"It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes. We make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us to seek is where it accords with our emotions."
Alexander Isayevich Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) was a Russian dissident, novelist, dramatist, historian, and the winner of 1970 Nobel Prize for literature. He survived eight years in Stalin's labor camps. He was exiled from the Soviet Union in 1974 and returned to Russia in 1994. His writings that exposed the tyranny and horrors of the Soviet forced labor system included The Cancer Ward (1966), The First Circle (1964), The Gulag Archipelago (1976), and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962) . His heroic figures portrayed the triumph of man over suffering and tyranny. He also warned the west of its moral bankruptcy, vulgar materialism, and probable political fate.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Malawi: Land of Contrasts
Sometimes called the Switzerland of Africa, Malawi is a small country of majestic mountains, highland forests, picturesque tea plantations, and some surprisingly semi-arid regions. Most of the agricultural land can best be classified as the semi-arid tropics. The country is over 500 miles long, but in width, only 5 miles in some areas, and up to 100 miles maximum. Lake Malawi is the third largest in Africa. A brief visit to Nkhata Bay was a highlight of our travels because of its splendid view of the lake and its bustling, open-air market along the narrow main village street. Magnificent, but often cloud-enveloped, Mount Mulanje is almost 10,000 feet high.
Most minor roads are untarred and quite dusty in the dry season. We saw no rain during the nearly one month we were there in the hot dry month of September. Bridges were at times treacherous, parts of them being removed by those who needed the wood or metal.
We hiked about seven miles early one morning to visit one of our Seventh Day Baptist church's four dispensaries in Malawi. Most of the way we hiked along the railway line. On five occasions we walked across rather long narrow railway bridges, as we occasionally peaked nervously at the scenic but shallow river far beneath us. Parts of the river divide Malawi from Mozambique. The dispensary or clinic had been established in Chipho, on the river border area, at an earlier time when Mozambique refugees had been pouring into Malawi to escape the civil war violence in Mozambique. We discovered after finishing our review and training at the clinic, and after we had had lunch with our local deacon and his wife, that the train, on which we were to return, had derailed the evening before. We ended up hiking back over the same 7 miles, this time in the heat of the day, praying that the train wouldn't catch us while crossing the longest of the rail bridges, the last one before reaching our home base of the previous week, Makapwa. The train did indeed return but thankfully not until after dark that evening, a few hours after our return to Makapwa.
Malawians are some of the friendliest and most hospitable people I have met anywhere in the world. The children especially were a joy to be around. As we travelled on the very rural dirt roads, the children waved, shouting to us in excitement. They also would quickly run to be included in any quick, candid photos I would attempt to shoot.
Beautiful modern architecture was evident in Llongwe, the new capital city located in the central region where former strongman President Hastings Kamuzu Banda was born. The charming small city of Zomba, in the southern region is the former colonial capital and location of Chancellor College of the University of Malawi. I spent one afternoon at Chancellor College doing research on Charles Domingo, an early Christian pastor, teacher, and writer, who was trained at Livingstonia under Dr. Robert Laws, and even for a time, at Lovedale in South Africa. Domingo was baptized by the famous early anti-colonialism hero of Malawi, John Chilembwe, a Baptist pastor who had been trained in Virginia in the 1890's, and who in 1915 led an uprising against the British, when the hated hut tax, and onerous conscription of Malawians to fight the Germans and their allies in neighboring Tanzania during Wold War I, had caused a lot of turmoil in Nyasaland (Malawi since independence in 1964). Domingo, himself became a Seventh Day Baptist, through the English-born, Baptist missionary Joseph Booth, most famous as a vocal opponent of the corrupt colonialist system. Booth had written a book in 1897 entitled Africa for the Africans. Both Booth and Domingo were deported from Malawi, though both were pacifist oriented and not directly involved in the 1915 uprising. Domingo soon returned to Malawi, but Booth remained in and died in South Africa. Chilembwe was hunted down and shot near the Mozambique border, while many of his band of supporters were executed. Domingo himself was the first certified native teacher in Nyasaland, and prioritized setting up schools for chilren along with the churches he helped establish in the northern region of Malawi.
Zomba is surrounded by the Zomba Plateau and some mountainous terrain. On the top of the plateau is the stately Ku Chawe Hotel, recently restored. We enjoyed its fine restaurant with outside dining and a great view down into the valley. On our descent to the valley, we marvelled at the bicycles, on the steep, long, winding road, heavily laden with firewood being carefully guided down the long, steep mountain road to potential buyers of the firewood in Zomba. We were amazed at the strong young men who would day after day accomplish this herculean task, in order to eke out a living and to put food on the table.
Also in the southern region is Blantyre, the largest city. It was especially intriguing to me because of its impressive history and fine old architecture. Inside Blantyre's magnificent St Michael and All Angels Church, completed in 1891, are brass monuments to David Livingstone, the famous missionary-explorer, as well as to missionary David Clement Scott, who was a superb linguist and noteworthy cultural specialist. Scott published the comprehensive Cyclopedic Dictionary of the Mang'anja Language (forerunner of Malawi's national language Chichewa) in 1892, and the entire New Testament in 1896. Amazingly, the beautiful church is itself the work of David Scott. The Scottish Presbyterian missionary had no formal training in architecture or any of the building trades. The five sanctuary windows are magnificent art treasures. The inscriptions are inspiring: "The Good Shepherd," "The Good Physician," "And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me." The clocktower on the grounds also has a monument with a rather long list of the names of the early Scottish Presbyterian missionaries. The Mount Soche Hotel, and surrounding gardens, are among Blantyre's most eloquent. The Mandala House is reputedly Blantyre's oldest building.
Mzuzu, in the northern region is the only other city of any significant size. It is in an area of mountains and of a thriving timber industry. We saw many monkeys and a small "deer" during our travels in the northern region. The city also has a fairly new public university.
We were privileged to visit people and churches in all three regions of the country. Many of the churches had no benches, either of wood, or of the more traditional mud variety. The windows and doors were also often unfinished, being gradually finished as the funds were raised. Many times extra bricks are made and kilned in order to sell, so that the relatively expensive corrugated metal roof could be purchased. The corrugated metal sheets are often secured over long hand-hewn, wooden poles. My last weekend in Blantyre I preached (from Acts 1 and 2, and the work of the Holy Spirit in mission) with an interpretor, at a church where 200 to 250 adults and children sat on the earthen floor.
In the central region especially, we visited villages that were predominantly Muslim. The Muslims make up at least 15% of the population, mainly among the Yao people (as many as 90% of the Yao are Muslim), and to a much lesser extent among the Chewa people. Picturesque mosques are evident in these villages, as well as in all the cities. There have been only three presidents since Malawi's independence, the second being a Muslim. The first, Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda, was Presbyterian, and the current president, Mose Bingu, is Roman Catholic. Current Vice President Joyce Banda, is Presbyterian. The largest religious groups in Malawi are the Roman Catholics, the Sunni Muslims, the Presbyterians, the Seventh day Adventists, and several Pentecostal-Charismatic churches, including the Assemblies of God and the Living Waters churches. The Anglicans are not as prominent as they were in the colonial days, prior to Malawi's independence.
We enjoyed the great variety of food, but especially the fresh vegetables and fruit from our host family's garden in Limbe, on the outskirts of Blantyre. I also especially enjoyed the 'chambo" (talapia) and other fish dishes. Nsima, made from corn is the national food staple. Malawias joke that if you haven't had nsima with your meal, then you haven't really eaten a meal at all.
A portion of the Old Testament (Genesis and Exodus) is available from the Bible Society of Malawi in the Yao language, in a paperback, with drawings reminiscent of the Good News for Modern Man New Testament ( the Today's English Version). Their Bible House is in Blantyre. The New Testament may be published within months. I was also able to purchase from the Bible House in Blantyre the complete Bible in Chichewa (Chewa), the national language of Malawi. Both the older "Revised Chinyanja (Union) Version", also known as the Buku Lopatulika (first edition 1922, with revised editions in 1936 and 1966) and the much newer version, the modern speech Buku Loyera, finally completed in 1998, are readily available. The Buku Loyera was a project of both Protestant and Roman Catholic scholars. Some Protestant and independent Churches still prefer to use the older Buku Lopatulika. I visited the bookshop of a large Catholic Cathedral in Blantyre, but was unable to find the earlier Roman Catholic translation, Malembo Oyera, done over many years by the French missionary Fr Louis Villy and finally published in 1966. The Catholic bookshop only sold the Buku Loyera. Neither was I able to locate in any used bookstore either the Malembo Loyera or a pre-independence copy of the old Chinyanga Bible, the New Testament of which is, essentially, with some later revisions, the translation work of the late 19th century pioneer missionary David Clement Scott, and the Old Testament of which is essentially the work completed in 1919 of missionaries Rev W. Murray and his assistant Rev Alexander Heaterwick. The most recent edition of the Buku Lopatulika is as close as I could get to the older Bible. The Chinyanga language evolved into the Chichewa language under President Hastings, soon after Malawi's independence in 1964. In Zambia and Zimbabwe it is still called Nyanja (Chinyanja) My search for these earlier versions continues.
I was able to acquire full Bibles in Tumbuka ( or Chitumbuka, the prefix "Chi" indicates language of the particular people group, Tumbuka), Sena (or Chisena), and Kyangonde all published by The Bible Society in Malawi, but copyrighted originally by either the United Bible Societies or the British and Foreign Bible Society. Chitumbuka is also spoken in neighboring Zambia. These Bibles I found either at the Bible House or at the CLAIM (Christian Literature Association in Malawi) Bookstore. Both of these excellent book outlets are located in downtown Blantyre. A used copy of the New Testament and Psalms in the Lomwe language was traded to me by our hosts' son, since, though of Lomwe ancestry, he can't read Lomwe. It was published in 1991 by the United Bible Societies afiliate Casa da Biblia in Mozambique, but was originally copyrighted by the National Bible Society of Scotland in 1930. The Lomwe language is spoken more in neihboring Mozambique than in Malawi. I was informed at the Bible House in Blantyre by a 12-year employee that the full Bible in Lomwe should be available within about 5 years, and that the feasability of a possible partial or full Bible translation into Tonga (the Tonga are a people group in the northern region, mostly residing near Lake Malawi, consisting of only about 170,000 people) is still being researched.
