AFRICAN INDEPENDENT CHURCHES WITH SPECIAL
REFERENCE TO ISAIAH SHEMBE’S ZULU ZION
(First published in African Ecclesial Review, August 1981)
Introduction
The African Independent Church (AIC) movement has
aroused much interest and concern in the course of its development. It has been described as “a phenomenon
without precedent and unique in the history of Christian missions” and as “one
of the most striking phenomena in Christianity”. (1) It
is not a new thing, as the first schism occurred in 1819, some twenty years
after the missionary impact began in Africa.
Barrett estimated in 1968 that there were more than five thousand
distinct ecclesiastical and religious bodies among two hundred and ninety
different tribes in thirty four African nations, with a total of seven million
adherents. (2) By 1971 total membership
of the independent church movement had reached ten million people. (3)
The 1880’s saw a great impetus to the movement with
great expansion in South and Central Africa and Nigeria. (4) Various interpretations have been suggested
to account for the phenomenon and the main stress is on the reaction of
Africans to the missions. But as Adrian
Hastings says, these movements are not to be seen purely or even primarily as a
reaction against missionary Christianity since most of their numbers had never
been full members of the latter. (5)
B.G.M. Sundkler:
The first full account of the movement was written by a
missionary, the Reverend B. Sundkler, who, in his book Bantu Prophets in South Africa, classified the burgeoning
independent churches in South Africa into Ethiopian Churches – those created as
a reaction to the political situation – and Zionist churches, revivalist
churches, which fulfilled the traditional needs of divining and healing through
Christianity. (6) Sundkler, along with
other writers, has laid stress on the socio-political situation within which
these movements arise. The fundamental
causes were social injustices arising from racial tensions and land problems,
and he maintains that “separatism in South Africa has been the result, to a
very large extent, of the presence of the colour bar within the Christian
church”. (7)
Typology:
However, it would be wrong to apply Sundkler’s
Ethiopian/Zionist typology – undoubtedly right in South Africa – to the rest of
Africa, as Parinder points out. (8) To
begin with, other areas do not have the same racial problems as South
Africa. Similarly, it would be wrong to
characterise all the religious movements in Africa as the “religions of the oppressed”
as Lantenari has done. This is far from
being the case in certain places like Southern Ghana and Southern Nigeria
“where independent churches were rather becoming the resort of a new social
elite”. (9)
In his Marxist analysis of the cargo cults of the
Pacific, Peter Worsley describes them as the protest of the oppressed races and
classes. (10) This may have been true of
some in Africa – George Shepperson notes the similarity between the cargo cults
and religious movements in Nyasaland (11) – but certainly not all. Wide generalisations are not very helpful,
nor accurate.
Barrett sees the common root cause of the movement as
the failure of the missionary movement to demonstrate at all times the Biblical
concept of love in the African setting and a lack of understanding of
traditional religion and society. He
shows how the reactionary element features prominently in the formation of the
new All-African churches, especially in the lives of the founder members.
(12) Welbourn and Ogot have shown how
the failure of the Western orientated missionary churches to make the Africans
feel at home has led to the creation of new churches. (13)
Though the reactionary element is a common theme of
the movement, there is a great complexity of factors causing the AIC’s which
are the consequence of the variety of political, social and cultural
situations. So pointing to colonial
oppression or missionary intransigence will not do, since there has been little
or no decline in the growth of the independents since the close of the colonial
period and the weakening of missionary control.
