ORDINARIOS Camacho G 3.002,

What has come to be called African Indigenous/Initiated/Independent/Instituted Churches (AICs) in the literature on Christianity in Africa are theoretically those churches which, at the beginning of the 20th century, either broke away from mission churches or missionary/mainline Christianity or were founded autonomously of European missionary activities and are headed by Africans. It is by and large established that the movement first surface in South Africa in 1884. There are so many reasons for the establishment of these churches. As the mission churches expanded and took roots, the bible was translated into indigenous languages and Africans appropriated the message of the gospel according to their local worldviews, often breeding quarrels and disagreements. The African worldview is powerfully charismatic and alive; the gospel was interpreted in a vigorous manner and infused with several culturally appropriate elements. There have been long debates about finding a suitable nomenclature for these churches: sometimes they are called “Separatist Churches”, a disparaging term that is only used by outsiders to denote the “Otherness” of the new churches.

But since not all of the AICs “separated” from mission churches, the term hardly ever does justice to the complication of the phenomenon. Some of the churches, predominantly in South and West Africa, broke away from the mission churches for political reasons. Internalizing the imperative of Psalm 68: 31 which reads “Let Ethiopia hasten to raise its hands to God”, pioneers of the protests against Euro-American dominance in the “colonial churches” soon constructed “the self-government of the African church under African leaders” according to Sundkler who first adopted this class of “Ethiopian Churches” in 1948. Ethiopian churches are those who broke away from mission churches principally on racial ground or as a result of “the struggle for prestige and power”. The first African church to separate from a mission church in Nigeria was in 1888 and the reason was to protest against American handling of a local leader. There are many such churches in diverse parts of Africa. Consequently, these churches that broke away from mission churches for political reasons are now called “Ethiopian churches”, signifying that they are indigenous initiatives without foreign financial or doctrinal aid designed to recover indigenous leadership roles and traditions. They are also absolutely African in ecclesiology, emphasizing independent Christian life and administration.

Ethiopianism is a movement of religious and cultural protest against maltreatment of Africans in some mission churches.

A large group of the AICs in Nigeria is called the Aladura (i.e. Praying) movement while in South Africa a related group is known as Zionist Churches. The Aladura movement in West Africa has its roots in the 1918 eruption of influenza in Yorubaland in Nigeria. A small group within the Anglican Church resorted to prayers alone to deal with the problem posed by the influenza but soon ran into doctrinal and ritual difficulties with the authorities of the church which kicked them out by 1925. The group emphasized prayer, healing and visionary guidance and grew rapidly in the 1920s and 1930s. The Eternal Sacred Order of the Cherubim and Seraphim movement (C&S) was founded in 1925 by Moses Orimolade and Christianah Abiodun Akinsowon; the Church of Lord Aladura was founded in 1930 by Josiah Oshitelu; the Celestial Church of Christ (CCC) was established in 1947 by Samuel Oschoffa (1909-1985); the Brotherhood of the Cross and Star (BCS) was founded by Olumba Olumba Obu (born ca 1909) in 1958 after a vision.

In South Africa, the “Zionist” churches emerged chiefly against political and social discrimination against Africans. Because Africans were constrained in terms of residence, labour, association and movement, the followers of these churches nursed the aspiration to put up “Zion”, a land of freedom, a home free from oppression and suppression. Many of the churches had “Zion” as part of their official names. According to Sundkler, Zionist churches historically have “their roots in Zion City, Illinois, the United States.

Ideologically they claim to emanate from the Mount of Zion in Jerusalem”. A popular example of Zionist churches is Zion Christian Church (ZCC). There are well over 7000 different Zionist churches in South Africa alone. According Allan Anderson, 30% of the South African population is made of members of African Zionist and Apostolic churches.

