Becoming an African Noah: John Chilembwe's Prophetic Missionary Consciousness in the Black Atlantic World (1872-1915) Pubblico
Aycock, Jennifer L. (Spring 2023)
Abstract
This project argues that Reverend John Chilembwe drew on numerous sources to frame new visions for an African Church and a future African society delivered from the violent tyranny of White colonial rule and the long-enduring legacy of slave trades. Through preaching, teaching, and practice, he propounded a form of Christianity that reclaimed African dignity and humanity and asserted a central role for African Christians in divine history. As an early 20th century African Christian missionary among his own people, Chilembwe’s vision of an African Church was shaped by various Christian ideas and discourses emanating from European, African, and African American sources. In turn, Chilembwe’s mission became an intercultural African mission experiment as members of his churches contended with the past legacies of slavery and slave trades and the devastating upheavals of colonization through religious gathering and practice.
My study expands our understanding of how an intercultural form of Christianity, namely Black Christian Nationalism, furnished narratives, motifs, and practices that inspired Chilembwe’s missionary consciousness at the height of the colonial takeover of African lands, resources, and peoples. As an intercultural form of Christianity, Black Christian Nationalism reflected Christian ideology and practice as refracted through African American experiences in North America. Black Christian Nationalism inspired a number of African expressions of Christianity at the turn of twentieth century. To that end, this study highlights the ways in which Chilembwe understood himself as a missionary among his own African kin and illustrates practices he implemented to creatively recontextualize Black Christian Nationalism as a religious response to social change. Specifically, this project establishes that recasting Chilembwe as a missionary brings to the fore how intercultural African Christianity could meet contextual challenges related to colonialism.
Table of Contents
Preface…….................................................................................................................................... 1
Introduction................................................................................................................................... 3
A Biographical Overview of John Chilembwe
John Chilembwe in Memory and Historiography
The Transnational Study of African Christianity and Black Christian Nationalism
Project Outline
A Note on Terminology
Chapter 1: Debating the ‘Black Atlantic’ and Its Significance for the Study of African Christianity…………………………………………………………………………………...…56
The World the Black Atlantic Created
The Black Atlantic as Conceptual Framework
The World that Black Atlantic Christians Made
The Emergence of Intercultural African Christianity in the Black Atlantic World
John Chilembwe’s Mission
Chapter 2: Chilembwe as African Noah: African Christian Missionary Consciousness in the Early Twentieth Century……………………………………………………….……….…91
Recalling John Chilembwe as Noah
Biblical Narratives and African Christian History
Ethiopianism’s African Noah: African Agents in Divine History
Biblical Narratives and African Missionary Consciousness
Evils in the Land: Slavery and Land Theft
The Problem and Potential of Missionary Christianity
Becoming African Noah in Light of Slavery and Land Theft
Chapter 3: Fashioning the Motherland: The Redemption of African Women in the Chilembwe’s Thought and Practice…………………………………………...….……….…146
The Gender Factor in Black Atlantic Christianity
The Suffering Motherland in National Baptist Thought and Practice
The Suffering Motherland in Chilembwe’s African Mission Practice
The Sacrament of Sartorial Practice
Chapter 4: Gathering a People, Building the Ark................................................................. 176
African Missionary Consciousness, Black Reason, and Ecclesial Visions
Ecclesial Visions and African Christian Mission
Black Christian Nationalism and Ecclesial Visions in the Shire Highlands
Ecclesial Visions and Chilembwe the African Noah
Chapter 5: Critiquing Imperial Reciprocity: Chilembwe’s Pastoral Letter....................... 205
African Missions in a Time of War
Colonial States of Violence and their Tribal Wars
From Colonial Subjugation to The War of Thangata in Nyasaland Protectorate
Prophetic Rumblings and Chilembwe’s “War of Thangata” Letter
Conclusion: Recasting Chilembwe as a Missionary Between Worlds……………………..230
Afterword: The Disciple Whom Jesus Loved………………………………………………..234
Bibliography…………………………………………….……………………………………..240
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