Page 194 - LD215 History of the Church in Africa A4 final

A History of the Church in Africa

Conversion of the Heathen in 1792, knew that everyone in the world should
have an adequate opportunity to be set free from sin and to become a
member of the world-wide church of Jesus Christ. The church was, as
author Eugene Peterson states, beginning to persevere with a “long
obedience in the same direction.”
The original purpose of the
church—missio Dei (God’s
Evangelicals responded mission)—was being revived.

to the needs of Africa in
Evangelicals responded to the
the nineteenth century… needs of Africa in the nineteenth

stressing the need for century as they stressed the
need for action as well as faith.
action as well as faith. As I pointed out during our
discussion about colonialism,
Evangelicals believed that
Christianity and wholesome commerce went hand in hand: colonizing and
Christianizing were common goals. Historian Kane refers to this period as
“the advance of the cross and the flag” (93). A quotation from Kraft about
a conversation he had with the Queen Mother of Shoa (in Ethiopia) in this
regard is enlightening:

She asked me…how my countrymen had come to be able to
invent and manufacture such wonderful things. I replied, that
God had promised in His word not only spiritual but temporal
rewards to those who obeyed His commandments; that the
English, Germans and Europeans in general, had once been as…
the Gallas, but after their acceptance of the Gospel, God had given
them with science and arts wondrous blessings of an earthly kind.
(quoted in Isichei, 83–84)

Mission Societies and Boards

The Great Awakening in Europe and North America produced a
missionary vision. Evidence indicates that Protestants began forming
mission societies or boards from approximately 1792 onward. The Baptist
Missionary Society led the way in 1792, and the London Missionary
Society came into being in 1795. The Church Missionary Society, as
a result of spiritual renewal among Anglicans, was organized in 1799,
and the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions began

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