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In 1910, a middle-aged African sat in a jail cell in Liberia. Locked up for political activism, he now found his mind turning to God. He little suspected something was about to happen that would make him one of the most effective evangelists Africa has seen and the founder of an influential denomination.

According to William Wadé Harris's later testimony, what happened was that the angel Gabriel entered his jail cell. With a sound like gushing water, the Spirit descended on the incarcerated Episcopalian.

"You are not in prison," the angelic messenger assured him. "God is coming to anoint you. You will be a prophet. Your case resembles that of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. You are like Daniel." Gabriel instructed him to replace his western clothes with a white gown and to shun alcohol.

Harris's wife, Rose, hearing the news, assumed her husband had gone mad. Overcome by grief, she fell ill and died.

Who was William Wadé Harris, and why was he in jail?

Harris was a member of the Grebo ethnic group, a people of southern Liberia, closely related to the Kru. The Kru were famous as seamen. For centuries, every ship coming to trade on the West African coast would stop to take on board Kru seamen, who were fearless, skilled, and loyal. Wadé, pronounced Woddy, was his Grebo name. He was born between 1860 and 1865, and to understand his life we must know a little about the history of Liberia.

Liberia's ruling class were free black settlers from America. Only a relatively small number of African Americans ever took this step—17,000, some of whom were forced to emigrate, since they were freed on this condition. (There were about 200,000 free African Americans in the States in the early nineteenth century, and most of them chose to stay in the nation they and their forebears had done so much to build.)

The first settlers arrived in 1822. In 1847, Liberia became an independent black republic; it was the only African nation to retain its independence throughout the colonial period. (Ethiopia, the other exception, was ruled by Italy for a short time.) The founders originally intended to call the capital of their new state "Christopolis," but in the end it became Monrovia, after the American president of the day.

The new state mirrored American political institutions—Capitol, Senate, and all. It had many weaknesses, some of them economic in origin. Under the True Whigs, who ruled from 1878 until a military coup in 1980, the settlers monopolized political power and controlled the economy. They rendered the indigenous peoples of Liberia invisible in the motto on their national crest; "The love of Liberty brought us here."

Meanwhile the Grebo and Kru, in particular, welcomed both Christianity and western education. Since the settlers were Christians already, white missionaries concentrated on this field, encouraging literacy both in English and in local languages. The Kru and Grebo were hostile to the settlers and their monopoly of power. In 1873 they had attempted to found an independent Christian state under the motto "In God We Trust." This was the world into which young Wadé was born.

His father was not a Christian, but he was brought up by an uncle who was a Methodist pastor. Harris became literate in English and Grebo. The name he adopted and the lifestyle of his uncle's household show how much the settlers and educated indigenous people had in common. Harris signed on as a sailor and made several coastal voyages as a youth, and in his old age would refer to himself humbly as a "Kru boy."

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