The health, sanitation, and land management needs in Malawi at times seem staggering. Probably 10-20% of the population are HIV positive, though the percentage may have declined somewhat lately. Life expectancy is only in the age 40's, having declined because of the AIDS epidemic. Falciparum malaria is very deadly, especially among the very young and the immunosuppressed. There have been over 800 cases of the dreaded cholera disease this year already. Last year only a few cases of cholera were reported. Cholera is especially deadly in the very young, causing rapid dehydration from the diarrhea produced.
Maternal and infant mortality rates are very high compared to the western world. Malnutrition related to droughts has been common in the past. Irrigation of some of the semi-arid lands of Malawi is needed, but is still relatively uncommon. Controlled burning of the land is common. I saw these burnings very frequently in many regions of Malawi when I was there in September.
Corn is the staple of most Malawian diets, yet corn yields are low compared to western standards. Here were some average corn yields (admittedly a few years ago) in tons per hectare (one hectare equals 2.4 acres): USA about 9 (Indiana and Illinois are an even better, at 16), South Africa 4, Malawi 1.4, Mozambique 0.9 (three of four of our church's clinics are very near the Mozambique border). Average for all of Africa is 1.5, so Malawi was actually at about the average African yield, and also of the neighboring Zambia yield for corn, but significantly better than neighboring Mozambique yield. Malawi's corn yield may now be above the African average as food production in Malawi has increased significantly in the past 2 years or so, primarily due to some government initiatives to improve farming techniques and land management. Another positive note: uranium is now being mined, for export, in the far north of Malawi, near Karonga.
Would you please pray as individuals for Malawi. Also pray in Bible study groups, and in local churches. Here are some suggested prayer items:
1. Completion and publication of the Yao New Testament within the next few months.
2. Completion of the rest of Old Testament in Lomwe.
3. Possible translation of at least a portion of the Bible in the Tonga language.
4. A Holy Spirit led revival in Malawi, as previously occurred in the early 20th century subsequent much fervent prayer.
5. Spiritual discernment for Christians in Malawi concerning some of Satan's imitations, especially both cultic and occultic imitations. Jehovah's Witnesses and other anti-Trinitarian cults are prevalent. Prosperity gospel teaching seems to be seen and heard daily on TV and radio in Malawi. Witchcraft, spiritism, and syncretism are present. Literature about the cults and occult is needed- especially in the Chichewa language, not just in English.
6. Community health evangelism programs by local churches are needed. Teaching the women (probably by other, more mature Christian women) basic maternity and child health principles has been shown to have the greatest impact in lowering infant and maternal mortality rates.
7. Effective chastity teaching in the churches, especially for the youth. Better teaching regarding AIDS.
8. That Muslims and Hindus in Malawi would come to know the living Christ. The Yao people group of the south and cental regions are over one million in number and are almost 90% Muslim). Some of the Chewa peoples are also Muslim. Most of the minority Asian peoples in Malawi (originally from south Asia, mostly Gujarati and Tamil) are either Hindu or Muslims, yet unreached with the gospel of Christ.
Thanks for your prayers. I wish to especially thank our financial supporters and prayer partners, without whom this mission trip would not even have been possible. Most of all, thanksgiving is due to the Sovereign Lord of all, who has promised to bring in an abundant harvest of souls as we sow the seed of the gospel message.
Such assuring promises give us much hope, encouragement, and anchoring of our faith in Christ (Hebrews 6:18-19), We realize that God is in control and that he is the worthy object of all our mission in life. When our mission, witness, and work on earth is accomplished, we will still have an eternity to praise and worship him. That is why worship, and not missions, is indeed in the final analysis our ultimate priority (Rev 5:9-14 and Rev 7:9-17). All praise be to God the Father, and to the Lord Jesus Christ, and to the Holy Spirit, the driving force behind God-centered and God-honoring missions.
By God's grace and mercy, and for His glory and honor,
Ron Davis
Most minor roads are untarred and quite dusty in the dry season. We saw no rain during the nearly one month we were there in the hot dry month of September. Bridges were at times treacherous, parts of them being removed by those who needed the wood or metal.
We hiked about seven miles early one morning to visit one of our Seventh Day Baptist church's four dispensaries in Malawi. Most of the way we hiked along the railway line. On five occasions we walked across rather long narrow railway bridges, as we occasionally peaked nervously at the scenic but shallow river far beneath us. Parts of the river divide Malawi from Mozambique. The dispensary or clinic had been established in Chipho, on the river border area, at an earlier time when Mozambique refugees had been pouring into Malawi to escape the civil war violence in Mozambique. We discovered after finishing our review and training at the clinic, and after we had had lunch with our local deacon and his wife, that the train, on which we were to return, had derailed the evening before. We ended up hiking back over the same 7 miles, this time in the heat of the day, praying that the train wouldn't catch us while crossing the longest of the rail bridges, the last one before reaching our home base of the previous week, Makapwa. The train did indeed return but thankfully not until after dark that evening, a few hours after our return to Makapwa.
Malawians are some of the friendliest and most hospitable people I have met anywhere in the world. The children especially were a joy to be around. As we travelled on the very rural dirt roads, the children waved, shouting to us in excitement. They also would quickly run to be included in any quick, candid photos I would attempt to shoot.
Beautiful modern architecture was evident in Llongwe, the new capital city located in the central region where former strongman President Hastings Kamuzu Banda was born. The charming small city of Zomba, in the southern region is the former colonial capital and location of Chancellor College of the University of Malawi. I spent one afternoon at Chancellor College doing research on Charles Domingo, an early Christian pastor, teacher, and writer, who was trained at Livingstonia under Dr. Robert Laws, and even for a time, at Lovedale in South Africa. Domingo was baptized by the famous early anti-colonialism hero of Malawi, John Chilembwe, a Baptist pastor who had been trained in Virginia in the 1890's, and who in 1915 led an uprising against the British, when the hated hut tax, and onerous conscription of Malawians to fight the Germans and their allies in neighboring Tanzania during Wold War I, had caused a lot of turmoil in Nyasaland (Malawi since independence in 1964). Domingo, himself became a Seventh Day Baptist, through the English-born, Baptist missionary Joseph Booth, most famous as a vocal opponent of the corrupt colonialist system. Booth had written a book in 1897 entitled Africa for the Africans. Both Booth and Domingo were deported from Malawi, though both were pacifist oriented and not directly involved in the 1915 uprising. Domingo soon returned to Malawi, but Booth remained in and died in South Africa. Chilembwe was hunted down and shot near the Mozambique border, while many of his band of supporters were executed. Domingo himself was the first certified native teacher in Nyasaland, and prioritized setting up schools for chilren along with the churches he helped establish in the northern region of Malawi.
Zomba is surrounded by the Zomba Plateau and some mountainous terrain. On the top of the plateau is the stately Ku Chawe Hotel, recently restored. We enjoyed its fine restaurant with outside dining and a great view down into the valley. On our descent to the valley, we marvelled at the bicycles, on the steep, long, winding road, heavily laden with firewood being carefully guided down the long, steep mountain road to potential buyers of the firewood in Zomba. We were amazed at the strong young men who would day after day accomplish this herculean task, in order to eke out a living and to put food on the table.
Also in the southern region is Blantyre, the largest city. It was especially intriguing to me because of its impressive history and fine old architecture. Inside Blantyre's magnificent St Michael and All Angels Church, completed in 1891, are brass monuments to David Livingstone, the famous missionary-explorer, as well as to missionary David Clement Scott, who was a superb linguist and noteworthy cultural specialist. Scott published the comprehensive Cyclopedic Dictionary of the Mang'anja Language (forerunner of Malawi's national language Chichewa) in 1892, and the entire New Testament in 1896. Amazingly, the beautiful church is itself the work of David Scott. The Scottish Presbyterian missionary had no formal training in architecture or any of the building trades. The five sanctuary windows are magnificent art treasures. The inscriptions are inspiring: "The Good Shepherd," "The Good Physician," "And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me." The clocktower on the grounds also has a monument with a rather long list of the names of the early Scottish Presbyterian missionaries. The Mount Soche Hotel, and surrounding gardens, are among Blantyre's most eloquent. The Mandala House is reputedly Blantyre's oldest building.
Mzuzu, in the northern region is the only other city of any significant size. It is in an area of mountains and of a thriving timber industry. We saw many monkeys and a small "deer" during our travels in the northern region. The city also has a fairly new public university.
We were privileged to visit people and churches in all three regions of the country. Many of the churches had no benches, either of wood, or of the more traditional mud variety. The windows and doors were also often unfinished, being gradually finished as the funds were raised. Many times extra bricks are made and kilned in order to sell, so that the relatively expensive corrugated metal roof could be purchased. The corrugated metal sheets are often secured over long hand-hewn, wooden poles. My last weekend in Blantyre I preached (from Acts 1 and 2, and the work of the Holy Spirit in mission) with an interpretor, at a church where 200 to 250 adults and children sat on the earthen floor.
In the central region especially, we visited villages that were predominantly Muslim. The Muslims make up at least 15% of the population, mainly among the Yao people (as many as 90% of the Yao are Muslim), and to a much lesser extent among the Chewa people. Picturesque mosques are evident in these villages, as well as in all the cities. There have been only three presidents since Malawi's independence, the second being a Muslim. The first, Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda, was Presbyterian, and the current president, Mose Bingu, is Roman Catholic. Current Vice President Joyce Banda, is Presbyterian. The largest religious groups in Malawi are the Roman Catholics, the Sunni Muslims, the Presbyterians, the Seventh day Adventists, and several Pentecostal-Charismatic churches, including the Assemblies of God and the Living Waters churches. The Anglicans are not as prominent as they were in the colonial days, prior to Malawi's independence.
We enjoyed the great variety of food, but especially the fresh vegetables and fruit from our host family's garden in Limbe, on the outskirts of Blantyre. I also especially enjoyed the 'chambo" (talapia) and other fish dishes. Nsima, made from corn is the national food staple. Malawias joke that if you haven't had nsima with your meal, then you haven't really eaten a meal at all.
