Continental Protestant Missions and the Evangelization of Africa (1800–1880)

This chapter is concerned with religious encounters between Africans and continental European Protestants in the eighty years between the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade and onset of high colonialism. Especially in comparison with the colonial period that followed, the decades to 1880 were uniquely open for African leadership and innovation. The chapter conceives of the early and mid-century encounter as African intellectual history, asking what Africans made of the Christian message presenting itself to them in the form of continental European Protestants. The chapter is structured as follows: a brief chronological overview is followed by a section on the distinctiveness of the continental European Protestant missionary movements. These movements were also characterized by several internal tensions—perhaps contradictions—that could not be sustained in the long run. A third section examines these tensions, asking how they were reconciled and how they were not. I conclude with some suggestions for further research.