Page 185 - LD215 History of the Church in Africa A4 final

Nineteenth-Century Challenges and Progress

are “nominal Christians” who do not understand life in the body of
Christ. For many years, while living in Tanzania, we had neighbors who
originated from Madagascar. They attended a local Protestant church
but did not seem to understand the essentials of Christianity. We are
always glad that God is the final judge.

Other people groups have been slower to respond to Christianity. It is
evident that traditional religion has a grip on much of the population in
the rural areas.

During the “scramble for Africa” mentioned earlier, the British agreed
to allow the French to colonize Madagascar—if they could control
Zanzibar. Thus, in 1895, Queen Victoria agreed to sign a treaty with
the French. Of course, the French brought Roman Catholic missionaries
to Madagascar. The Roman Catholic Church has been more successful
in reaching the rural area of the island, and there has been tension
between Catholics and Protestants for decades.

In 1960, Madagascar became an independent republic. In the next
unit, we will look at the coming of Pentecostal missionaries to the island.

Mauritius

With a little more than one million inhabitants, Mauritius is the largest
of four small groups of islands in the Indian Ocean Basin. It was settled
by the Dutch but became French in 1715 and then British in 1810. It is
interesting to note that French remained the dominant language. In the
mid 1800s, African slaves were set free. However, as Baur notes: “They
refused to labour on the plantations and were replaced by Indians who
soon constituted two-thirds of the population” (500). As a result, the
dominant religion became Hinduism.

Since the Roman Catholic Church did a commendable job of
evangelizing slaves and later working among the emancipated slaves,
Catholicism is strong among the Creole. Protestant missionaries came to
the island in the nineteenth and the twentieth century.

Reunion

With a population of approximately one million, Reunion is about the
same size as Mauritius. The French occupied this island in 1638, and it

::: 175 :::