19th Century: (The Christian Impact on African Culture, State, and Society — African Religions Stubbornly Resistant, Monotheism Alien to Polytheistic Societi…

19th Century: (The Christian Impact on African Culture, State, and Society — African Religions Stubbornly Resistant, Monotheism Alien to Polytheistic Societies, the Intellectual Theory of Conversion as Worldviews Expanded, Islam More Adaptive Than Christianity to African Culture, the Xhosa Cattle-Killing of 1857, and Native Converts Like Philip Quaque and Samuel Crowther as Pioneer Proselytizers): African religions and political institutions proved stubbornly resistant to Christian theology. Political elites whose power was rooted in control of indigenous religion saw Christianity as a clear threat. The fundamental principle of monotheism was in many senses alien to polytheistic societies where a distant creator god was less important than functional deities associated with rain, fertility, and war. However, according to the intellectual theory, as the outside world encroached through expanding trade networks and European presence, the creator god became more relevant, and Africans became more receptive to global monotheistic faiths. A persistent problem was that Christian teaching was more proscriptive regarding African culture than Islam — missionaries abhorred polygamy and poured disapproval on singing, dancing, and drumming, while Islam had been rather more adaptive. Where Christianity was adopted, it was a matter of adaptation to indigenous religion. Among the Xhosa, some had absorbed radical Christian ideas about the end of the world — in 1857, many were persuaded to kill their livestock in anticipation of communal rebirth and the destruction of European power, a catastrophe that enabled the Cape Colony to seize new territory. Christianity offered the advantage of literacy, which ruling elites were eager to acquire, and missionaries were seen as agents of lucrative commerce. One of the most important strategies was the use of native converts for grassroots work — Philip Quaque, born in the Gold Coast in 1741, became the first African ordained by the Church of England, and Samuel Crowther became the most famous of the ex-slave missionaries from Sierra Leone.