Its History — Aims—Growth-—Division-—Fruits-—Conference
at Johannesburg—Mzimbaism—A Surprising Parallel— The Bishop of Kafraria.
‘Trifles are the occasions
but not the causes of Revolutions.’—Aristorl.
‘The Native would need the
Anglo-Saxon alongside of him for the next fifty or one hundred
years.’—Mackay of Uganda.
I am largely indebted to an
article in the Ailgemeine Missions Zeilschrift for
1902, translated by Mrs. Stormont of
Blythswood. I have also borrowed from the admirable statement about
Ethiopianism in the Report of the first General Missionary Conference held
at Johannesburg in 1904.
That Report is based upon a series
of papers in the Lovedale Christian Express.
THE
Ethiopian Church had a great influence upon
Stewart’s last years. It was one of the sorest disappointments of his
life, and yet it contributed to
the fulfilment of one of his greatest dreams. It
therefore claims a chapter in his biography.
Its History.—This
movement took a definite form in the early eighties. It
began with the native assistants. Their position was a trying one. In many
stations they did the most of the work, but as they were not ordained,
they could not celebrate marriages, or baptize, or dispense the Lord’s
Supper. They had also a lower salary and status than the white missionary,
and they felt more or less isolated both from the blacks and the whites.
Being somewhat educated, they wished to better their position, and the
more ambitious wished to make a rapid ascent of the social ladder. They
had also an awakening sense of power and racial responsibility. Social and
political avenues were closed against them, but the church seemed to offer
a highway to increased influence. They were, no doubt, also moved by the
bearing of white men, many of whom would not worship in the same building
with them. Ethiopianism is the reply of the native to the unfriendly
attitude of the colonist in the press, on the platform, and in private
life. It was thus the product of the many subtle and complex influences
which create the ferment and ‘growing pains’ of national adolescence.
Even the Apostle found it very
difficult to weld into one society the Hebrew and the Hellene, two races
with two languages. The effort to unite the Saxon and the Gael—two races
with two languages—in the United Free Church of Scotland has recently led
to a disruption. The corresponding difficulties in South Africa have been
intensified by colour, by extreme social distinctions, by foreign
domination, and by the aftermaths of war. All these smouldering embers
were easily stirred into a flame.
Ethiopianism was chiefly a
minister’s movement. The schism began in the Wesleyan Church at Pretoria
in 1892, and in 1896 the Rev. James Dwane, a Wesleyan evangelist, became
the leader of the movement. Many members seceded from the Wesleyan and
Episcopal churches.
Dwane had visited England in 1894,
and several sums of money were then entrusted to him. On his return many
questions arose. Was that money a gift to the missionary or the mission?
Was it for his own mission or for the general mission-work? Was it to be
expended by himself or by the Committee? These questions were the
occasion, and probably also one of the causes, of his secession.
Another element in this movement is
the native’s hereditary delight in fighting. As this tendency cannot now
be gratified on the battlefield, it often reveals itself in politics, in
church life, and especially in litigation. ‘All the Kafirs are naturally
lawyers,’ Stewart says, ‘and very sharp ones too.’
In designating their Church, the
leaders wished to avoid the name ‘African,’ and they chose the title
‘Church of Ethiopia.’ It has the three recommendations of being
distinctive, biblical (Acts viii. 27), and popular. It is a well-chosen
rallying cry. ‘Ethiopianism’ is now applied to all independent, religious,
and social or political societies under native management.
Its Aim.—The
avowed aim was excellent. It was to
plant a self-supporting, self-governing, self-propagating Native Church,
which would produce a truly African type of Christianity suited to the
genius and needs of the race, and not be merely a black copy of any
European Church. All the home churches had from the first avowed the same
aim. [On Stewart’s appointment to Lovedale in 1866, the Committee drew up
a minute as to its future management, in which this passage occurs: ‘So
soon as native congregations are formed, the care of them ought, as
speedily as possible, to be consigned to a native pastorate. . . in time
to be supported by natives themselves, while the Europeans should be free
to press on to the regions beyond.’]
The foreign mission was a f9ster-nurse for the rearing of an infant native
church that should by and by be able to stand alone. All would admit that
for Africa’s redemption, the African must be the chosen instrument.
Christianity can adapt itself to all races and individualities, and it is
an historical fact that it never has taken root in any land till, as in
Britain and Germany, a native church had been formed under native
ministers. Stewart believed that there should be native churches composed
of natives only, for he held that as soon as the natives were in a
majority, the whites would separate from them. In this opinion he differed
from the home church.
