Saved

‘When the missionaries came to Africa, they had the Bible and we had the land. They taught us to pray with our eyes closed. When we opened them, we had the Bible in our hand, and they had the land.’
Jomo Kenyatta, first president of Kenya

As early as the 1840s, missionaries have played a central role in shaping colonial and post-colonial Africa. From David Livingstone who landed here in Malawi and Johann Krapf, the first European known to see Mt. Kilimanjaro, missionaries have left a heavy footprint on the development of modern Africa. Even today, the deepest corners of Congo hide aging Catholic priests for whom Europe is a distant memory of youth.

Today, Sub-Saharan Africa is a patchwork of denominations: Anglican, Presbyterian, Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist, Pentecostal, Baptist, several home-grown churches such as the Congolese Kimbanguist and of course, Muslim. The Christian missionaries were the first Europeans to trek into the interior of Africa en masse and were certainly a large portion of the Europeans who remained there, living outside of the major urban centers.

Aside from outright conversion, missionaries were instrumental in constructing the first schools and health care institutions in much of rural Africa, introducing western medicine and literacy while learning to speak local languages. In fact, it was (predominantly black) missionaries returned from the Belgian Congo Free State (Belgian King Leopold’s private property) who first reported the extent of the European abuse and torture, starting what author Adam Hochschild refers to as the first global human rights movement. And it is missionaries to the Congo that Barbara Kingsolver’s amazing novel The Poisonwood Bible speaks of: one who assimilates, marries a Congolese and sails up and down the river bringing medicines to far-flung villages; the other who pushes his family and village to the brink in an effort to complete the divine transformation to Christianity.

Unlike the colonists, missionaries still speckle the African countryside. Many are involved in humanitarian relief, providing health services or teaching but there are still pastors among them, come to preach to the masses, to save souls.

It’s one hell of a legacy to leave.