Turner’s Typology:
Aylward Shorter finds the typology of Harold W. Turner
the “most useful as well as the most theological”. (14) Turner distinguishes three main types of
AIC’s: Christian, Hebraist ad
Neo-Traditionalist. The Christian type
of independent church is closely similar to the mission churches in doctrine
and practice and its differences are largely due to sociological or historical
causes. A good example is the
Kimbanguist Church in Zaire which is the only AIC to be recognised by the World
Council of Churches. The Hebraist type
of church is one that is mainly inspired by the Old Testament and the Zionist
church of Isaiah Shembe in South Africa is a good example. Lastly, the Neo-Traditional type of church is
really a new form of traditional religion mixed with Christian elements: for example, the Maria Legio (sic) church in
Kenya. (15)
A Zulu Church:
I would like to concentrate on a church of the
Hebraist type – the Amanazaretha Church of Isaiah Shembe – one of the largest
and most famous in South Africa. When
Shembe appeared on the scene there was a power vacuum in Zululand. The great nation founded by Shaka was without
an effective leader as all had been imprisoned or exiled. The Zulus were a proud race, and a lively
oral tradition kept their great military history much to the forefront of
people’s minds. They remembered Shaka,
the military strategist and contemporary of Napoleon, who launched the Zulus as
the finest fighting force on the African continent, and created a Zulu identity
and sense of unity out of many diverse peoples.
They remembered the many famous battles against the Boers and the
British, and the humiliating defeat suffered by the latter at their hands in
1879 at Isandhlwana. However, after this
the greed of the white man encroached more and more on Zulu lands and it was
the Zulus who were humiliated. A final
Zulu Rebellion in 1906, led by Bambata, was a disastrous defeat and many
leaders were exiled or imprisoned. By
1909 the Zulu nation was ruthlessly and systematically subjugated. (16)
The observation of Sundkler, probably the most
knowledgeable missionary on Zulu religious movements is relevant here:
“In the modern world the influence
of the chiefs is dwindling fast. Here
then is the prophet’s opportunity, brought about not by calculating opportunism
but by the logic of events. When
chieftainship falls into limbo, there follows a vacuum of power and authority
and the separatist church leader steps in.
This has especially been so with Shembe”. (17)
Sundkler supports his case by comparing Zululand with
the neighbouring kingdom of Swaziland which has a well established and skilful
leader – King Sobhuza. But there is no
Prophet in Swaziland:
“In
Swaziland such a prophet is unthinkable, and therefore does not exist. Shembe’s Nazarites have hardly any influence
in Swaziland. A Bantu Messiah has no
place in a Bantu Kingdom where the king himself is sacral”. (18)
Isaiah Shembe:
From some of the early statements of Shembe it appears
he assumed an overtly political leadership and saw himself as a new Messiah of
a defeated nation, with the power to regenerate Zulu society. This is brought out by his statement in 1912,
one year after founding his own church of the Nazarites, north of Durban, at a
centre he called Ekuphakameni, or the
Elated Place. Shembe, standing at the
grave of Messen Qwabe, one of the chief leaders of the Zulu Rebellion in 1906,
is reported to have said: “I am going to revive the bones of Messen, of the
people who were killed in Bambata’s Rebellion”. (19)
Though Shembe does not appear to have lived up to this
Messianic role (probably he thought the time was not ripe), yet his people
treated him as King of Kings. Shembe,
and his son and successor, Johannes Galilee, were the object of intense respect
on the part of their followers just like that paid to traditional kings.
(20) Sundkler, in fact, says that both
Shembes have been so successful in this that young members of the Zulu royalty
come to study the source and method of such prestige. (21) Shembe’s authority grew to such an extent
before his death that he was buried as Zulu royalty. (22)
Shembe’s Genius:
It is true that Shembe’s success can be explained to
some extent by the vacuum existing in the region at the time, but this cannot
explain his great poetic genius, for he was also a very gifted man. Unfortunately his successors did not come up
to the same standard. Not only had he
the ability to read minds and secret thoughts (23) but he was also a wonderful
hymn writer. These hymns with their
“trailing grandeur and harmonious density” (24) would well-up from his
unconscious while he was awake or asleep, in a way reminiscent of the great
Western composers. The Zulu, Peter
Mkize, told Ronald Eyre that Shembe’s hymns were “the most authentic Zulu sound
I have ever heard”(25) and Sundkler refers to Shembe’s “religious poetry of
great beauty”. (26)
Shembe and St. Francis:
In some ways Shembe was rather like St. Francis of
Assisi. Sundkler says his great
sensitivity expressed itself in a deep sympathy with the suffering of
nature. He would tell his sons not to
cut a branch of a tree, adding, “How would you feel if I were to cut one of
your fingers from your hand?” (See Second Life of St. Francis by Celano, No.
