Theology: Mission Studies: South Africa

African Teachers on the Colonial Frontier is an exploration of the profound social and personal changes that accompanied the expansion of European influence in the interior of southern Africa during the nineteenth century, focusing on the role played by Tswana Christian evangelists. Drawing on a wide range of sources and locating African converts rather than European missionaries at the center of the story, this book provides new insights into the development of African-European relations and the impact of colonization. Although Christian missions played an important role in European expansion, this book reveals that during much of the nineteenth century, Europeans had little control over the various ways that Africans interpreted, assimilated, and propagated Christianity, and how Christianity acquired meanings contrary to its presumed role as a vehicle for European imperialism. Africans associated Christianity with Europeans, but the implications of that association changed as relations between Africans and Europeans changed. More influential was the association of Christianity with certain individuals or families and their employment of Christianity as an element of politico-religious authority. Africans transformed Christianity as they were themselves transformed by it, and their efforts were usually motivated by very personal or local concerns, often despite - rather than because of - Christianity's association with foreigners. Given its broad chronological scope and accessible prose, this book will be useful to undergraduate students studying the history of Africa, religion, or colonialism. The book's detailed references to specific people and places in southern Africa also make it of interest to students and other readers residing in that region with an interest in the history of their churches or particular communities.

Some churches and Christian traditions have been far more influential in shaping South African society than others. Working from some 3,500 primary documents relevant to understanding the role of Christianity in forming South Africa, this book looks at the final three decades of the 19th century and the beginnings of modernization in the first part of the 20th century. During this time, the country was transformed from a primarily rural and traditional society into one which was increasingly urban, industrial, and capitalist. This was also a moment of transition for Christian missionary endeavor and the formation of the colonial churches. The book considers the way in which theology functioned in the construction of modern South Africa. The most salient theological dimension concerns ecclesiology, or the doctrine of the church. Ecclesiology functions at the interface of theological conviction and social reality. It describes both what the church should be and what it is in day-to-day experience. This gap between faith and reality is nowhere more evident than in the account presented in this volume. But more so, one of the most remarkable aspects of South African social history has been the interaction and parallels between ecclesiological praxis, on the one hand, and social and political formation, on the other.

From the beginning of the nineteenth century through to 1960, Protestant missionaries were the most important intermediaries between South Africa's ruling white minority and its black majority. The Equality of Believers reconfigures the narrative of race in South Africa by exploring the pivotal role played by these missionaries and their teachings in shaping that nation's history. The missionaries articulated a universalist and egalitarian ideology derived from New Testament teachings that rebuked the racial hierarchies endemic to South African society. Yet white settlers, the churches closely tied to them, and even many missionaries evaded or subverted these ideas. In the early years of settlement, the white minority justified its supremacy by equating Christianity with white racial identity. Later, they adopted segregated churches for blacks and whites, followed by segregationist laws blocking blacks' access to prosperity and citizenship--and, eventually, by the ambitious plan of social engineering that was apartheid. Providing historical context reaching back to 1652, Elphick concentrates on the era of industrialization, segregation, and the beginnings of apartheid in the first half of the twentieth century. The most ambitious work yet from this renowned historian, Elphick's book reveals the deep religious roots of racial ideas and initiatives that have so profoundly shaped the history of South Africa.