The avowed aim of the Ethiopian
movement was good, but the missionaries believed that it was premature,
and that it derived much of its strength from inferior motives, though it
was a proof that the African was awakening from the slumber, not of
decades, but of centuries.
The Native Affairs Commissioners
say: ‘The Church Separatist or Ethiopian movement has as its origin a
desire on the part of a section of the Christianised natives to be freed
from control by European Churches. Its ranks are recruited from every
denomination carrying on extensive operations in South Africa, and there
is in each case little or no doctrinal divergence from the tenets of the
parent Church, though it is alleged, and the Commission fears with truth,
that relaxed strictness in the moral standard maintained frequently
follows. It is the outcome of a desire on the part of the natives for
ecclesiastical self-support and self-control, first taking tangible form
in the secession of discontented and restless spirits from religious
bodies under the supervision of European missionaries without any previous
external incitation thereto. Further, that upon the affiliation of certain
of these seceders and their followings to the African Methodist Episcopal
Church, lamentable want of discrimination was displayed by the first
emissaries to South Africa in ordination to the ministry of unsuitable
men.’
Stewart gave very interesting
evidence about Ethiopianism before the Native Affairs Commission in the
end of 1904. His opinion about it then was much more unfavourable
than it had been in previous years.
Its Growth.—It
was resolved to seek affiliation with the Methodist
Episcopal Church of U.S.A. which has a section entirely composed of
blacks. It was founded because of the ‘evils arising from the unkind
treatment of their white brethren, who considered them a nuisance in the
house of worship, and even pulled them off their knees when in the act of
prayer, and ordered them to the back seats.’ The American Methodist
Episcopal Church sent over Dr. Turner, a coloured bishop, who toured the
country with great flourish, and gave a great impetus to Ethiopianism. In
six weeks he received members into the Church by the thousand, ordained
sixty ministers and deacons on their face value, and welcomed into
fellowship at a few hours’ notice many seceding congregations and pastors.
The Ethiopians were greatly excited.
Oh, they were going to annex Rhodesia—Mr. Rhodes had given permission for
that—and Egypt, and Soudan, and Abyssinia. The bishop wrote to Menelik,
king of Abyssinia. He was quite ready to start and visit the king as soon
as he got the money from America. They would found a negro church for all
Africa, and Africa would be evangelised by genuine Africans. The hope was
held out that the Africans might found a great African Republic.
In his Kafir Socialism,
Dudley Kidd shows how an average native chief regards the pretensions of
the Ethiopian. ‘You are the coming men, and you are going to do without
the white man ?—Are you?—Did you build your church yourself? Did you make
the iron in it, the door, the glass? Did you make the books you use? Did
you weave the clothes you wear?’ To all these questions the Ethiopian has
to answer ‘No.’ ‘You owe all these to the white man, and how are you to
get on without him?’ The thoughtful natives know right well that the white
missionaries are their best friends.
Its Divisions.—The
coloured bishop did his best to foster race-prejudice
and disloyalty to the Government, and to make Ethiopianism an anti-white
crusade. But it soon began to divide and subdivide: division is the
weakness of the Africans in Church and State. It was engineered, too, by
men not always of good repute, some of whom were fugitives from
discipline. Any and all who presented themselves were ordained, and
members were drawn over from all the missions.
In 1899
Dwane, the leader, was admitted into the
Anglican Church, and was made Provincial of the new ‘order of Ethiopia,’
which was founded to welcome his followers. The name was a great
concession to the Ethiopians.
The Fruits.—Stewart
wrote: ‘The effect of this method is to create a Cave
of Adullam for the restless and dissatisfied, and to weaken the discipline
of other churches. Nominally a church movement, it contains a strong,
perhaps dangerous political element. By itself it is not likely, at least
for some time, to be either in government, doctrine, or practice, much of
a blessing to native Christianity in South Africa. Its aim seems to be a
kind of ecclesiastical Home Rule, and it has done nothing but mischief.
‘The name Ethiopian Church was
admirably conceived as an appeal both to race and religion, though
probably race more than religion had to do with the whole movement. There
was a good deal said at first about the Ethiopians going to evangelise the
heathens. If that meant to the outside or distant heathen, none as yet
have gone.’
