Page 177 - LD215 History of the Church in Africa A4 final

Nineteenth-Century Challenges and Progress

I introduced myself to him as a mallam sent by the great mallams
from the white man’s country, to see the state of the heathen
population, and to know the mind of the rulers, whether we
might teach the people the religion of the Anasara (i.e. Nazarene),
and at the same time introduce trade among them. To this he
at once gave a full consent, saying that it was all one, we might
teach them, and that he would give us a place for a station at
Rabba. (quoted in Groves, 2:76)

By October, they resumed their journey up the river. Unfortunately,
the small ship the expedition used was not strong enough to navigate
the Niger River at this point and was demolished on the rocks with the
loss of many personal effects, but no loss of life. It took a year for the
British government to send a replacement. Crowther took advantage of
the God-appointed delay to do missionary work and to build a bridge
to Muslims and traditionalists so that he might present the truth of
the gospel. His journals reflect a desire for Rabba to be a link between
Yoruba and Haussa. When the journey resumed, he got off the ship at
Onitsha to minister to the Ibo. Nearly twenty years after the first Niger
expedition of 1841, the mission had restored hope and laid a foundation
for Christian expansion.

The Church Missionary Society varied somewhat from Venn’s vision
of a “native pastorate.” According to Sanneh, Crowther “ended his days
in Nigeria where, in humiliating circumstances, he was compelled to
relinquish responsibility for the Niger Mission” (1983, 76). Nevertheless,
Blyden and James Johnson kept alive the ideal of Africanisation by their
rhetoric, especially that of Johnson, who because of his lifestyle and
witness was called “Holy Johnson.”

Johnson was born to Yoruba recaptives in Sierra Leone in 1836. After
his conversion to Christ and education at Fourah Bay College, he was
ordained and became a missionary to Lagos under the Church Missionary
Society. While he advocated a church under African leadership, he did
not abandon the Anglican Church. However, members of his church
broke away and formed an independent church.

We should also mention the work of the Presbyterian Church in
the Calabar area of Nigeria that began in 1847. Mary Slessor, a single

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