South Africa, Christianity in

South Africa, Christianity in. The first Christian missionaries to Africa south of the Zambezi were Portuguese. Their effect was very limited, and Christianity was really introduced by the Dutch, who began to settle in 1652. In the Napoleonic Wars the British occupied the Cape and they retained the colony in 1814.

The existence of a large White community led to the establishment of a settled Church, but, apart from a Moravian mission to the Cape in 1737, there was practically no attempt to convert the Africans before the end of the 18th cent. The LMS arrived in 1799 and provided many of the most famous missionaries, including J. van der Kemp, J. Philip, and R. Moffat. Methodists arrived in 1814; they came to have the largest number of African adherents in the country. Particularly influential was the Church of Scotland mission centred around the educational institution at Lovedale in Ciskei. The Great Trek (1837) resulted in the establishment as the State Church in the Transvaal of the Hervormde Kerk, separate from the Dutch Reformed Church, and a further separation led to the creation of a free Gereformeerde Kerk. RC missions have grown since the latter part of the 19th cent. The multiplication of missions led to the creation of the ecumenical General Missionary Conference in 1904; this evolved into the South African Council of Churches.

Racially discriminatory government policies brought tension with the Churches. The Dutch Reformed Church, whose theology in the 20th cent. for a time backed a policy of ‘separate development’, left the World Council of Churches after the Sharpeville crisis of 1960. The other Churches were all opposed to the policies of the State and their work in Black education was virtually halted in 1954. With the establishment of the Christian Institute in Johannesburg in 1963, Christian opposition to racialism became more systematic; it was increasingly led by Black Christians such as Desmond Tutu.

African Independent Churches are numerous and include at least 30 per cent of African Christians. Some derive from schisms from a mainstream Church whose doctrine and order they retain; others have developed their own rituals, especially of healing, and were often founded by a ‘prophet’ figure. The most famous is the Amanazaretha, founded by Isaiah Shembe in Zululand.

The Church of the Province of Southern Africa (so called since 1982) is an independent province of the Anglican Communion. The archiepiscopal see at Cape Town was founded in 1847. The Province has been strongly influenced by the Tractarian movement.