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yes May – August 2007 Church Mission Society
Crowther: the UnSUng hero
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words of Samuel Crowther May I ever have a fresh desire to be engaged in the service of Christ, for it is perfect freedom.
About the third year of my liberation from the slavery of man, I was convinced of another worse state of slavery, namely, that of sin and Satan. It pleased the Lord to open my heart ... I was admitted into the visible Church of Christ here on earth as a soldier to fight manfully under his banner against our spiritual enemies.
After many years’ experience, I have found that the Bible, the sword of the Spirit, must fight its own battle, by the ought we not to consider guidance of the that the gospel is the Holy Spirit. message of god to man; and that god can bless it, enthusiasm is when faithfully declared, always far from whether it be by a white me, and is never or a Black man?
the extreme into which I am liable to fall; but I do not despise the day of small things and can discover the leadings of Providence in things of this description.
The King of Ibo is not ashamed to confess his own ignorance; nor too proud to sit down to one of his own countrymen and listen to his instructions, or to derive in any way some advantage from the superior knowledge he has obtained by his intercourse with Europeans.
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Pentecost Edition
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his issue of YES is devoted almost entirely to celebrating the life and mission of Samuel Ajayi Crowther, the slave boy who was the first African to become an Anglican bishop. Crowther is a colossal figure, as professor Andrew Walls has said, “the most outstanding African Christian of the nineteenth century.” Yet in his day he was cruelly misjudged and since has largely gone unrecognised outside West Africa. He is, for example, conspicuous by his absence in the Church Calendar, something CMS is campaigning to put right. Included with the magazine is the premiere issue of Connect. Its purpose is exactly as stated: to provide essential news and information for CMS members. Connect will ensure supporters are fully informed about CMS priorities, principles, policies, people and events. It complements YES which will focus on the wider, bigger, more general stories of mission in our time.
7 Do not DeSPISe the DAY oF SMALL thIngS 4
From our correspondents
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Do Not Despise the Day of Small Things
Crowther’s World: 12
Biography
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Sierra Leone
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The Yoruba People
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Conversion
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The Niger Mission
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Islam
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The Cover Up
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Crowther: The Legacy HeAr THe STUNNINg CroWTHer PoDCAST AT WWW.CMS-Uk.org/AUDIoMISSIoN
The first issue of Connect is being sent to all readers of YES. From then on, however, it will go only to voting members of CMS. This is a way of saying membership is important and that our core base of support should receive something over and above our other publications. It follows in the steps of N:Vision, a newsletter distributed in the Northern Province. It’s part of a plan to refresh commitment to membership of the Society. Included is a letter from our President, Lady Brentford, and Chair of Trustees, the Rt Rev David Urquhart, explaining more of the vision. If you are not already a CMS member and you want to receive Connect, please complete and return the enclosed form. And we’d be delighted to receive your feedback. We are indebted to our fellow mission people USPG for use of their stunning stained glass window of Crowther as our cover image.
John Martin
Editor john.martin@cms-uk.org
YES Magazine Pentecost Edition. Published by CMS. General Secretary: Canon Tim Dakin. Editor: John Martin. Staff writer: Jeremy Woodham. Designer: Gareth Powell. Printers: CPO. Printed on Arctic the Volume, a sustainable paper that has been accredited by the Forest Stewardship Council. Cover Shot by Gareth Powell. Views expressed in YES are not necessarily those of CMS. CMS is a community of mission service: living a mission lifestyle; equipping people in mission; sharing resources for mission work. CMS supports over 700 people in mission and works in over 50 countries with offices in Cape Coast, Nairobi, Oxford, Seoul and Singapore. Church Mission Society, PO Box 1799, Oxford, OX4 9BN. Registered Charity Number 220297.
Majesty of Himalayas revealed. Photo: Simon Fagg
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from our correspondents CMS partners report from around the regions The effects of pollution give rise to a spiritual lesson for Gill Parkin in Kathmandu Nepal is famous for its Himalayan Mountains and they are spectacular but only when they can be seen. Foreigners often come to Nepal expecting to see the snow capped peaks and all they see are the blue skies along with an overcast haze – much of this is pollution but it is better than it was about four years ago. When I first arrived in Kathmandu, in 1999, I looked north and just saw green hills. New friends tried to persuade me that the snow capped mountains were behind the green hills but couldn’t be seen due to the haze or the clouds. I didn’t really understand what they meant by the spectacular view of the mountains, as I couldn’t see anything but hills and sky. And then one day, there they were, ‘the mountains were out’ – the local phrase, which means the mountains can be seen. One day there was nothing and the next I could see a range of jagged snowy peaks, and they certainly are spectacular. Now, when I look northwards and can see nothing but green hills, cloud, and blue sky, I know that the mountains are there even though I cannot see them. I often think of this as being a parallel to faith: sometimes we just cannot feel God’s presence or his love yet we know, from past experience, that the Lord is there right beside us. It is at times like this that we need to be reminded that he is walking with us all the time.
