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Christians, Colonists, and Conversion: a View from the Nilotic Sudan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

John W. Burton
John W. Burton
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Connecticut College, New London.
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Extract

The majority opinion of those who have contributed to the literature on conversion in sub-Saharan Africa suggests that Islam has been more ‘successful’ than Christianity in attracting the faithful. The standard inventory of explanations for this state of affairs include the following: first, it has been commonly noted, Islam has proved to be more compatible than Christianity with indigenous customs, cosmology, and morality. A second point that has been argued with some consistency (though evidencing not a small measure of ethno-centric bias) is that ‘it is easier for the African to govern himself by the few rules set forth by Mohammedanism…than…by the all-embracing stringent laws of Christianity’. A third, more encompassing stance, implies that conversion to Islam can be accounted for sociologically, ‘while the acceptance of Christianity involves the recognition of divine truth’, in which case a similar line of analysis is uncalled for. Thus, according to William Arens, a thorough review of the voluminous literature indicates that there is an ‘ideological flavour’ in much of what is accepted as objective and authoritative material on this topic, and that a more balanced understanding of the facts could be realised if greater attention was given to the study of the social context of evangelical Christianity in Black Africa.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , June 1985 , pp. 349 - 369
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985

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References

1 Cited in Arens, William, ‘Islam and Christianity in Sub-Saharan Africa ethnographic reality or ideology’, in Cahiers d'études africaines (Paris), 15, 59, 1975, p. 444.Google Scholar

2 Ibid. p. 447.

3 Ibid. p. 443.

4 Arens, ibid. p. 447, also draws attention to the fact that the ‘unrelenting stance of Christianity in Africa’ offers a stark contrast to the historical facts of conversion in European communities. In that setting, accommodation rather than doctrinal purity was the rule. Peter Rigby hints at some of the reasons for this disparity in ‘Pastors and Pastoralists: the differential penetration of Christianity among East African cattle herders’, in Comparative Studies in Society and History (Cambridge), 23, 1981, pp. 96–129. In his words, loc. cit. p. 98, the message of evangelical Chrstiana in Eastern Africa reflected ‘specific ideological forms related to late 19th and 20th century Europe and their dominant capitalist mode of production… These forms of colonial Christian ideology… were very different from, say, early Christianity or Islam’.Google ScholarCf. Thornton, J.,‘The Development of an African Catholic Church in the Kingdom of the Congo, 1491–1750’, in The Journal of African History (Cambridge), 25, 1984, p. 147–68.Google Scholar

1 As in other essays I have written, it has seemed most fruitful to consider these peoples as more alike than different, though this recourse is not intended to neglect, nor deny, significant variations in forms of social organisation and related cultural expressions that can be observed. It is unlikely, for example, that the 1982 observations by R. G. Lienhardt are applicable to northern Dinka communities, such as those in the area of Renk. Likewise, the voluminous studies by Francis Mading Deng evidence a certain bias towards Dinka-speaking peoples in the area of Abyei. In the same manner, comments based on observations in Atuot communities reflect the interests of a special focus. In spite of these qualifications, the conclusions reached are offered as valid observations.

2 See Sanderson, L. P. and Sanderson, Neville, Education, Religion and Politics in the Southern Sudan, 1899–1964 (London, 1981).Google Scholar

1 Collins, Robert O., Land Beyond the Rivers: the Southern Sudan, c. 1898–1918 (New Haven, 1971), p. 11.Google Scholar A decade before this work was published, Gray, Richard noted in A Histoty of the Southern Sudan, 1839–1889 (London, 1961), p. 203: ‘The reconquest in 1898 depended not on a desire to develop the resources or to meet the needs of the area itself, but on a desire to safeguard the Nile waters as an inevitable extension of the British occupation of Egypt… The southern Sudan, remote and savage while its neighbours advanced, became a problem child of the 20th century’.Google Scholar

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1 Collins, Land Beyond the Rivers, p. 283.

2 See, for example, Henderson, K. D. D., The Making of the Modern Sudan (London, 1953);Google ScholarArkell, A. J., A History of the Sudan from the Earliest Times to 1821 (London, 1955);Google ScholarHolt, P. M., A Modern History of the Sudan from the Funj Sultanate to the Present Day (London, 1961);Google Scholaral-Rahim, Muddathir 'Abd, Imperialism and Nationalism in the Sudan (London, 1969);Google Scholar and Deng, Francis Mading, Dynamics of Identification: a basis for national integration in the Sudan (London, 1973).Google Scholar

3 See Gray, op. cit. and Lienhardt, R. G., Divinity and Experience: the religion of the Dinka (Oxford, 1961).Google Scholar

4 See, for example, Deng, Dynamics of Identification, p. 27.

1 See Collins, Robert O., Shadows in the Grass: Britain in the Southern Sudan, c. 1918–1956 (New Haven, 1984).Google Scholar

2 See Beshir, Mohamed Omer, Educational Development in the Sudan, 1898–1956 (Oxford, 1969), pp. 18–19.Google Scholar

1 Collins, Land Beyond the Rivers, p. 286.

1 Not at least to my knowledge. Douglas H. Johnson has overseen archival resources in the southern Sudan in an official capacity and might well bé able to cite correspondences of which I am not aware.

2 Collins, Land Beyond the Rivers, p. 291: ‘Cromer had opened the Sudan to Christianity, not from religious scruples but for administrative convenience. He expected the missionaries to train literate clerks and artisans to staff the bureacracy without demands upon the government's slender resources’.

