African and Christian: From Opposition to Mutual Accommodation

Abstract

Christianity was for a long time the exclusive property of whites in South Africa before it purposefully reached out in the 1820s to touch the African population, the great majority of whom were settled Bantu-speaking farmers and pastoralists. How Africans perceived the approach of Christianity, responded to it and were ultimately affected by it, is the subject of this chapter. History has largely fashioned the African perception of and response to Christianity. In the earliest encounters between Africans and Christian emissaries, who were in most cases not missionaries, lasting impressions were formed by each of the other which were to have profound consequences for subsequent interaction between two very dissimilar ways of life. Each had its own closed system of ideas for interpreting the world and humanity’s place in it and for organising a distinctive way of life. Each was satisfied with its own understanding of the universe and entertained no desire to change it under challenge from the other, much less to adopt an alien outlook. Yet, in conjunction with other sources of change, mainly of an economic and political kind, Christianity has been instrumental in transforming the lives of Africans in this part of the continent. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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