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Aggrey, James Emman Kwegyir (1875-1927)

African minister and educator

Aggrey was born in Anamabu, Gold Coast Colony (now Ghana), seventeenth son of an important chiefdom counselor and of chiefly lineage on his mother’s side. The family converted during his childhood. Taken into the house of a Wesleyan missionary, he became teacher and preacher, and by 1898 he was headmaster of a Wesleyan school at Cape Coast. That year the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church gave him the opportunity to study at Livingstone College, North Carolina, and at the associated Hood Theological Seminary. He excelled there (B.A. with honors, 1902; M.A. and D.D., 1912), became professor at Livingstone (1902-1920), was ordained an elder of the AME Zion Church, and married an African American, Rosebud Douglass. From 1914 he was also pastor of two rural black churches, combining evangelism with community development. The latter led him into schemes for credit unions and African American land ownership. He was appointed to the influential commission on African education initiated by the Phelps-Stokes Foundation and supported by combined missionary societies, visiting West, Central, and South Africa (1920-1921) and East and South Africa (1923-1924).

As the only black commissioner, he was racial discrimination in several colonies, but his personal and intellectual qualities, powerful utterance, and conciliatory tone made an overwhelming impression, especially in his native Gold Coast and in South Africa (where he was offered a professorship at Fore Hare College). Despite his increasing celebrity, he resumed doctoral studies in sociology at Columbia University, until he agreed in 1924 to be assistant vice-principal to A.G. Fraser at Achimota College, Gold Coast. His mediation with African society was vital to the success of the visionary college. He died in New York while on leave, seeking to complete the book intended as his doctoral dissertation.

Aggrey’s goal was an African characterized by Christianity, education (classical, social, practical, all to the highest standards), agricultural development, and civilization (but not Westernization). His famous unscripted speeches, studded with memorable aphorisms, stressed interracial cooperation, African self-help, and the distinctive contribution of African culture to world civilization.

This article is reprinted from Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions, Macmillan Reference USA, copyright © 1998 Gerald H. Anderson, by permission of Macmillan Reference USA, New York, NY. All rights reserved. By Andrew F. Walls.

Bibliography

T.J. Jones, Education in Africa (1922) and Education in East Africa (n.d.)
E.W. Smith, Aggrey of Africa (1929)
C.K. Williams, Achimota: The Early Years (1962).

Agbebi, Mojola (David Brown Vincent) (1860-1917)

Early leader of the independent church movement in Africa

The son of a Nigerian (Yoruba) Anglican catechist, Agbebi was given the name David Brown Vincent at baptism. Educated by the Church Missionary Society (CMS) and appointed a teacher in 1878, he left the CMS in 1880 following a disciplinary measure. Converted about 1883 at a Baptist revival service, he and his wife, Adeline Adeotan, then became Baptists. Agbebi played a prominent role in the March 1888 establishment of the Native Baptist Church in Lagos, the first indigenous church in West Africa. Understanding the importance of indigenous African leadership for an African church, he affirmed the richness of African culture and in 1894 discontinued using David Brown Vincent as his name. An exemplary preacher and pastor, he initiated evangelistic work in Yorubaland and in the Niger Delta.

While maintaining his Baptist convictions, Agbebi was an apostle of ecumenism and an ambassador for Africa at large. His contact in 1895 with a Welsh Baptist, William Hughes, resulted in training for some Africans at the African Training Institute in Wales. In 1903 he visited the United States and Britain to raise money to support his evangelistic work in West Africa. In 1898 he founded the African Baptist Union of West Africa. He was the first president of the Yoruba Baptist Association, formed in 1914, and he supported his wife’s efforts in establishing the nationwide Baptist Women’s League in 1919. A visionary, he dedicated his life to evangelism, education, and the advancement of African leadership.

Bibliography

Mojola Agbebi, “The West African Problem,” in G. Spiller, ed., Papers on Interracial Problems Contributed to the First International Races Congress…(1911), reprinted in H. S. Wilson, Origins of West African Nationalism (1969)
Akinsola Akiwowo, “The Place of Mojola Agbebi in the African Nationalists Movements, 1890-1917,” Pylon 26 (1965): 122-139
E.A. Ayandele, A Visionary of the African Church: Mojola Agbebi, 1860-1917 (1971)
Hazel King, “Cooperation in Contextualization: Two Visionaries of the African Church—Mojola Agbebi and William Hughes of the African Institute, Colwyn Bay,” JRA 16 (1986): 2-21.
J.B. Webster, The African Churches among the Yoruba, 1888-1922 (1964).

