“They Came with a Book”: Re-examining the Facts and Fallacies about Missionary Activity, Colonialism, and the Role of the African Agency

“They Came with a Book”: Re-examining the Facts and Fallacies about Missionary Activity, Colonialism, and the Role of the African Agency

The claim that missionaries arrived with “the Bible in one hand and power in the other” captures a painful chapter of African history. It is true that missionary activity and European colonialism often overlapped in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and across the continent. It is also true that Africa possessed sophisticated systems of governance, law, trade, and spirituality long before 1884. Yet to stop at “the message was faith, the outcome was control” is to miss the complexity of what actually happened. 

For many across Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, the DRC, and the wider continent, that image captures real wounds. Lands were seized. Cultures were shamed. Resources were extracted. And Christianity was often the doorway. To deny that would be dishonest. Yet to reduce 2,000 years of African Christianity to “faith used for control” is also dishonest. Africa had the Gospel before colonialism. Some missionaries were complicit in empire. Others were killed for opposing it. African believers were not passive. They translated, resisted, reformed, and led. This article tells the whole story: the errors of colonialism and complicit missionaries, the good deeds that cannot be erased, and the Gospel truth that belongs to Africa by history and by right. A people who face their past without flinching are the only ones who can own their future.

Africa Had Systems, Governance, Spirituality, and Identity Long Before Colonialism

The claim that “Africa did not begin with colonialism” is not rhetoric; it is documented fact. By the 1300s the Mali Empire operated Sankore University in Timbuktu with thousands of manuscripts in law, astronomy, and theology. The Kingdom of Benin in modern Nigeria built city walls longer than the Great Wall of China, ran a guild system of bronze casters, and maintained diplomatic correspondence with Portugal by the 15th century. The Kingdom of Kongo had a centralized state, currency, and ambassadors to Europe before 1500. Igbo communities governed through village republics and age-grades; Akan states managed gold economies with sophisticated weights; the Zulu under Shaka developed legal and military structures studied globally. Spiritually, African traditional religions provided cosmology, sacrifice, priesthood, and moral codes. Ancestor veneration, divination, and rites of passage gave identity and cohesion.  

To say missionaries “brought civilization” is therefore historically false. They encountered civilizations. The first Portuguese chaplains in Kongo in 1491 met a kingdom, not a void. British missionaries in 19th-century Yorubaland met city-states, markets, and legal systems. The error of many 19th-century Europeans was to mistake technological difference for human inferiority. That error produced the language of “dark continent” and “heathen.” It was racist, and it shaped colonial policy. The Church must name it as sin, because Scripture says all nations are of “one blood” Acts 17:26 and that God “shows no partiality” Rom 2:11.  

Yet pre-colonial Africa was not utopia. The slave trade existed intra-African before Europeans arrived. Human sacrifice occurred in some kingdoms. Twin-killing was practiced in parts of Calabar. Osu caste systems existed in Igboland. African societies, like all societies, had glory and brokenness. The Gospel did not come to replace culture wholesale; it came to redeem it. That is why African Christians themselves later led campaigns to end those practices, using the same Bible the missionaries carried.

Missionaries Arrived Preaching Salvation; Colonial Powers Followed Enforcing Domination — But the Timeline Is Complex

The post’s sequence is partially true and partially misleading. In many regions, missionaries preceded formal colonization by decades. Portuguese missionaries were in Kongo in 1491; the Scramble for Africa began in 1884. Thomas Birch Freeman of the Methodist Mission arrived on the Gold Coast in 1838; the British declared the Gold Coast Colony in 1874. Johann Ludwig Krapf reached Kenya in 1844; the British East Africa Protectorate was proclaimed in 1895. Samuel Ajayi Crowther and Henry Townsend were in Abeokuta in the 1840s; Lagos was annexed in 1861 and the Southern Nigeria Protectorate formed in 1900. David Livingstone traversed Southern Africa in the 1850s; the Union of South Africa came in 1910.  