For both the Aladura and Zionist churches, their three most significant characteristics are:

i) self-financing, ii) self-governance and, iii) self-supporting. In addition to these are: iv) the emphasis on cultural appropriation of noteworthy themes and practices such as the use of indigenous music and language; v) emphasis on the activities of evil spirits such as witches and demons and the claim by the leaders to have the power to set free people from the influences of these baneful spirits; vi) dynamic role given to women as some even became church founders. At the outset these churches were regarded with great condescension by who ridiculed them by calling them “schismatic movements” and regarding them as syncretistic, and for that reason, impure churches.

The colonial administrators also looked at them with great distrust and perceived them as a peril to their colonial agenda predominantly as these churches engineered mass revivals in many parts of colonial Africa. In some cases, the leaders of these churches such as

Garrick Sokari Braide and Joseph Babalola were arrested and imprisoned by the colonial authority. As well the leadership of the mission churches poured scorn on them with bizarre names such as “white garment churches” or “mushroom churches”. However, it was shortly to turn out to be palpable that the AICs represented attempts to Africanize Christianity, to make it applicable to the cultural needs to the African people; they were part of embryonic efforts to decolonize the continent from exterior religious, social and cultural influences.

The spread of the AICs has been phenomenal not only in Africa where they constitute more than 10% of the Christian population but in Europe and North America where they are undoubtedly striking to a large segment of diaspora Africans. As Africans migrant to remote locations in search of work, education and better life, they hold their religious traditions with them. As they face new forms of life crises produced by modernity and its anxieties, these indigenous forms of Christianity turned out to be ever more appealing to many Africans whether in Africa or in Europe.

In the 21st century, there are evangelical churches dynamic in Sudan, Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Rwanda, Uganda, Ghana, Kenya, Zambia, South Africa, and Nigeria. They have grown in particular since independence came in the 1960s, the strongest movements are based on Pentecostal-charismatic beliefs, and encompass a way of life that has led to uphill social mobility and demands for democracy. There is a wide range of theology and organizations, including some supported by European missionaries and others that have emerged from African culture such as the Apostolic and Zionist Churches which enlist 40% of black South Africans, and their Aladura counterparts in western Africa.

In Nigeria the Evangelical Church Winning All formerly "Evangelical Church of West Africa" is the biggest church organization with five thousand congregations and over three million members. It sponsors two seminaries and 8 Bible colleges. It also sponsors 1600 missionaries who serve in Nigeria and other countries with the Evangelical Missionary Society (EMS). There have been severe disagreements since 1999 between Muslims and evangelical Christians standing in opposition to the expansion of Sharia law in northern Nigeria. The confrontation has radicalized and politicized the Christians.

In Kenya, mainstream evangelical denominations have taken the lead in promoting political activism and backers, with the smaller evangelical sects of less significance. Daniel Arap Moi was president 1978 to 2002 and claimed to be an evangelical; he proved intolerant of dispute or pluralism or decentralization of power.

The Berlin Missionary Society (BMS) was one of four German Protestant mission societies energetic in South Africa before 1914. It appeared from the German tradition of Pietism after 1815 and sent its first missionaries to South Africa in 1834. There were little

optimistic reports in the early years, but it was particularly active 1859-1914. It was in particular strong in the Boer republics. The World War cut off contact with Germany, but the missions continued at a reduced pace. After 1945 the missionaries had to deal with decolonization across Africa and principally with the apartheid government. At all times the BMS gave emphasis to spiritual inwardness, and puritanical values such as morality, hard work and self-discipline. It proved unable to articulate and act determinedly against injustice and racial discrimination and was disbanded in 1972. Since 1974, young professional have been active proselytizers of evangelicalism in the cities of Malawi.

In Mozambique, Evangelical Protestant Christianity appeared around 1900 from black migrants whose religious conversion took place in the past in South Africa. They were supported by European missionaries, but, as industrial workers, they paid for their own churches and proselytizing. They made southern Mozambique of for the spread of evangelical Protestantism. During their time as a colonial power in Mozambique, the Catholic Portuguese government tried to oppose the spread of evangelical Protestant ideology.

The appearance of AICs on the continent of Africa has been a trend so rapid and widespread that it has forced its way onto the academic program of the study of religious movements in Africa. Ever since the first academic research on this religious incident, writers have pondered the cause or causes of the growth of this new religious movement.