Mission service is as much preparation as an end in itself, says Angela Chorlton in Egypt In the life of Paul there was a 10-year period between his conversion and his emergence as someone ready to lead the Church. For Moses there were 40 years spent as a shepherd between his departure from Pharaoh’s palace in disgrace and his return to lead the people out of Egypt. For Jacob there were 20 years between fleeing Esau and meeting him again – by which time he was generous and ready to reconcile. These observations are made by Peter Graystone in Detox Your Spiritual Life in 40 Days, in which he asks how Jacob and the others had learned so much. Not from religious sermons, books or worship experiences, Graystone points out, but “because he was acutely aware of God involved in his daily life... mostly he learnt through hard, patient graft, work, success, being cheated... We also grow through blunders, successes, heartaches, laughter and slog... and hopefully some dramatic revelations on the way!” We have been encouraged by this, as we sense God speaking to us about preparation, especially in terms of how our life and work here in Egypt is all part of his plan. We’re not clear what his purposes are for our future, but what we know is that he’s in the business of seeing us grow, learn and mature. As 1 Peter 2:2 puts it, “Crave pure spiritual milk so that by it you may grow up in your salvation.”
“We’d picked our way through a maze of roofless cardboard structures, each barely 10 feet square, home to 200 families” Contact with a cruel refugee ghetto in Indonesia forces John Martin to stop and think What would you do? You’re a portly Western male and you’re asked to “share the word of God” with 40 or so refugees. Most of the world knows about militant-inspired bombings taking a toll on Indonesian tourist areas. Less well known have been attacks on Christians in more remote islands. We’d picked our way through a maze of roofless cardboard structures, each barely 10 feet square, home to 200 families – no running water or electricity and a single, shared pit-latrine. The people sitting expectantly before me are among 150,000 Christians driven from their homes by ethnic and religious violence that has left 2,000 dead. This is their third temporary home in five years. An eviction notice hangs over them. The Bible is replete with examples where God speaks into circumstances just like this: people in exile who’ve lost everything, mourning for loved ones and what used to be. My mind went to Psalm 37: “fret not because of evildoers; rest in the Lord, wait patiently for him; commit your way to him and he will act.” I told them this would be my prayer for them. On my return flight, by chance I sat by a Norwegian. It turned out he was building a four-star hotel in the town and will employ 600 workers. No, he didn’t know about these Christian refugees. Yes, he’d be interested in employing some of them – training included.
An Indonesian refugee does the washing outside her shack. Photo: John Martin/CMS
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From Tanzania Elaine Macha reports on the opportunities and complexities involved in HIV education Last September our St Margaret’s HIV Education team trained 31 church members from congregations in the Kilimanjaro deanery. Then in October and November the trainers returned to their home parishes and formed their own teams to run a total of 26 seminars. The response at these seminars is always, ‘We need more teaching on this, one day is too short. Can we run another seminar?’ Believers here relish the opportunity to meet together and explore how they as Christians can face the problem of HIV/AIDS in their communities. What would Christ’s response be? How do they respond to those who have the condition itself, deal with the behaviour change needed in their own lives, help young people to resist peer pressure to enter into sexual activity as a leisure pastime or resist the offer of sex for treats from a wealthy neighbour? How do they apply the Christian value of faithfulness when they have an unfaithful partner? Christians in local Tanzanian communities, both rural and urban, need to be well-equipped with knowledge on how to prevent infection and how to be Christ-like salt and light to their friends and neighbours in the midst of these situations. For many Tanzanian women, denying sex to their husbands is not an option, but condoms are still seen as evil within most Christian communities.
The ‘roaring sea’ already threatens the poor
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The impact of our lifestyle choices on poor countries is all too clear to James Pender in Meherpur, Bangladesh Jesus prophesied: “On the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea.” (Luke 21:25) Could this be a prediction of current worries over sea level rises? The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fourth Assessment Report, published this year, confirms that human-induced climate change is an irrefutable reality. Environmentalists warning of climate change have sometimes been described as ‘secular prophets’. Unfortunately their messages proved no more popular than the warnings by the Old Testament prophets. Rather than reducing our plane flights, our car journeys and the impact of our materialistic lifestyles, we seem to be increasing such consumption in the UK. Perhaps, as a nation, we prefer the fiscal type of profit to the environmental one? I recently attended the 2nd International Workshop on Community-based Adaptation to Climate Change. It was heartening to learn about innovative, practical ideas: from salt-tolerant rice varieties to vegetable gardens floating on beds of water hyacinth, from raised houses to various kinds of irrigation. The Church of Bangladesh Social Development Programme will use these to cope with a moderate change in climate, but they assume emissions will be reduced now. Over to you.
