Congo, Democratic Republic of the, Christianity in

Congo, Democratic Republic of the, Christianity in. In the late 19th cent. this huge area of central Africa was formed into a single country, known as the Congo Independent State, mainly through the efforts of Leopold II, king of the Belgians. Exploration was followed by missionary endeavour. In 1878 the Baptist Missionary Society began work in the Lower Congo region; in 1880 the White Fathers founded a mission in the east of the country. Other missions, British, American, and Swedish followed. From the mid-1890s King Leopold's policy of financing the Independent State through a trading monopoly enforced with brutality made missionary work difficult and provoked protest from Protestant missionaries; the ensuing international agitation led to Belgium's annexation of the Congo in 1908. There was close co-operation between the government and the RC Belgian missionaries, who were granted extensive privileges. Only in 1946 did the Protestants obtain equal treatment. The alliance between the RC Church and the State was weakened in the 1950s when there was a socialist government in Brussels. Independent African Churches and prophetic movements, which had been banned since the trial of Simon Kimbangu in 1921, came into the open.

After Independence in 1960 there was much resentment against the missionaries. Under the authoritarian State (called Zaire from 1971 to 1998), the Churches were largely Africanized and in 1965 by presidential decree only three Churches were recognized: the RC Church (by far the largest); the ‘Church of Christ in Zaire’ (a loose federation of mission-founded Protestant Churches); and the Kimbanguists, to which the Greek Orthodox Church was added later.

See also following entry.