Each AIC has its specific and distinctive sets of reasons that have contributed to its emergence and development within its own national and local setting, and in spite of comparisons, causes must not be universalized. All together, on the other hand, this movement can be placed in the wider context of the rapid spread of Christianity in Africa all through the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

AICs, principally, as a new religious movement reacting to religious needs, Harold Turner, who conducted wide-ranging research on Aleatory churches, stresses the sacred nature of these churches, arguing that, they offered security, fellowship and spiritual guidance in the midst of breakdown traditional structures and the invasion of foreign religious groups. Religious factors are more often than not based upon the traditional critique of western mission in Africa as one failing to meet the cultural and religious needs of Africans. The inability of western missions to appropriate Christ predominantly and Christianity usually into African context in a way that was significant and affirmative of Africans, constituted a major reason why western Christianity was resisted by many.

It is believed that reaction to European missions was the general cause for the emergence of AICs across the continent, because western missions had exhibited a ‘failure in love’

in their approach toward African people. It was not just their inattentiveness to African culture that caused this obvious reaction to their message, nevertheless, but it was moreover the insufficiency of the message and its effectiveness for an African planetary point of view. An instance of this was the church’s approach towards witchcraft and evil

spirits, which was more often than not unconcerned as opposed to recognizing that, for the African, they constituted a genuine and immanent threat against which one needed to be protected.

The failure of western mission churches to grapple with the salvatory needs of the African was most obviously articulated in the area of illness. The missionaries, by and large, damned traditional healing practices, and the provision of western medicine through hospitals and clinics was in short supply to meet the needs of the expanding Christian community all over the country. At this point, the church merely had no message and provided insufficient alternatives, which, thus, left a vacuum appropriately filled by a proliferation of faith-healing Prophets.

In addition to the disappointment and dissatisfaction with missionary Christianity experienced by African, there was also a unwillingness to continue to recognize the patronizing attitudes and racialist inequalities meted out by white colonial church officials. Adrian Hastings, in discussing the causes and motivations of independency and Prophetism writes:

...it was, still more, the racialism within the church, the impression - in most cases, very well grounded - that even able and experienced African ministers remained second-class members of the church, constantly mediocre to even the most junior missionary recently arrived from Britain. This was a matter of authority exercised, of salary, of details of human behavior, such as the sharing of meals. The missionary churches were so integrated into racialist society that their membership was deeply alienating for black people. In the West African context, the fall down of Bishop Crowther’s Niger Episcopate at the hands of CMS missionaries, determined to declare their position of power, was a case in point and, which some would argue, set the stage for the proliferation of indigenous Christianity across West Africa.

Conclusion

African Indigenous/Initiated/Independent/Instituted Churches (AICs) in the literature on Christianity in Africa are supposedly those churches which, at the launch of the 20th century, either broke away from mission churches or missionary/mainline Christianity or were founded separately of European missionary activities and are headed by Africans.

There are several reasons for the founding of these churches. As the mission churches stretched out and took roots, the bible was translated into indigenous languages and Africans approached the gospel according to their local worldview. The African worldview is moreover charismatic and culturally oriented.

Summary

The emergence of AICs on the African land has been a trend so rapid and widespread that it has influenced the rapid spread of Christianity in Africa during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. AICs, principally, as a new religious movement had been responding to religious needs of the Africans accordingly. The unwillingness of western missions to appropriate Christ predominantly and Christianity into African context in a way that was significant and affirmative of Africans, formed a key reason why western Christianity was opposed. European or western missions had demonstrated a ‘failure in love’ in their attitude toward African people. This is their thoughtlessness of African culture that caused this evident reaction to their message. An obvious case in point was the church’s altitude towards witchcraft and evil spirits, which was usually dismissive as opposed to affirming that, for the African, they formed a real and looming threat against which one needed to be protected. The desire to interpret the teachings of Christ from a non-western viewpoint has led to spread of AICs in Africa.

