Christian Missionary Engagement in Central Nigeria, 1857-1891

In the decades before colonial partition in Africa, the Church Missionary Society embarked on the first serious effort to evangelize in an independent Muslim state. Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther led an all-African field staff to convert the people of the Upper Niger and Confluence area, whose communities were threatened or already conquered by an expanding jihadist Nupe state. In this book, Femi J. Kolapo examines the significance of the mission as an Africanrather than Europeanundertaking, assessing its impact on missionary practice, local engagement, and Christian conversion prospects. By offering a fuller history of this overlooked mission in the history of Christianity in Nigeria, this book reaffirms indigenous agency and rethinks the mission as an experiment ahead of its time.

Investigates an overlooked Christianization effort led by a group of all-African missionaries, focusing on the significance of the African staff Examines Christian-Muslim encounters in Africa before the European partition of Africa Highlights exchanges between missionaries and local people inflected by traditional and religious practices, finding evidence for local consternation, rejection, reinterpretation, approval, and adaptation of missionary ideas

Autorentext
Femi J. Kolapo is a professor of African History at the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada. He is the author of The Journals of Church Missionary Society Agent, James Thomas, in Mid-Nineteenth Century Nigeria.

Inhalt

1. Introduction.- 2. The CMS Upper Niger and Confluence Area Environment.- 3. CMS Niger Mission Agents' Field Practice.- 4. Management of Conversion on the Upper Niger and at the Confluence.- 5. Women and the CMS Upper Niger Mission.- 6. A Stalled Christian Transition.- 7. Concluding Thoughts.