A portion of the Old Testament (Genesis and Exodus) is available from the Bible Society of Malawi in the Yao language, in a paperback, with drawings reminiscent of the Good News for Modern Man New Testament ( the Today's English Version). Their Bible House is in Blantyre. The New Testament may be published within months. I was also able to purchase from the Bible House in Blantyre the complete Bible in Chichewa (Chewa), the national language of Malawi. Both the older "Revised Chinyanja (Union) Version", also known as the Buku Lopatulika (first edition 1922, with revised editions in 1936 and 1966) and the much newer version, the modern speech Buku Loyera, finally completed in 1998, are readily available. The Buku Loyera was a project of both Protestant and Roman Catholic scholars. Some Protestant and independent Churches still prefer to use the older Buku Lopatulika. I visited the bookshop of a large Catholic Cathedral in Blantyre, but was unable to find the earlier Roman Catholic translation, Malembo Oyera, done over many years by the French missionary Fr Louis Villy and finally published in 1966. The Catholic bookshop only sold the Buku Loyera. Neither was I able to locate in any used bookstore either the Malembo Loyera or a pre-independence copy of the old Chinyanga Bible, the New Testament of which is, essentially, with some later revisions, the translation work of the late 19th century pioneer missionary David Clement Scott, and the Old Testament of which is essentially the work completed in 1919 of missionaries Rev W. Murray and his assistant Rev Alexander Heaterwick. The most recent edition of the Buku Lopatulika is as close as I could get to the older Bible. The Chinyanga language evolved into the Chichewa language under President Hastings, soon after Malawi's independence in 1964. In Zambia and Zimbabwe it is still called Nyanja (Chinyanja) My search for these earlier versions continues.
I was able to acquire full Bibles in Tumbuka ( or Chitumbuka, the prefix "Chi" indicates language of the particular people group, Tumbuka), Sena (or Chisena), and Kyangonde all published by The Bible Society in Malawi, but copyrighted originally by either the United Bible Societies or the British and Foreign Bible Society. Chitumbuka is also spoken in neighboring Zambia. These Bibles I found either at the Bible House or at the CLAIM (Christian Literature Association in Malawi) Bookstore. Both of these excellent book outlets are located in downtown Blantyre. A used copy of the New Testament and Psalms in the Lomwe language was traded to me by our hosts' son, since, though of Lomwe ancestry, he can't read Lomwe. It was published in 1991 by the United Bible Societies afiliate Casa da Biblia in Mozambique, but was originally copyrighted by the National Bible Society of Scotland in 1930. The Lomwe language is spoken more in neihboring Mozambique than in Malawi. I was informed at the Bible House in Blantyre by a 12-year employee that the full Bible in Lomwe should be available within about 5 years, and that the feasability of a possible partial or full Bible translation into Tonga (the Tonga are a people group in the northern region, mostly residing near Lake Malawi, consisting of only about 170,000 people) is still being researched.
The health, sanitation, and land management needs in Malawi at times seem staggering. Probably 10-20% of the population are HIV positive, though the percentage may have declined somewhat lately. Life expectancy is only in the age 40's, having declined because of the AIDS epidemic. Falciparum malaria is very deadly, especially among the very young and the immunosuppressed. There have been over 800 cases of the dreaded cholera disease this year already. Last year only a few cases of cholera were reported. Cholera is especially deadly in the very young, causing rapid dehydration from the diarrhea produced.
Maternal and infant mortality rates are very high compared to the western world. Malnutrition related to droughts has been common in the past. Irrigation of some of the semi-arid lands of Malawi is needed, but is still relatively uncommon. Controlled burning of the land is common. I saw these burnings very frequently in many regions of Malawi when I was there in September.
Corn is the staple of most Malawian diets, yet corn yields are low compared to western standards. Here were some average corn yields (admittedly a few years ago) in tons per hectare (one hectare equals 2.4 acres): USA about 9 (Indiana and Illinois are an even better, at 16), South Africa 4, Malawi 1.4, Mozambique 0.9 (three of four of our church's clinics are very near the Mozambique border). Average for all of Africa is 1.5, so Malawi was actually at about the average African yield, and also of the neighboring Zambia yield for corn, but significantly better than neighboring Mozambique yield. Malawi's corn yield may now be above the African average as food production in Malawi has increased significantly in the past 2 years or so, primarily due to some government initiatives to improve farming techniques and land management. Another positive note: uranium is now being mined, for export, in the far north of Malawi, near Karonga.
Would you please pray as individuals for Malawi. Also pray in Bible study groups, and in local churches. Here are some suggested prayer items:
1. Completion and publication of the Yao New Testament within the next few months.
2. Completion of the rest of Old Testament in Lomwe.
3. Possible translation of at least a portion of the Bible in the Tonga language.
4. A Holy Spirit led revival in Malawi, as previously occurred in the early 20th century subsequent much fervent prayer.
5. Spiritual discernment for Christians in Malawi concerning some of Satan's imitations, especially both cultic and occultic imitations. Jehovah's Witnesses and other anti-Trinitarian cults are prevalent. Prosperity gospel teaching seems to be seen and heard daily on TV and radio in Malawi. Witchcraft, spiritism, and syncretism are present. Literature about the cults and occult is needed- especially in the Chichewa language, not just in English.
6. Community health evangelism programs by local churches are needed. Teaching the women (probably by other, more mature Christian women) basic maternity and child health principles has been shown to have the greatest impact in lowering infant and maternal mortality rates.
7. Effective chastity teaching in the churches, especially for the youth. Better teaching regarding AIDS.
8. That Muslims and Hindus in Malawi would come to know the living Christ. The Yao people group of the south and cental regions are over one million in number and are almost 90% Muslim). Some of the Chewa peoples are also Muslim. Most of the minority Asian peoples in Malawi (originally from south Asia, mostly Gujarati and Tamil) are either Hindu or Muslims, yet unreached with the gospel of Christ.
Thanks for your prayers. I wish to especially thank our financial supporters and prayer partners, without whom this mission trip would not even have been possible. Most of all, thanksgiving is due to the Sovereign Lord of all, who has promised to bring in an abundant harvest of souls as we sow the seed of the gospel message.
Such assuring promises give us much hope, encouragement, and anchoring of our faith in Christ (Hebrews 6:18-19), We realize that God is in control and that he is the worthy object of all our mission in life. When our mission, witness, and work on earth is accomplished, we will still have an eternity to praise and worship him. That is why worship, and not missions, is indeed in the final analysis our ultimate priority (Rev 5:9-14 and Rev 7:9-17). All praise be to God the Father, and to the Lord Jesus Christ, and to the Holy Spirit, the driving force behind God-centered and God-honoring missions.
By God's grace and mercy, and for His glory and honor,
Ron Davis
Friday, August 28, 2009
Monday, August 24, 2009
Audio Bible Malawi
God's Word in Audio - Testimonies
Faith Comes By Hearing associates gather information and testimonies about what God is doing in and through Audio Bible listening programs in heart languages around the world.
Father to the Fatherless
This past summer, 23-year-old Kristie Campbell and her fiancée, 24-year-old Trever Duarte, took six Proclaimers to Malawi: One to the children at the Grace of God Orphanage and one to the caretakers who cook for the children; others were distributed throughout the area. Now the children spend much of their free time listening to God’s Word. Kristie says, “When they received the Proclaimer, they were sitting in the hot sun, totally engaged. You can’t get these children to get so engaged in something, but this is great!”
As well as filling their free time, the children can now also hear about God the Father’s love for them. Some have been forsaken and abandoned because their parents’ lives were taken by disease. Others have been abused. God’s Word says, “When my mother and father forsake me, then the Lord will take me up” (Psalm 27:10). God’s Word reveals His great love and concern for the fatherless, and now these children can hear for themselves about their heavenly Father’s love for them—in their own mother tongue of Chichewa.
Kristie says, “We bring them all sorts of gadgets: potato peelers, beautiful frying pans for the open fire, African Bible commentaries, Bibles . . . but the Proclaimers were THE BEST gift we ever brought to our Native friends in Malawi. They are used non-stop. The children not only listen to the Proclaimer in their free time, but also during Bible School and their morning and evening prayer times.”
The caretakers who cook for the children also received a Proclaimer. They cook 12 hours a day for 120 children, leaving not much free time or time to attend church. They set the Proclaimer carefully on the dirt floor beside the open fire and they play it the whole time they are cooking. Even though they cannot read, or attend church, they can now hear God’s Word.
A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling - Psalm 68:5
Click here for video of more FCBH work in Malawi.
From Naming’azi Listening Post-Thyolo:
Mr. Mizeri, who is the leader of Naming’azi Listening post, observed that the Faith Comes By Hearing program has brought hope and comfort into the lives of the members, especially now that HIV/AIDS is everywhere. The program has also equipped members to be able to witness to others about the love of God - a thing which was not there before the introduction of the Audio Bible listening programs.
From Pentecostal Holiness Church – Balaka:
Mrs. Padambo was over the moon when she gave her views regarding the FCBH Audio Bible listening program. She said the program is helping illiterate members to know and recite Bible verses, and with these they are able to assist fellow friends. The program has also resulted in a steady increase in the number of members attending church services. Above all, most members couldn’t pray or preach in church before, but because of Faith Comes By Hearing, people are more confident and full of faith.
From Fountain of Life Church:
Pastor Chisale of Fountain of Life Church made the following observations since his members started the Faith Comes By Hearing listening program:
"Members now know biblical concepts that were not known before the introduction of FCBH programs and members are now able to share and openly discuss Scriptures from the Bible without being shy."
From NYAMBADWE Youth Bible Study Group:
Lusayo, a youth from Nyambadwe Youth Bible Study Group, spoke on how he has benefited from hearing God's Word in his own language. First, he said that he has grown spiritually since he now is able to resist and overcome womanizing and other tempting situations influenced by peer pressure. Secondly, the program has increased his understanding of the Bible.
“There are some Scriptures which I didn’t understand that I now understand,” Lusayo remarked.
Thirdly, he is very grateful to God that through this program, he has now made a lot of new friends who are very helpful in his spiritual life. Lusayo also says that he has learned to make good use of his leisure time; instead of indulging in unnecessary activities, he uses he studies his Bible with his friends.
Some other testimonies:
Jesse used to be short-tempered before hearing the Word of God. When she picked a quarrel with a friend or neighbor, she would go for months without talking to the neighbor. But after joining the listening sessions, Jesse has now developed a heart of forgiveness as required by the Bible.