“The Lithuanians are God–believing telepaths, while Iranian refugees worship at the Church of Scotland in Budapest” From Budapest, Darrell Jackson marshal’s the evidence: Europe is a mission field The Czech Republic is statistically the most atheist of all European countries (only 39% believe in God) yet has the second highest rate of belief in telepathy (73%), only surpassed by Lithuania at 79% – the Lithuanians are ‘God-believing telepaths’ (Source: EVS 2001). In ‘secular’ France, a survey in 2003 revealed that 32% of people who described themselves as ‘Christian’ had recently returned to the faith. Ten years previously that figure had been only 13% (Source: Tennant, A, “The French reconnection”, in Christianity Today, March 2005, p29). Most Britons describe themselves as Christian despite not attending church regularly, a BBC survey has found. More than twothirds of the 1,019 respondents indicated they were Christian, but only 17% regularly went to church. A survey conducted in Autumn 2004 revealed that only 33% of the Dutch population regards itself as Christian. The Chinese church in Helsinki is a first-generation congregation of those who came to faith since arriving in the city. Awareness of the Chinese situation is not particularly relevant for them. Their church reflects the social strata of the Chinese community in Helsinki, particularly the ‘waves’ of immigrants. The pastor, trained in the USA, uses Mandarin and Cantonese. Iranian refugees worship at the Church of Scotland in Budapest.
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Do Not Despise The Day Of Small Things By gareth Sturdy It is time to tell again the long-neglected story of Samuel Ajayi Crowther. If you know the name, it probably resounds as that of a hero. Such heroes, unacknowledged in their own time and then ignored by their immediate successors, end up being the Really Important Ones. Their stature is so great that it is missed entirely up-close, gets larger the more distant you are from it, and can only been seen in its true glory from space. If the name is unknown to you, then you are the victim of a cover-up. How else can you have missed one of the most important Africans of the modern era?
Two hundred years after the best guess at his birth date is an opportune moment to reassess Crowther in the light of new understanding. A light that glares at the cover up and reveals a significance greater than that so far ascribed to him by even his most loyal champions. Where attention is paid to Samuel Crowther by history books at all, it is because he was the first black Anglican bishop. Professor Andrew Walls of Edinburgh and Princeton, perhaps the pre-eminent authority on Crowther, goes further, calling him “the most outstanding African Christian of the 19th century.” Walls’s magisterial body of work has identified Crowther as the representative of an “African
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Christianity-in-waiting”, and shows how this was not understood or recognised by the Church at the time. However, for me, even Walls isn’t going far enough today. In the early years of the Third Millennium, it is a new generation which must evaluate Samuel Crowther. We are defined by a global story that had yet to unfold when Walls was developing his understanding of the man. That story goes something like the following. The famines of the 1980s prompted the Live Aid concerts, which built into the Jubilee debtcancellation campaign and then a wider trade justice movement, culminating in the Live 8 / Make Poverty History franchise. Complex international development issues are now part of popular culture as a result. The figurehead is Nelson Mandela, the first truly global African leader; he represents one of the last great idealistic victories, before the failure of human ideals in Rwanda, and lately, Darfur. Ideals are now under attack, on one side from radical Islamic mass terrorism born in North Africa, and on the other from the new imperialism of an unopposed and interventionist American super-power. Meanwhile China is brewing a second Scramble for Africa, which more than anything highlights the desperate state of climate change and global sustainability. Africa seems unable to rise from the curses of corruption, debt and the AIDS and malaria pandemics. It fails to capitalise on an astonishing world-wide digital telecommunications revolution, which spreads a uniform, mass-media youth consumer culture based on the American Afro-Caribbean urban experience, increasingly interested in its African genealogy and haunted by slavery and colonialism. This is the context in which the new generation approaches the idea of mission. It is in urgent need of a hero: not a Christian popstar or best-selling author, but a life. If we care to look hard enough we will see that Crowther is standing in the middle of that maelstrom, the elements of his story echoing within ours, even though he has been dead for over a century. It is time for a new generation to take Crowther as their hero, to get inside that life, seek out his neglected written works, re-publish and distribute them, take up his ideas, be guided by his technique, take him onto Google, into blogs,
