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Christianity vs. Islam in Africa: A 19th Century Debate

© Jessica Powers

Christianity had failed, announced Reverend Isaac Taylor, Canon of York, to a British audience in 1897. It had failed to civilize the savage, barbarous Africans. Islam, he continued, had been more successful than Christianity in ridding that continent of its evils -- evils like cannibalism, devil worship, and human sacrifice.

Not only had Christianity failed to civilize the savage, he said, but it had extended European trade, which also extended "drunkenness and vice and the degradation of the [African] people" (Prasch 51).

His Christian audience, offended and upset, responded audibly to his statements. The London Times, reporting Taylor's speech, included their reactions to his statements in parentheses: (sensation), ("Oh, oh!") and ("Oh.") The Times also included the audience's reaction to the speakers who followed Canon Taylor and denounced his ideas: (cheers).

But Canon Taylor comments continued, despite his audience's unfavorable reaction. "Islam is an imperfect Christianity," he stated, "a half-Christian faith." He believed that this made Islam more appropriate for Africans than Christianity because it appealed to the physical, sensual nature rather than the intellect. Africans had a "lower intellect" and could not reach the height of Christianity without first ascending to Islam, which, though not on level with Christianity, was higher than animism or other African traditional religions. On the other hand, he said, Christianity was more appropriate for the British because they were a "higher race" and could comprehend its abstract, "lofty" truths (Prasch 51).

The Islam/Christianity debate raged in the London Times for several months after Taylor's speech (see dates below). Most of the attacks attempted to disprove Taylor's statement that Islam had been more successful than Christianity.

Responding to his critics in the Times, Taylor admitted that missionaries did some good, but suggested that they failed because their efforts were misdirected (London Times, 31 Oct. 1887, 13.)

In a following letter, he took that argument a step further: Christianity in Africa not only failed to do good, but it actually produced character defects and rebellion. (In his own "misdirected" way, he might have had a point. Though Christian missions were a failure in the 19th Century, Christianity grew like wildfire in the 20th Century as Africans began to form their own churches, separate from the mission churches. Christian Africans were often leaders in the nationalist and independence movements against the colonial powers. Canon Taylor's "rebellious" African Christians did indeed prove to be a problem for Great Britain.)

To back up his statement, Taylor quoted an army official, Major-General Blaksley, who claimed he would use an unconverted African as a servant because he could trust them; but, Blaksley said, "even slavers" avoided neighborhoods where Christian Africans lived because they were so "'unutterably bad'" (London Times 17 Nov. 1887, 13.)

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