1 of 2

These days we're working on an issue of Christian History about Christianity in Africa, to be published next year. Though we dipped into this subject with our treatment of David Livingstone (issue 56), there are so many more chapters to tell. These include not just stories about white missionaries called to bring the gospel to alien (and sometimes fatal) lands, but the countless tales of indigenous leaders who have built up the church in their own countries.

The story we bring today slips through the cracks between these categories. It deals with one of those called back to a land both his own and not his own—a free African-American descended from enslaved forebears, who returned to Africa as a missionary. Western Christians must hear these stories, too, if we are to begin to understand the tangled roots and rich, abundant fruit of Christianity in Africa.

Pull up a chair, then, as Michigan writer Jennifer Parker sketches the outline of this forgotten missionary hero's life in her review of Pagan Kennedy's new book, Black Livingstone: A True Tale of Adventure in the Nineteenth-Century Congo (Viking).

***

Pagan Kennedy's Black Livingstone reads like a swashbuckling fantasy, the work of a novelist's romantic imagination. But amid the scenes of jungle exploration, big-game hunting, international political intrigue, and even courtroom drama, readers will discover a tale stranger than fiction.

In 1890 the segregated Presbyterian Church in the U.S. sent William Sheppard, a young African American born in Virginia near the end of the Civil War, to "darkest Africa" as a missionary. And it insisted on assigning him a white companion, since the denomination would never send a black man to Congo alone and unsupervised.

Samuel Lapsley, the white son of an Alabama plantation owner, was naturally expected to oversee the mission. Yet the two men traveled through the African wilderness as yokefellows, sharing a tent, meals, and clothing, not to mention occasional fears, triumphs, and sorrows. Crossing a racial divide to forge a friendship improbable in their time, the missionaries became partners in the dangerous effort to take Christianity into the largely unexplored Congo.

A sad collaboration between colonialism and the church also is part of the drama. The deceitful efforts of King Leopold II of Belgium, who summoned Lapsley to offer advice about where to set up the mission, come across as particularly hair-raising.

"Once the missionaries had helped to westernize the territory—building roads and schools, teaching the people English—Leopold would expel them," Kennedy writes. "Then he'd send in traders and make a fortune. Though they little suspected it, the missionaries would work for the king."

When one-third of all travelers to Africa died, usually of disease, it took an extraordinary person to survive, let alone succeed, in the Congo wilderness. While Lapsley died early on, succumbing to tropical fever, Sheppard thrived and went on to run one of the only all-black missions in Africa. Lapsley's primary focus was the Christianizing and "civilizing" of the heathen. Sheppard concentrated on meeting the tribes throughout the region—the Bateke, the Zappo-Zaps, the Kuba—and bridging the culture gap by addressing their physical needs. "He was far more interested in saving bodies than souls," Kennedy writes. "Lapsley longed to keep the Africans from falling into the fiery pit of unbelief, but Sheppard preferred to see them clothed and fed and cheerful."

next page... |  1 of 2

FREE E-Newsletter Sign up for the ChristianHistory.net e-mail newsletter. Discover more about your Christian heritage with this weekly e-newsletter that features key people, topics, and events from the history of Christianity.      RSS Feed   RSS Help