Page 175 - LD215 History of the Church in Africa A4 final

Nineteenth-Century Challenges and Progress

sites. However, he showed respect for Africans and especially kings and
their traditional kingship, as Falk notes: “One key to his success in Ghana
was his rapport with the king of the Ashanti” (120).

Freeman’s tireless work in places like Kumasi succeeded in laying a
foundation for the church to expand. Making missionary visits to
Dahomey, Asante, and Yoruba-
land, he spoke constantly of the
benefits of following Christ and
also of Christianity in general. Of Freeman’s tireless
this, Sanneh writes, “His con- work in places like
tribution, direct and indirect, to
the Christian awakening in West Kumasi succeeded in
Africa was enormous” (1983, laying a foundation for
122). Isichei adds: “On his death
bed he said, ‘I feel like a little bird the church to expand.
with wing ready raised for
flight’” (169).

Nigeria

I have noted the example of Crowther who returned to Yoruba-land
from Sierra Leone, and he was not alone. Many ex-slaves, who had not
forgotten their home, moved back to Badagry, Lagos, or Abeokuta. They
were called “Saro” because of their divided identity and because they
lived in two worlds with links in Freetown and Europe. The Saro did
better at synthesizing their new culture with their African heritage than
the settlers in Liberia. All of the problems of integrating Christianity with
African culture were present: marriage, funerals, traditional rituals, and
social structures. Hastings’ comments in this regard are insightful:

What is remarkable, nevertheless, is how an evangelical
momentum, begun in Freetown, was in many places maintained
quite outside the sphere of British rule and how committed
and imaginative the best clergy and laity were. It is interesting,
for instance, to find hymns, both words and tunes of local
composition. (354)

Being Yoruba with a European background was not viewed as
negative. There was strength in a worldview that included modernity

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