Early 20th Century: (Salvation and Resistance — The African Independent Church Movement as Proto-Nationalist Protest, the Ethiopian Church Movement in Centra…

Early 20th Century: (Salvation and Resistance — The African Independent Church Movement as Proto-Nationalist Protest, the Ethiopian Church Movement in Central and Southern Africa, the Bible as Revolutionary Handbook Promising a Second Coming That Meant the End of White Oppression, Kamwana’s Watchtower Preaching in Nyasaland from 1908, and Chilembwe’s 1915 Rebellion as Martyrdom and Inspiration): One of the earliest expressions of anti-colonial protest — for a time almost invisible to European eyes — was linked to the growth of Christianity across sub-Saharan Africa. The failure of armed resistance between the 1870s and the First World War had destroyed or severely compromised African political authority, which in turn undermined spiritual authority, as in nineteenth-century state and society the two had been closely intertwined. This destruction and reconstruction facilitated the spread of Christianity, conversion frequently representing a quest for new answers to old questions and a rejection of nineteenth-century forms of authority. Increasingly, however, the newly converted rejected European domination of the Church and sought to recreate worship free of European cultural imperialism. The so-called Ethiopian church movement — named after the biblical use of Ethiopia to describe Africa — was especially strong in central and southern Africa, where independent churches were founded in the years around the First World War. They embraced the Bible as a revolutionary handbook speaking of justice and equality, and perhaps above all containing the extraordinarily potent notion of a second coming — a concept easily interpreted as the imminent destruction of colonial rule. The Watchtower movement across central-southern Africa took inspiration from the Jehovah’s Witnesses, predicting the end of colonial rule and the salvation of chosen peoples. In Nyasaland, Elliot Kamwana preached from 1908 that Christ’s return would bring Africa’s liberation — he was arrested and exiled, but Watchtower grew in strength, particularly across the region feeding the southern African mining economy’s migrant labor system. John Chilembwe founded his own church and in 1915 led a full-blown rebellion sparked by the ravages of prolonged combat with the Germans and a series of colonial injustices. Chilembwe was killed attempting to escape, but his martyrdom would inspire a later generation of Malawian nationalists. Simon Kimbangu in the Belgian Congo proclaimed himself a prophet in 1921, preaching that God would deliver the people from colonial oppression — Kimbanguism flourished even after its founder’s arrest, its adherents periodically defying the state by refusing to pay tax or grow cash crops.