By Muhammad Azhar Kaleem
During the early colonial era, Europeans founded their first colonies in Africa. In the 16th century, the Portuguese settled in Angola and Mozambique while in 1652 the Dutch founded a colony in South Africa. In the late 19th century Europeans colonized most of Africa, South Asia and some other regions, primarily these were colonized by the British. In all colonies, churches were established and they provided schools as well.
Christianity and colonialism had been observed deeply associated with each other. The state religion of the European colonial powers was considered Christianity in the majority of the states which had been divided into various sects mainly Protestantism, Catholicism and Orthodoxy. The Christian missionaries had acted as the “religious arms” of the imperialist powers of Europe. According to Edward Andrews, Christian missionaries were initially portrayed as “visible saints, exemplars of ideal piety in a sea of persistent savagery”. However, by the time the colonial era drew to a close in the latter half of the 20th century, missionaries became viewed as “ideological shock troops for colonial invasion whose zealotry blinded them”, colonialism’s “agent, scribe and moral alibi”. In some regions, almost all of a colony’s populace was converted to Christianity. At that time Africans were traded as slaves. Europeans had believed that Christian slaves are easy to handle hence they tried their best to convert them to Christians.
In South Asia, the Goa Inquisition had been considered an extension of the Portuguese Inquisition in colonial India. The Inquisition was established to force conversion to the Roman Catholic Church and maintains Catholic orthodoxy in the Indian dominions of the Portuguese Empire. The institution persecuted Hindus, Muslims, Bene Israels, New Christians and the Judaizing Nasranis by the colonial era Portuguese government and Jesuit clergy in Portuguese India.
It has been noted that physical force, religious propaganda and extractive economic policies were combined in collaboration with each other’s to enhance the colonial power of the Portuguese in Goa. Xenddi was a discriminatory religious tax imposed on Hindus by the colonial era Portuguese Christian government in the 17th century while in Goa no one owned any sort of land ownership except the Christians at that time. In its very nature, this tax was extremely oppressive and arbitrary, because its collection was based on severe extortions and abuses, hence the tax was considered to be an example of religious intolerance.
Christianity had a blatant effect, reaching far beyond the converted population to potential modernizers. The introduction of European medicine was especially important, as well as the introduction of European political practices and ideals such as religious liberty, mass education, mass printing, newspapers, voluntary organizations, colonial reforms, and especially liberal democracy. However, more recent research finds no such proof of a significant relationship between Protestant missions and the development of democracy.
When Christian missionaries came to Africa, some native peoples were very hostile and not accepting of the missionaries in Africa. Even though some Christian missionaries went about colonizing the native Africans in unchristian ways, some missionaries were truly devoted to colonizing through peaceful means and truly thought that the people of Africa needed to be taught that Jesus was their Savior.
The major missionary activities from Europe and North America happened in the late 19th century during the scramble for Africa despite some earlier small-scale efforts. In southern Africa, Christian evangelists were intimately involved in the colonial process. The missionaries’ learnt that the medical and educational services provided by them were highly welcomed by Africans who were not receptive to theological appeals.
One of the most popular British heroes of the late 19th-century Victorian era, David Livingstone (1813–1873), a Scottish missionary, became world-famous in the Anglophone world. He worked after 1840 north of the Orange River with the London Missionary Society, as an explorer, missionary and writer. He had a mythical status that operated on several interconnected levels: Protestant missionary martyr, inspirational story of rising from the poor, scientific investigator and explorer, imperial reformer, anti-slavery crusader, and advocate of British commercial and colonial expansion.
French Catholic missionaries contributed a lot to the widespread possessions in Africa. In independent Ethiopia (Abyssinia), four French Franciscan sisters arrived in 1897, summoned there by the Capuchin missionaries. However, By 1925, they were very well-established, running an orphanage, a dispensary, a leper colony and 10 schools with 350 girl students. The schools were highly attractive to upper-class Ethiopians. Such kinds of activities attracted many to convert to Christianity.
A multifarious debate erupted between the French missionaries and the upper–class leadership who attended the French schools in preparation for eventual leadership in French West Africa in the 1930s. the major concern was that many of them had become Marxists and French officials worried that they were creating their own Frankenstein monster. The French shifted priorities to set up rural schools for the poor lower classes, and an effort to support indigenous African culture and produce reliable collaborators with the French regime, instead of far-left revolutionaries seeking to overthrow it.