into podcasts, make him their own. In finally recovering that vision of mission discarded by his so thoughtless ‘elders and betters’, and in discovering just how far that vision can penetrate, they will see that Crowther is a man of our time. As Walls says, “His story represents the hopes and disappointments that were felt about Africa by the missionary movement as a whole. He also represents the independent African Church and the way in which these hopes were crushed by the colonial period.” “The experience of slavery is critical for him, he never forgets that,” Walls adds. “His picture of his village burning; his picture of what it was to be torn away from his family, to see his father for the last time as he rushes in to tell them to flee; of the eventual separation from his mother and sister; of the successive sellings from person to person before he reaches the coast and is put into the baracoon [captivity enclosure] where people of uncertain nationality are selling slaves to the ships; the business of being taken on the ship and then the awful fear, after days at sea when they are intercepted by the Royal Navy, that after all this war on land there will be war at sea too, and then the mystery as the slaves are released and come on deck. That experience of trauma is very clear.” When Ajayi is set down in the new order of the Province of Freedom around the British anti-slave trade base in Sierra Leone, he responds to the trauma by taking up a new identity (which will eventually be called Samuel). “But he hasn’t lost contact with the previous society, he remembers it well, he speaks the language intimately,” says Walls. “There is a connection with a still unbroken African world-view.” This is a completely different psychology to those who were slaves in the Americas, which ultimately makes for a completely different approach to Africa. Crowther can redeem slavery. His life’s work was to patiently transform the chaos of that hecatomb into something living and vibrant: the creation of a new nation by extending the new identity he found to a whole people, starting in the melting pot of Sierra Leone and then working up the Niger eventually into the heart of his homelands. By uniting them in a single consciousness, cementing it with a single language, and strengthening ties with other African peoples, he can be said to be the father of the Yoruba nation.
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The characteristics of it were self-support and selfgovernment underpinned by strong education, and a religion fulfilling the traditional one of the past but free of its rigid structures. The Niger missions began to offer a viable post-slavery model for Africa, by Africans. “Certainly he’s the representative of a new way of life, which is shown by Christian worship, and dress, and other things,” says Walls, “but it doesn’t interfere with a sense of belonging, of congruence with local society. He’s not a stranger in that society.” Cotton trading was introduced by him to stop Africans slave-trading. There was solidarity with the locals when they were invaded. Crowther travelled to London and presented the people’s case to the Queen and government ministers. Walls says, “Here was a man in a position to stand up to his European colleagues. He was certainly a humble man, certainly not an awkward customer, but there are things he knows and which his colleagues recognise he knows.” Here is one of Africa’s first great modern (Christian) leaders. For us today he is able to liberate Christianity from its association with colonialism, revealing it to be a worldly force able to undo the evil of slavery and rebuild society according to spiritual principles. He proves that everything you were told about the missionaries and the empire is wrong. Crowther is also the great peace-maker, who fosters good relations with Islam and is able to win the respect of imams on their own terms. They send people to hear Crowther preach. He shows enormous humility, advising those that follow him to learn from the Muslims. Walls says, “He’s guaranteeing for the future that the average Niger Christian will know his Bible better than the average Niger Muslim knows his Qur’an.” By 1875, the colonial era was beginning and within 16 years Crowther had died a broken man, his work abandoned and buried. His superiors appointed a European in his place, believing that Africans lacked the capacity to rule. The Yoruba turned to nationalism and sectarianism in response. His Yoruba Bible still survives though, as does his codification of the language, and the Yoruba
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“He proves everything you were told about the missionaries and the Empire is wrong” cultural identity which it created and which is of dramatically increasing importance to today’s diaspora. A magnificent legacy, but still not equal to his achievements. Then there is the authentically African Church which, in Crowther’s day, was still only a tenuous presence in most places in Africa. It grew, doubling its numbers every 12 years or so. “It’s an amazing story and one that hasn’t been told in its entirety,” says Walls. “It’s an African story, about Africans, which happens in Africa, but which inter-meshes with the rest of the world. It’s a long narrative, which British Christians need to know about, but also, in my experience, a lot of African Christians need to know about too.” Crowther would certainly balk at being thought of as hero, still more so at a title like ‘father of a nation’. He did everything in the most humble way, the opposite of what he called “enthusiasm”. “I do not despise the day of small things,” he said, believing such things were the stuff of God. Crowther’s time in mission in Africa was a day of small things; so small it was trodden underfoot. But if we today can avoid despising it in the way his contemporaries did, his unique and incredible project can, at last, be put back on track and we may yet see a beautiful dawn break over his homeland. Andrew Walls was interviewed by Jeremy Woodham at CMS’s Partnership House in London in January 2007.
Ben Okri, ‘An African Elegy’
And one day our suffering will turn into the wonders of the earth.