Stella lost her husband some years ago, but she has been having hallucinations of him every night. At the Faith Comes By Hearing listening sessions, she learned that prayer is the answer to all problems, including hallucinations. She started praying alone in her house so that God would deliver her from the torment. After a few days, her request was answered and now she sleeps peacefully with no more hallucinations.
Agness was an alcoholic. She couldn’t go for even a day without drinking. Having listened through the New Testament in her own language, she is now a completely reformed person. She no longer drinks, but spends most of her time in prayer.
Esther's health was very poor and weak. She couldn’t go to work in her garden. She was dependent on her husband and children for everything. After attending an Audio Bible listening program and being prayed for by group members, she is now healed and can even do gardening.
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Friday, July 17, 2009
Charles Domingo and Seventh Day Baptists in Malawi
Charles Vicente Domingo can be considered the founder, in 1910, of an ongoing, continuous Seventh Day Baptist work in Nyasaland. He was born about 1880 in Mozambique. Nyasaland, located in Central Africa, was renamed Malawi at the time of independence in 1964. The Seventh Day Baptist work has continued unabated for at least one hundred years. It is unclear whether a Seventh Day Baptist work, however, continued without interruption, between the years 1900 and 1910, since in 1900 the Seventh Day Baptist industrial mission, the Plainfield Industrial Mission (started by the Plainfield Seventh Day Baptist Church) was sold and Joseph Booth, the pioneer missionary, left Seventh Day Baptists for awhile during that time.
The year 1900 is given by the Evangelical Dictionary of World Missions as the date for the founding by Joseph Booth of Seventh Day Baptists in Malawi. The same author, Klaus Fiedler, in the same article on Malawi, gives the year 1910 as the date that "Charles Domingo began the Seventh Day Baptists" in Malawi. Probably in reality then the 100 year anniversary of a continuous, unabated work of Seventh Day Baptists in Malawi is 2010. The 100 year anniversary though was already celebrated by Seventh Day Baptists in Malawi in the past decade.
Klaus Fiedler further writes, "With Malawi being seen as a Presbyterian/Anglican territory, evangelical and Catholic missions were seen as intruders. The early evangelical missions...all go back to Joseph Booth." Klaus Fiedler, a Baptist, though not himself a Seventh Day Baptist, lectured at the Seventh Day Baptist Bible College in Makapwa located in the more heavily populated southern region of Malawi, where Seventh Day Baptists have today their greatest concentration of members.
We will look at the Seventh Day Baptist leaders Domingo and Booth, as well as several other early church and political leaders , to better grasp the story of Seventh Day Baptists, as well as of other early missions, in Malawi.
Malawi was formally named the Nyasaland Protectorate by the British in 1907, although a British Central African Protectorate had been previously formed as early as 1891. The famous Scottish missionary David Livingstone had traversed Malawi on several occasions between 1859 and his death in 1873. Blantyre, Malawi is named for Livingstone's city of birth in Scotland.
Charles Domingo was probably from Quelimane which was near the Indian Ocean in neighboring Mozambique. He was the son of a cook with the African Lakes Company. W. P. Livingstone, the early biographer of Dr. Robert Laws, in his Laws of Livingstonia, calls the young boy a "helpless waif" and claims that the father may have been an alcoholic, but provides no substantiation for this claim.
The remarkable African, William Mthusane Koyi, a Gaika Kafir, was born in 1846 in South Africa. He became a Christian at age 23, and subsequently walked 150 miles to Lovedale, where he trained. He then volunteered to be a missionary to Nyasa with the famous Livingstonia Mission. He had brought the young Domingo to Nyasaland as early as 1881 on his return from furlough. Koyi was to became a very successful and influential evangelist to the Ngoni people.
Domingo very early in life, perhaps from only one or two years of age, was taken care of by Dr. and Mrs Robert Laws. He soon served as a houseboy in their home. Dr. Robert Laws was a well-known physician missionary and the leader of the Livingstonia Mission and spent over 50 years in Malawi (from 1875 until 1927). Domingo received excellent training at its Overtoun Institute at Livingstonia, a noteworthy Free Scottish Presbyterian institution.
Domingo was taken by Dr. Laws in 1891 to South Africa. Laws was on his way to Scotland, as ordered by his mission board, after he had suffered a severe bout of fever. Laws left four young men at Lovedale, in South Africa, one of whom was young Charles Domingo. Laws stopped in Capetown, and gave an address on Nyasaland, which was attended by Joseph Booth, a missionary who had recently arrived from Australia, and who, after hearing Laws, decided to go to Nyasaland, as an independent missionary.
Domingo himself attended the Lovedale Institution which many considered the best school in sub-Saharan Africa at that time. Domingo thus received an excellent theological and academic education.
Back at the Livingstonia mission Dr. Laws, when for a time without a carpenter, taught the young Domingo theology, while Laws himself was working at the carpenter's bench. At Livingstonia and its environs near Lake Nyasa (Lake Malawi, or more accurately Maravi) in northern Nyasaland, Domingo served well as the first native assistant in the school, and also served in the church.
W. P. Livingstone's early Law's biography states that Domingo was an elder in the church, even though not officially ordained. He also became a gifted lead singer and soloist. He was formally licensed to preach in 1903. A thanksgiving service at the time of the Laws' silver wedding anniversary was conducted by Domingo. He was, however, partly because of the pervasive, subtle racism of the time, never ordained by the Presbyterians, who were also acknowledgely, very conservative in polity and practice.
The Presbyterian missionaries, did speak very highly of Domingo, and after the 1915 uprising led by Chilembwe, under intense questioning by the British colonial authorities, refused to speak disparagingly of Domingo. Other Malawians, who had good theological training and experience, were also at the time left unordained. This fact, as well as a disagreement at Loudon with the missionary Donald Fraser, may have influenced Domingo's decision to leave the Presbyterians, which he did abruptly in 1908, without giving any advanced notice.
He was baptized by immersion by John Chilembwe, a Yao tribesman and American-trained Baptist pastor. Chilembwe was the Providence Industrial Mission leader. Chilembwe had been brought to the U.S. by Joseph Booth about 1897. Chilembwe had met Booth in 1892 and had served as a household servant, and as a nurse-companion for Booth's little daughter Emily, who had been nursed back from near-death from malaria by Chilembwe, while Booth was gone on an extended mission trip.
Dr. Laws was to have, at a later time, a chance meeting with Domingo in Balantyre, where Laws had travelled by the new train system. He apparently treated Domingo who was ill. Laws' early biographer, W. P. Livingstone reports that Domingo had had dealings with John Chilembwe, "but he never seems to have agreed with his extreme views," and when Laws met Domingo in Balantyre, Domingo had already broken with Chilembwe. W. P. Livingstone also reported that Domingo, after failing to "obtain a footing" along the Nyasa Lake shore, "established a pretentious mud church" in Ngoniland, the pulpit and pew being made also of mud. Livingstone also reported that Domingo "gathered a following, his influence, unlike Chilembwe's being for good."
Charles Domingo briefly worked with the Watchtower movement (Jehovah's Witnesses) and the Church of Christ, perhaps out of financial expediency, but his views remained mostly Presbyterian, except for his new-found views on baptism by immersion and his even later views on the seventh-day Sabbath. He moved around northern Malawi frequently as a Christian evangelist, came under the influence of missionary Joseph Booth, and had become a Seventh Day Baptist leader by 1910, a century ago.
Remarkably, Domingo at one time served nine stations in northern Nyasaland, pastoring about 180 baptized believers. He set up stations with schools for children and young people. He stressed the necessity of not being dependent on foreign missionaries and on subsidies from outside Malawi, a view he later had to modify somewhat, because of a lack of good local jobs, due to colonial inequities and injustices. A related obstacle to an indiginous work was that currency was scarce, the barter system having to be used extensively by the rural people.
Domingo also may have reshaped his thinking about foreigners, after being favorably influenced by the U.S. Seventh Day Baptist missionary, Walter B. Cockerill, who came to Malawi in December 1913 and had bicycled hundreds of miles in the northern part of Malawi by 1914 and early 1915. Cockerill was deported from Malawi in 1915, a scapegoat of the colonial administration's crackdown on mission activity after the January 1915 uprising of John Clilembwe and his supporters, even though Cockerill himself was not involved in any way in the uprising.
George Shepperson and Thomas Price call the youthful Walter Cockerill "an innocent abroad" in their well-researched, definitive book, Independent African, published in 1958, which was primarily a book about the 1915 uprising in Malawi. Cockerill, partly because he was from the town of Berlin in Wisconsin, and also because he was working in the northern region of Nyasaland, near the colony of adjacent Tanganyika, which had become a German protectorate in 1891. Cockerill was suspected, incorrectly, by the British administrators of being a German sympathizer. There was an ongoing proxy war between British Africa and the German colonies in Africa, with a result that the Africans were often conscripted to fight against their wishes.
Because of this abuse and other abuses, Domingo opposed the colonial system, and the white employers who were "cruel as tigers. " The British colonialists dismissed from jobs some of his Seventh Day Baptist congregants who refused to work on the seventh day Sabbath, and were thus often jailed for being unable to pay the hut tax, which had been imposed about 1912. The "bomas" or administrative stations, which were often in the office of the District Commissioner (or "D. C."), were named after the thorn hedge (literally: "stockade of thorns") which surrounded the D. C. in Balantyre.
Although Domingo strongly opposed colonialism, he did not believe in resorting to violence, as Chilembwe had done in the 1915 uprising. In spite of his innocense he was also later deported by the fearful British colonial authorities. Livingstone again reports, "Though unconnected with the rising, Charles Domingo went down in the cataclysm."
Livingstone makes this somewhat biased assessment of Domingos later years, "The writer saw him in 1920 at Mzimba, where [subsequent to his deportation and after his return to Malawi] he was employed in the Government service, and came across his church in the bush falling into ruins. Charles appeared to be conscious of his foolish conduct, but there was nothing against his moral character, which was something to the credit of the careful teaching and training he had received in the [Livingstonia] Mission."
