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Page 4
When the British spoke of the power of the gospel, they had a particular gospel in mind. "Christianity" was not a universal term, embracing all forms of the faith. To the British, it meant Protestantism. This in itself created a problem. According to Reade, for Christianity to be successful in Africa, it had to be sensually accessible. Protestantism had been stripped of Catholic rituals, leaving a simpler form of worship that appealed to the mind, rather than the senses. But even Catholicism failed, he argued, which should impress the Africans with "music, perfumes, rites." So how could Protestantism, with its "sublime", "abstract truths" succeed? (Reade, 443).
When conversion did not result in civilization, or when conversion did not occur at all, missionaries and non-missionaries alike expressed disappointment. Livingstone, for example, expressed frustration at the character of the converted Africans he met. He justified their lack of civilization by stating that they could not compare Africans with themselves, who had had the light of Christianity for centuries. Comparing converted Africans with true "heathens," he concluded that the missionaries had accomplished an "unquestionably great" change (Livingstone, 121-122). At the end of the century, despite the fact that Livingstone argued otherwise, Great Britain engaged in a debate about whether missions had failed to civilize Africa or not. A few religious leaders began to advocate Islam as the solution, creating dissent in Christian circles (Thomas Prasch, "Which God for Africa: The Islamic-Christian Missionary Debate in Late-Victorian England," Victorian Studies 22 (Autumn 1989): 51-73). The Islam/Christianity debate raged in the London Times for several months. It reported the Reverend Canon Isaac Taylor's speech at the Church Congress, who proposed an alliance with Islam in order to civilize Africa. He argued that Islam had been more successful than Christianity in Africa, stating that although it was "unfitted for the higher races," it was quite "adapted to be a civilizing and elevating religion for barbarous tribes." He argued that Christianity was too spiritual, too "lofty" for the Africans, because the higher virtues, such as forgiveness, or humility, were "unintelligible to savages." On the other hand, Islam, with its insistence on particular rules, had successfully abolished vices like polygamy or drunkenness which Christianity had been unable to root out of African culture. Instead of seeing Islam as an enemy, Taylor suggested that Christians should view it as an "imperfect Christianity," or a "half" Christianity, which was more intelligible to a lower order of mind (Times (London), 8 Oct. 1887, 7).
The copyright of the article Converting a Savage Mind: Conversion and Civilization - Page 4 in African History is owned by Jessica Powers. Permission to republish Converting a Savage Mind: Conversion and Civilization - Page 4 in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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