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Biography 1792 1,100 ex-slaves arrive in Sierra Leone to create ‘Province of Freedom’, bringing Christianity from American Great Revival.
attenders, 200 baptism candidates.
1799 CMS formed by Clapham Sect Abolitionists.
1843 Publishes Yoruba Vocabulary, first linguistic work by an African native speaker. Begins translating Book of Common Prayer.
1807 British slave trading abolished. c1807 Ajayi born in osogun (present-day Nigeria)
1840s Begins work on Yoruba Bible.
1845 Reunion with sister, and mother whom he baptises three years later.
1808 Freetown made official British colony. 1821 Ajayi snatched from home by local Fulani raiders, sold to Portuguese slave traders. 1822 British Navy attacks Portuguese ship (over half of slaves die in subsequent wreck), takes Ajayi and other freed survivors to Freetown. 1825 Ajayi baptised by the rev John raban; takes name of CMS home committee member Samuel Crowther.
1851 Travels to england, presses Abeokuta cause to Queen Victoria and government ministers. 1854 Commercially-sponsored Second British Niger expedition. Includes Crowther, who plans a chain of missions along river, beginning at Onitsha in Igboland. 1857 Begins Niger Mission with the Igbo rev JC Taylor and entirely African staff. Crowther shipwrecked among the Nupe people and begins work on their language.
1826 To England, Islington Parish School. 1827 returns to Freetown, among first students at pioneering Fourah Bay College (educating Africans under auspices of Durham University). c1827 Marries Asano (who takes name Susan Thompson) who had been on the same slave ship.
1864 Consecrated Bishop of the Niger in Canterbury Cathedral. Honorary divinity doctorate conferred by University of Oxford. 1867 Churches in Abeokuta attacked by regional tribes, mission staff stay in solidarity. 1875 Start of European Colonial Period
1830 Appointed headmaster in regent’s Town. 1833 Slavery abolished in British territory. 1841 Joins as interpreter First Niger expedition to chart river and end slave trade with commerce. 1843 Ordained in London. First sermon in Africa. 1844 Begins mission journey up the Niger to his own Yoruba people. 1846 Arrives in city of Abeokuta. Starts up cotton industry to hold back slave economy. 1849 Mission has 500 regular church
1885 Congress of Berlin ‘legitimises’ european claims over African territory, establishes european freedom of navigation on Niger and Congo. european missionaries, driven by holiness movement, take over missions, criticise Crowther as weak and typical of African inability to lead. Yoruba Bible finally completed. 1890 Crowther resigns in protest (possibly forced). 1891 Crowther dies a broken man, 31 December. Succeeded by european. 1896 Sierra Leone made British Protectorate, rise in nationalism, foundations laid of modern Republic.
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By Jeffrey green
When Europeans first traded with people from a corner of West Africa, they named the region the Lion Mountains. Slave ships found shelter from the Atlantic in the harbour, protected by the 2,400ft ridge. Hawkins loaded slaves there in the 1560s; Drake took on water on his voyage round the world; the Royal African Company traded from 1672. By the 1780s imports were £500,000; exports were 74,000 slaves annually.
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The region flourished but there was no urban settlement until 1786 when British philanthropists proposed a ‘Province of Freedom’ for the Black Poor (usually stranded black sailors) then common in Britain. Former slaves who had served Britain in the American War of Independence joined them, taking Christianity picked up in the Great American Revival.
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pic of ricorn
from Angola to Senegal the epispora (gathering in) of Sierra Leone is a crucial element in the history of the African diaspora.
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Often settling where linguistic associations were strong, incomers forged new identities by taking on Western and African heritages, such as the Krio (Creole) and the Yoruba. CMS was a major provider of educational facilities, with schools and Fourah Bay College (1827). Freetown offered great security, and was cleaner than many English county towns of the time. The multitude of languages – which boiled down into Krio – and traditions, plus the clash between religions (Huntingdonian Methodists, Anglicans, and Muslims) made society vibrant.
Local Temne chiefs permitted the settlement. Freetown grew with black settlers from Canada and Jamaica, and – a British colony from 1807 – serviced the Royal Navy’s anti-slavery patrols. The ex-slave ships were sold and black folk joined in this commercial process. Chandlers and other dealers supplied merchant and naval ships, and their crews were supplied with whatever they needed – in every sense. Commercial successes permitted children to be educated in Europe.
Whites, unaware of what caused malaria, often died within days of reaching West Africa – ‘the White Man’s Grave’. Africans had better protection (survival after babyhood infection, and sickle cell syndrome being the cause). White survival improved after identification of the mosquito’s role in malaria, circa 1902. Social segregation increased with white housing up the hills, away from the mosquito infested regions, and the imposition of white rule at levels which had, during the 19th century, been dominated by Africans.
