African Religions

Two types of religious movements were behind the independent churches: prophetic and messianic. Christian prophetic movements are organized around an individual who is believed to reveal a message from God—in great contrast to Africa’s traditional religious systems, which are more typically generated and sustained by the community. Prophets are seen as charged by God with the task of purifying the people and struggling against witchcraft. Public confessions, exorcisms (ridding people of evil spirits), and purifying baptisms are typically dominant features of the movements led by prophets. Like indigenous African religions, these movements are preoccupied with healing.

One such prophet-healer, William Wade Harris, founded an important independent church movement in West Africa in 1913 and 1914. While imprisoned for participation in a 1909 coup attempt in his native Liberia, Harris claimed that the angel Gabriel visited him. After his release he led a vigorous campaign in neighboring Côte d’Ivoire against what he perceived to be the worship of idols. The church Harris founded became one of the first of the African Independent Churches to receive state support. Churches that claim Harris as their founder are still active in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana.

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (then known as the Belgian Congo), Simon Kimbangu, a religious instructor at a British mission, inaugurated a healing revival in 1921. Claiming that the voice of Christ called him as a prophet, Kimbangu drew thousands of converts. The Belgian colonial authorities who then governed the Congo viewed Kimbangu’s revival ministry as a threat and arrested him. His imprisonment and the subsequent Belgian attempts to suppress his movement only stirred the fervor of his followers. After the prophet’s death in 1951 the Kimbanguist church survived under the leadership of his son. When the Congo gained independence in 1960, the church became one of four religious bodies recognized by the government. With more than 4 million adherents, the Church of Jesus Christ on Earth Through the Prophet Simon Kimbangu was admitted to the World Council of Churches in 1969.

A number of new religious groups in Africa have been organized around a leader regarded as a messiah, or savior. Messianic churches are sustained by a message of hope for spiritual and political liberation. Such messianic vision promises a golden age of self-sufficiency. Isaiah Shembe, a self-proclaimed Zulu prophet, founded such a messianic church in South Africa in the early 1900s. In 1932 Johane Masowe, another self-declared prophet, preached among the Shona in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), imploring followers to resist cooperation with colonial authorities and institutions, including the church. Perceived as a political threat, he moved his Apostolic Church to South Africa but in 1960 the church was expelled from that country as well.

Movements described as neo-traditional, by contrast, retain elements of indigenous African beliefs and rituals within the context of Christian practice and teaching. These groups incorporate important aspects of African religious expression, such as the belief in the intervention of ancestral spirits. An example is the Bwiti cult originating with the Fang people of Gabon, which fuses traditional ancestral cults with Christian symbolism, theology, and prophetic leadership by a messiah. These new African churches have tried to sustain a sense of community and continuity within the context of changing rural life and burgeoning, multiethnic urban centers.

Some scholars interpret the new African religions as protest movements within the struggle for political self-determination and the establishment of independent nations. But the persistence and proliferation of indigenous religions suggests to others that these movements exemplify the characteristic openness in Africa to religious experimentation and renewal. The new religions revive traditional cultural and symbolic forms. Stressing unity across ethnic groups, they appear to enable Africans to accommodate the changing needs of their communities.