Panikkar, Raimundo (1918-2010)

Ecumenical, interfaith, and global scholar of religion

Born in Barcelona, Spain, the son of a Hindu father and a Roman Catholic mother, Panikkar was brought up in a Hindu-Catholic milieu and spent much of his time, theologically and existentially, in working out how Christians, Hindus, and people of other religious traditions should relate in the developing “one-world” situation. As a Roman Catholic priest, with doctorates in philosophy, science, and theology, he has pursued his academic and spiritual inter religious interests through interfaith dialogue, personal spirituality, and academic appointments at Banares Hindu University, Harvard, and the University of California, Santa Barbara. Panikkar’s Christian, inter-religious, multidisciplinary, and global scholarship has deeply influenced Roman Catholic, wider Christian, and other religious views through significant writings. These include The Unknown Christ of Hinduism (1964)m on the universalization of theology; Christianity and World Religions (1969), on Christian attitudes to other religions; The Trinity and World Religions (1970), on comparative spirituality; The Intra-Religious Dialogue (1978); Myth, Faith, and Hermeneutics (1978); The Vedic Experience (1979), on Hindu studies; and From Alienation to Atoneness (n.d.), on the global future. His original and integrative thought also provides clues to a new and more universal Christian theology incorporating elements from other disciplines, cultures, and religions.

Bibliography

Panikkar wrote over twenty books in languages other than English, and over five hundred articles in various languages.

Miguel Siguan, ed., Philosophia Pacis: Homenaje a Raimon Panikkar (1989, Festschrift).

Shembe, Isaiah Mdliwamafa (1869-1935)

Zulu religious leader and founder of the Nazareth Baptist Church

Shembe was born at Ntabamhlophe near Estcourt, Natal, South Africa, of Zulu parentage. After involvement with Wesleyans, he associated with Baptists and was baptized in July 1906. He seems to have acted as an itinerant evangelist prior to coming into contact with Nkabinde, a former Lutheran who was regarded as a prophet. Nkabinde led him to develop a healing ministry in 1910. A year later, he founded the iBandla lamaNazaretha (Nazareth Baptist Church), a controversial religious movement rooted in Zulu tradition. Shortly afterward he acquired a farm that became his holy city of Ekuphakameni and established an annual pilgrimage to the sacred mountain of Nhlangakazi. Shame was noted for his vivid parables, dramatic healings, and uncanny insights into people’s thoughts. He wrote many moving hymns, composed music, and provided his followers with a rich liturgical tradition based on modified forms of traditional Zulu dancing. Critics of the movement claimed that his followers regarded Shembe as the incarnation of God. Others, led by Lutheran scholar Bengt Sundkler, argued that Shembe’s theology was an Africanized form of Christianity.
After Shembe’s death a succession conflict occurred before leadership passed to his third wife’s son Johannes Galilee Shembe. More serious trouble erupted following J.G. Shame’s death in 1975, when the movement split between his brother, Amos Shembe, and son Londa Shembe. Amos Shembe took the title “bishop” and seems to have led his followers toward orthodox Christianity. Linda Shembe openly admitted that he was unsure whether his movement was Christian, a form of Judaism, or perhaps more closely related to some other religious tradition such as Hinduism. Today there are about one million amaNazaretha in southern Africa.

Bibliography

Irving Hexham, ed., The Scriptures of the amaNazaretha of Ekuphakameni (1994).

Irving Hexham and G.C. Oosthuizen, eds., The Oral history and Sacred Traditions of the Nazareth Baptist Church, 3 vols. (1996-1997).

G.C. Oosthuizen, The Theology of a South African Messiah (1967)

Bengt Sunkler, Bantu Prophets in South Africa (1961) and Zulu Zion and Some Swazi Zionists (1976)

Absalom Vilakazi et al., Shembe: The Revitalization of African Society (1986).

