European Missionaries in Africa Essay -- African Missionaries Religion

European Missionaries in AfricaAt the beginning of the 19th century, Christianity was bounded to the coastal areas of Africa. At this time in Western Africa, at that place were a total of three missionary societies operating in Hesperian Africa. There was the order of magnitude for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG), the Wesleyan missional Society (WMS), and the Glasaw and Scottish Missionary Society (GSMS). In the southern portion of Africa, the Morovian Missionary and the London Missionary were dominant. There was only one society in easterly Africa and there were none at every last(predicate) in Federal Africa. However, by 1840 the number of missionary societies had increased to more than fifteen in western Africa, eleven in southern Africa, five in eastern Africa in 1877 and there were six in northern Africa in 1880. non only were these societies active in the coastal region of Africa, but they in any case started stretching in come to lands where they havent reached be fore. Around the year 1860, these societies in southern Africa had traveled as far north as evidence day Botswana, Lesotho and Zambia. (Boahen 15) Famous names of this time include David Livingston and Robert Moffat. (Gordon 285)Maybe it is slap-up to look at how these missionaries spread and shared their ideas to all four corners of Africa. When the Europeans get in Africa in the beginning, they had no knowledge of the type of people that they were transaction with. They knew nothing of their culture, language, religion or anything of that nature. So the Europeans had to find someone or something to tell them about the people they were dealing with. The Europeans looked no further than the slaves in the main in the United States. The United States exported freed slaves back to Africa in order to do the liquidation serve up run smoother. After all, these people knew about African culture and language and the people of Africa would probably listen to someone of their accept co lor before a white European whom they knew nothing about. The Christian Africans were most successful around the Guinea coastaround sierra Leone, Liberia and Nigeria. (Gordon 44) In fact, most African Catholics owe their conversion to black catechists. Catechists were Africans who were more often than not untrained and unordained, but preached the gospel and set up Catholic communities all over Africa. These catechists were the main people responsible for ... ...ed people, which mainly comprised of the workers and the poorer citizens of Africa. The result of this was, of course, a good deal social tension and upheaval. Even though the people of Africa were given a steady diet of Christianity and Christian doctrine from the missionaries, there were still more that had no intentions of converting. Most Africans held true to their have traditions, there own religion, and their own customs. It also didnt take a while for the Africans to realize that the missionaries and colonizatio n went hand in hand. The missionaries help the colonizers work up treaties that cheated Africa tribes out of their land and their resources. Kenyan nationalist leader, Jomo Kenyatta, was quoted saying When the missionaries came the Africans had the land and the Christians had the Bible. They taught us to pray with our look closed. When we opened our eyes we saw that they now had the land and we had the Bible. ( Gordon 286)This is the sad truth. The missionaries did mathematical function Christianity as a way to control the Africans and make the colonization process easier. These people were doing quite well without having Christianity in their livesbelieve it or not.