Throughout human history, encounters among different peoples have not been crowned by indifference. Inasmuch as peoples embody heterogeneous worldviews, their encounters often involve two characteristic extremes. On the one hand, it is possible to identify instances of welcome and peaceful cohabitation. On the other hand, there have been cases of brutal occupation and barbaric hegemony. Almost invariably, the aftermath of those interactions produces complex processes of collaboration and oppression.
In this volume, editor Jean-Luc Vellut offers readers an opportunity to study the implications involved in the encounter between Congolese and Western peoples. Vellut does not offer a diachronic history of this encounter. He instead presents a synchronic account of this process through the prism of the prophetic movement launched in 1921 by the Congolese Simon Kimbangu, a former Protestant catechist. In so doing, Vellut relies solely on materials from the Catholic missions whose presence constituted a major force in the encounter between Congolese peoples and the West. Vellut's painstaking and in-depth research draws upon a profuse corpus of correspondence, reports, and lively debates, all produced in response to Kimbangu's prophetic movement. Vellut provides an excellent and long Introduction, in which he explains that the sources in the book were intended for three audiences: the Catholic Church, which includes local Congolese missions and the home churches of the missionaries (that is, the Belgian church, the French church, and the Vatican); the Belgian colonial regime; and the large European public who sympathized with the projects of mission and colonialism. In discussing Kimbangu's religious movement, Vellut rejects singular explanations of past processes of change, favoring instead the use of multiple vantage points to study history. In the compendious Conclusion, Vellut offers an overview of several different nineteenth- and twentieth-century historical accounts of Christianity in the Congo Basin.
The distinctiveness and subtleties of the historical analysis in this volume might have escaped my lens of an ethicist and social theorist. However, I argue that the strength of this volume lies in exposing the different layers of conflicts and interests that were implicated in the encounter of Congolese peoples and the Belgian colonizers. Kimbangu's prophetic movement served as a critical catalyst in unveiling those competitions and claims.
Kimbangu declared himself the black messiah, and he articulated a doctrine that called for the redemption of black people. Hence, his messianic fervor shook four major areas. First, religion became a complex battlefield. Missionaries worked in mission fields for the salus animarum, or the salvation of souls, and the eradication of ‘paganism’, the term that foreign missionaries used to refer to ancestral beliefs. But the zeal and activism of Western missionaries also drove rivalries among different Christian denominations. The Catholic missionaries sought to overtake and supersede their Protestant counterparts and vice versa. In effect, missionaries exported the religious rivalries of Europe and the Americas to the Congolese colony. This state of affairs suppressed Congolese agency and hampered the ways in which Congolese peoples could appropriate, and lay claims to, Christian faith on their own terms. Kimbangu's prophetic movement challenged this religious indoctrination, and its field of rivalries, and promised a clear pathway of religious liberation to its Congolese followers.
Second, tensions also emerged around national political interests. The Belgian, French, and Portuguese missionaries feared the destabilization of their homelands’ interests in the region by the growing British, Sweden, and American missionary presence. In a similar vein, Kimbangu's prophetic movement became a political threat when its teaching and songs were interpreted as subversive to the colonial regime and supportive of Congolese self-determination.
Third, the movement allegedly put the economic interests of the colonial regime in jeopardy. The Catholic missionaries accused Kimbangu of inciting his followers to abstain from paying taxes and working in plantations. Fourth, while foreign missionaries found praiseworthy Kimbangu's efforts to fight against three social ills, namely fetishism (occultism), obscene dances, and polygamy, they also found that the movement fostered ‘insolence’ and ‘insubordination’ to white people. Such claims made by Catholic missionaries, who collaborated with the colonial regime, helped to trigger the colonial state's full involvement in the suppression of Kimbangu's messianic campaign. Indeed, these actions suggest that the patriotism and the religious agendas of these missionaries were inextricably connected.
These assorted issues and circumstances give evidence to the way that various dimensions of human life — religious, social, and political — overlap and intersect with each other. Moreover, this book also demonstrates the interconnections of religious and political forces in colonial Congo. In 1921 and thereafter, there was no separation between church and state in the Belgian Congo, because missionaries and colonial officers shared common interests and concerns, which brought them together into close collaboration.
It is worth noting that the reading of this volume can be tedious, given that different voices (Catholic missionaries of different religious orders) reported much the same story about the prophetic movement of Kimbangu. However, this repetition becomes fascinating insofar as it gives insight into the sensibilities, interests, and objectives of those doing the reporting. Readers of this book will be further rewarded by Vellut's careful contextual and interpretive notes, which abound throughout.
