#95. Did the Scramble Matter?
The Sacrifice of Joseph Booth
Welcome to “Global Witness, Globally Reimagined.” You get a glimpse here of the kind of work that I do both at Church Mission Society and Missio Africanus where I help students of all levels (from unaccredited courses to PhD) explore the theological (and missiological) implications of the rise of World Christianity. In the newsletter, I focus on the subject of global witness in the twenty-first-century context. Every Thursday, I share a thought that has spoken to me in the week, one or two resources that I trust will be helpful to you, and three exciting quotes about mission to give you something to think about as you go through your day. I pray one of these will energise you.
1. A Thought I Can’t Shake Off
This week has been filled with conversations about Western missionaries in Africa in the late 1800s, the European scramble for colonies in Africa, and the West African Conference that took place in Berlin between 15 November 1884 and 26 February 1885. The question I have been asked by several people wonders whether the Scramble, and indeed, the ensuing colonialism had any effect on the work of the missionaries at all. “Did it matter in the end? Did the colonial presence of European governments make mission any easier or harder in Africa?” They have read some mission historians (Brian Stanley, Stephen Neill, and others) who argue that colonialism had no effect on mission. I disagree with them all. For me, the short answer is “Yes.” But that is a long conversation that is best tackled longform. (Go ahead and pre-order my new book (coming out in a few months), Decolonising Mission).
But today, I want to highlight a few things. First, the work of the missionaries, many of them British, who exposed the atrocities of Leopold II in the Congo. It took many years but, eventually, the Belgian Government took over the colony though, to the colonised in the Congo, the change of ownership had minimal impact. In the end, of course, it was just as bad. Now, before we forget, the British missionaries raised awareness of the situation in the Congo at the same time when Cecil Rhodes owned Zimbabwe as his own personal property and committed his own atrocities there as well. At around the same time, the Germans were starving the Hereros in Namibia. A few decades later, the British would have concentration camps in Kenya. In all this, the religion of the coloniser is implicated and its missionaries are part of the colonial problem.
In Malawi, there was a man called Joseph Booth. He came from Derby in England and went to Malawi after a few years in New Zealand and Australia. He came in 1892 (right at the start of British colonisation of Malawi) to set up what would be called the Zambezi Industrial Mission, a few miles away from the Blantyre Mission (of the Scotts). He immediately saw what colonialism would do to the country and, of course, the fact that the other missionaries seemed to bury their heads in the sand. In 1897, Booth published a fiery booklet entitled “Africa for the African.” Later in 1899, he published a petition to the British Crown in which he asked for five things:
1. that the entire amount of the hut tax in the Protectorate should be spent on African education ‘to the point of equality with the average British education’;
2. ‘That a pledge be given from your Government that this Protectorate shall never pass from the direct control of your Home Government unless it be to restore the Territory to an approved Government’;
3. that free higher education should be provided for not less than 5 per cent of the African population to qualify it for ‘Government, professional, mechanical, or mercantile operations’;
4. that the whole Protectorate should revert to native ownership after twenty-one years; and
5. that Africans from British Central Africa should not be forced to bear arms against neighbouring tribes or elsewhere in Africa.
The British Government did not waste time. Booth was immediately deported from Malawi.
I remember a conversation I read in Mongo Beti’s novel, The Poor Christ of Bomba. A senior Catholic missionary, Father Drumont, realised that his work in colonial Cameroon was impossible because he could not effectively evangelise the community without helping the colonial project. After twenty years of missionary work in Cameroon, he told Monsieur Vidal, a newly-arrived colonial administrator, “I can stay in this country along with you, associated with you, and thus assist you to colonize it, with dreadful consequences; softening up the country ahead of you, and protecting your rear – for that is how you envisage [my role]. Or else, I can truly Christianize the country; in which case I’d better keep out of the way, as long as you are still here.” It is this dichotomy that Beti reveals in the mind of Father Drumont that begins to answer the questions asked above. To colonise and Christianise at the same time makes no sense. The implications of this are massive.
2. Resources I am Enjoying
Podcast: Samuel Escobar on Reverse Mission
In this conversation, the Latin American theologian, Samuel Escobar, reaffirms the unprecedented shift taking place in Christian mission: missionaries coming “from below” (global South) to “the above” (global North). While many push and pull factors continue to fuel the South-North migration, Escobar notes that the presence of these migrant Christians in the Western world is remixing the face of Christianity in Europe and the rest of the West. However, to consolidate these gains, Escobar advises that just as Paul sought a united church in Rome, both migrant and Western Christians must remember that “mission comes out of communion; out of fellowship,” and not from living as segregated communities of faith—whether as black or white congregations, for instance. Such a practice of homogeneity only makes our mission work weaker.
3. Quotes I am Pondering
As children of God all the people are equal in God’s sight. Wherever human’s worth is not recognised, wherever his/her equality and brother/sisterhood is denied, there conversion should take place. — Pramod Rao, "The Nature and Pattern of the Christian Church as a Reflection of Christian Missions in Andhra Pradesh (1884-1960): A Critique," in Mission at and from the Margins: Patterns, Protagonists and Perspectives, Regnum Edinburgh Centenary (Oxford, UK: Regnum Books International, 2014), 50.
Mission is participation in the self-giving action of God. This disposition underscores a fundamental Christian stance. God breathes into human conditions and they become life-giving. — Beatrice W. E. Churu and Mary N. Getui, "Community on Mission in a World Wounded by Poverty: A Call to Solidarity, Vulnerability and Liberation," Ecclesial Futures 2, no. 1 (06/01 2021): 13, https://ecclesialfutures.org/article/view/11884.
We need friends and equal partners in the common mission and not mere donors and recipients in mission … Friendship is a responsibility and not an opportunity, and so is mission today. — Raj Bharath Patta, "Mission as ‘Opening the Roofs’ in the Context of Globalisation and Marginalisation," in Mission at and from the Margins: Patterns, Protagonists and Perspectives, Regnum Edinburgh Centenary (Oxford, UK: Regnum Books International, 2014), 241.
I pray that you will be faithful to the work God has for you this week.