By 1912 there were several thousand Seventh Day Baptist adherents in northern Nyasaland. The church structures were, it is true, mostly unpretentious mud churches with mud benches, in contrast to the impressiive, often beautiful, Presbyterian and Anglican church edifices in Malawi. When I visited the Seventh Day Baptist churches in September 2009 many of them had mud benches or the congregants simply sat on hard-packed mud floors.
Charles Domingo, edited an African version of the Sabbath Recorder magazine in Nyasaland, under Joseph Booth, the editor-in-chief, who was working out of Capetown, South Africa. Booth, accused of being an an "Ethiopianism" supporter by the British colonialists, had been deported from Malawi in 1903. When I visited Chancellor College of the University of Malawi, in the old colonial capital, Zomba, I was able to copy a file full of letters from Charles Domingo. Domingo had written, mostly to Joseph Booth in Africa, and also to the Seventh Day Baptist Missionary Society in the United States. His hand writing was very neat and beautiful, as was one of his wife's letters. Chancellor College also has, according to the card catologue, the first three issues of the African Sabbath Recorder, which Domingo edited with Charles Booth. The second and third issues seem to be lost and unavailable for viewing, I discovered on my second visit to the college library.
Domingo supported a strong education for the youth, as well as for adults. Unlike Elliot Kamwana, the famous indiginous, charismatic Watchtower leader in northern Nyasaland, who reportedly baptized as many as ten thousand people, Domingo strongly supported education for the youth and adults. Kamwana was generally opposed to education, primarily due to his Watchtower millenial ideas; there was no need to educate people since Christ was supposed to return in 1914, as Jehovah's Witnesses falsely taught. Charles Domingo, on the other hand, was the first trained and educated indiginous teacher in all of Nyasaland, and made the education of the people a high priority of his Christian work.
Joseph Booth, the English nonconformist was born in England 1851, moved from Australia to Nyasaland in 1892, and died in South Africa in 1932. He visited the U.S. in 1897 (author Benjamin Ray says 1895) accompanied by John Chilembwe. Booth published the egalitarian, anti-racist treatise Africa for the African: Dedicated First to Queen Victoria, Queen of Great Britain, Second, to the British and American Christian People, Third and Specially to the African-American people of the United States of America , in the city of Baltimore in 1897. It went through two editions.
He, with the help of the Plainfield, New Jersey Seventh Day Baptist Church, which he had joined in 1898 while he was in America, started an industrial mission in southern Malawi on 2,000 acres near Cholo (now more correctly spelled Thyolo). It came to be known as the Plainfield Mission. The coffee-growing industrial mission was not economically viable for a variety of reasons, one of which was a precipitous drop in coffeee prices, and soon failed and was sold at a great loss to the Seventh Day Adventists. It is now under the Adventists known as Malamulo Mission, one of the showplace, vintage mission complexes in Africa.
Booth was only in Malawi from 1892 until 1903, having been deported, and also banned from returning to Nyasaland, by the British colonial government.
Chilembwe, who went with Joseph Booth to the U.S. in about 1897, attended Virginia Theological Seminary, a National Baptist Convention school, for three years. Chilembwe returned to Malawi in 1899 or 1900 as an ordained Baptist minister, and started Providence Industrial Mission (PIM). He, like Domingo, established mission schools. He completed a beautiful large brick church building there in 1913, later destroyed by the British after the 1915 uprising.
A hut tax had been imposed by the colonial administrators (their colonial stations were nicknamed the "boma") in 1912, which the Malawian correctly viewed as a a form of conscription or slave labor, since half the tax could be rebated for doing a month's work on the white settler's lands. The Malawians were also conscripted to fight European battles on African soil before and during World War I, which many of them resented. The German colony of Tanganyika (now Tanzania) was contiguous to Nyasaland on its north boundary, and the Germans, in similar manner conscripted Africans from their colony.
Chilembwe became famous for leading the 1915 uprising in which several colonial men were killed, including the cruel manager of the Bruce estates, William J. Livingstone, a relative of the famous Scotish missionary-explorer, David Livingstone. It is to be noted in contrast to the killing of the men, that the western women and children were taken to safety, fed, and treated well.
Separatist churches, like the Watchtower Society and the Seventh Day Adventists, to some extent had raised unfulfilled millenial dreams of a new order to be established with Christ's imminent second coming. The white colonial order in Malawi and Africa it was proclaimed would be abolished. The year of 1914 had been set by Jehovah's Witness leader, Charles Taze Russell, for Christ's return.
Chilembwe started the first Central African resistance movement to British colonialist abuses, and is considered by Malawians to be their first national patriot. Near the Mozambique border Chilembwe was shortly tracked down and killed by Nyasaland policemen, working for the colonial government. Other supporters and accomplices of the uprising were also executed by the colonial government.
The only Seventh Day Baptist leader, who I was able to establish, with any certainty, to have been part of the 1915 uprising, was Pastor Filipo Chamaya. He was involved in a planned branch-uprising at Ntcheu. His group of Ngoni supporters were less organized and were apprehended by the District Commission before there was any violence. Chinyama was executed, even though no one had been killed by him or his men.
Joseph Booth very early was a noted denomination hopper, partly for financial reasons, having been variously a Presbyterian, a Baptist, a Seventh Day Baptist , a Seventh Day Adventist, a Watch Tower movement supporter, and a Church of Christ worker. In the end, however, he rejoined and stayed with Seventh Day Baptists. During his visit to the U.S. he published an anti-Watchtower treatise, and distributed it at Chautauqua Lake in New York, where he lectured during the summer.
Booth had come to Malawi in 1892, three weeks after his wife Mary, who had shared the missionary call, died of pneumonia. He independently started the Zambezi Industrial Mission and then the Nyasa Baptist Industrial Mission, before organizing in 1899 the Plainfield Industrial Mission with the help of the Plainfield Seventh Day Baptist Church in New Jersey. Twelve thousand dollars had been paid by the Plainfield Church for the plantation.
Booth left Malawi in 1902 or 1903 after religious disagreement with the Adventists, with whom he had briefly affiliated. He was permanently barred from Malawi by the British colonialists in 1907 for "seditious" ideas. He was a pacificist and not involved in the Chilembwe armed uprising of 1915. He was egalitarian and opposed to colonialism. Booth had angered some whites by paying, what was considered by colonial standards, very high wages to Malawians.
George Shepperson and Thomas Price, Harry Langworthy, T. Jack Thompson, John McCracken, Andrew C. Ross, Robert Rotberg, Bridglal Pachai, D.D. Phiri, have written scholarly works which, among other things, have effectively shown the African response to European and African missionary factors. The three early Malawians trained by the missions, who came under the "Ethiopianism" and "Africa for the African" influence of Joseph Booth, have now become well known in Malawi and African history- John Chilembwe, Elliot (Kenan) Kamwana, and the Seventh Day Baptist Charles Domingo, althought the last has been somewhat less studied than Chilembwe and Kamwana.
Charles Domingo was a better writer than the better-known John Chilembwe. His English was sinificantly better. Apparently the education obtained by Domingo at Lovedale and at Livingstonia, in Africa, was superior to that received by Chilembwe in the segregated Baptist seminary in Virginia, though all three of these were Christian schools.
Domingo effectively used the pen, to oppose the injustices of colonialism in Africa. He was one of the pioneers in an Africa movement for freedom. As the first trained African teacher in Malawi, Domingo placed a high priorty on educating the youth, the future leaders of Africa. Though he, like Booth, had briefly been swayed by the Watchtower movement, his Christian faith remained orthodox and evangelistic. His writings were strongly influenced by the Bible, his primary source book. He emphasized that churches and Christian schools should be led by Africans, and not be so dependent on western missionaries and agencies, a concept that was ahead of the colonial times in Africa. His vision for his people was mostly unfulfilled in his lifetime, due to the colonial inequalities and injustices, and the pervading poverty of his family and people in a colonial culture.
Charles Domingo's vibrant Christian faith, a faith that was practical and holistic, was the hallmark of his life, and of his vision of hope for the African people.
References/Sources:
Black, William Henry, Proposal for a Christian Mission to the Millions of Ethiopia and Eastern Africa, Walworth, Wisconsin: J. C. Beard, Crown Row, 1845.
Booth, Joseph, Africa for the African, Baltimore, 1897. Republished by CLAIM (Christian Literature Association in Malawi), Balantyre, Malawi, in the Kachere Series of the University of Malawi, Zomba, Malawi in 1996, edited by Laura Perry, 114 pp. , editor's preface, index, illustrations.
Booth, Joseph, Correspondence with American Seventh Day Baptists in the Malawi/Nyasaland Collection, 1898-1915, Seventh Day Baptist Historical Society, Janesville, Wisconsin.
Briggs, Philip, Malawi: The Bradt Travel Guide, Chalfont St Peter, UK: Bradt Publications, 1996, 1999. 246 pages. Chapter 1: History, pages 3-22.
Crosby, Cynthia, Historical Dictionary of Malawi, Metuchen, New Jersey: Scarecrow Press, 1980. 169 pages, abbreviations and acronyms, chronology, introduction, maps, extensive bibliography with introduction to bibliography. Charles Domingo, pp. 41-42.
Davidson, Basil, The African Genius, Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1969, 367 pp. Illustrations and maps, notes and references, select bibliography, index. Published in England as The Africans. For Charles Domingo, John Clilembwe, and Joseph Booth see pp. 281-283, 288, 296.
Domingo, Charles, and Joseph Booth, "A Native Pastor's Plea for Boys and Girls," Sabbath Recorder, 72, 5 (January 29, 1912), 140-142.
Douglas, John and Kelly White, Spectrum Guide to Malawi, New York: Interlink Publishing Group, 2003, 384 pages. "The History of Malawi" section, pp 30-43.
Harris, Joseph E., Africans and their History, New York, New York: Penguin Books, 1972, second revised edition, 1998. 337 pages, bibliographical notes, index. Booth and Chilembwe pages 198-200, 231, 236. "Chilembwe's Rebellion" pages 198-200.
King, Michael and Elspeth, The Story of Medicine and Disease in Malawi: The 130 Years since Livingstone, Balantyre: The Montforth Press, 183 pages, 1992.
Langworthy, Emily Booth, This Africa Was Mine, Sterling Tract Enterprise, 1950, 139 pp. Introduction by George Shepperson, M.A., Department of History, The University of Edinburgh, 2 maps, 2 photos: Joseph Booth, and daughter Emily Booth as a child, in Malawi. Written by the daughter of Joseph Booth.
