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EDITORIAL Dr Hodgson's study of Soga and Dukwana brings vividly to light two little-known but highly significant figures for 19th century African Christian history. Both belong to the tradition of Ntsikana, that mysterious Xhosa prophet of the early years of the century, who may well be seen, more than anyone else, as the protofigure of modern African Christianity. Both died, fighting on the nation- alist side, in the Ninth Frontier War of 1877. Missionary perplexity in regard to Dukwana 'christian and patriot' can be found too in Dr Githige's study of CMS mis- sionaries on the east coast a few years later in their struggle with slavery. Could their commitment to preach 'salvation' really be divorced from the protection of run-away slaves? For the most part they found it hard to see how it could be, irritating as that convic- tion was, both for the Society's authorities in London and for the East Africa Company's agents on the spot. The Evangelical com- mitment to anti-slavery could not be dropped just because it might disturb British relations with the Sultan of Zanzibar. Contributions to this volume of the JOURNAL have, I think, reinforced the sense that political issues were, nevertheless, somewhat marginal to the concerns of most missionaries, but that this produced a double contrast: on the one hand with their con- verts for whom political concerns were bound to be more central, on the other with cultural issues. For missionaries the cultural challenge in all its ambiguity was far less avoidable than problems of politics and the two seemed generally separable in a way that, again, for Africans was hardly the case. Dr Kaplan's reconsidera- tion of a wide range of missionary cultural attitudes demonstrates how-far more than is often suggested-early missionaries were serious 'Africanizers' in a variety of ways. The six-fold typology he presents can well provide a constructive point of departure for fur- ther analysis while at the same time offering something of a syn- thesis for a number of the themes discussed in this volume.
Journal of Religion in Africa – Brill
Published: Jan 1, 1986
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