Africa is considered one of the most dynamic centres of Christianity in the world. The continent has a significant number of Christians around the world, about 2.2 billion. A 2019 report by evangelical church group The Gospel Coalition (TGC), revealed that Africa has about 30% of the world’s evangelicals, 20% of the world’s Pentecostals and charismatics, and about 15% of the world’s Roman Catholics. In addition, Africa has significant Orthodox groups such as the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Churches and the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria.
While many attribute the history of Christianity in Africa to colonialism, it actually dates much further back to Bible days.
Historical accounts from the Bible shows that Africans were part of the early church and the continent was one of the first world regions to receive the Gospel. An account in Acts 8:26-39, records that an Ethiopian eunuch (from Africa) became a Christian – received the gospel, which is the basis of the Christian faith, following his encounter with Phillip, an apostle. The Ethiopian eunuch who was said to be the treasurer of Queen Candace of Ethiopia, and after the encounter that made him a Christian, he returned to his hometown, which is estimated to be Meroe in modern day Sudan.
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Also, Simon, who was recorded to have helped Jesus carry his cross to the crucifixion ground in Luke 23:26, was from a Greek city called Cyrene in the province of Cyrenaica in modern Libya. The region had a large Jewish community as 100,000 Jews from Judaea had been forced to settle there during the reign of Macedonian Greek emperor Ptolemy Soter in 323-285 BC. The large Jewish population would later form the bedrock of the spread of Christianity in the region.
Christianity in North Africa
Christianity was well established in North Africa in the first few centuries after Christ. From a solid foundation in North Africa, Christianity moved deeper into the heart of the continent,
Egypt’s Coptic Orthodox Church attributes the spread of Christianity in Africa to Mark the apostle, who reportedly went to evangelize in Alexandria in 60 AD. Alexandria, the second largest city in modern Egypt, became a hub for the continental development of Christianity, spearheaded by Mark, who served as a bishop. Systems, structures, and schools were established to foster the growth of Christian religion in the area. One of such notable schools was the Catechetical School of Alexandria which was founded towards the end of the 2nd century AD by Clement of Alexandria, AKA Titus Flavius Clemens. This school would become a major centre for theological study and interpretation of the Bible.
From Alexandria, Christianity spread to another North African city called Carthage in modern Tunisia. Carthage, which was the centre of the Roman province in Africa, is widely regarded as a centre of early Christianity.
The key moment in early Christianity in North Africa was in the late third century when there was rapid growth, in part due to the conversion of many people in large Jewish communities. But perhaps the most surprising thing that helped Christianity grow was persecution.
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The modern missionary movement and indigenous Christian movements in Africa of the 19th and 20th centuries are built upon these earlier foundations.
The city of Alexandria in Egypt produced many notable Christian scholars like Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian, who is widely regarded as the Father of Western Theology.
Tertullian was the person who came up with the term “Trinity”, a fundamental Christian tenet which asserts that the single Godhead is made up of three distinct persons, God the Father, the Son (Jesus Christ) and the Holy Spirit. He was the first person known to have used the Latin word “Trinitas” to refer to the doctrine in writing. The doctrine is today widely accepted by many Christian theologists.
The Roman empire acted as a catalyst for the spread of Christianity in the subcontinent, however, the Roman leaders were opposed to the religion as they saw it as a religion of dissent to their rule. Consequently, they opposed the religion, forcing the people to practice it covertly. Ironically, this persecution bolstered the spread of the religion even more.
Persecution deepened the commitment of believers in Africa and gave them courage to witness to an increasingly sympathetic African audience.
Christianity thrived in North Africa for centuries, but took a backseat in the 7th century when Islam was introduced from the neighbouring Arabian Peninsula. Not long after Prophet Muhammad died in 632 AD, the latter religion was brought to the subcontinent by Arabs and soon became deeply entrenched in society. In 698 AD, the Muslim Umayyad army from Egypt destroyed Carthage and effectively ended Roman and Christian rule in Northwest Africa. Still, there is sizeable Christian population in the region.
