This book tells how Christianity developed in the specific region of the Nyamwezi people in western Tanzania, from the time of the slave trade up to the 1930–70 experience of the East African Revival.
Using many published resources and invaluable interviews with local people recalling memories going back 150 years, and tabulating his research with detailed maps, personal names, and tables, Salvatory Nyanto shows that accurate history is best written with extensive use of indigenous African resources. He gives the example of Leo Maria Kalenga, whose father was enslaved in the Congo. Her Tanganyikan mother was sold into slavery by her destitute family. Both fled to the Ndala mission near Tabora where they first met and then married. Maria was baptized, sponsored at school by Catholic Fathers, and finished up as secretary (and family friend) of President Nyerere, dying aged 92. Her complex name reflects her father’s, Nyamwezi and Christian culture.
In Chapter One, Nyanto describes the social and economic effects of the slave trade, which was not officially banned until 1924 under the British mandate. The Nyamwezi people lived across the trade route to the coast and became renowned porters of slaves and ivory, which brought them wider experience, wealth, and status. Local chiefs, among them the famed Mirambo, acquired slaves both from slave caravans and by raiding. These slaves, predominantly female, far from home, readily adopted the Nyamwezi language and culture. The arrival of Catholic and Protestant missionaries in the 1850s offered them a place of refuge from their bondage. Local chiefs supported missions as a source of “progress,” especially desiring healing and guns, but they gradually lost their authority as the churches grew.
Chapter Two tells how the missions made few converts at first, but with the development of mission communities and communal villages where freed slave families lived, worked, and learned, and with the coming of drought and smallpox in the 1880s, many adopted the new faith. Nyanto lists the detailed “certificates of freedom” given to ex-slaves in the Catholic missions. They worked for the mission and observed its regulations, but eventually Nyamwezi customs of ethnic dances and of communal meals spread the Christian message with independent thinking that reflected African culture.
Chapter Three tells how Bible translation done by young men reflected Nyamwezi culture. Jesus was “Chief,” God was “Ancestor,” Angel was “Messenger” (a fortuitously accurate rendering of the Greek!). The preferred language was Nyamwezi because Swahili was connected with slavery and Islam. The Moravian church’s first converts (1903) started translating the New Testament into Nyamwezi in 1906. Old Testament stories were added in 1910 and it was printed in Europe. European hymns were unpopular, partly because the missions banned the use of drums. The first Christians were called “readers,” as in Uganda. They became the first evangelists and catechists of the new African faith.
Chapter Four describes Catholic mission work from 1930 to the 1950s, pioneered by African catechists and teachers, trained at Ndala mission school, who baptized children and established schools. They reflected local culture more than “mission-speak,” buying books and designing teaching aids in villages that missionaries could not reach. Their pupils became messengers and translators of the faith. Their wives led the way in domestic skills and handicrafts and modeling Christian family life. Statistical tables show numbers of catechists and of Christians over a period of twenty years. Their work and responsibilities were such that they claimed recognition and payment from the church. The mission told them to be self-reliant, reflecting national policy. Continuing clerical control seems to be why Catholic numbers, unlike the Moravians, seemed to remain static.
Chapter Five relates to the Moravian and Swedish Free Missions and discusses the many dilemmas arising from the clash of Christian ethics with Nyamwezi traditional culture, including the brewing of alcohol and sexual licence. There were debates about whether paying tithes or good conduct was more important for church membership. These debates were conducted in the pages of Lusangi, the Moravian church newspaper, and also at the lusangi festivals, traditional Nyamwezi gatherings of shared meals lasting several days. In this way Nyamwezi Christians became self-governing, independent of both chiefly and missionary authority. The key to the growth of the Moravian church was the work of teachers, pastors, and especially lay women in outlying villages beyond missionary reach. Nyanto sets out interesting tables showing how freed slaves changed their slave names to escape the shame these names carried.
From the 1930s all the Protestant churches were much affected by the East African Revival, but Nyanto explains in his last chapter how the Nyamwezi experience was different from elsewhere. The Revival Fellowship was readily embraced by many Moravians, but was opposed by “dissenters” (among whom was the first Nyamwezi pastor, a gifted Bible translator), who broke away to form separate churches such as the Tanganyika African Church. Nyanto suggests the Revival was a European import, but in fact it was an indigenous, racially harmonious African spirituality. The one place where revivalists and dissenters met in harmony was the Nyamwezi lusangi festivals. The chapter closes by tracing the path to Africanizing Moravian leadership (with Anglican and Lutheran support in the face of missionary hesitation) and creating the Unyamwezi Moravian Church Council (UMCC).
Unfortunately poor editing affects the readability of the book. There is much word-for-word repetition and many inaccuracies (e.g., “second blessing” appears as “second coming” (192) and UMCC is indexed as Universities’ Mission to Central Africa!). Nevertheless, Nyanto’s detailed research on one specific region has shown how Tanzanian churches developed under local initiatives with African culture to develop and spread the Christian message.
