The Dark Ages and Twentieth Century Africa: A Comparison in Churchmanship

Extract

Bishop Stephen Neill, in his Survey of the Training of the Ministry in Africa, writes as follows: ‘I could not but feel profound sympathy with the African student who remarked: “It seems to me that missionaries are much too hard in their judgments on the African Churches. Did you never have a period of struggle in your own Churches? ” Indeed we did. In that moment I suddenly saw that, for the African Churches in their contemporary struggle, the most important period is the one that ordinarily we never teach them in detail, the Dark Ages.… They wrestle with precisely the same difficulties and are called to find anew the way out of the twilight of the coexistence of the old and new into a more genuinely Christian life and social order. ’