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Though Livingstone had gone to Africa expecting to work as a traditional missionary (he had originally hoped to be a medical missionary to China), he quickly found his passion in exploring. But this too was missionary work, Livingstone wrote.

My views of what is missionary duty are not so contracted as those whose ideal is a dumpy sort of man with a Bible under his arm. I have labored in bricks and mortar at the forge and carpenter's bench, as well as in preaching and in medical practice. I feel that I am not my own. I am serving Christ when shooting a buffalo for my men, or taking an astronomical observation … and after having, by God's help, gotten information which I hope will lead to more abundant blessing being bestowed on Africa than heretofore.

Still, he had only one convert—and that one relapsed into polygamy. Livingstone was aware of this irony, but he knew that missionaries would follow him who could make thousands of converts.

He was right. His books inspired hundreds of missionaries, including Peter Cameron Scott, founder of Africa Inland Mission. After his first mission to Africa failed in the early 1890s, Scott was inspired by Livingstone's Westminster gravestone to give it another shot.

While colonialists scrambled for Africa's land, missionaries scrambled for its soul. Zambia, though landlocked and much harder to reach than Africa's coastal areas, was no different. In 1878, a mere five years after Livingstone's death, members of the London Missionary Society began their work in the country. They were followed by Roman Catholics in 1891, then the English Primitive Methodist Mission, the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society, the Dutch Reformed Church, Seventh-day Adventists, Baptists, Brethren in Christ, and Anglicans. By 1921, the country counted 65,531 Protestants and 76,084 Catholics.

Like Livingstone, these missionaries didn't consider themselves only preachers of the Word. They founded institutions like hospitals and industrial training centers. They also established schools, which educated generations of Zambians—including Kenneth Kaunda, who became the country's first president in 1964.

It might seem ironic that Western-based missions, especially these schools, became the breeding grounds of anticolonialism, but not when you consider that the teachings there included freedom in Christ and the equality of all believers. The nationalism of Kaunda, the son of a Malawian missionary, reflected these teachings. His speeches talked about Jesus, God-given freedoms, and the Bible. He wasn't just a political hero to Zambians; he was a fellow believer.

Western governments balked at his socialist policies, which were grounded in his Protestant faith and thought. But they worked. Still, when communists pressured Kaunda to shift from a religious humanism to a secular socialism, the churches balked. Kaunda, who once preached the integration of Christianity with state policies, now railed against churches' involvement in politics. He and his party even accused his church opponents of preaching hatred. But it was too late. With the churches against him, Kaunda could not remain in power.

Most Christians, meanwhile, had found a new hero: Frederick Chiluba, who stepped down as president in January after two five-year terms. Like Kaunda in his heyday, Chiluba was seen by Zambia's Christians as God's instrument.

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February 4 2002, Vol. 46, No. 2