165) He was also against cruelty to
animals and his hymn book must have the only hymn in the history of hymnology
in which an animal speaks. (Hymn No.
213) Shembe met a boy who had caught a
monkey and was about to sell it, but the monkey cried out, according to the
first verse in the hymn:
“Shembe,
Mayekisa’s son
Have
pity on me.
I
have left father and mother.
I
don’t know where I’m going”.
According to verse 4 in the same hymn, Shembe asked
the boy how much he wanted for the monkey, and the reply was 5 shillings. Shembe gave him the money with the admonition
to let the monkey free at the place where it had been caught. (27) This is rather similar to the well known
story of St. Francis meeting a boy who had caught some doves and was on his way
to sell them when the saint intervened and persuaded the boy to release the
birds instead. (28)
Shembe’s hymn number 78 is a great and moving hymn of
praise of God and his creation, and again rather like The Canticle of the
Creatures by St. Francis. Like the
latter it ends on a sobering note as it looks towards Brother Death:
“Stay
well you firmament,
I am leaving
you;
I am going to
sleep
Under the
wings of the earth”.
Attitudes towards AIC’s:
However, not every observer of the AIC’s is as
enthusiastic as Sundkler, who takes a favourable stance as regards this
movement. Shorter gives three positions
generally taken by members of mission churches:
the optimistic position taken by David Barrett, who sees these movements
as mainly a Christian phenomenon, even an “incipient reformation”; the
pessimistic position taken by the South African theologian, G.C. Osthuizen, who
regards these AIC’s, and especially Shembe’s, as “Post Christian” ethno-centric
folk religions that are adulterating the message of the Gospel. Finally, there is the realistic position
taken by Harold W. Turner which holds that as people in Africa become more
sophisticated (in the best sense of that word) they will draw nearer to
official Christianity. (29)
I would hold with the last position from my own
observations of the Aladura Cherubim and Seraphim church and my reading on the
early history of the Amanazaretha. It seems
with education comes sophistication and a much more Christian, rather than Old
Testament, understanding. Prophets
usually avail themselves of their prominence to send their sons on for further
education; Shembe’s son and successor,
Johannes Galilee Shembe, was sent to do a degree at Fort Hare. He left with a B.A. degree and education his
father lacked.
As an educated man, Johannes Shembe was conscious of
the criticism levelled against his father’s teaching that it was not explicitly
Christian. He set about refuting this
and preaching a much more Christocentric religion. (30) My own experience of the Cherubim and
Seraphim Church worship shows it has a greater sophistication than, say, 20 or
30 years ago. Much has been written on
the history and liturgy of this movement and so it is easy to study its
development over the years. It may seem
very angel-orientated from its title – and it was very much so at the beginning
– but not now. They strongly emphasise
the inferiority of angels to Jesus Christ, the sole Mediator, who is lord and
master of all in heaven and on earth.
Oosthuizen comes in for strong criticism from Sundkler
because of his view that the Amanazaretha should not be called a Christian
movement. The former believes Shembe’s
hymn book to be a catechism of his doctrine and finds it very much
wanting. Oosthuizen is a member of the
Dutch Reformed Church with no mystical tradition of its own and so he fails
completely to understand the subtle and almost mystical nature of Shembe’s
poetry. One wonders what he would have
made of the poetry of St. John of the Cross.
I think that we Catholics, with a rich mystical tradition, are in a
better position to appreciate Shembe and with our concept of the “ikon” –
especially strong in the Eastern tradition – can understand the prominence of
Shembe in worship.
An “Iconic Church”:
Sundkler himself, first believed Shembe to be a Bantu
Messiah (31), but after taking a new look at the church coined the term “iconic
church”. By this he meant an African
Christian community in which the leader stands like an icon, a mask of God
before his people. (32) Anyone observing
the Franciscans at their worship would imagine that their “Seraphic Father” had
been deified, when in fact he is seen as an iconic figure, with a particularly
close resemblance to Christ on whom he modelled his whole life.