Christianity in East Africa
While Christianity was growing strong and flourishing in North Africa, the kingdoms of Nubia, in modern Sudan, and Ethiopia, in East Africa, were not left out. Nubia is one of the two countries considered to be the world’s oldest Christian nation—the second being Europe’s Armenia.
King Ezana of Aksum, a land in ancient Ethiopia and Eritrea, made Christianity the official religion of his kingdom in the 4th century. King Ezana had been taught about Christianity by a Syrian missionary called Frumentius. The spread of the religion in Nubia was also spurred by Jewish converts, but didn’t see as much growth as it did in Ethiopia. Between 1200-1500, Ethiopia’s Zagwe dynasty—a family of Christian kings—revived Christian art, literature and the expansion of the church. Lalibela, regarded as the greatest emperor of the Zagwe dynasty, even took this a step further, building 11 famous stone churches to create a “new Jerusalem”.
However, in 1270, a new Solomonic dynasty replaced the Zagwe dynasty. The former dynasty was inaugurated by Melenik I, who was said to be the first emperor of Ethiopia, and was the son of the biblical King Solomon and Makeda, the Queen of Sheba. Accordingly, this family line was seen as the rightful dynasty. In the 15th century, the dynasty reached its peak with Zara Yaqob at its helm. Yaqob convened church councils for theological debates and even purged Ethiopia of African traditional religion.
Concurrently, Christianity was being snuffed out in Nubia as the territory’s indigenous forces were defeated in a battle led by a sultan of Cairo called Babyars 1. Following the defeat, Nubia came under the control of the Muslim Egyptians and by 1500, Christianity in the country was virtually non-existent.
The Evangelical Era – Spread of Christianity to Other Parts of Africa
As the glories of Catholicism faded in the late eighteenth century, a new force arose: Evangelicalism.
Christianity was both a movement of spiritual revival as well as a force for justice. It combined a passion for personal religion with a crusade against slavery and changed the face of Africa forever. Evangelical Christianity has been described as a fourfold commitment to the Bible, the cross, conversion, and mission.
In the late eighteenth century, evangelicals and other British leaders formed a movement that sought to abolish slavery in Africa. Great nineteenth-century British leaders such as William Wilberforce (member of the British parliament and champion of anti-slavery legislation), Thomas Clarkson (leader of the anti-slavery society in England), and Granville Sharp (English abolitionist) did much good.
Evangelicals in Africa such as Ottobah Cugoano and Olaudah Equiano were just as crucial to the anti-slavery cause. They were two Nigerian former slaves who lived in England and published stories of their liberation and conversion to Christianity. Many African slaves who were freed during the American Revolution found their way to the Canadian maritime provinces where their faith was deepened by the fiery preaching of Henry Alline of Nova Scotia.
Sierra Leone, a West African colony for freed slaves, was founded in 1787. From Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, the evangelization of West Africa began through liberated slaves such as Samuel Ajayi Crowther, the first Anglican bishop in Africa. Liberia, founded for free-born American blacks in 1822, played a similar role.
The evangelical revivals of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the United States and England produced the modern missionary movement. Denominational missions and faith missions such as the Africa Inland Mission, Sudan Interior Mission, Sudan United Mission, and the South Africa General Mission (later the Africa Evangelical Fellowship) influenced African societies. Schools, hospitals, churches, and many social agencies in Africa were the result of missionary efforts in partnership with African Christians. The same partnerships translated the Bible or a portion into more than 640 African languages, an effort which has helped promote literacy as well as the knowledge of God.
The commitment of the missionaries to Africa is illustrated by the many who took their coffins with them when they travelled from their homelands, knowing that their lifespan would probably be short. Many were martyred for their faith, including the American medical missionary Paul Carlson, who was killed by rebel insurgents in 1964 in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Last modified: March 18, 2024
