Christian missions were agents of colonization. They arrived before colonial conquest was complete and eased the way for colonialism. The missionaries taught that Western civilization and Christian faith were inseparable. Conversion meant cultural transformation.
Missions built schools that educated Africans into colonial culture. They taught that African spiritual practices were pagan and inferior. They taught obedience to authority, work discipline, sexual morality aligned with Victorian culture. The missionaries were doing what they understood as God's work but they were also doing colonialism's work.
The missions were given land and resources by the colonial state. In exchange, they served the state's purposes. An African educated in a mission school was more compliant with colonial rule. Mission churches taught submission to authority. The church and the colonial state were partners in controlling the African population.
But the relationship was not simple. Some missionaries also protected Africans from the worst of colonial violence. Some mission schools were the only places where Africans could get education. The church was both oppressor and refuge.
After independence, the church remained a significant institution. It owned land, schools, hospitals. The church maintained the infrastructure and practices that colonialism had created. The postcolonial church was not colonial but it was the inheritor of colonial structures and colonial ways of operating.
What Kenya inherited from this history is a church that is both genuinely serving Kenyans and reproducing colonial patterns. The church's role as educator, healer, and moral authority is significant. But the church's history as a tool of colonialism remains embedded in its institutions and practices.
See Also
- The Missionary Legacy
- Colonial Education Legacy
- The Church in Public Life
- Decolonising the Mind
- Gender and the State