A Christian experiment: the early Sierra Leone colony

Abstract

In the course of the past century the centre of gravity of the Christian world has shifted completely. Europe, once the centre, is now at best an outpost on the fringe of the Christian world, some would say an outpost likely to be overwhelmed. The great majority of Christians, and the overwhelming majority of practising Christians are, and are clearly going to be, Africans, Americans or Asians. And of these, the most startling expansion—the greatest Christian expansion since what were for Europe the Middle Ages—has been in Africa, where Christians have been increasing in geometrical progression, doubling their numbers every twelve years or so, for over a century. The greater part of African Church history, however, has still to be written. Hagiography we have in abundance, and hagiography, like mythology, is a valid literary genre; but (again like mythology) it is a poetic, not a scholarly category. Of missionary history we have a little, though very little in proportion to the vast resources which the missionary society archives supply; but missionary history is only one specialized part of African Church history; by far the greater part of African Christian life and African Christian expansion goes on, and has long gone on, without the presence, let alone the superintendence, of the European missionary.

Seeing the World Through African Eyes: A Tribute to Andrew Walls

“…Walls's contention that the modern Church of tropical Africa actually arrived "a ready-made African Church" more than hints at the complex elements that require navigation. 13 It is worth mentioning that the Center was regularly visited by a who's who of renowned World Christianity scholars. It was there that I first met three eminent scholars of African Christianity, who are now passed.…”

The Legacy of James Stephen

“…In 1791 Henry Thornton and Wilberforce took the lead in founding the Sierra Leone Company, and the following year 1,100 former slaves from the American South who had moved north to Nova Scotia were settled in Freetown. 3 When Macaulay stepped down as governor of Sierra Leone in 1799 and returned to London, he was accompanied by twentyfour African children, whom he brought to Great Britain to be educated and prepared for leadership in the emerging "Colony of Freedom." Not all of the children survived the transition to the climate of the British Isles.…”

Missionaries and Revolutionaries: Elements of Transformation in the Emergence of Modern African Christianity

“…Their conversion to Christianity in vast numbers represents one of the most spectacular achievements in modern mission history and "the first mass movement to Christianity in modern Africa." 5 Indeed, one African historian calculates that Freetown in 1820 boasted more African Christians than the rest of tropical Africa. 6 These early successes augured well for an experiment aimed at making the settlement "the beacon of light to Africa [and] the springboard of missionary enterprise."…”