Silva, Lynn A. de (1919-1982)

Sri Lankan ecumenical leader and promoter of inter religious dialogue

De Silva, an ordained minister of the Methodist Church in Sri Lanka, studied theology at the United Theological College, Bangalore, India. Well known as a preacher and theologian, he contributed primarily in three areas: comparative studies in Christianity and Buddhism, theological debate in inter-religious relationships, and promoting Christian-Buddhist dialogue. These were his emphases at the study Centre for Religion and Society, Colombo, where he was the director for many years, and where his wife, Lakshmi, was also an able partner. De Silva was the founder-editor of the journal Dialogue, published by the center in Colombo. For many years he was a member of the World Council of Churches (WCC) working group of the subunit Dialogue with People of Living Faiths and Ideologies. He made significant theological contributions as Sinclair Thompson Memorial Lecturer at the Thailand Theological Seminary, Chiang Mai (1964), and as William Paton Lecturer at Selly Oak Colleges, Birmingham, England (1970). During the Nairobi assembly of the WCC (1975), where dialogue was a controversial subject, he made a notable intervention urging that dialogue is not a temptation to syncretism but a security against syncretism.

Bibliography

Creation, Redemption, and Consummation in Christianity and Buddhism (1964).
Buddhism: Beliefs and Practices in Sri Lanka (1974).
The Problem of the Self in Buddhism and Christianity (1975).

Sihombing, Justin (1890-1979)

Indonesian church leader and moderator of the Toba-Batak Church

Sihombing was born in Pangaribuan, Tarutung, northern Sumatra, the son of a Batak medicine man. After serving as head of a village school, he trained for the ministry and was ordained in 1925. Commissioned to evangelize his people, his fervent preaching and compelling insights produced an outstanding spiritual impact. His pastorate in the city of Medan during World War II led to his election as moderator of the Batak church, the second indigenous leader to hold this office. He was reelected for five successive terms, for a total of 20 years. He led the church to join the World Council of Churches in 1947 and to join the Lutheran World Federation in 1952. During the period of Japanese occupation and the national independence movement, Sihombing gave fearless and faithful leadership, based on biblical convictions. In 1951 the University of Bonn conferred on him an honorary doctor of theology degree in recognition of his leadership in maintaining the unity of the church in a time of great adversity and change. Tribute was paid to him as a church father of outstanding wisdom, patience, and dedication to his office and to his people. His published writings were largely directed to the church and its coworkers. With his book Tohonan sidjaga tondi (Ministry of the Spirit), he undergirded Christian discipleship; in Poda pardjamitaon, a homiletics manual, he published his homiletics lectures at the theological seminary in Pematang Siantar. For the centenary celebration of the church in 1961 he wrote Seratus taon Huria Kristen Batak Protestant (A hundred years: Batak Protestant Christian Church).

Bibliography

Alfred Rutkowsky, “…zu treiben das Evangelium des Friedens,” Berichte d. Rhein. Mission 113 (1963): 193-195

Edward O.V. Nyhus, An Indonesian Church in the Midst of Social Change: The Batak Protestant Christian Church, 1942-1957 (1987)

In die Welt die Welt 15 (1979): 174 (obit.)

Simatupang, Tahi Bonar (1920-1990)

Indonesian Christian leader in the ecumenical movement

Born to a Batak family in Sidikalang, Sumatra, Simatupang became an Indonesian army staff officer and was trained at the royal Dutch military academy in Bandung. During the war of independence he was chief of staff of the armed forces in defense of the Republic of Indonesia. After early retirement he served with the National Council of Churches in Indonesia, then was president of the Christian Conference of Asia (1973-1977) and a president of the World Council of Churches (1975-1983). He was noted as a speaker and writer on social ethics and ecumenical concerns in Indonesia and in other Asian countries and in the West. Because of his prominent role in the national movement for independence in Indonesia (1949-1954), he was able to promote the cause of the Protestant churches in relation to the government as well as in society generally. He was the author of numerous articles and books in Indonesian, some of which were translated into other languages.

Lothar Schreiner, "Simatupang, Tahi Bonar," in Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions, edited by Gerald H. Anderson (New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 1998), 621.

Bibliography

T. B. Simatupang, “The Situation and Challenge of the Christian Mission in Indonesia Today,” South East Asia Journal of Theology 10, no.4 (1969): 10-27.

“Kurzer Ruckblick auf die Geschichte der christlichen Kirche in Indonesien,” in Rolf Italiaander, ed., Indonesiens verantwortliche Gesellschaft (1976), pp. 37-85.

Dynamics for Creative Maturity,” in Gerald H. Anderson, ed., Asian Voices in Christian Thelogy (1976), pp. 87-116.

“Doing Theology in Indonesia Today,” CTC Bulletin 3, no.2 (1982): 20-29.

Gelebte Theologie in Indonesien, zur gesellschaftlichen Verantwortung der Christen (1992).