Between 1808 and 1864 about 84,000 liberated slaves were put down in Sierra Leone. Originating
Jeffrey Green is author of Black Edwardians: Black people in Britain 1901–14 (Frank Cass publishers).
Luand
Lob Namibe
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The Yoruba People By gareth Sturdy
Historically ‘Yoruba’ was a term used to describe certain people from a corner of West Africa by outsiders. It was Samuel Crowther who, in a response to the turmoil caused by the slave trade, brought together several regional dialects into one language called ‘Yoruba’ and so laid the foundations of a new national identity. Crowther is the Father of the Yoruba. By the year 1000AD, the ancient city of IleIfe in what is now southwest Nigeria had risen to become a major city-state covering an area about the size of England (present-day: southwest Nigeria, Benin, and Togo). It was the spiritual home, providing common cultural and genealogical heritage, to several ‘tribes’: the Oyo (by far the largest), Sabe, Ketu, Egbado, Ijebu, Ondo, Ikale, Ijesha, Akoko, Bunu, Yagba, Ekiti and Igbomina. In a 16th century treatise, Ahmed Baba, a scholar from the Songhai people, yoked the Oyo and the Yagba under a single term: ‘Yoruba’. It is the
earliest recorded use of the word. It was taken up by the Hausa people of what is now northern Nigeria to refer to their southern neighbours, and with the Muslim influence among the Hausa, it began to be used by Arab travellers. The separate tribes themselves never thought of themselves as Yoruba. When Samuel Crowther arrived in Sierra Leone, he found many other ex-slaves from his region there too. Eventually he set out to translate the Bible and Prayerbook into a language which they would understand. So he pioneered bringing together the separate dialects into one codified ‘Yoruba’ language, complete with dictionary and grammar book. With a united language, came a united people. It was the missionaries who began to talk of ‘the Yoruba people’. It was through this influence under the powerful unifying force of Crowther’s single Yoruba language that the people came to think of themselves as part of one distinctive culture.
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Crowther’s World
Conversion By gareth Sturdy
How did Crowther’s missionaries convince the Yoruba to move from the religion of their fathers and embrace Christ? It would be entirely wrong to think of the West Africa missionaries as imposing their faith on a quiescent culture in a battle of wills, or via coercion or subtle blackmailing. That would be to miss the essential fact of Crowther’s whole life: he was a Yoruba who consciously underwent a spiritual transformation amid massive cultural changes, and embraced the new identity this gave him. The overwhelming number of missionaries evangelising the Yoruba region were just the same: people who wanted to show their fellow countrymen and -women that there was a vital, life-giving spiritual analogue to the cultural transformation they were living through. A fresh identity in Christ became, in a sense, the fulfilment of the Yoruba historical destiny. At Crowther’s birth, a tribal diviner had forbidden that the boy enter any of the local deity cults because he would grow up to be a servant of Olorun, the God of Heaven. This story illustrates how Christians could easily develop the traditional belief system already based around this Supreme Being.
restore this higher belief. Such a lapse from an earlier monotheism thus brought the Yoruba directly into the Fall and Exile stories of the Old Testament. By extension elements of traditional Yoruba belief were said to prefigure and prophecy Jesus. The adoption of faith in Christ, therefore, was not a rejection but an evolution of Yoruba belief.
The sticking point was the veneration of the orisa – the local ancestors who were also heroes and gods. Interaction with the orisa formed the backbone of daily Yoruba life, and this social aspect of religion was less easily adapted.
To take a lesson from another continent, when Gandhi was asked how Christianity could be naturalised in India so that it would no longer be a foreign thing identified with a foreign people, he said, “I would suggest first of all that all of you … begin to live more like Jesus Christ. Second practise your religion without adulterating or toning it down. Third emphasise love and make it your working force, for love is central in Christianity. Fourth, study the non-Christian religions more sympathetically to find the good that is in them, so that you might have a more sympathetic approach to the people.” Don’t talk about it, he said, because “The rose doesn’t have to propagate its perfume. It just gives it forth and people are drawn to it.”
