The Church and the Movement for Congo Reform
When Christian missionaries returned to the Congo in the nineteenth century, all traces of the promising Portuguese missionary effort of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries had been obliterated. The Kingdom of the Congo which had produced several generations of Christian Kings, thousand...
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| Format: | Electronic/Print Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Cambridge University Press
[1963]
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| In: |
Church history
Year: 1963, Volume: 32, Issue: 1, Pages: 46-56 |
| IxTheo Classification: | KAH Church history 1648-1913; modern history |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (doi) |
| Parallel Edition: | Electronic
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| Summary: | When Christian missionaries returned to the Congo in the nineteenth century, all traces of the promising Portuguese missionary effort of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries had been obliterated. The Kingdom of the Congo which had produced several generations of Christian Kings, thousands of converts, even an African clergy and an African Bishop, had been literally swept away by the European slave trade. The Church had paid a heavy price for its failure to restrain the greed of the faithful, and one would scarcely expect to find the error repeated. Furthermore, the intervening centuries had produced in Europe a growth of humanitarian sentiment which had sensitized the Christian conscience to the suffering of the oppressed; indeed this concern for the temporal welfare of the African had been an important factor in the outburst of nineteenth century missionary activity. Yet when this second encounter of European and African produced in the Congo Free State a form of exploitation which rivalled the first in its brutality, dedicated Catholic missionaries and zealous Catholic prelates staunchly defended the regime against the attacks of reformers. The explanation of this melancholy episode appears to lie in the fact that sectarian interest, national loyalty, and an overwhelming faith in the benefits of Europeanization were allowed to obscure the essential facts. |
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| ISSN: | 0009-6407 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Church history
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.2307/3162540 |