Langworthy, Harry, "Africa for the African": The Life of Joseph Booth, CLAIM: Balantyre, Malawi, 1996, 520 pp. Kachere Monograph Number 2, University of Malawi, Zomba, Malawi. Bibliography, index, 40 illustrations, including maps. Harry Langworthy is the great grandson of Joseph Booth and the grandson of Emily Booth.
Langworthy, Harry W., "Charles Domingo, Seventh Day Baptists and Independency," Journal of Religion in Africa, 15,2 (1985), 96-121.
Langworthy, Harry W., "Joseph Booth, Prophet of Radical Change in Central and South Africa, 1891-1915," Journal of Religion in Africa xvi, 1 (1986), pp 22-43.
Livingstone, W. P., Laws of Livingstonia: A Narrative of Missionary Adventure and Achievement, London: Hodder and Stroughton, 1921. 385 pages, introduction, many photos, endmap, index. Domingo pages 194, 257, 277, 277, 309, 327, 339, 355.
Lohrentz, Kenneth, "Joseph Booth, Charles Domingo, and the Seventh Day Baptists in Northern Nyasaland, 1910-1912," Journal of African History, 12, 3 (1971), 461-480.
McCracken, John, Politics and Christianity in Malawi 1875-1940: The Impact of the Livingstonia Mission in the Northern Province, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1st edition, 1977. CLAIM edition, 2000, 376 pages, 5 maps, preface, abbreviations page, bibliography, index.
Moreau, A. Scott, editor, Evangelical Dictionary of Missions, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 2000, 1068 pp. Articles on "Malawi" and on "Joseph Booth" both by Klaus Fielder.
Moore, N. Olney., and Wayland D. Wilcox, "The Report of the Visit to South and Central Africa," Sabbath Recorder 73, 22 (November 25, 1912, 695-735.
Moore, N. Olney., "Seventh Day Baptists and Mission Work in Nyasaland, Africa," Riverside, Cailfornia, 1950, Duplicated copies.
Morrison, J. H., Missionary Heroes of Africa, New York: George H. Doran Co., 1922. reprinted New York: Negro University Press, 1969, 267 pages. Chapters on David Livingstone, Stewart of Lovedale, and Laws of Livingstonia.
Pachai, Bridglal, editor, Livingstone, Man of Africa: Memorial Essays 1973-1973, London: Longman Group, 1973. 245 pages, notes, index, includes essays by George Shepperson, Andrew C. Ross, and John McCracken.
Pachai, Bridglal, editor, The Early History of Malawi, Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1972, 454 pages.
Pachai, Bridglal, Malawi: The History of the Nation, London: Longman Group, 1973, 324 pages. Charles Domingo, see pp. 89, 169-170, 176, 179, 204-205, 210.
Pearson, Bettie, "An Old Soldier of Christ," Sabbath Recorder, 189, 4 (July 27, 1970), P. 6-7.
Pearson, David C., Seventh Day Baptists in Central Africa, Seventh Day Baptist Historical Society assisted author in publication, 2003. 138 pages, forward by Janet Thorngate, introduction by author, 2 maps, biography of Malawian SDB leaders, list of SDB missionaries and their dates of service, explanatory notes, bibliography, index. Charles Domingo, pages 14-19 in chapter 4 "Booth Relives."
Phiri, D. D., History of Malawi: from Earliest Times to the Year 1915, Christian Literature Association in Malawi (CLAIM), 2004, 292 pages, references, index. Pages 163-167 has sections on Seventh Day Baptists Charles Domingo and Alexander Makwinja.
Ray, Benjamin C., African Religions: Symbol, Ritual, and Community, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1976. 238 pages, introduction, notes, bibliography, index, map. Chapter 6, "Religion and Rebellion," includes pages 159-165: "John Chilembwe and the Nyasaland Uprising of 1915."
Ross, Andrew C., Balantyre Mission and the Making of Modern Malawi, Balantyre, Malawi, 1996. Ross, R. K., Christianity in Malawi: A Source Book
Rotberg, Robert I. The Rise of Nationalism in Central Africa: The making of Malawi and Zambia, 1873-1964, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1965,1972. 360 pages, preface, postscript, note on the sources, select bibliography, index. Charles Domingo, pages 69-72, 76-77, 135. Seventh Day Baptist Church, pages 64, 66, 70-71, 85, 151.
Sanders, Renfield, Malawi, New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1988, 103 pages.
Sanneh, Lamin, Disciples of All Nations: Pillars of World Christianity, New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. 362 pages, inroduction, notes, maps, select bibliography, index. Charles Domingo, pp 142-143, 307.
Shepperson, George, and Thomas Price, Independent African: John Chilembe and the Origins, Setting, and Significance of the Nyasaland Uprising of 1915, Edinburgh, Scotland: The University Press, 1958. 564 pages, introduction, illustrations, notes and references, sources appendices, index, endmap. Charles Domingo, see pp. 159-169, 183, 210,213, 223, 241-242, 323, 334, 339.
Shepperson, George, "Joseph Booth and the African Diaspora," Tenth Herkovits Memorial Lecture, Evanston, Illinois, 1972.
Singano, E. and A. A. Roscoe, Tales of Old Malawi, 1974, amended and enlarged 2nd edition, 106 pages, 1980. Forward, thirty tales from Malawi's oral tradition, 137 riddles plus meaning of riddles.
Siwane, Nyaniso James, The Unknown Made Known: A History of Seventh Day Baptists in South Africa, published by the Seventh Day Baptist Conference of South Africa and the Seventh Day Baptist Missionary Society, 1995. See Chapter 4 " Joseph Booth: The European Connection"
Thompson, T. Jack, Christianity in Northern Malawi: Donald Fraser's Methods and Ngoni Culture, Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1995. 292 pages, peface, glossary, map, 20 photos, bibliography, index. Charles Domingo pp. 166-169, 173, 177, 223.
White, Landeg, Magomero: Portrait of an African Village, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987, 1st paperback edition 1989. 271 pages, preface, illustrations, maps, sources, index. Much Chilembwe and some Booth information.
Williams, Walter Lee, Black Americans and the Evangelization of Africa, 1877-1900, Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982.
The year 1900 is given by the Evangelical Dictionary of World Missions as the date for the founding by Joseph Booth of Seventh Day Baptists in Malawi. The same author, Klaus Fiedler, in the same article on Malawi, gives the year 1910 as the date that "Charles Domingo began the Seventh Day Baptists" in Malawi. Probably in reality then the 100 year anniversary of a continuous, unabated work of Seventh Day Baptists in Malawi is 2010. The 100 year anniversary though was already celebrated by Seventh Day Baptists in Malawi in the past decade.
Klaus Fiedler further writes, "With Malawi being seen as a Presbyterian/Anglican territory, evangelical and Catholic missions were seen as intruders. The early evangelical missions...all go back to Joseph Booth." Klaus Fiedler, a Baptist, though not himself a Seventh Day Baptist, lectured at the Seventh Day Baptist Bible College in Makapwa located in the more heavily populated southern region of Malawi, where Seventh Day Baptists have today their greatest concentration of members.
We will look at the Seventh Day Baptist leaders Domingo and Booth, as well as several other early church and political leaders , to better grasp the story of Seventh Day Baptists, as well as of other early missions, in Malawi.
Malawi was formally named the Nyasaland Protectorate by the British in 1907, although a British Central African Protectorate had been previously formed as early as 1891. The famous Scottish missionary David Livingstone had traversed Malawi on several occasions between 1859 and his death in 1873. Blantyre, Malawi is named for Livingstone's city of birth in Scotland.
Charles Domingo was probably from Quelimane which was near the Indian Ocean in neighboring Mozambique. He was the son of a cook with the African Lakes Company. W. P. Livingstone, the early biographer of Dr. Robert Laws, in his Laws of Livingstonia, calls the young boy a "helpless waif" and claims that the father may have been an alcoholic, but provides no substantiation for this claim.
The remarkable African, William Mthusane Koyi, a Gaika Kafir, was born in 1846 in South Africa. He became a Christian at age 23, and subsequently walked 150 miles to Lovedale, where he trained. He then volunteered to be a missionary to Nyasa with the famous Livingstonia Mission. He had brought the young Domingo to Nyasaland as early as 1881 on his return from furlough. Koyi was to became a very successful and influential evangelist to the Ngoni people.
Domingo very early in life, perhaps from only one or two years of age, was taken care of by Dr. and Mrs Robert Laws. He soon served as a houseboy in their home. Dr. Robert Laws was a well-known physician missionary and the leader of the Livingstonia Mission and spent over 50 years in Malawi (from 1875 until 1927). Domingo received excellent training at its Overtoun Institute at Livingstonia, a noteworthy Free Scottish Presbyterian institution.
Domingo was taken by Dr. Laws in 1891 to South Africa. Laws was on his way to Scotland, as ordered by his mission board, after he had suffered a severe bout of fever. Laws left four young men at Lovedale, in South Africa, one of whom was young Charles Domingo. Laws stopped in Capetown, and gave an address on Nyasaland, which was attended by Joseph Booth, a missionary who had recently arrived from Australia, and who, after hearing Laws, decided to go to Nyasaland, as an independent missionary.
Domingo himself attended the Lovedale Institution which many considered the best school in sub-Saharan Africa at that time. Domingo thus received an excellent theological and academic education.
Back at the Livingstonia mission Dr. Laws, when for a time without a carpenter, taught the young Domingo theology, while Laws himself was working at the carpenter's bench. At Livingstonia and its environs near Lake Nyasa (Lake Malawi, or more accurately Maravi) in northern Nyasaland, Domingo served well as the first native assistant in the school, and also served in the church.
W. P. Livingstone's early Law's biography states that Domingo was an elder in the church, even though not officially ordained. He also became a gifted lead singer and soloist. He was formally licensed to preach in 1903. A thanksgiving service at the time of the Laws' silver wedding anniversary was conducted by Domingo. He was, however, partly because of the pervasive, subtle racism of the time, never ordained by the Presbyterians, who were also acknowledgely, very conservative in polity and practice.
