BOOK REVIEWSThemes in the Christian History of Central Africa Edited by T. O. Ranger andJ. Weller. London, Heinemann, 1975, xvi, 285 pp., £2,50.The British missionary is one of the more static figures in British fiction andhis character has been accepted almost without modification in both Americanand British films. Occasionally, a writer like Graham Greene will flesh outthe type figure by giving to his missionaries varieties of motives, methods andemotions, but for the most part the familiar figure remains. Benevolentlypaternalistic to the physical welfare of his people, he battles the satanicforces that grip their spiritual lives with whimsical good humour and anabsolute certainty that he has a monopoly of the truth. No one is more res-ponsible for these images of the missionary than the great nineteenth centurymissionary societies themselves. Concerned as they were to raise money fortheir work abroad Š and they raised enormous sums Š they sold theirproduct with all the skill of a modern advertising agency. The public knewwhat a missionary should be like and should be doing and the societiesshaped missionary narratives to confirm these images. Carlyle's Great Man,the solitary hero, that curious relic of Romanticism that persisted as a con-cept well into this century ŠŁ T- E. Lawrence is a representative type Š wasable to be incarnated in the best known of the nineteenth century missionaries:Moffat, John Williams, Livingstone.It is only fairly recently that the myth has begun to be challenged. Asfar as Central and East Africa is concerned we owe a singular debt to thewritings of Professor T. O. Ranger who both in his own work and in bookshe has edited has made it clear that not only did the societies and individualmissionaries bring a wide range of experience, expectations and emphasisto their work but more important came into situations that varied enormouslyfrom one another politically, socially and in their religious practices. For ifthe missionary was a stock figure in the old tradition, the 'heathen5, whetherhe was a nomad on the edge of the Kalahari or belonged to one of the sophis-ticated cultures of West Africa, was offered to the missionary public as oneof an amorphous group of savages waiting only to be enlightened by thegospel.In his new book the most valuable section is probably the first, signific-antly entitled 'Christianity and Central African Religions' where the con-tributors deal with limited localities and the interaction between, usually, asingle mission and the existing religion in the surrounding area. It is onlythrough this sort of detailed history which allows no room for generalizationsthat the real complexity of any mission situation can be reconstructed andits uniqueness emphasized.The second section of the book, 'Christianity and Colonial Society', showsthe different reactions to colonial administrations that were possible withinthe established missionary and church bodies. Livingstonia, where the em-phasis on industrial training sent out generations of skilled workers whowere to have a profound effect on the economy of Northern Rhodesia, isshown in D. Cook's essay to have also given a social conscience to its ad-herents so that they brought with them a habit of social and communityconcern that resulted in the formation of welfare associations on the Copper-belt. Out of this tradition, that cut across the traditional groupings of clanand family, a national consciousness could arise. A contrast in reactions to9596BOOK REVIEWScolonial authorities is shown in the essays on John Lester Membe andBishop May. Membe, with extraordinary energy and organizational ability,was able to make the African Methodist Episcopal Church with its blackAmerican origins a significant congregation through large areas of centralAfrica. Bishop May, on the other hand, an establishment Anglican, saw hisrole as modifying the harsher effects of colonial office policy. Northern Rho-desian legislation for Africans was less unattractive than it might have beenbecause of the work of a man like May, but the limitations of his back-ground and his role as a Bishop of the established Church, finally made himless important a figure than Membe who as an African was able imaginativelyto offer an orthodox and yet African witness that was appropriate to theneeds of people moving into the new order that colonialism had created.Steele's important essay on Arthur Shearly Cripps appears in this sectionand Cripps stands as a useful figure between Membe and May. He was asclose to the Shona as Membe was to the various African groups with whomhe worked, and closer than May could ever have been. His achievements interms of new churches and schools were minimal and his influence has to beseen as something far more intangible than the institutional church normallylooks for as a sign of the success of its leaders. Cripps, who was more radic-ally active in Southern Rhodesian politics than May was in the politics ofthe North, lived to see the failure of every cause he had espoused, and yet hisgrave is now an object of pilgrimage to local Shona. One likes Steele's phrase,that Cripps's mission, despite the outward signs of failure, was in fact aplace of 'peculiar influence'.The third section of the book I find the least satisfactory. DespiteRanger's valiant introduction, it is difficult to see any real connection betweenthe need for contemplative life among Rhodesia's Catholic religious, recentmanifestations of ecumenism in Rhodesia, and the combination of Christianspirituality and social activism that marks the Rukwadzano women of Rho-desia. The apparent connecting theme is the recognition that traditionalAfrican religion was profoundly involved in the social life of village and chief-tainship, and little distinction was made between the spiritual and the secular.This, it is implied, has been carried over into the particular expectationsmodern Christians have of the Church. The reservations one has about thissection stem partly from the inadequate sampling of Weinrich's essay onthe religious, but also from the suspicion, born out of one's own experience,that for many people the Church's chief value is seen to lie in its secularwork. If this suspicion is true it could well be more significant than theexamples chosen which might well be eccentric within the larger frameworkof the Christian life of Rhodesia. An article examining Africa's scepticismto Christianity's spirituality would have corrected the possibility of imbalance.Undoubtedly, however, where the book's particular interest lies is inRanger's introductions to the various sections. What he has achieved is tospell out the issues that should concern the future historians, sociologists,and missiologists who are attempting to examine the nature and significanceof Christianity in Africa. He has described Š and the essays to some extentprovide ŠŁ a radical departure from the old imperial history of missions which,however well intentioned, saw the whole process from the point of view ofmissionaries themselves As so often before, Ranger, even if his findings aresuspect in detail, has shown the way for a new history of African Christianity.University of RhodesiaA. J. CHENNELLS