‘Africa for the Africans’ is the
motto of the Ethiopian movement, [A few months ago, His Highness Prince
Bandele Omoniyi (a West African educated at Edinburgh University)
published A Defence of the Ethiopian Movement. He regards it as
almost entirely a political movement, and he claims social and political
equality for all adult British subjects in Africa, irrespective of race,
creed, or colour. He also advocates the fusion of the black and white
races by intermarriage, but he advertises out of a Black Man’s
Republic. The essential difficulties of the problem are entirely
ignored.] says Naylor, ‘and through it the African strikes at the
missionaries, the one class of foreigners upon whom he can depend for fair
treatment and the highest service. The movement embitters the native,
intensifies the race problem, and threatens to extend northward.’ It is
believed to be to some extent responsible for the uprising of the natives
in German South Africa, and the ensuing bloodshed.
Ethiopianism has become very much a
Home Rule movement, and it is charged with having made a compromise with
heathenism. It is not doing mission-work among the natives, and it
threatens to become ‘the parasite of African missions.’ All the elements
of discord are fostered by it, and its recruits are gathered from all the
missions, but it has created nothing. It is without unity or leadership.
Powerful to disturb and destroy, its career has been like the torrent
accompanying a thunder - shower, which loses itself in the sand, leaving
only a discoloured sediment. It adds its current to the terrible undertow
that makes for a carnal Christianity.
The Missionary Conference at
Johannesburg in 1904 adopted the following resolution:—‘ This Conference
deplores (1) the fact that the Ethiopian bodies should so often display an
utter lack of regard for the principles of Christian comity by entering
fields already occupied, and by proselytising therein; (2) the
lowering of the standard of Christian morals through lax discipline, and
the fostering of schism in the Church of Christ; (3) the intensification
of the distrust existing between the two great races of this land by the
emphasis which Ethiopianism is placing upon the colour line.
‘This Conference understands
Ethiopianism to be the effort in South Africa to establish churches
independent of European missionary control, and on racial lines; the
quickening power of the Gospel and the unavoidable contact of the native
with European civilisation have produced an awakening amongst the natives
throughout South Africa; Ethiopianism is largely a misdirected use of
their new-born energy; for the present at least it would seem to require
not so much repression as careful guidance.’
Ethiopianism has brought much sorrow
to many missionaries. ‘It broke Mr. Coillard’s heart,’ his biographer
says, ‘and hastened his end.’ His own son in the faith, who owed
everything to him, wrote a letter under the heading :—‘ Reply from the
Reverend W. J. Mokalapa, Arch-elder, Overseer, Director of the Training
Institute, President of the District Conference, Presiding Elder of
Barotsiland, Central Africa.’
Mzimbaism.—Stewart
closely watched the movements of Ethiopianism, and
devoted to it many able articles in the Christian Express. But he
did not then dream that it was to come to his own door. The Rev. P. I.
Mzimba had been one of the leading pupils of Lovedale, and he had acted
there as ordained minister of the native congregation for twenty-two
years. Stewart and his friends had bestowed upon him exceptional kindness.
But in 1898, without warning, he resigned his position, drew off with him
two-thirds of the congregation, and founded the ‘African Presbyterian
Church,’ forgetting his ordination vows ‘to maintain the unity of the
Church against error and schism.’ He persisted in retaining properties
with the custody of which he had been officially entrusted. These included
£1361, several buildings, and many records and documents. As representing
the Foreign Mission Committee of the Church at home and the donors, the
Presbytery was constrained to appeal to the law courts, and Mzimba was
ordered to restore the goods he had appropriated. He is a Fingo, and
nearly all in his church are Fingoes. Tribal influences have had a large
share in the movements. The Fingoes were originally the slaves of the
Kafirs,—their ‘dogs’ they called them—though they have now outstripped
their former masters. All the Kafirs were loyal when the Fingoes sided
with Mzimba.
The trouble began with Mzimba as
with his friend Dwane. When in Scotland several people, from the very best
motives, gave him sums of money for his church, and he claimed the right
of using these as he thought best. [It is not surprising that the
Moravians have adopted the following rule :—‘ We also disapprove of
bringing converts to Europe on any pretext whatever, and think it would
lead them into danger of injury to their own souls.’ Some of the most
distressing troubles in missions among Jews and Gentiles have been created
by the liberality of good people who have given money to converts visiting
this country, instead of giving it to responsible committees. This
practice is to a certain extent responsible for the origin of
Ethiopianism, of which Mzimbaism is an off-shoot. An ‘Independent Mission’
is one dependent on foreign aid, while the missionary is independent of
those whose guidance he needs. Money without the usual business control
has proved a great snare to many.]
This secession brought peculiar
sorrow to Stewart, for in the early days Mzimba had been to him as his own
son in the faith. This great sorrow was ever before him, for Mzimba’s
church and manse were on the hill-top overlooking Lovedale.