The Presbyterian missionaries, did speak very highly of Domingo, and after the 1915 uprising led by Chilembwe, under intense questioning by the British colonial authorities, refused to speak disparagingly of Domingo. Other Malawians, who had good theological training and experience, were also at the time left unordained. This fact, as well as a disagreement at Loudon with the missionary Donald Fraser, may have influenced Domingo's decision to leave the Presbyterians, which he did abruptly in 1908, without giving any advanced notice.
He was baptized by immersion by John Chilembwe, a Yao tribesman and American-trained Baptist pastor. Chilembwe was the Providence Industrial Mission leader. Chilembwe had been brought to the U.S. by Joseph Booth about 1897. Chilembwe had met Booth in 1892 and had served as a household servant, and as a nurse-companion for Booth's little daughter Emily, who had been nursed back from near-death from malaria by Chilembwe, while Booth was gone on an extended mission trip.
Dr. Laws was to have, at a later time, a chance meeting with Domingo in Balantyre, where Laws had travelled by the new train system. He apparently treated Domingo who was ill. Laws' early biographer, W. P. Livingstone reports that Domingo had had dealings with John Chilembwe, "but he never seems to have agreed with his extreme views," and when Laws met Domingo in Balantyre, Domingo had already broken with Chilembwe. W. P. Livingstone also reported that Domingo, after failing to "obtain a footing" along the Nyasa Lake shore, "established a pretentious mud church" in Ngoniland, the pulpit and pew being made also of mud. Livingstone also reported that Domingo "gathered a following, his influence, unlike Chilembwe's being for good."
Charles Domingo briefly worked with the Watchtower movement (Jehovah's Witnesses) and the Church of Christ, perhaps out of financial expediency, but his views remained mostly Presbyterian, except for his new-found views on baptism by immersion and his even later views on the seventh-day Sabbath. He moved around northern Malawi frequently as a Christian evangelist, came under the influence of missionary Joseph Booth, and had become a Seventh Day Baptist leader by 1910, a century ago.
Remarkably, Domingo at one time served nine stations in northern Nyasaland, pastoring about 180 baptized believers. He set up stations with schools for children and young people. He stressed the necessity of not being dependent on foreign missionaries and on subsidies from outside Malawi, a view he later had to modify somewhat, because of a lack of good local jobs, due to colonial inequities and injustices. A related obstacle to an indiginous work was that currency was scarce, the barter system having to be used extensively by the rural people.
Domingo also may have reshaped his thinking about foreigners, after being favorably influenced by the U.S. Seventh Day Baptist missionary, Walter B. Cockerill, who came to Malawi in December 1913 and had bicycled hundreds of miles in the northern part of Malawi by 1914 and early 1915. Cockerill was deported from Malawi in 1915, a scapegoat of the colonial administration's crackdown on mission activity after the January 1915 uprising of John Clilembwe and his supporters, even though Cockerill himself was not involved in any way in the uprising.
George Shepperson and Thomas Price call the youthful Walter Cockerill "an innocent abroad" in their well-researched, definitive book, Independent African, published in 1958, which was primarily a book about the 1915 uprising in Malawi. Cockerill, partly because he was from the town of Berlin in Wisconsin, and also because he was working in the northern region of Nyasaland, near the colony of adjacent Tanganyika, which had become a German protectorate in 1891. Cockerill was suspected, incorrectly, by the British administrators of being a German sympathizer. There was an ongoing proxy war between British Africa and the German colonies in Africa, with a result that the Africans were often conscripted to fight against their wishes.
Because of this abuse and other abuses, Domingo opposed the colonial system, and the white employers who were "cruel as tigers. " The British colonialists dismissed from jobs some of his Seventh Day Baptist congregants who refused to work on the seventh day Sabbath, and were thus often jailed for being unable to pay the hut tax, which had been imposed about 1912. The "bomas" or administrative stations, which were often in the office of the District Commissioner (or "D. C."), were named after the thorn hedge (literally: "stockade of thorns") which surrounded the D. C. in Balantyre.
Although Domingo strongly opposed colonialism, he did not believe in resorting to violence, as Chilembwe had done in the 1915 uprising. In spite of his innocense he was also later deported by the fearful British colonial authorities. Livingstone again reports, "Though unconnected with the rising, Charles Domingo went down in the cataclysm."
Livingstone makes this somewhat biased assessment of Domingos later years, "The writer saw him in 1920 at Mzimba, where [subsequent to his deportation and after his return to Malawi] he was employed in the Government service, and came across his church in the bush falling into ruins. Charles appeared to be conscious of his foolish conduct, but there was nothing against his moral character, which was something to the credit of the careful teaching and training he had received in the [Livingstonia] Mission."
By 1912 there were several thousand Seventh Day Baptist adherents in northern Nyasaland. The church structures were, it is true, mostly unpretentious mud churches with mud benches, in contrast to the impressiive, often beautiful, Presbyterian and Anglican church edifices in Malawi. When I visited the Seventh Day Baptist churches in September 2009 many of them had mud benches or the congregants simply sat on hard-packed mud floors.
Charles Domingo, edited an African version of the Sabbath Recorder magazine in Nyasaland, under Joseph Booth, the editor-in-chief, who was working out of Capetown, South Africa. Booth, accused of being an an "Ethiopianism" supporter by the British colonialists, had been deported from Malawi in 1903. When I visited Chancellor College of the University of Malawi, in the old colonial capital, Zomba, I was able to copy a file full of letters from Charles Domingo. Domingo had written, mostly to Joseph Booth in Africa, and also to the Seventh Day Baptist Missionary Society in the United States. His hand writing was very neat and beautiful, as was one of his wife's letters. Chancellor College also has, according to the card catologue, the first three issues of the African Sabbath Recorder, which Domingo edited with Charles Booth. The second and third issues seem to be lost and unavailable for viewing, I discovered on my second visit to the college library.
Domingo supported a strong education for the youth, as well as for adults. Unlike Elliot Kamwana, the famous indiginous, charismatic Watchtower leader in northern Nyasaland, who reportedly baptized as many as ten thousand people, Domingo strongly supported education for the youth and adults. Kamwana was generally opposed to education, primarily due to his Watchtower millenial ideas; there was no need to educate people since Christ was supposed to return in 1914, as Jehovah's Witnesses falsely taught. Charles Domingo, on the other hand, was the first trained and educated indiginous teacher in all of Nyasaland, and made the education of the people a high priority of his Christian work.
Joseph Booth, the English nonconformist was born in England 1851, moved from Australia to Nyasaland in 1892, and died in South Africa in 1932. He visited the U.S. in 1897 (author Benjamin Ray says 1895) accompanied by John Chilembwe. Booth published the egalitarian, anti-racist treatise Africa for the African: Dedicated First to Queen Victoria, Queen of Great Britain, Second, to the British and American Christian People, Third and Specially to the African-American people of the United States of America , in the city of Baltimore in 1897. It went through two editions.
He, with the help of the Plainfield, New Jersey Seventh Day Baptist Church, which he had joined in 1898 while he was in America, started an industrial mission in southern Malawi on 2,000 acres near Cholo (now more correctly spelled Thyolo). It came to be known as the Plainfield Mission. The coffee-growing industrial mission was not economically viable for a variety of reasons, one of which was a precipitous drop in coffeee prices, and soon failed and was sold at a great loss to the Seventh Day Adventists. It is now under the Adventists known as Malamulo Mission, one of the showplace, vintage mission complexes in Africa.
Booth was only in Malawi from 1892 until 1903, having been deported, and also banned from returning to Nyasaland, by the British colonial government.
Chilembwe, who went with Joseph Booth to the U.S. in about 1897, attended Virginia Theological Seminary, a National Baptist Convention school, for three years. Chilembwe returned to Malawi in 1899 or 1900 as an ordained Baptist minister, and started Providence Industrial Mission (PIM). He, like Domingo, established mission schools. He completed a beautiful large brick church building there in 1913, later destroyed by the British after the 1915 uprising.
A hut tax had been imposed by the colonial administrators (their colonial stations were nicknamed the "boma") in 1912, which the Malawian correctly viewed as a a form of conscription or slave labor, since half the tax could be rebated for doing a month's work on the white settler's lands. The Malawians were also conscripted to fight European battles on African soil before and during World War I, which many of them resented. The German colony of Tanganyika (now Tanzania) was contiguous to Nyasaland on its north boundary, and the Germans, in similar manner conscripted Africans from their colony.
Chilembwe became famous for leading the 1915 uprising in which several colonial men were killed, including the cruel manager of the Bruce estates, William J. Livingstone, a relative of the famous Scotish missionary-explorer, David Livingstone. It is to be noted in contrast to the killing of the men, that the western women and children were taken to safety, fed, and treated well.
Separatist churches, like the Watchtower Society and the Seventh Day Adventists, to some extent had raised unfulfilled millenial dreams of a new order to be established with Christ's imminent second coming. The white colonial order in Malawi and Africa it was proclaimed would be abolished. The year of 1914 had been set by Jehovah's Witness leader, Charles Taze Russell, for Christ's return.
Chilembwe started the first Central African resistance movement to British colonialist abuses, and is considered by Malawians to be their first national patriot. Near the Mozambique border Chilembwe was shortly tracked down and killed by Nyasaland policemen, working for the colonial government. Other supporters and accomplices of the uprising were also executed by the colonial government.
The only Seventh Day Baptist leader, who I was able to establish, with any certainty, to have been part of the 1915 uprising, was Pastor Filipo Chamaya. He was involved in a planned branch-uprising at Ntcheu. His group of Ngoni supporters were less organized and were apprehended by the District Commission before there was any violence. Chinyama was executed, even though no one had been killed by him or his men.
Joseph Booth very early was a noted denomination hopper, partly for financial reasons, having been variously a Presbyterian, a Baptist, a Seventh Day Baptist , a Seventh Day Adventist, a Watch Tower movement supporter, and a Church of Christ worker. In the end, however, he rejoined and stayed with Seventh Day Baptists. During his visit to the U.S. he published an anti-Watchtower treatise, and distributed it at Chautauqua Lake in New York, where he lectured during the summer.
Booth had come to Malawi in 1892, three weeks after his wife Mary, who had shared the missionary call, died of pneumonia. He independently started the Zambezi Industrial Mission and then the Nyasa Baptist Industrial Mission, before organizing in 1899 the Plainfield Industrial Mission with the help of the Plainfield Seventh Day Baptist Church in New Jersey. Twelve thousand dollars had been paid by the Plainfield Church for the plantation.
