The London Missionary Society in Southern Africa, 1799-1999: Historical Essays in Celebration of the Bicentenary of the LMS in Southern Africa (review)

To celebrate the London Missionary Society's bicentennial, its lineal descendant, the United Congregational Church of Southern Africa, requested a scholarly critical reflection on the LMS past. The resulting anthology inevitably reflects individual authors' interests and is in no sense a general history of the LMS in Southern Africa over the last two centuries: there is little on the early LMS and almost nothing on the 20th century, except for a few pages on the early 1900s in the closing section of the final essay. Apart from some references to the work of Robert Moffat and David Livingstone further afield, this volume is more about South Africa than the wider region.

The editor, Professor John de Gruchy of the University of Cape Town, is a UCCSA minister and a respected authority on South African Christianity. He explains in his introduction that this volume is neither celebratory nor apologetic; rather, it examines the missionaries' successes and failures in promoting the gospel, at a time when their legacy remains highly relevant. The LMS is the best known and most controversial missionary group in Southern African history: in the early 19th century, it was widely detested by white settlers for defending Africans' rights, yet ironically was later accused of furthering British imperialism and capitalism. Since it became Congregationalist by default, as members of other denominations joined newer societies, its story follows the sadly familiar pattern of interdenominational rivalry. Well-meaning missionaries' errors in imposing European values and misunderstanding African culture remain pertinent as South Africans seek to build a multicultural society. Finally, the role of women missionaries and converts requires a major reassessment.

Christopher Saunders provides a useful historiographic overview, partly paralleling broader South African historical scholarship, from George Theal's critical, prosettler view through William Macmillan's more sympathetic liberalism to Dora Taylor's critique of the LMS as the servant of imperialism. Despite a shift to newer concerns, such as gender, and postmodernists' focus on missionary "discourse" and the "contested nature" of missionary-African interaction, more recent scholarship has often stressed missionaries' social, economic and political impact, rather than evangelization itself. Striking gaps remain: there is no biography of the Revs. James Read (Senior or Junior) and little on the later LMS, and the scholarship on the LMS still needs to be integrated into overall South African historiography.

Steve de Gruchy and Andrew Ross provide two of the most interesting contributions. De Gruchy argues that Moffat was not so different from the activist John Philip as is often believed, especially after Moffat returned to South Africa in 1843, when he opposed Boer expansionism and his Tswana converts' "betrayal" by Britain as it withdrew from the interior in 1854 and again in 1881. Ross suggests that Livingstone was, contrary to current orthodoxy, not a paternalistic racist, but an old-style liberal, who believed Africans capable of achieving anything by embracing Christianity and "civilization." He admired African medicine, believed in a linguistic relationship between Bantu-speakers and ancient Egypt, and supported Africans' right of defense against the Boers and even, in the 1850-1853 Eighth Cape Frontier War, against Britain.

Jean and John Comaroff, in contrast, stress missionary disdain for Tswana "irrationality" in the quest to impose Victorian models. This densely written chapter draws heavily on the arcane language of postmodern cultural anthropology, focusing less on the LMS itself than on its promotion of capitalism and modern agriculture. Les Switzer's chapter on the American Zulu Mission, another Congregationalist enterprise, reflects the postmodernist stress on "narrative" and "discourse" in discussing the impact of patriarchy and ethnocentrism on missionary attitudes to women and African evangelists and to developing autonomous Zulu churches, in accordance with the original spirit of Congregationalist "independency."

Natasha...