Stewart’s legal adviser thus
describes this episode:—‘That matter aged Dr. Stewart perceptibly. How he
felt it all in the inmost depths of his soul! Advice was taken from the
first counsel in the Colony, the position made clear, and the remedy
pointed out. The issue could not be evaded, all efforts to arrange a
peaceful settlement had been repulsed. . . Hard things were said, wrong
statements made, grave reflections were cast upon him. These did not fail
to wound, for underlying the deep strength of the man there lay a vein of
keen sensitiveness. . .. Dr. Stewart received his justification in the
Mzimba action at the hands of the Chief-Justice of this Colony, but he
never was the same man afterwards. That bitter time left a scar upon his
heart that I believe he felt each day until he died.’
Ethiopianism, however, gave a
decisive impulse to a scheme which had been in Stewart’s heart for thirty
years. About one hundred Ethiopians had gone to the United States of
America to receive in a Negro College a higher education than was within
their reach at home. Their minds had been poisoned with hatred of the
white man and his rule. This fact persuaded many leading statesmen that
they must provide a college for the natives. If Ethiopianism thus brought
to Stewart great sorrow, it also brought him, indirectly, not a little
joy.
The early history of Ethiopianism
has been exactly repeated in a surprising fashion. The ‘Legal’ Free Church
of Scotland were urging their claim for a share of the Mackinnon Bequest
of £150,000 for missions in Africa. At the same time two disappointed
native probationers in the neighbourhood of Lovedale were eager for
ordination, and had failed to gain it by the usual methods. They claimed
to be faithful adherents of the old Free Church of Scotland, and lifted up
their protest against the Union. Last year two deputies from the Legal
Free Church visited the African dissentients. Not in Plutarch’s Lives
can we find so close a parallel as unites the early careers of the
Negro Bishop and the White Deputies. In the reports of the two deputations
we observe the same royal welcome, the same display of native
horsemanship, the same eagerness of native missionaries for ordination,
the same readiness to accept the applicants’ estimates of their own
qualifications, the same forgetfulness of the Apostolic injunction to ‘lay
hands suddenly on no man,’ the same eloquent congratulations, the same
fostering of divisions and alienations. But the parallel is not perfect.
The friends of the Negro Bishop understood perfectly what they wanted: it
is not easy to believe that the followers of the White Deputies did so.
They professed to understand the questions about which there were
conflicting opinions among the Law Lords in England and Scotland. The
Kafir language has no word for the establishment of the Church by the
State, the dogma upon which the House of Lords based its decision. If a
passable equivalent could be found for the ‘principle of Church
establishment,’ it would probably convey no meaning to the native
mind. Many of those whom the deputies welcomed could neither read nor
write. In Scotland a probationer from another Church is admitted only
after a prolonged and careful process which is fixed by Church law. But
the Scotch deputies refused to meet with the missionaries formerly in the
same Church-communion with themselves, who could have given them reliable
information about the applicants. They telegraphed home for permission to
ordain the native probationers, and ordained them on the spot.
Ere long the Negro Bishop
[Here is part of a recent speech by the Bishop of Kafraria. ‘He would like
to say that he thought if the old Free Church at home knew how it was
being exploited by designing natives, how men who had no character
whatever had succeeded in using them to empty churches of old Free Church
missionaries who spent their lives among the natives, he thought they
would be very sorry that they had ever been so deluded. The natives were
very sharp. They did not understand the subtle point of discipline which
separated the Free Church from the United Free Church. He was afraid the
Free Church thought they did. The natives understood that where waters
were troubled it might be good to fish. They saw there was a dispute, and
they were always spoiling for a fight—if it was anything of a legal fight
so much the better. They were devoted litigants. When he saw this trouble
was on, a native ex-Presbyterian minister saw his opportunity, and he
cabled home to the Free Church more than once to say: "We have not joined
the union. We are quite disposed to remain under the old status"—he had
lost his status long ago—"and we are quite prepared to manage these
properties for you "—to manage Lovedale—(laughter)—and other large
stations. There was just a chance that they might get these stations to
manage. It was a desperate delusion. To them who knew the natives it was
incredible that they should have any interest in the matter at issue. It
had been most pathetic to watch these good missionaries going to their
churches on Sunday mornings and finding their places nearly empty simply
from these intrigues.’] was deeply disappointed with his efforts at
church-making, and was disposed to admire the horsemanship more than the
churchmanship of the Ethiopians. Time will show whether the parallel
between the Negro and the Scottish deputies will be as close in its sequel
as it was in its beginning. |