HISTORICIZING CHRISTIAN INDEPENDENCY: THE
SOUTHERN AFRICAN PENTECOSTAL MOVEMENT
c. 1908–60
Authors: MAXWELL DAVID 
Published: July 2002

Scholarly study of Christian independency in southern Africa began
with the publication of Bengt Sundkler's Bantu Prophets in 1948. A rich
literature subsequently followed, much of it deploying his now classic
typology of Ethiopian and Zionist Churches. Nevertheless, the historical
study of independency has been limited. As one scholar has recently
observed, historians have tended to focus on the Ethiopian-type churches,
leaving the study of the Zionist-type to anthropologists and missiologists.
The neglect of Zionist-type churches by historians meant that early studies
on this form of Christianity were historically weak. Missiologists distorted
the whole area of inquiry with theological concerns, at first raising the spectre
of syncretistic heresy, and more recently making claims about indigenous
authenticity. Anthropologists initially viewed independent churches as
fascinating examples of cultural resilience. The movements were seen as
sources of community, loyalty and security in the face of the atomising and
anomic experience of urbanization; or as foci for ‘the process of modification
and adaptation’ taking place throughout rural society. But anthropologists
rarely paid attention to independency's origins. Where historians did engage
with Zionist-type independency, they did so through the spectacles of
nationalist historiography in order to demonstrate independency's supposed
proto-nationalist character.

By adopting an international and regional perspective, this article provides
an account of the historical origins and early evolution of these churches.
Where scholars in the past have tended to disaggregate the movement,
essentializing its later racial and geographical boundaries, this paper will
draw the early history of the movement together, illuminating its common
origin and global character. The basic ingredients of this account have been
available in the work of Walter Hollenweger, Jean Comaroff, Sundkler's later
book, and more recently, studies by Jim Kiernan and David Chidester.
Nevertheless, the historical implication that so-called African independent
churches emerged out of the global pentecostal movement continues to be
ignored.

The purpose of demonstrating the origins of southern African pentecostalism
is not to make the now commonplace historical and anthropological
critique of authenticity, although those pursuing a theological agenda which
distinguishes African Independent Churches as a separate category of
Christianity would do well to pay heed to that critique. Neither is it assumed
that analysis of origins explains the meaning and appeal of different southern
African pentecostal movements and denominations. Rather, this paper
demonstrates that pentecostalism is a global phenomenon: a collection of
vital and powerful idioms about illness and healing, evil and purity which
make striking resonances with peoples sharing common historical experiences
of marginalization from established religion and from the values of
twentieth-century industrial capitalism. At the same time pentecostalism has
also exhibited a remarkable capacity to localize itself, taking on very distinct
meanings in different local contexts. At the heart of this paper lies a
comparative analysis of the radically different responses which the movement
engendered from the South African and Southern Rhodesian states.