Black church leaders photographed early in the twentieth century. By the end of the 19th century the Ethiopian movement, frustrated by the fact that the mainstream churches were loath to advance blacks quickly in church offi ces, made rapid headway. By 1898 there were more than 60 ordained ministers in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the biggest of the independent churches.
A major challenge to missionary methods had occurred in the 1890s. The rapid expansion of the Protestant missionary enterprise was shaken when several black clergymen broke away from their missions to found their own black-ruled churches. The church founded by the Wesleyan, Mangena Mokone, later joined by James Dwane, was called the Ethiopian Church, in reference to the black nation of Ethiopia frequently mentioned in the Bible. The term was later attached to the whole movement. Most Ethiopian clergy were highly trained and deeply committed to the theological beliefs of their missionary mentors.
Though some tolerated polygamy, the Ethiopian rebels were not driven by a desire to alter doctrine or Africanise Christianity. Virtually every secession involved a dispute with a missionary – often over control of funds, or a symbolic slight to the dignity and professional standing of black clergy. ‘No Native minister is honoured among the white brethren,’ said Mokone; racial separation at clergy meetings showed that ‘we can’t be brothers’. Although some early Ethiopians were politically active, the mainspring of their movement was ecclesiastical, a desire for black-run churches.
White authorities were nonetheless alarmed by Ethiopianism, especially when Mokone and Dwane affiliated with the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the largest US black denomination, whose Bishop H.M. Turner, an outspoken pan-Africanist, toured South Africa in 1898. But, as the predominantly religious motivation of Ethiopianism became apparent, the panic died down. Dwane and his followers eventually joined the Anglican Church, as the separate Order of Ethiopia. Some other Ethiopian groups were reconciled to their missions, though most remained independent and spawned frequent new breakaways, as the Ethiopian movement spread over the African continent in a pattern of endless fission.
Missionaries experienced Ethiopianism as a personal betrayal by their closest African associates. They did not easily recover from the blow. James Stewart, the veteran Church of Scotland missionary and principal of the prestigious school for blacks at Lovedale,suffered deeply from the rebellion of his colleague P.J. Mzimba, who broke away from the Scots mission to form the African Presbyterian Church. Stewart’s legal adviser recalled that Mzimba’s defection had ‘left a scar that would not heal, a scar upon [Stewart’s] heart that . . . he felt each day until he died’. Many missionaries, anticipating further struggles with their black colleagues and the loss of still more black followers, began to restructure their ministries. Surrendering their pastoral functions to black clergy, many redirected their energies from church management to social activism.
Established in 1842, Lovedale College had almost 400 students in 1874, of whom half were Christian. Initially pupils were taken through the fi rst six years of the school curriculum, and there was a class that trained teachers for primary schools. Later Junior High School was added, but Lovedale long remained the only place in the country where blacks could attain this school level. By the end of the century more than 100 black students were studying abroad.
By the 1930s a new force, which would prove much greater than Ethiopianism, was altering much of African Christianity. Scores of new churches were being founded, deeply affected by African belief and spirituality, but with roots in the United States. At the turn of the twentieth century, a number of ‘Zionist’ and, later, Pentecostal missionaries arrived from America with new teachings about ‘baptism in the Holy Spirit’, the power of the Spirit to effect physical healings and, among the Pentecostals, speaking in tongues. The emphasis on the Spirit proved highly congenial to blacks, who flocked to white evangelists, particularly to a revival at Wakkerstroom in the Transvaal, but quickly hived off to found churches of their own.
Before long, this movement (labelled ‘Zionism’ by scholars, after one of its main inspirations, Zion City in Illinois) was growing more rapidly than Ethiopianism, especially in rural areas. African prophets tightly organised communities, often called Zion Cities. Attracting many followers, particularly through their emphasis on physical healing, most such churches owed much to the charisma of their founders or their founders’ children. Numerous innovations appeared: elaborate garments, uniforms for members, adoption of Old Testament symbols such as the menorah candlestick, worship on Saturday instead of Sunday, and the shofar horn, and, in some cases, a toleration of polygamy.
For the most part rural (they would spread very rapidly in the cities after World War II), the prophetic African churches appeared rarely on the national scene. One important exception was the Israelites of Enoch Mgijima, whose clash with government forces and the subsequent deaths and injuries of his followers have already been noted.
As blacks flooded into the burgeoning cities of South Africa and poverty deepened in the African countryside, missionaries found vast new fields of ministry, providing social services and advocating political and social reforms for their black following.
Dr D.F. Malan took a keen interest in missionary work while serving as minister of the Dutch Reformed Church in Montagu between 1906 and 1912. This was later supplanted by his concern for poor whites and by his leadership role in the Afrikaner nationalist movement.
To foster these aims they created a new region-wide body, the General Missionary Conference, in 1904. Responding to the crises of rural and urban blacks, missionaries turned increasingly to American ideas on race relations – particularly to the moderate views and politics advocated by Booker T. Washington and his colleagues at Tuskegee Institute – and to ‘social gospel’ influences emanating from the international missionary movement based in London.
Missionaries turned to the social gospel only after grappling with social disorders for which they could find no spiritual remedy. For example, American missionaries in Durban and Johannesburg concluded that the gospel of individual conversion that they had been preaching was inadequate to deal with the temptations of drunkenness, crime and sexual immorality to which black rural migrants were exposed in conditions of extreme poverty and racial discrimination.
D.F. Malan, the future prime minister and initiator of apartheid, began his career as a Dutch Reformed clergyman dedicated to missions and the social gospel. Unlike most of his missionary contemporaries, however, he slowly shifted his social concern from coloureds to poor white Afrikaners. In 1915, to foster the upliftment of poor whites, Malan resigned his ministry and became editor of Die Burger and a National Party politician.