This gap matters for two reasons. First, it proves “missionaries” and “colonial officers” were not always the same people or working on the same agenda. Second, it shows African rulers exercised agency. The King of Kongo requested missionaries to strengthen his state. The Egba in Abeokuta invited Crowther to establish schools. Buganda’s kabaka Mutesa I asked for teachers in 1875 to counter Islamic and European influence. Africans used missions for literacy, medicine, and diplomacy. To say the missionary was always the “gateway for empire” strips Africans of that political calculation.  

However, the gateway did exist. Once missions built stations, they created maps, dictionaries, and reports that colonial governments later used. Some mission societies explicitly asked for military protection and accepted land grants carved out by force. In German East Africa and Belgian Congo, missions were legally tied to colonial administration. In South Africa, the 1913 Land Act dispossessed Africans while many English-speaking missions stayed silent. That silence was complicity. It is right to call it sin. James 4:17 says, “To him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin.” Many knew, and did not speak.

The Message Was Faith; The Outcome Was Both Control and Liberation

“Faith… control” is a half-truth. The outcomes were plural. Yes, control happened. Colonial education often taught European history as “world history” and labeled African names “heathen.” Converts were told to wear Victorian dress, take English names, and abandon drums. In schools in Nigeria, Ghana, and Kenya, students were punished for speaking mother tongues. In DRC, the Belgian state and Catholic missions ran a system that forced labor and suppressed dissent. These are documented harms. They produced cultural alienation that persists today. The Church must repent where it dehumanized, because Genesis 1:27 declares every African made in God’s image.  

But liberation also happened, and it came through the same Book. The Bible translated into Yoruba by Crowther gave the first widespread written form of the language. The Bible in Twi, Ga, Xhosa, Zulu, Swahili, and Lingala did the same across the continent. Literacy rates rose because missions opened schools for girls and boys when colonial states would not. In Calabar, Mary Slessor stopped the killing of twins and adopted dozens of children. In Congo, William Sheppard, an African American Presbyterian, documented Leopold’s atrocities in 1899 and was sued for it; his reports helped end the Congo Free State. In Malawi, John Chilembwe’s 1915 letter protested labor abuses and used Scripture to indict colonialism: “We understand that we have been called to shed our blood for Africa.” In South Africa, missionaries like Trevor Huddleston and Beyers Naudé were banned for opposing apartheid.  

African-initiated churches prove the point further. Garrick Braide’s Niger Delta revival in 1916 was suppressed by the British because it threatened colonial order. Simon Kimbangu’s movement in Congo was jailed by Belgian authorities for preaching healing and independence from white control. Joseph Babalola’s Christ Apostolic Church in Nigeria broke from Anglican mission control in 1940 and became self-governing, self-supporting, and self-propagating. If the Bible were only a tool of empire, it would not have produced African prophets who used it to confront empire. The Word cuts both ways, Heb 4:12.  

Not All Missionaries Came with Bad Intentions, and African Christians Were Not Passive

Motive and effect must be distinguished. Many missionaries believed Matthew 28:19 and genuinely thought they were rescuing souls from hell. That belief does not excuse racism, but it explains sacrifice: thousands died of malaria, yellow fever, and sleeping sickness in their 20s and 30s. They buried children in African soil. Cynicism is easy 150 years later; it was not easy in 1850.  

Yet good intent did not prevent harm. The “civilizing mission” merged with racial theory. Converts were told African art was demonic, not discipled. Polygamous families were split rather than taught. That was pastoral malpractice, and it created generational wounds. The Church must own it, not deflect.  

At the same time, the narrative of African passivity is colonial. Africans chose, refused, adapted, and led. King Nzinga a Nkuwu was baptized João I in 1491 but later reverted to traditional religion when he saw Portuguese excess. His son Afonso I embraced Christianity and tried to create an African Christian kingdom. Ntsikana in Xhosa land composed hymns in the 1820s without European tutoring. In the 1900s, millions of Africans joined churches founded by Africans, not Europeans. By 1910, over 80% of Protestant clergy in West Africa were African. By 1960, African churches were sending missionaries to Europe. The Book did not stay in white hands; Africans took it, read it, and judged both missionary and colonizer by it. That is agency, not conditioning.  

