Christianity in Africa
In the late 15th century, Portuguese traders and missionaries began arriving in West Africa, first in Guinea, Mauritania, the Gambia, Ghana, and Sierra Leone, then Nigeria and later in the Kingdom of Kongo, where they would find success in converting prominent local leaders to Catholicism.
This was the beginning of Christian monasticism, which over the following years spread from Africa to other parts of the Gohar, and Europe through France and Ireland.
At the beginning of the fifth century, no other region of the Roman Empire had as many bishoprics as Northern Africa; when the Vandal king summoned a synod in Carthage, 460 Catholic bishops attended.
[21] In these first few centuries, African Christian leaders such as Origen, Lactantius, Augustine, Tertullian, Marius Victorinus, Pachomius, Didymus the Blind, Ticonius, Cyprian, Athanasius and Cyril (along with rivals Valentinus, Plotinus, Arius and Donatus Magnus) influenced the Christian world outside Africa with responses to Gnosticism, Arianism, Montanism, Marcionism, Pelagianism and Manichaeism, and the idea of the university (after the Library of Alexandria), understanding of the Trinity, Vetus Latina translations, methods of exegesis and biblical interpretation, ecumenical councils, monasticism, Neoplatonism and African literary, dialectical and rhetorical traditions.
Proponents of this theory compare this situation with the strong monastic tradition in Egypt and Syria, where Christianity remained more vigorous.
[27][28] Some historians remark how the Umayyad Caliphate persecuted many Berber Christians in the 7th and 8th centuries CE, who slowly converted to Islam.
[6] Up until the Fatimid period (10th to 12th centuries), Christians likely still constituted a majority of the population, although scholarly estimates on this issue are tentative and vary between authors.
[citation needed] In addition, calendar reforms adopted in Europe at this time were disseminated amongst the indigenous Christians of Tunis, which would have not been possible had there been an absence of contact with Rome.
[42] In June 1225, Honorius III issued the bull Vineae Domini custodes that permitted two friars of the Dominican Order named Dominic and Martin to establish a mission in Morocco and look after the affairs of Christians there.
[43] The bishop of Morocco Lope Fernandez de Ain was made the head of the Church of Africa, a title previously held by the archbishop of Carthage, on 19 December 1246 by Innocent IV.
[45] The medieval Moroccan historian Ibn Abi Zar stated that the Almohad caliph Abu al-Ala Idris al-Ma'mun had built a church in Marrakech for the Christians to freely practice their faith at Fernando III's insistence.
Innocent IV asked emirs of Tunis, Ceuta and Bugia to permit Lope and Franciscian friars to look after the Christians in those regions.
In 1561, Gonçalo da Silveira, a Portuguese missionary, managed to baptize Monomotapa, king of the Shona people in the territory of Zimbabwe.
Despite this confrontation, they found success in instituting Catholic doctrine in a region that, prior to the existence of their vocation, maintained strictly established orthodoxies.
Other religious congregations did exist who sought to evangelize regions of the continent under Portuguese dominion, however, their influence was far less significant than that of the Christians.
The Jesuit's ascendency to prominence began with the padroado in the fifteenth century and continued until other European countries initiated missions of their own, threatening Portugal's status as sole patron of the continent.
The Jesuits found themselves expelled from Mozambique and Angola, as a result, the existence of Catholic missions diminished significantly in these regions.
[51] Due to the exodus of the pieds-noirs in the 1960s, more North African Christians of Berber or Arab descent now live in France than in Greater Maghreb.
The Office for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor in the United States also noted the presence of thousands of Tunisians who converted to Christianity.
Within the Kimbanguist church, Simon Kimbangu questioned the order of religious deliverance- would God send a white man to preach?
The common practice of placing crosses and crucifixes in churches was viewed as a graven image in their eyes or a form of idolatry.
Polygamy was a topic of debate- many literate Africans interpreted it as acceptable because of information contained in the Old Testament- while it was condemned by European Christianity.
Dona Beatriz was a woman from Central Africa known for her controversial views on the acceptance of polygamy – she argued that Jesus never condemned it – and she was burnt at the stake.
Mirza Ghulam Ahmed, the founder of the Ahmadiyya sect, believed that Muhammed was the most important prophet, but not the last- departing from typical Muslim views.
For example, the Redeemed Christian Church of God, founded in 1952, has congregations in a dozen African states, Western Europe and North America.
Christian missionaries were compelled to spread an understanding of their gospel in the native language of the indigenous people they sought to convert.
The conflicting branches of secularism and religiosity within the Christian schools represents a divergence between the various goals of educational institutions within Africa.
[73] There has been tremendous growth in the number of Christians in Africa - coupled by a relative decline in adherence to traditional African religions.
[1] According to a 2006 Pew Forum on Religion and Public life study, 147 million African Christians were "renewalists" (Pentecostals and Charismatics).
[79] Some experts predict the shift of Christianity's center from the European industrialized nations to Africa and Asia in modern times.
