Product Description
Brethren in Christ Church Among the Ndebele takes off from a theoretical framework including views of Liberation Theology that Latin American writers espoused. It focuses, mostly, on the history of the Brethren in Christ Church in Zimbabwe and that of the Ndebele among whom it settled in 1898. Perhaps guided by Rudyard Kipling’s The White Man’s Burden, the early missionaries preached a mixing of Christianity and westernization, causing some Africans to question and resist its mission. However, Cecil J. Rhodes viewed BICC missionaries as useful partners in subduing the then-rebellious Ndebele in the Matopos area—allegedly writing Rev. Jesse Engle saying: “missionaries are cheaper and better.” No wonder, when the liberation war in Zimbabwe intensified, that the BICC became a target of attacks resulting in the forced withdrawal of all missionaries—and a hasty turning over of power to ill-prepared African leaders.