CHRISTIANITY EXISTED WELL BEFORE THE TRANS AMERICA SLAVE TRADE: Christianity in Kongo In the first millennium of the Common Era, Christianity had spread into North Africa and North East Africa from Palestine where Christianity originated. See Map Spread of Christianity. However, the successful spread of Islam into North Africa and along the coastal regions of East Africa put barriers in the way of the expansion of Christianity into the interior of Africa until the sixteenth century. As you will remember from Module Seven B: History of Africa, in the fifteenth century, European countries began to search for a new sea trade route to Asia. Spain supported the explorations of Christopher Columbus who believed that by sailing to the west, Spain could develop an new trading route to Asia. At the same time, Portugal was sending ships down the west coast of Africa in the hope that they would find a sea route around Africa to Asia. Refer to Map Exploration of Africa. As the Portuguese worked their way around Africa, they established contact with African peoples in the Canary Islands, Cape Verde Islands, along the Guinea coast, in equatorial Africa (Kongo), Angola, Mozambique, and Kenya. In the early years of contact with African peoples, the Portuguese had a dual agenda. First to establish trade and secondly to spread the Christian religion. In their attempt to convert people to Christianity, the Portuguese supported Roman Catholic missionary priests. Using a similar strategy as the Moslems used in West Africa, these priests first attempted to work with the rulers of the African kingdoms with whom they had contact. They believed that if the rulers converted, their people would follow the example set by the ruling class. This strategy met with mixed success. Some African rulers rejected the efforts of conversion. The Portuguese missionaries had their greatest success in the Kongo Kingdom. Kongo speaking peoples lived along the west coast of African and along the Kongo river in the present day countries of Gabon, the two Congos, and Angola. The first contact between the Portuguese and the Kongo Kingdom came in 1483. By 1491, the Portuguese sent missionaries to the Kongo and soon afterwards King Nzinga a Nkuwu was baptized as a Christian, and he allowed his son Nzinga Mbembe to be taken to Portugal where he received a Catholic education. When he returned to the Kongo, he replaced his father as king and changed his name to King Alfonso I. King Alfonso I developed a close trading and cultural relationship with the Portuguese. Missionaries opened schools across the kingdom, and many Kongolese were converted to Christianity. The relationship between the Portuguese and Kongolese was mutually beneficial until the introduction of the slave trade in the seventeenth century C.E. The Portuguese did not raid the Christian Kongo for slaves, but strongly encouraged the Kongolese to raid neighboring non-Christian groups for slaves. Inevitably, slave raiding weakened the Kingdom of the Kongo until it was a weak puppet state of the Portuguese. In the eighteenth century, a young Kongolese woman, Beatrice Kimpa Vita, broke away from the Catholic Church claiming that St Anthony had appeared to her in a vision in which he encouraged her to form a movement that would lead to the restoration of Kongo kingdom. Beatrice Kimpa Vita taught that Jesus had been born in the Kongo and had been baptized in the Congo River and that the Virgin Mary also came from a neighboring area. She did not denounce the Pope nor did she openly work against missionaries, but she did develop an order of priests and a new Africanized church liturgy that included African music, drumming, and dancing. Her movement, known as the Antonine movement (named after St. Anthony), grew rapidly reflecting dissatisfaction with the Portuguese and her own popularity. However, Beatrice became such a threat to the Catholic Church and Portuguese control in the Kongo that in 1706 she was captured and burned at the stake as a heretic. The Antonine movement is an early example of what is called African Independent Church movement. Beatrice Kimpa Vita, sought to establish a type of Christianity that was independent from the European missionary church. In addition to claiming that Jesus was really from the Kongo, she instituted practices that were influenced by Kongolese cultural beliefs. In a later section, you will learn more about African Independent Church movements in the twentieth century. We could consider the Coptic Church in North Africa and the Ethiopian Orthodox Church as the earliest examples of Christian independency in Africa. For although these Christian churches had much in common with Christian groups in Western Asia and in Europe, in both teaching, beliefs and their practice of Christianity, there were significant differences from Christian practice in other parts of the world.
Posted on: Sun, 30 Mar 2014 17:16:22 +0000
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