Tutor Marked Assignment

1. Why did Africa Christians decide that it was necessary to form churches that were independent from mission churches?

2. African Independent Churches are the fastest growing churches in Africa. In your opinion why is this so?

3.

References for Further Reading

Journal of African Instituted Church Theology. Vol. II. No. 1, 2006 African Indigenous Church in Ghana

boosters for Ghanaians, who were previously considered too inept to be at the helm of church leadership.

Harold Turner, History of an African Independent Church (1) - The Church of the Lord (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967).

Terence O. Ranger, ed., Evangelical Christianity and Democracy in Africa (Oxford University Press, 2008)

Gunther Pakendorf, "A Brief History of the Berlin Mission Society in South Africa," History Compass (2011) 9#2 pp 106-118

Richard A. Van Dijk, "Young Puritan Preachers In Post-Independence Malawi," Africa (Edinburgh University Press) (1992) 62#2 pp 159-181.

Patrick Harries, "Christianity in Black and White: The Establishment of Protestant Churches in Southern Mozambique," Lusotopie (1988) pp 317-333

Latourette, Kenneth Scott. A History of the Expansion of Christianity, 7 volumes, (1938–

45), the most detailed scholarly history

Moreau, A. Scott, et al. Evangelical Dictionary of World Missions, Baker Book House Company, 2000.

Anderson, G.H. 1974. A moratorium on missionaries? Mission Trends 1, Anderson, G.H.

& Stransky, T.F. (eds). New York: Paulist Press & Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 133-142.

Barrett, D.B. 1968. Schism and renewal in Africa . Nairobi: OUP.

Bediako, K. 1995. Christianity in Africa: The renewal of a non-Western religion . Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Bosch, D.J. 1980. Witness to the world: The Christian mission in theological perspective.

London: Marshall, Morgan & Scott.

Bosch, D.J. & Saayman, W.A. 1987. Church and mission. Only Study Guide for MSB200-B. Unisa, 1-177.

Bosch, D.J. 1992. Transforming mission. Paradigm shifts in theology of mission.

Maryknoll:

Daneel, I. 1987. Quest for belonging. Gweru: Mambo Press.

Hastings, A. 1979. A history of African Christianity 1950-1975. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hayes, S. 1992. Mission as an African initiative. Study Guide for MSB302-G. Unisa, 1-134. 100

Kato, B.H. 1975. Theological pitfalls in Africa. Nairobi, Kenya: Evangel Publishing House.

Maluleke, T.S. 1998. African traditional religions in Christian mission and Christian scholarship: Re-opening a debate that never started. Religion and Theology, 5(2): 121-137.

Maluleke, T.S. 2000. The crucified reflected In Africa’s cross-bearers. Mission Studies, XVII (1/2): 33/34: 82-96.

Masuku, M.T. 1996. African Initiated Churches, Christian partners or antagonists?

Missionalia, 24:3 (November): 441-455.

Masuku, M.T. 1997. Feedback on assignment 02 in Tutorial Letter 102/1997 for MSB301-F. Unisa.

Molobi, V.M. 2004. African theology, Black theology and the AIC: A vision for mission.

D.Th. Thesis, Unisa.

Mpako, D. 2000. African priests accuse Catholic Church of racism. Challenge 59, April/May: 16-17.

Mugambi, J.N.K. 1977. The Church and the future in Africa. Nairobi, Kenya: All Africa Conference of Churches.

Pato, L.L. 1980. The communion of the saints and ancestor veneration: a study of the concept “communion of saints” with special reference to the Southern African religious experience. MA dissertation, University of Manitoba.

Sundkler, B. & Steed, C. 2000. A history of the Church in Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Turner, H. 1979. Religious innovation in Africa. London: Oxford University Press.

Uka, E.M. 1989. Missionary go home? A sociological interpretation of an African response to Christian mission. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.

West, M. 1975. Bishops and prophets in a black city. African Independent Churches in Soweto, Johannesburg. Cape Town: David Phillip

UNIT2: DEVELOPMENT OF AFRICAN INDEPENDENT CHURCHES (AICs)