In the colonial administration, the senior positions of power were held by Europeans. This racial divide was not so easy to justify in the church. What was attractive about Christianity, and Islam for that matter, was that these religions offered something to everyone; they did not only serve the rich, the powerful, or those of a certain race or from a certain region, clan or people. In practice, however, the prejudices of Europeans led to double standards.


In Nigeria, in Lagos, in the 1930s one of the churches was reserved for Europeans only. The only Nigerian allowed in was the composer, musician and organ scholar Fela Sowande. For obliging the Europeans by playing the organ there, on several occasions he incurred criticism from fellow Nigerians. The Sowande family were typical of the Christian educated elite in Lagos; they put up with these racial slights because they had their eyes set on prizes further afield. Fela ended up composing music for the BBC and his brother became a London based barrister.

Listen
	Tunje Sowande describing a religious Sunday

In the neighbouring Gold Coast, Akans expelled from the Methodist Church reacted by setting up their own church with its own heavenly language, Musama Christo Disco or the Army of the Cross of Christ. The Akan lay preacher and composer Ephraim Amu broke with Methodist convention when he was refused ordination because he wore African cloth in church. AMU, who died a few years ago in his nineties, also composed music and lyrics for many hymns, as well as the national anthem.

Listen
	Composer Ephraim Amu speaking about the creation of hymns

In southern Africa, the increasingly segregated Dutch Reform Church and the growing exclusion of Africans from social and political life, led to a huge number of churches springing up, many of them going under the name of Ethiopian (a tribute to Ethiopia's ancient church).

Among these Ethiopian churches was Nehemiah Tile's founded in 1882 and Mangena M. Mokone's Tembu National Church established in 1892. The other important Christian movement was the Watchtower Movement, a precursor of the Jehovah Witnesses. Their followers believed in the end of the colonial rule and the end of the world. They were prominent from the late 19th century onwards in Nyasaland (modern Malawi) and Northern Rhodesia (modern Zambia).

The assertion of African identity was a driving force in many churches, for example, The Church of Christ for the Union of the Bantu and Protection of the Bantu Customs. The African-American Christianity also had great weight in southern Africa, the main church being the African Methodist Episcopal (AME). It was very influential in Zimbabwe, and South Africa, as well as Liberia and Sierra Leone. Local churches continue to flourish and be founded today; in times of war or famine their role becomes particularly important.


In East Africa a number of churches sprung up. After the First World War, Ruben Spartas Mukasa, formerly with the King's African Rifle, formed a church for 'the redemption of all Africa'.

In Kenya the concept of the Holy Spirit played a big role. Speaking in tongues was a regular feature of the services of the Holy Ghost Church, Dimi ya Roho, founded in 1927 and the Joroho Church, founded in 1932.

The Watu wa Mngu (People of God) were a Gikuyu religious group founded between the World Wars. Their mode of praying inspired the title of Jomo Kenyatta's social and anthropological book, Facing Mount Kenya.

"Their prayers are a mixture of Gikuyu religion and Christian; in these they add something entirely new to both religions. They perform their religious duties standing in a picturesque manner.

In their prayer to Mwene-Nyaga (God) they hold up their arms to the sky facing Mount Kenya; and in this position they recite their prayers, and in doing so they imitate the cries of wild beasts of prey, such as lion and leopard, and at the same time they tremble violently.

The trembling, they say, is the sign of the Holy Ghost, Roho Motheru, entering in them. While thus possessed with the spirits, they are transformed from ordinary beings and are in communion with Mwene-Nyaga.

Some of their shrines were closed down by the Government, on the assumption that they were used for secret meetings of a political character?It was also stated that very offensive and unedifying attacks were made, in the name of Christ, on the Christian neighbouring missionaries." - Taken from Facing Mount Kenya by Jomo Kenyatta.

In Tanzania the African National Church of Tanganyika was founded in the 1930s. One of its attractions was that it tolerated polygamy.


In the Congo, the church had a strong anti-colonial strand. Along with the Eglise des Noirs (Church of the Blacks) was Simon Kimbangu's EJCSK (Eglise de Jesus sur la Terre par le Prophete Simon Kimbangu), or Church of Jesus on Earth through the Prophet Simon Kimbangu. The latter was founded in 1921 and its followers refused to pay taxes and witheld their labour. Simon Kimbangu died in prison in 1951, but his church spread in the Congo and Oubangui-Chari (modern Central African Republic).


"We must seek to bring into the Native Church the Chiefs and other men of influence. Do not expect of them the perfection, which a narrow philanthropy exacts. Consider the conditions under which Europe received the Gospel.

Had the hard conditions now imposed upon African Chiefs been required of European sovereigns and chiefs, Christianity might never have been permanently established on the West of the Bosphorus.

The first Christian Emperor, Constantine, was half a pagan to the end. He erected in his new capital, Constantinople, a statue of himself. At the base of this statue, it is said, he placed a fragment of what he believed to be the true Cross.

In the same place he deposited the Paladium, the cherished relic of Pagan Rome, which Aeneas was said to have rescued from the flames of Troy, and which Constantine himself stealthily removed to his new capital. This was his fetish, brought over from heathenism." - Liberian thinker and writer, Edward W. Blyden. Excerpt from Proposals for a West Africa Church.