From Christian brother to native

This article argues that, by the late nineteenth century, the growing population of African Christians created a difficult conundrum for colonial officials. For almost a century, justification for the colonial project rested in part on the premise that Christianization benefited local populations. However, as African evangelists and preachers experienced greater success, colonial states sought to undermine a growing Christian community whose existence threatened administrations that increasingly relied upon systemic violence. The egalitarian expectations of African Christians, in particular, were inimical to colonialism and created dissonance in its undergirding intellectual architecture. As this strain increased, many colonialists turned against the missions and their converts and embraced the pseudo-scientific racism gaining favor in European metropoles. In Natal, South Africa, this shift led the colony to reassert the “nativeness” of African Christians by taking away the privileges their faith had previously earned them and even, on several occasions, razing the churches in which they worshipped. Race, in early twentieth-century colonies, trumped religion

Christianity · Christianization · Civilization · Colonialism · Environmental ethics · Ethnology · Faith · Political science · Population · Racism · Sociology · Theology · Gender Studies · History · Law · Philosophy · Religion, Gender, and Enlightenment · Religion, Society, and Development · Religious studies · South African History and Culture · Religious Studies

• From Mississippi and Memphis to Mozambique

  Benedict Carton•American Nineteenth Century History•2023

  Add to list