeshed,
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willingly or not, in its order of signs and values, interests and passions, wants and needs. Even the established modes of protest open to them in ringing Christian terms - terms like civil rights, civilized liberties, freedom of conscience (1991: xii).
It is therefore ironic that while Africans were being westernised, they were also given the tools to fight against western domination. It is no wonder that the first generation of African leaders, who assumed the leadership of their respective countries in the 1960s, were products of mission schools and churches (see Nthamburi 1991:1). These leaders included, Kenyatta of Kenya, Nkrumah of Ghana, Kaunda of Zambia, Nyerere of Tanzania and Senghor of Senegal, Banda of Malawi, and Mugabe of Zimbabwe.
Nthamburi builds on this thought when he states that:
Kenyatta had gone through missionary schools and Institutions. Senghor and Nkrumah were even seminarians. Kaunda's father was a clergyman while Nyerere was a very devout catholic. It seems, therefore, correct to say that there is a close affinity between African theology and the movement towards freedom in Africa (1991:1).
The view that these African leaders were ironically given the Bible and education as tools to fight against western domination is easily seen in the case of Kenyatta, who preferred to use Hebrews 11: 24-7, which reads:
By faith, Moses when he had grown up refused to be known as the son of pharaoh's daughter. He chose to be mistreated a long with the people of God rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a short time. He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward. By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the King's anger; he persevered because he saw him who is invisible.
Kenyatta would also use the same text to argue that, as Moses refused to be called the son of pharaoh's daughter in order to serve his nation, the Kikuyu (read Africans) who were working or staying away from their homes, needed to emulate Moses and return home to uplift their people icf. Muiguithania, a Kikuyu newspaper, Kenya National Archives file, No. DC/MKS. 10B/13/1). Kenyatta's usage of the Bible for the purposes of political liberation clearly emulates other pre-independence nationalist leaders of the 1960's such as Nyerere, Kaunda, Senghor and Nkrumah.
While western missionaries appeared to be working for their oppressive colonial rulers, they also provided Africans with weapons and tools through which they could channel
7 Muiguithania was a political journal, edited by Kenyatta from as early as 1928. Muiguithania is a Kikuyu word, which means "the unifier."
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their quests for political liberation. As noted these tools included the bible and western education. This observation is clearly noted by Mugambi when he writes:
If education is the process of positive character-formation and liberation is the process towards the realization of total freedom, it is clear that there is an intimate connection between the two processes. Sometimes the realization of human dignity, which is an important aspect of liberation, may depend entirely on the kind of education one has received. For if, as in the colonial period, one is taught to think of oneself as a subject, one will continue so to regard oneself until a new process of re-education arises (1989b: 111).
Mugambi holds that the Christian faith only maintains total liberation "when people take seriously their dependence on God" (read - abiding by biblical teachings). He further notes that not only should education extend beyond the classroom, but that "all education should be for liberation" (1989b: 111). Western missionaries thus gave some Africans an important tool of liberation through the Bible and Western education.
In concluding this sub-section on the missionary involvement and their western ethno- centricism as a historical factor behind the quest for human liberation, we have discovered that the theology of liberation in Africa is deeply rooted in the conduct and teachings of the early nineteenth missionary societies who came together with the colonial rulers. Their importance in Christianising Africa cannot be underestimated, as they were responsible for the brand of Christianity that we practice today. While the Portuguese missionaries of the fifteenth century failed to make a lasting positive impact in the spread of Christianity in Africa, the nineteenth century Christian missionaries left a lasting legacy that, despite obvious shortcomings, can still be felt today. Finally, western mission provided fertile ground for the African quest for liberation especially where their behaviours were deemed ethnocentric.