3 Ibid. p. 295: ‘Unlike Uganda and other British territories in eastern and central Africa, the Sudan Government could deal arbitrarily with the missionary societies, paying little heed to their demands for religious freedom because the Sudan was not bound by the General Act of the Conference of Berlin, 1885… Missionaries would be allowed to proselytise among the southern Sudanese so long as they obeyed the laws and regulations of the Government at Khartoum and remained as far away from each other as possible.’

4 Ibid. pp. 292–3.

5 Ibid. p. 293.

1 A notable, though not perhaps unique entry, is provided by Beidelman, I. O., Colonial Evangelism: a socio-historical study of an East African mission at the grassroots (Bloomington, 1982), p. 62, who observed that C.M.S. missionaries in Kaguruland, Tanzania, occasionally ‘held services and preached in English to natives who could not possibly understand them’.Google Scholar

2 See Burton, John W., ‘Pastoral Nilotes and British Colonialism’, in Ethnohistory (Tucson, Ariz.), 28, 1981, p. 127.Google Scholar

3 See Johnson, Douglas H., ‘Evans-Pritchard, the Nuer, and the Sudan Political Service’, in African Affairs (London), 81, 323, 04 1982, pp. 231–46.Google Scholar

1 Sanderson and Sanderson, op. cit.

2 Ibid. p. 31.

3 Ibid. p. 200.

4 Cf. Beidelman, op. cit.

1 Cited in Sanderson, G. N., ‘Some Problems of Colonial Rule and Local Response in the Southern Sudan, 1900–1920’, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1976.Google Scholar

2 Deng, Francis Mading, The Dinka of the Sudan (New York, 1972), p. 79.Google Scholar

3 Collins, Shadows in the Grass, p. 6.

4 Cited in ibid. p. 7.

1 Ibid. p. 10.

2 Ibid. p. 10.

1 Ibid. p. 11.

2 Cf. Johnson, Douglas H., ‘Colonial Policy and Prophets: the Nuer settlement’, in Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford, 10, 1979, pp. 1–20;Google Scholar‘The Fighting Nuer: primary sources and the origin of a stereotype’, in Africa (London), 51, 1981, pp. 508–27;Google Scholar and ‘Tribal Boundaries and Border Wars: Nuer-Dinka relations in the Sobat and Zeraf valleys, 1860–1976’, in The Journal of African History, 23, 1982, pp. 183–203.Google Scholar

3 Sanderson and Sanderson, op. cit. p. 52.

4 Ibid.

1 Cited in Beshire, op. cit. p. 75.

2 Ibid.

1 Ibid.

2 Cited in Wai, Dunstan M. (ed), The Southern Sudan: the problem of national integration (London, 1973), p. 175.Google Scholar

1 Beshir, op. cit. p. 74.

2 Ibid.

3 Sanderson and Sanderson, op. cit. p. 200.

4 Cf. Burton, ‘Pastoral Nilotes and British Colonialism’.

5 P. P. Howell, cited in ibid.

1 Lienhardt, R. G., ‘The Dinka and Catholicism’, in J., Davies (ed.), Religious Organization and Religious Experience (New York, 1982), p. 86.Google Scholar

2 Cf. Burton, John W., ‘Ghosts, Ancestors and Individuals among the Atuot of the Southern Sudan’, in Man (London), 13, 1978, pp. 600–17.Google ScholarPubMed

3 Lienhardt, loc. cit. p. 83.

1 Sanderson and Sanderson, op. cit.

2 Evans-Pritchard, op. cit. pp. 48–9.

3 Johnson, loc. cit. 1982, p. 245, fn. 54.

1 See Needham, Rodney, Belief, Language and Experience (Chicago, 1972), and Lienhardt, ‘The Dinka and Catholicism’.Google ScholarCf. also Nida, Eugene, ‘Problems Translating the Scriptures into Shilluk, Anuak and Nuer’, in The Bible Translator (London), 6, 1955 pp. 55–63; Deng, Dinka Cosmology; and Burton, ‘Ghosts, Ancestors and Individuals among the Atuot of the Southern Sudan’.Google Scholar

2 Lienhardt, ‘The Dinka and Catholicism’, p. 89. Cf. Arens, loc. cit. p. 448: ‘In a very real sense a convert could not be both an African and a Christian since to the European missionary these were contradictory categories.’

1 Lienhardt, loc. cit. p. 83.

2 Cf. Deng, Francis Mading, Dinka Cosmology (London, 1980).Google Scholar

3 See especially Lienhardt, op. cit. p. 83.

4 Ibid. p. 84.

5 Burton, John W., ‘Sacrifice: a polythetic class of Atuot religious thought’, in Journal of Religion in Africa (Leyden), 11, 1980, p. 94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Phrased in different terms, Rigby, loc. cit. p. 125, argues that the Maasai, ‘because of the unity of ideological and economic practice characteristic of their social formation’, realised that conversion was antithetical to the survival of their manner of livelihood. The education offered by missionaries likewise represented ‘a denial of the unity of pastoral praxis and ideology in an egalitarian social formation’. In a less doctrinaire manner it has been suggested by Peel, J. D. Y., ‘Religious Change in Yorubaland’, in Africa, 37, 1967, pp. 292–306, that converts are those who have already been alienated from their traditions.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

1 Evans-Pritchard, op. cit. p. 18.

2 Ibid. pp. 152–3.

3 Cf. Deng, The Dinka of the Sudan, pp. 158–60.

1 See Maiwal, Bona, The Sudan: a second challenge to nationhood (New York, 1985).Google Scholar

2 Cf. Sanderson and Sanderson, op. cit. p. 430.