Page 211 - LD215 History of the Church in Africa A4 final

Evangelical Missions and African Initiatives

Hastings begins the story of Harris in the following manner:

Late in 1913, a strange barefooted figure, carrying cross, calabash,
and Bible, crossed the frontier from Liberia to Ivory Coast to begin
the most effective crusade in modern African history. His name
was William Wade Harris. He was a Grebo, a native Liberian,
of about 50 years of age. He had been brought up a Methodist
but later worked for many years as a teacher for the Protestant
Episcopal Church. (443)

Interestingly, the Bible Harris carried was the English Authorized Version,
and the language he used was not the language of the people. He became
involved in Liberian politics by advocating that the country should submit
to British rule rather than American-Liberian rule. At one point he hoisted
a British Union Jack flag and was imprisoned. While in prison, he had a
vision that transformed his life. According to Harris, the angel Gabriel told
him “to be a prophet, to preach a gospel of repentance, to destroy ‘fetish’
worship, and to baptize those who obeyed” (Shaw 1996, 247).

After being released from prison, Harris traveled to Ivory Coast and
then to Ghana for a brief time. There he experienced amazing results
between 1913 and 1915 in which tens of thousands of people turned
from their traditional religions to Christianity. Hastings adds:

Not only did the fetishes go up in great bonfires, not only did
Christian communities spring up and survive quite stably in
countless villages where there had never been a missionary, the
very social habits of the people had changed. “The sanitation of
the villages…improved to a truly amazing degree during 1914,”
wrote the District Commissioner in the Axim Record Book.
“This is largely the work of the “prophet” as he was called.… He
impressed upon them that next to Godliness is cleanliness.” (444)

Harris traveled with two female companions, and he did not condemn
polygamy. Although he saw himself as a “last day” prophet, he did not
view himself as anti-establishment or anti-Christianity. Isichei writes:

Harris told his converts to await “teachers with Bibles.”… When
Protestant missionaries reached Ivory Coast in 1924, they were

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