Is Christianity in Africa a Fruit of Colonialism?
Abstract
There has been a belief in traditional and conservative African circles that Christianity is a religion that was brought by the white man. However Christianity on the African continent precedes colonialism. The history of. Christianity in Africa can be divided into three phases: Antiquity, the Portuguese period and the 19th-century missionary efforts. The first phase, where Church in North Africa and the Horn of Africa ended with the rise of Islam. Efforts to evangelise Africa south of the Sahara in the second period 15th to the 18th centuries were apparently a complete failure because Christianity did not take roots. The last period is marked by the blossoming of the Church in Africa. where the Christian population in Africa grew to some 335 million in 2000 (45%), marking a shift in the “center of gravity of Christianity” from the West to Latin America, parts of Asia and Africa.
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