JDY Peel in Religious Encounter and the Making of the Yoruba describes how the missionaries engaged with the old religion. They encouraged the view that the orisa were simply great individuals who had done deeds so outstanding that, with time, they became held up as gods. They presented this as a decline from a previously higher form of religion, one without such base misunderstanding, and that their mission was to
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The Niger Mission By Andrew Walls
There were three Expeditions up the Niger with which Crowther was involved, in 1841, 54 and 57. In an interview with CMS, professor Andrew Walls explained how the foundations of Crowther’s Niger Mission were laid. The doctrine that grows up around 1840 is that the slave trade can only be destroyed by building up good commercial relations with Africa. The interests of trade and Christianity go, therefore, hand-in-hand. This is being expounded by Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, the devout evangelical leader of the campaign against slavery in the House of Commons [successor to Wilberforce], who comes to faith through the preaching of Josiah Pratt, Secretary of the CMS, and gets both his evangelical faith and his interest in Africa from the same source at the same time. The British Government in 1841 decide to try out this new Africa policy and send an expedition to the Niger, and they invite the CMS to be represented. The CMS send two representatives – the German missionary, JF Schön, who was one of the few missionaries who had become interested in African languages and was working in Sierra Leone, and Crowther. He is still a young man, still not ordained (there are no ordained Africans at this point), a catechist and schoolteacher under the CMS. This expedition will explore the Niger and make treaties with chiefs promising regular steamer traffic from Britain, which would supply the desired manufactured goods in return for an undertaking not to engage in the slave trade. Crowther is a key member. It crosses the bar of the Niger in the Delta in August. By the beginning of October, this fleet of purpose-built ships is creeping back with 40 Europeans dead, including the captain; the medical officer is in command of the ship and the geologist is down below trying to work the engines with the aid of a manual.
“Most people are now saying this proves Europeans cannot live in inland Africa and therefore the new Africa policy is hopeless” Most people are now saying this proves Europeans cannot live in inland Africa and therefore the new Africa policy is hopeless. Yet Crowther’s report draws entirely different deductions. It says no, it’s not hopeless, but it has to be done by Africans, and the mission force will have to be African, and it will have to take language much more seriously but for that you’ve got people like Crowther in Sierra Leone. Later cotton is introduced by the CMS, because a Yoruba state is on the brink and might go back into the slave economy. It is exported through Lagos: CMS secretary Henry Venn makes arrangements with a Manchester merchant who comes forward at a missionary meeting. Later on, when they realise they are going to have to do the processing in Nigeria, Venn again inveigles one of his major donors into presenting the equipment. They train Yoruba people from Sierra Leone at the Colwyn Bay Institution to work the machinery. All this is coming as a by-product of the mission activity. When the colonial period came in it obliterated this general assumption that leadership is going to be African.
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Crowther’s World
Islam By Andrew Walls
As Christians were carrying the message of Christ across the lands of the Yoruba, to the north Arab travellers and slave-traders had brought Islam with them in the Great Jihad. In an interview with CMS, professor Andrew Walls explains how Crowther became a pioneer in relations with Islam. The across-the-board approach to Islam at the time comes from a method devised by the CMS Arabist CG Pfander in the Caucasus, and developed in India. It is a very confrontational one. Crowther isn’t an Arabist or a scholar of Islam in any way, but he understands the way African societies work, and he works on the basis of the Scripture. He has a splendid account (which he uses a number of times) of discussions in Upper Niger areas which are being Islamised at the time, where you have a Muslim court and Muslim clerics present, but a populace which is by no means universally Muslim. He works on the nexus of Bible and Islam, and refuses to make an answer to the Muslims’ questions except from the Bible, read in Yoruba. The whole thing is very dignified, it’s quite sharp; it’s a well-informed audience. You can see a real dialogue is going on in the Upper Niger, at a time when the other centres of engagement with Islam are overwhelmingly polemical and confrontational. Crowther doesn’t realise he’s developing what we would call inter-faith dialogue, though very explicitly Christian and very anxious to show the position of Christ. But he’s guaranteeing for the future that the average Niger Christian will know his Bible better than the average Niger Muslim knows his Qur’an. The important thing is that the dialogue is taking place. It’s a very early stage of the encounter, and the terms of the whole thing are changed by the coming colonial period and the general European occupation of the lands over which the Great Jihad has been exercised. The emirs that have arisen from the Great Jihad are taken into the colonial system. It’s the colonial period that creates the great Islamic expansion in the 19th century. The colonial period does more for Islam than all the jihads ever did.
