Each reintroduced European Christianity to Africa as part of their commercial and colonial agendas. During the 18th and 19th centuries, repatriated Christian slaves helped spread the religion. When European powers divided sub-Saharan Africa among themselves and created colonies in the late 19th century, conversion to the Christian religion availed one of Western education and with access to the requisite skills for survival in a changed world.
Roslyn A. Initial efforts to convert the king oba of the Benin kingdom failed but mutually beneficial commercial trade—the trafficking of European luxury goods, firearms, and brass in exchange for salt, pepper, and slaves—was established. Khan Academy Learn more about the Kingdom of Aksum. Oxford Bibliographies Find more resources about Christianity in Africa.
The location, close to the modern-day border with Eritrea and 70 miles to the southwest of the Red Sea, appealed to the archaeologists in part because it was also home to temples built in a southern Arabian style dating back many centuries before the rise of Aksum, a clear sign of ancient ties to the Arabian Peninsula.
The temples reflect the influence of Sabaeans, who dominated the lucrative incense trade and whose power reached across the Red Sea in that era.
Developed by the Romans for administrative purposes, the basilica was adopted by Christians at the time of Constantine for their places of worship.
According to Ethiopian tradition, Christianity first came to the Aksum Empire in the fourth century A. Butts, however, doubts the historical reliability of this account, and scholars have disagreed over when and how the new religion reached distant Ethiopia.
While the story of Frumentius may be apocryphal, other finds at the site underline how the spread of Christianity was intertwined with the machinations of commerce. The second event in The Church in Africa series welcomed Rev. Paul Kollman, C. He was joined by Rev. This session served to explore the roots and causes of contemporary realities of the African Church and the Catholic Church worldwide found in the history of Christianity in Africa.
The speakers discussed various topics related to the challenges and victories of Christians in Africa over the last two millennia. The speakers began by highlighting the deficiency in knowledge throughout Africa about its own religious history. Many Christians throughout Africa know little about where Christianity originated, how it was developed, and how it has expanded to become a religion with a large following.
Kollman emphasized that this discussion and the work of the World Religions World Church department as a whole is to provide African peoples with the resources to make sense of the faith that is so important to them and to better understand their role in the Catholic Church that is alive in Africa today. The first major event discussed was the arrival of Portuguese missionaries in the Congo.
Though this evangelization was not ultimately successful, it resulted in a very vital Catholic presence for a couple centuries. When Europeans began capturing and enslaving Africans from the Congo, a large number of them brought this religion with them, contributing to the Catholicism practiced in the Americas today.
While earlier studies of Christianity in Africa focused on the roles of European missions and missionaries in establishing Christianity in Africa, historians now tend to stress the roles of African converts, catechists, translators, and evangelists in interpreting Christianity, spreading it to their neighbors, and establishing new Christian movements and churches that are as distinctly African as they are Christian.
Two recent studies by leading church scholars, Hastings and Sundkler and Steed , stand out and can be supplemented by briefer studies on Africa generally Isichei , West Africa Sanneh , South Africa Chidester , and contemporary Africa Hastings Chidester, David. Religions of South Africa. London: Routledge, A wide-ranging synthesis of the literature on the diverse religions of South Africa that stresses their historical development and social significance in the context of colonial rule and apartheid.
Hastings, Adrian. A History of African Christianity, — DOI: A study that both predates and updates Hastings , but neglects the recent proliferation of evangelical, charismatic, and Pentecostal churches.
Focuses on the relations of church and state, the Africanization of mission churches, and independent churches during the period of nationalism and independence. The Church in Africa, — Oxford: Clarendon, A magisterial historical synthesis of the formative period of African Christianity written by one of its foremost scholars.
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