Journal of African Studies and Sustainable Development

It is argued that the history of Christianity in Africa is not merely a narrative of what the missionaries did or did not do. Nor does the view that Africans enthusiastically embraced Christianity largely because they are naturally religious, provides any satisfactory answer to the question of the success of missionary enterprise in Africa. Rather several themes converge on the subject of the character of Christianity in Africa. Therefore, in view of many factors other than the ordinary preaching of the gospel message and established rule which led to the new impulse to embrace Christianity, and in view of the fact that material aspect of Christianity would have attracted a large segment of African population, this paper underscored a particular historiographical perspective and drew attention to certain wider issues such as how and why communities which had their own religious and viable instruments of social and legal principles came into conduct with a new religious form and the varieties of factors that necessitated their response to this external agent of change. Church history in this perspective is studied within the total context of the lives of communities. This is particularly so since this paper revealed that African response to the message of the early missionaries indicates the belief that Africa could be redeemed through the power of Christianity. The study is attentive to legal and socio-economic interpretations because Africans seek health, power, and health through religious powers. This has stamped African Christianity with recurring themes that would engage and engage African Christian spirituality for centuries that follow.

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