The Amanazaretha sect is certainly an unusual and
interesting one but it is not unique according to H.J. Becken. He has noticed in his studies of AIC’s over a
period of 20 years that they all fall into a three-periods pattern, and he
finds Shembe’s church no different. He
believes that the church is now at the stage of institutionalization, having
passed through a first stage of formation under Shembe I, and a consolidation
stage under his son Shembe II. (33) I
would broaden this out to include all charismatic movements including those in
the Catholic Church. For example, in the
Franciscan movement the charismatic leadership and formation by Francis was
succeeded by Bonaventure’s consolidation and finally by
institutionalization. However, as Hans
Burgman points out, decline and death do not always follow; for many ossified
organisations originating in a charismatic leader, often experience a revival
and prolongation of life. (34) This
might happen just as easily with the Shembe church in years to come.
Conclusion
Not all writers on the AIC’s view them in such a light
as Sundkler does. John Mbiti sees the
endless divisions and subdivisions in Kenya as a “messy soup” and “absolutely
scandalous”. (35) Some independent
churches are fanatical and harmful, like Alice Lenshina’s Lampas movement in Zambia.
Some can rightly be called “the opium of the people” and like many sects
are not socially conscious in any way.
In fact some are so heavenly minded they are no earthly good. Fernandez says that “South African separatist
churches, though sensitive to their relationship to the larger society,
strongly support apartheid and the social status quo”. (36) Sundkler in Bantu Prophets... (37) makes it clear that this support is
strongest from those movements of a Zionist, that is Messianic disposition.
(38) A good example is the Zion
Christian Church in South Africa whose walls are covered with portraits of all
the apartheid premiers of South Africa.
This church has also had as an honoured guest for its Holy Week
services, the Minister in Charge of Bantu Affairs, and he was hailed as a new
Moses. (39)
I believe the established churches in Africa have much
to learn from the AIC movement.
Certainly this has been recognised in England where for some years now a
successful project has been going on between the white established churches and
the many black independent churches present in Great Britain. (40) Adrian Hastings believes that the independent
churches can give a lead to the historic churches in cultural adaptation. (41) Some of them can also be a challenge to the
compromising mediocrity of mission church life... (42)
Shembe, in a quiet and dignified way, showed blacks
their worth, and the beauty and value of their own customs which do not have to
be jettisoned when they become Christians.
Shembe II complained that the “great African fault is imitation, we tend
to give up everything to go with the Europeans.
My father always preached against imitation and I continue it!” (43)
Sundkler says that God is praised by Shembe because he
encourages Africans to worship Him in their own free and natural way and not
according to the heavy artificial rules of the whites. (44) Certainly at Ekuphakameni the Zulus are made
to feel very much at home. (45)
I think too that Pope Paul VI’s sincere plea for a
genuine African theology will be aided by the impetus given by the independent
movement. I conclude with a final
quotation:
“They (AIC’s) have little of an
explicit theology any more than has African traditional religion but they have
a praxis and spirituality in which a theology is profoundly implicit. Their being is almost an eruption of African
traditional religion integrally transmogrified by faith in Christ: the human situation is the same, the solution
is difference”. (46)
FOOTNOTES
1. Graines
d’Evangile, 1973, p.13. and RISK,
3/1971, Education & Communications Section of the Ecumenical Council of Churches, Geneva.
2. D.B. Barrett, Schism and Renewal
in Africa, Nairobi, 1968.
3. Graines...., loc.
cit., p.11.
4. Ibid.
5. Adrian Hastings, A
History of African Christianity, 1950-1975, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1979,
p.69.
6. B.G.M. Sundkler, Bantu
Prophets in South Africa, 1961 (rev. ed.).
7. Ibid., p.37.
8. Quoted in J.W. Fernandez, African Religious Movements, in Sociology
of Religion edited by Roland Robertson,
Penguin, 1969, p.386.
9. Hastings, op. cit., p.251.
10. P. Worsley, The
Trumpet Shall Sound, 1957.