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Crowther’s World
The Cover Up By John Martin
One of the great contributions of CMS to African Christianity was its encouragement and support of the mission of ex-slaves in West Africa, led by Samuel Ajayi Crowther and his associates. As Yale Professor Lamin Sanneh has noted, this movement brought a new world order into being, a world order achieved not through colonial power or military might but by something radically opposite. Its agents were drawn from among the world’s most repressed and downtrodden who became champions of freedom, dignity and enterprising evangelical faith. The outcome was a high-octane faith that exulted in the freedom Christ offered. The principles of anti-slavery and freedom became keynotes of a massive movement that few white people fully comprehended. At one stage Sierra Leone was sending a higher proportion of its population into missionary service than has ever been achieved anywhere. Fostering this missionary movement of ex-slaves was part of the vision of Henry Venn, who led CMS from 1841 to 1873. We need to understand, however, that Venn’s vision for an African Christianity was never uncontested either in CMS or wider British society. Crowther’s appointment as Bishop of the Niger was a poisoned chalice thanks to raciallymotivated opposition by white settlers and some of his fellow missionaries. He was not given jurisdiction over Abeokuta, Ibadan or Lagos because settlers would not accept his oversight. His diocese was an ill-defined, non-geographic jurisdiction purposefully designed to be beyond the range of white people. Equally there were CMS people who claimed he could not be trusted in charge of a “purely native mission” and insisted that Europeans must lead. After Venn left the scene “pharaohs who did not know Joseph” exercised decisive power and influence. Colonialist attitudes, combining
“Colonialist attitudes saw all African Christianity as flawed and suspect” with a view of holiness arising from the Keswick evangelical movement, saw all African Christianity as flawed and suspect. After years of festering complaints against his conduct of the Niger Mission a CMS commission of inquiry into Crowther’s work did a hasty, selfrighteous hatchet job. A man less than half Crowther’s age summarily dismissed him. He died soon after. The work was all but dismantled. Mercifully some of Crowther’s former colleagues attached themselves to independent Baptist work in Nigeria that had broken off from its American parent body over the slavery issue. The fire of the Gospel continued to spread. For years CMS preferred to gloss over this sad story and its racist and colonialist motivation. There is no mention of it in Eugene Stock’s massive history of the first CMS century. Stock’s early volumes report CMS developments fairly objectively. Later he reveals himself as a child of his times and saw British domination in Africa as “progress”. Today CMS willingly accepts its part in the Crowther debacle and acknowledgment of this opens up the chance of healing hurt still keenly felt, over a century later, in West Africa.
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tim dakin
Crowther: The Legacy To this day there are many in Nigeria who treat Crowther’s name with respect and venerate him as a great pioneer African missionary. The legacy of Crowther is inspiring to those who follow in his footsteps – to learn his way of discipleship and mission. One of those who did this was Crowther’s youngest son, Dandeson Coates Crowther. Like his father, Dandeson dedicated his life to mission. He was trained in Islington, like his father, and ordained in St Mary’s Church by his father. He was trained and mentored for mission by his father. Eventually, Dandeson was made Archdeacon of the Niger Pastorate, which became self-supporting, self-governing and self-extending. In the changing and uncertain times of the late 19th century Dandeson’s leadership was never fully recognised by CMS but the Pastorate was acknowledged as an expression of Venn’s three-self strategy. If Dandeson had been made a bishop, like his father, we may well have seen the birth and flowering of an indigenous African Anglicanism. That was to be delayed for another two generations. Is Crowther’s legacy just the 20-year experiment of the Niger pastorate? No. It is much more, Crowther stands for an essential drive in Christian mission: the need for the transcultural transmission of the Gospel from one mission context to another for the sake of the world. Reflecting on the mission situation today, Andrew Walls writes: “The recession of Christianity among the European peoples appears to be continuing. And yet we seem to stand at the threshold of a new age of Christianity, one in which its main base will be in the Southern continents, and where its dominant expressions will be filtered through the culture of those countries. Once again, Christianity has been saved for the world by its diffusion across cultural lines.” (A Walls: “Culture and Coherence in Christian History” S Escobar: The New Global Mission, IVP 2003 p.15) It is out of this vision for mission that the Crowther
Centre for Mission Education has been established in Oxford. This centre will bring together three aspects: discipleship and leadership formation; the preparation for transcultural mission; and research in mission thinking. The aim will be to relate mission practice with mission research, and to build-up a worldwide community of practice that can be a resource for many. The Crowther Centre will not deliver all the programmes it promotes, but it will coordinate them. It will also be a resource for mission reflection, housing the combined libraries of Partnership House and the former CMS training college, Crowther Hall. Connected with the Centre is the John V Taylor Fellowship in Missiology recently established at Regent’s Park College in partnership with Wycliffe Hall. Dr Cathy Ross will be both the manager of the Centre and the first Fellow. She is a former CMS New Zealand mission partner who joined CMS Britain as Interchange Manager. The Centre launches in June. Staff will include an administrator, librarian, archivist and it will regularly welcome missiologists-in-residence drawn from different parts of the world. A later edition of YES will carry more information about this development. One of the ways in which the Anglican Church could acknowledge Crowther’s significance would be to include him with his son in the church’s calendar, in a way similar to that of Henry and John Venn (July 1st).