In today’s world, the most populated religion is Christianity, however, the majority of them are non-practice. In East Asia, the share of Christians has increased by nearly 8 percentage points from 0.4 per cent in 1900 to 8.1 per cent now. The share of Christians in Central Asia has also increased from 1.3 to 3.3 per cent since 1900. But Christians in this region are confined largely to Kazakhstan, where they form 26 per cent of the population, and to neighbouring Kyrgyzstan. In Kazakhstan, the Christian share has grown to this level from 5 per cent in 1900.
Christians still form about 6 per cent of the population of West Asia. Most of them are concentrated in the Christian majority countries of Georgia and Armenia. Christians have also acquired a significant expatriate presence in Arabian countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman and UAE.
South Asia Share of Christians has increased everywhere except in Sri Lanka Of 342 million Christians in Asia, 64.5 million are in this region. Of them, 57.3 million are in India, 3.8 million in Pakistan, 1.8 million in Sri Lanka, about 0.9 million in Nepal and 0.7 million in Bangladesh. These numbers for India, Pakistan and Bangladesh are much higher than their respective Censuses and perhaps indicate the presence of large numbers of hidden Christians in these countries. In 1900, there were only about 4 million Christians in South Asia. Their share of the population was less than 1.5 per cent. Christians then had a significant presence only in Sri Lanka, where they formed nearly 10 per cent of the population. Sri Lanka is the only country where the share of Christians has undergone a decline since 1900; their share now is 8.8 per cent; it was even lower at around 7.8 per cent in the earlier decades. In all other countries of South Asia, Christians have registered a slow but steady growth. Their growth has been particularly remarkable in Nepal in recent decades.
In South Asia, the share of Christians has grown modestly from 1.4 to 4.0 per cent. But actual growth may be more because of hidden Christians. In 2000, when the sources gave separate data for Christians and Crypto-Christians, the share of the two together was higher at 5.2 per cent.
Southeast Asia had a fairly high presence of Christians at 10.4 per cent of the population in 1900. Their share has doubled to 22 per cent in 2010. The region has thus registered the highest rise in Christian share in this period. Nearly two-thirds of the Christians in Southeast Asia are in the Philippines, where they form 91 per cent of the population. The country was 86 per cent Christian in 1900. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Christians had a foothold in Vietnam, Singapore and Timor also. Their share has improved in all three, and it has reached up to 86 per cent in Timor. Christians have acquired a significant presence in Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei and Myanmar also, where they did not have much presence in 1900.
The share of Christians in East Asia is said to have increased to about 8 per cent in 2010 from 0.4 per cent in 1900. Their share in China is also said to have reached near 8 per cent. This figure is, however, controversial and various sources estimate the share to be anywhere from 1.5 to 8 per cent. In this region, Christianity has been the most successful in South Korea, where it acquired a share of 18 per cent in 1970. It rose further to nearly 41 per cent in 2000 before declining to 33.4 per cent in 2010. Christians have also acquired a significant presence in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau during this period. In other countries of East Asia, including Japan, the presence of Christians is not very significant, though it has improved in most of those countries.
African Independent Churches (AICs) are the largest group of Christian churches. Once regarded as Ethiopian churches, the majority are now referred to as Zionist or Apostolic churches. There are more than 4,000 AICs, with a membership of more than 10 million, constituting approximately 20 per cent of the population. The Zionist Christian Church is the largest AIC, with an estimated membership of more than four million. AICs serve more than half the population in the northern KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga areas. There are at least 900 AICs in Soweto. Other Christian groups include Protestants (Dutch Reformed family of Churches, Anglican, Baptist, Congregational, Lutheran, Methodist, and Presbyterian) and the Roman Catholic Church. Greek Orthodox, the Church of Scientology, and Seventh-day Adventist churches are also active in different regions of the world.
Such a large number of Christians in different regions of the world especially, Africa and Asia is the result of early missionary groups that preached Christianity in the West’s colonies. When we go through history we find that the prime objective of these missionaries was to find good slaves and servants for the European Empires. They found through their experiences that Christian slaves and servants are easy to govern. Many books and research was done in that era that how to convert Nigger and other people to Christianity. Now, these Christians have an active role in regional and geo-politics.
(Muhammad Azhar Kaleem is writer and researcher from Islamabad)