11. Fernandez, loc. cit., p.385.
12. Barrett, op. cit.
13. F.B. Welbourn and B.A. Ogot, A Place to Feel at Home, Oxford, 1966.
14. Aylward Shorter, W.F., African
Independent Church Movements, The Outlook, XVI (1978) 4, p.125.
15. Cf. Peter Dirven, M.H.M., The Maria Legio: the Dynamics of a Breakaway Church among the Luo..., P.U.G., Rome, 1970.
16. G.S. Were, A History
of South Africa, Evans, 1974, p.93.
17. B. Sundkler, Chief
and Prophet in Zululand and Swaziland, in Fortes & Dieterle African Systems of Thought, Oxford University Press, 1965, p.80.
18. Ibid., p.286.
19. Ibid., p.282.
20. J.W. Fernandez, The
Precincts of the Prophet: A Day with Johannes Galilee Shembe, Journal of
African Religion (JORA), 5 (1973)1,
p.26.
21. Sundkler, Bantu
Prophets, p.111.
22. Ronald Eyre, The Long
Search, Collins, 1979, p.219.
23. B. Sundkler, Zulu
Zion and Some Swazi Zionists, Oxford University Press, 1976, p.171.
24. Eyre, op. cit., p.220.
25. Ibid.
26. Sundkler, Zulu Zion, p.186.
27. Ibid., p.171f.
28. Little Flowers of St.
Francis, Chapter 22.
29. Shorter, loc. cit., p.127.
30. Sundkler, Zulu Zion,
p.196 and Hastings, A History...., p.183.
31. Sundkler, Bantu
Prophets, p.388f.
32. Sundkler, Zulu Zion, p.193.
33. H.J. Becken, Ekuphakameni
Revisited..., JORA, 9(1979)3, p.162f.
34. Hans Burgman, M.H.M., The
Life-Cycle of Religious Groups, Millbilliana, Nos 1 & 2 (1975).
35. A. Hastings, African
Christianity, Chapman, 1976, p.53; cf. A
History, p.251.
36. Fernandez, in Robertson, loc. cit., p.391.
37. Sundkler, Bantu
Prophets, p.310f,
38. Fernandez, in Robertson, loc. cit., p.391.
39. Hastings,
A History, p.122f. and p.183. It is interesting to compare this Zulu
Christian Church with Shembe’s,
which seems to have become more socially conscious after Soweto, if the recent
singing at assemblies of the African National Anthem is anything to go by; this
was never done before. Cf. Becken, loc.
cit., p.166, and Fernandez, The
Precincts, loc. cit., p.44.
40. This Project on
Partnership Between Black and White is centred at Selly Oak College,
Birmingham.
41. Hastings, African
Christianity, p.48.
42. Hastings, A History, p.83.
43. Fernandez, The
Precincts, p.40.
44. Sundkler, Zulu Zion, p.193.
45. Ibid.,
p.7. Cf. Another Blanket: Report on an Investigation into the Migrant Situation,
June 1976. Agency for Industrial Mission, Harison (R.S.A.), 1976, p.20.
46. Hastings,
African Christianity, p.54.
Postscript: (November
2017)
For all the supposed Christian influences on the
Amanazaretha Church, charity, unfortunately, does not seem to be one of
them. Vela Shembe, one of their
spiritual leaders, died on 24th November 2017. According to the Sowetan (November 27th) the “social media was ablaze
with celebrations of Vela’s death” by his rivals! His death “has thrown the church into a new
era of bickering, accusations and counter-accusations”.
Whilst culture is important in the Judeo-Christian/
Biblical tradition, moral values are more important than cultural ones. “Reverence, goodness, fidelity,
responsibility, truthfulness and humility of man rank higher than genius,
brilliancy, great vitality, higher than the beauty of nature or of art, higher
than the stability and power of the state.
What is realised and what shines forth in an act of real forgiveness, in
a noble and generous renunciation, in a burning and selfless love, is more
significant and more noble, more important and more eternal than all cultural
values”. (Dr. D. Van Hildebrand, sfo)
