Page 182 - LD215 History of the Church in Africa A4 final

A History of the Church in Africa

to them for an inheritance.… The Boers feel themselves insecure.…
The direct vengeance appears to the most mildly disposed among
them a simple measure of self-defence. (quoted in Isichei, 111)

The Bible and theology were used to support Afrikaner nationalism
and the development of apartheid. In this regard, Shaw says:

Nationalism as an ideology is capable of subverting any form of
theology, however noble or sophisticated it might be. Afrikaner
neo-Calvinism was modern ethnic nationalism dressed in the
clothes of Reformation theology. (1996, 165)

By the late 1800s, most of South Africa had been colonized, and the
indigenous people had been conquered and humiliated.

The African masses were primarily recognized as the “black
problem” and were as Jabavu described them “landless, voteless,
helots, pariahs, social outcasts in their fatherland and with no
future in any path of life.” (Chanaiwa, 107)

It took decades for South Africans to overcome apartheid and racial
policies of the Afrikaners and other colonial powers. We will discuss some
of these changes in the next unit.

Indian Ocean Islands

Madagascar, Mauritius, Reunion, Seychelles, and Comoros are all
islands off the coast of East Africa. Let’s look briefly at the extent to
which Christianity has developed on each of these islands.

Madagascar
Madagascar is one of the largest islands of the world, and it is twice
the size of Great Britain. The people in the highlands of Madagascar are
of Malayo-Polynesian descent. Since there have also been settlements of
Africans and Arabs along the coast, the island’s population is composed
of Asian, African, and Arab people. The main language is Malagasy.
The religion of the Malagasy people was a form of traditional worship
with multiple gods. However, as Sibree observes: “In the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries efforts were made by Roman Catholic missionaries

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