Christianity Was African Before It Was Colonial, and the Gospel Is Not European

If “foreign boots” means European, then Christianity was in Africa before those boots existed. The church in Alexandria was founded c. 42 CE by Mark. By 200 CE, Tertullian of Carthage was writing, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” Athanasius of Alexandria defended the deity of Christ at Nicaea in 325 CE while Northern Europe was still tribal. Augustine of Hippo in modern Algeria shaped Western theology in the 400s. Nubia was Christian for 900 years from the 6th century with the Bible in Old Nubian. Ethiopia adopted Christianity in the 4th century and has never been colonized. To call the faith “white man’s religion” is to accept the colonial lie that erased Africa’s church fathers.  

The Gospel itself is Middle Eastern. Jesus was born in Bethlehem under Roman occupation, a brown-skinned Jew speaking Aramaic. His first followers were Africans — Simon of Cyrene who carried the cross, Mk 15:21, and the Ethiopian eunuch baptized in Acts 8:26-39. Europe received the Gospel from Africa and the Middle East, not the other way around. Colonialism tried to repaint Christ in its image, but Scripture undoes that. Rev 7:9 shows “a great multitude from every nation, tribe, people and language” before the throne. No continent owns Him.  

Have We Truly Broken Free, or Are We Still Operating Within Designed Structures?

This is the right question. Some structures are colonial hangovers. Educational curricula that center Europe, denominational hierarchies that mirror 19th-century mission boards, and theological texts only in English or French are real issues. Decolonizing mindset matters. But other structures were built by Africans. The Church of Pentecost in Ghana, Christ Apostolic Church in Nigeria, AICs in Kenya, Kimbanguist Church in DRC, and Zion Christian Church in South Africa are self-governing, self-supporting, and self-theologizing. They rethought liturgy with drums, re-learned theology in mother tongues, and reclaimed spiritual leadership.  

The deeper bondage today is not only colonial. It is prosperity theology imported from 20th-century America after independence. It is political corruption run by African elites who loot while quoting Scripture. It is biblical illiteracy that lets any charismatic figure claim, “God said,” without Berean testing Acts 17:11. Galatians 5:1 says, “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” That yoke can be a colonial curriculum, but it can also be a seed-offering scam, ethnic chauvinism, or state-church co-option. Freedom requires truth, not just anti-colonial rhetoric.  

Conclusion

Africa must remember, rethink, relearn, and reclaim — but with accuracy. Remember that Africa had kingdoms, universities, and theologians before 1884. Remember also that Africa had slavery, human sacrifice, and war. Rethink by rejecting single stories. The missionary was not always a colonizer; the colonizer was not always a missionary; the African was not always a victim. Relearn by reading Crowther’s journals, Kimbangu’s trial records, Ethiopian manuscripts, and the Bible in Ewe, Igbo, Luo, or isiZulu. Reclaim by owning a faith that was African in the 1st century and is still African in the 21st.  

The Book did not come to steal a continent. Men stole, and some misused the Book to bless it. Other men used the same Book to set captives free — literally. The difference was not the Book. The difference was whether they obeyed it. So the question is not “Did they come with a book?” The question is “What will we do with the Book now that it is ours?” If we use it to justify greed, tribalism, or neo-colonial mimicry, we repeat the error. If we use it to “do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God” Mic 6:8, then we break free indeed. “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” John 8:32. That truth is not European. It is eternal, and it is already ours.

References

Baur, J. (1994). 2000 Years of Christianity in Africa. Paulines Publications Africa.  

Hastings, A. (1994). The Church in Africa, 1450–1950. Oxford University Press.  

Isichei, E. (1995). A History of Christianity in Africa. SPCK.  

Sanneh, L. (1983). West African Christianity: The Religious Impact. Orbis Books.  

Sundkler, B., & Steed, C. (2000). A History of the Church in Africa. Cambridge University Press.  

Walls, A. F. (1996). The Missionary Movement in Christian History. Orbis Books.  

Crowther, S. A. (1855). Journal of an Expedition up the Niger and Tshadda Rivers.  

Markowitz, M. D. (1970). Cross and Sword: The Political Role of Christian Missions in the Belgian Congo, 1908–1960.  

The Bible, Acts 8:26-39; Acts 17:11, 26; Gal 5:1; John 8:32, 36; Rev 7:9; Mic 6:8; Jas 4:17.

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