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A History of the Church in Africa

of the interior?…Is it not the Niger of this part of Africa?” (quoted in
Hildebrandt, 113).

From that point on, the interior of Africa drew him like a magnet. For
a period of time, he persuaded his wife and children to travel with him
at great sacrifice. For example, Mary gave birth to additional children,
one of which died at birth, leaving her temporarily paralyzed. Not
surprisingly, his in-laws criticized him for these developments. By 1852,
Livingstone realized that his travels were not compatible with a family;
so he sent his wife and children to England.

In 1853, he traveled to the Zambezi and across Africa to Angola and
then returned to his starting point at Linyanti. It was here that he saw
the great falls and named them after his queen, Victoria. While some
western authors use the term “discovering Africa,” Livingstone used
routes that were already known to Africans. However, he made his
travels popular by writing the book Missionary Travels and Researches,
which became a best-seller in England and much of the world. He
became popular and returned to England with a hero’s welcome in
1856, having spent 15 years in Africa. In 1858, he resigned from the
London Missionary Society and accepted income from other sources
including his writings.

Since Livingstone was still convinced that Africa should be opened to
Christianity and commerce, he returned to Africa to begin an expedition
on the Zambezi. When he found the going tough, he turned north on
the Shire River to Lake Nyasa. To his disgust, rather than Christian
commerce, slave traders followed his route, and for a period of time it
appeared he was doing more to encourage slave trade than Christianity.

Because of an enthusiastic speech that Livingstone made at Cambridge,
the Universities Mission to Central Africa (UMCA) was formed and
missionaries were sent to establish churches. Bishop Charles MacKenzie,
who was the leader of the group, was a controversial individual who
“arrived in East Africa with a crosier [bishop’s staff] in one hand and
a rifle in the other” (Moorhouse, quoted in Tucker, 152). Nor was the
bishop reluctant to use his rifle to free slaves. As one might imagine,
the mission focused on ministry to a group of freed slaves. Within a
year, Mackenzie died while traveling on the Zambezi. Mary Livingstone

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