Booth left Malawi in 1902 or 1903 after religious disagreement with the Adventists, with whom he had briefly affiliated. He was permanently barred from Malawi by the British colonialists in 1907 for "seditious" ideas. He was a pacificist and not involved in the Chilembwe armed uprising of 1915. He was egalitarian and opposed to colonialism. Booth had angered some whites by paying, what was considered by colonial standards, very high wages to Malawians.
George Shepperson and Thomas Price, Harry Langworthy, T. Jack Thompson, John McCracken, Andrew C. Ross, Robert Rotberg, Bridglal Pachai, D.D. Phiri, have written scholarly works which, among other things, have effectively shown the African response to European and African missionary factors. The three early Malawians trained by the missions, who came under the "Ethiopianism" and "Africa for the African" influence of Joseph Booth, have now become well known in Malawi and African history- John Chilembwe, Elliot (Kenan) Kamwana, and the Seventh Day Baptist Charles Domingo, althought the last has been somewhat less studied than Chilembwe and Kamwana.
Charles Domingo was a better writer than the better-known John Chilembwe. His English was sinificantly better. Apparently the education obtained by Domingo at Lovedale and at Livingstonia, in Africa, was superior to that received by Chilembwe in the segregated Baptist seminary in Virginia, though all three of these were Christian schools.
Domingo effectively used the pen, to oppose the injustices of colonialism in Africa. He was one of the pioneers in an Africa movement for freedom. As the first trained African teacher in Malawi, Domingo placed a high priorty on educating the youth, the future leaders of Africa. Though he, like Booth, had briefly been swayed by the Watchtower movement, his Christian faith remained orthodox and evangelistic. His writings were strongly influenced by the Bible, his primary source book. He emphasized that churches and Christian schools should be led by Africans, and not be so dependent on western missionaries and agencies, a concept that was ahead of the colonial times in Africa. His vision for his people was mostly unfulfilled in his lifetime, due to the colonial inequalities and injustices, and the pervading poverty of his family and people in a colonial culture.
Charles Domingo's vibrant Christian faith, a faith that was practical and holistic, was the hallmark of his life, and of his vision of hope for the African people.
References/Sources:
Black, William Henry, Proposal for a Christian Mission to the Millions of Ethiopia and Eastern Africa, Walworth, Wisconsin: J. C. Beard, Crown Row, 1845.
Booth, Joseph, Africa for the African, Baltimore, 1897. Republished by CLAIM (Christian Literature Association in Malawi), Balantyre, Malawi, in the Kachere Series of the University of Malawi, Zomba, Malawi in 1996, edited by Laura Perry, 114 pp. , editor's preface, index, illustrations.
Booth, Joseph, Correspondence with American Seventh Day Baptists in the Malawi/Nyasaland Collection, 1898-1915, Seventh Day Baptist Historical Society, Janesville, Wisconsin.
Briggs, Philip, Malawi: The Bradt Travel Guide, Chalfont St Peter, UK: Bradt Publications, 1996, 1999. 246 pages. Chapter 1: History, pages 3-22.
Crosby, Cynthia, Historical Dictionary of Malawi, Metuchen, New Jersey: Scarecrow Press, 1980. 169 pages, abbreviations and acronyms, chronology, introduction, maps, extensive bibliography with introduction to bibliography. Charles Domingo, pp. 41-42.
Davidson, Basil, The African Genius, Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1969, 367 pp. Illustrations and maps, notes and references, select bibliography, index. Published in England as The Africans. For Charles Domingo, John Clilembwe, and Joseph Booth see pp. 281-283, 288, 296.
Domingo, Charles, and Joseph Booth, "A Native Pastor's Plea for Boys and Girls," Sabbath Recorder, 72, 5 (January 29, 1912), 140-142.
Douglas, John and Kelly White, Spectrum Guide to Malawi, New York: Interlink Publishing Group, 2003, 384 pages. "The History of Malawi" section, pp 30-43.
Harris, Joseph E., Africans and their History, New York, New York: Penguin Books, 1972, second revised edition, 1998. 337 pages, bibliographical notes, index. Booth and Chilembwe pages 198-200, 231, 236. "Chilembwe's Rebellion" pages 198-200.
King, Michael and Elspeth, The Story of Medicine and Disease in Malawi: The 130 Years since Livingstone, Balantyre: The Montforth Press, 183 pages, 1992.
Langworthy, Emily Booth, This Africa Was Mine, Sterling Tract Enterprise, 1950, 139 pp. Introduction by George Shepperson, M.A., Department of History, The University of Edinburgh, 2 maps, 2 photos: Joseph Booth, and daughter Emily Booth as a child, in Malawi. Written by the daughter of Joseph Booth.
Langworthy, Harry, "Africa for the African": The Life of Joseph Booth, CLAIM: Balantyre, Malawi, 1996, 520 pp. Kachere Monograph Number 2, University of Malawi, Zomba, Malawi. Bibliography, index, 40 illustrations, including maps. Harry Langworthy is the great grandson of Joseph Booth and the grandson of Emily Booth.
Langworthy, Harry W., "Charles Domingo, Seventh Day Baptists and Independency," Journal of Religion in Africa, 15,2 (1985), 96-121.
Langworthy, Harry W., "Joseph Booth, Prophet of Radical Change in Central and South Africa, 1891-1915," Journal of Religion in Africa xvi, 1 (1986), pp 22-43.
Livingstone, W. P., Laws of Livingstonia: A Narrative of Missionary Adventure and Achievement, London: Hodder and Stroughton, 1921. 385 pages, introduction, many photos, endmap, index. Domingo pages 194, 257, 277, 277, 309, 327, 339, 355.
Lohrentz, Kenneth, "Joseph Booth, Charles Domingo, and the Seventh Day Baptists in Northern Nyasaland, 1910-1912," Journal of African History, 12, 3 (1971), 461-480.
McCracken, John, Politics and Christianity in Malawi 1875-1940: The Impact of the Livingstonia Mission in the Northern Province, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1st edition, 1977. CLAIM edition, 2000, 376 pages, 5 maps, preface, abbreviations page, bibliography, index.
Moreau, A. Scott, editor, Evangelical Dictionary of Missions, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 2000, 1068 pp. Articles on "Malawi" and on "Joseph Booth" both by Klaus Fielder.
Moore, N. Olney., and Wayland D. Wilcox, "The Report of the Visit to South and Central Africa," Sabbath Recorder 73, 22 (November 25, 1912, 695-735.
Moore, N. Olney., "Seventh Day Baptists and Mission Work in Nyasaland, Africa," Riverside, Cailfornia, 1950, Duplicated copies.
Morrison, J. H., Missionary Heroes of Africa, New York: George H. Doran Co., 1922. reprinted New York: Negro University Press, 1969, 267 pages. Chapters on David Livingstone, Stewart of Lovedale, and Laws of Livingstonia.
Pachai, Bridglal, editor, Livingstone, Man of Africa: Memorial Essays 1973-1973, London: Longman Group, 1973. 245 pages, notes, index, includes essays by George Shepperson, Andrew C. Ross, and John McCracken.
Pachai, Bridglal, editor, The Early History of Malawi, Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1972, 454 pages.
Pachai, Bridglal, Malawi: The History of the Nation, London: Longman Group, 1973, 324 pages. Charles Domingo, see pp. 89, 169-170, 176, 179, 204-205, 210.
Pearson, Bettie, "An Old Soldier of Christ," Sabbath Recorder, 189, 4 (July 27, 1970), P. 6-7.
Pearson, David C., Seventh Day Baptists in Central Africa, Seventh Day Baptist Historical Society assisted author in publication, 2003. 138 pages, forward by Janet Thorngate, introduction by author, 2 maps, biography of Malawian SDB leaders, list of SDB missionaries and their dates of service, explanatory notes, bibliography, index. Charles Domingo, pages 14-19 in chapter 4 "Booth Relives."
Phiri, D. D., History of Malawi: from Earliest Times to the Year 1915, Christian Literature Association in Malawi (CLAIM), 2004, 292 pages, references, index. Pages 163-167 has sections on Seventh Day Baptists Charles Domingo and Alexander Makwinja.
Ray, Benjamin C., African Religions: Symbol, Ritual, and Community, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1976. 238 pages, introduction, notes, bibliography, index, map. Chapter 6, "Religion and Rebellion," includes pages 159-165: "John Chilembwe and the Nyasaland Uprising of 1915."
Ross, Andrew C., Balantyre Mission and the Making of Modern Malawi, Balantyre, Malawi, 1996. Ross, R. K., Christianity in Malawi: A Source Book
Rotberg, Robert I. The Rise of Nationalism in Central Africa: The making of Malawi and Zambia, 1873-1964, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1965,1972. 360 pages, preface, postscript, note on the sources, select bibliography, index. Charles Domingo, pages 69-72, 76-77, 135. Seventh Day Baptist Church, pages 64, 66, 70-71, 85, 151.
Sanders, Renfield, Malawi, New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1988, 103 pages.
Sanneh, Lamin, Disciples of All Nations: Pillars of World Christianity, New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. 362 pages, inroduction, notes, maps, select bibliography, index. Charles Domingo, pp 142-143, 307.
Shepperson, George, and Thomas Price, Independent African: John Chilembe and the Origins, Setting, and Significance of the Nyasaland Uprising of 1915, Edinburgh, Scotland: The University Press, 1958. 564 pages, introduction, illustrations, notes and references, sources appendices, index, endmap. Charles Domingo, see pp. 159-169, 183, 210,213, 223, 241-242, 323, 334, 339.
Shepperson, George, "Joseph Booth and the African Diaspora," Tenth Herkovits Memorial Lecture, Evanston, Illinois, 1972.
Singano, E. and A. A. Roscoe, Tales of Old Malawi, 1974, amended and enlarged 2nd edition, 106 pages, 1980. Forward, thirty tales from Malawi's oral tradition, 137 riddles plus meaning of riddles.
Siwane, Nyaniso James, The Unknown Made Known: A History of Seventh Day Baptists in South Africa, published by the Seventh Day Baptist Conference of South Africa and the Seventh Day Baptist Missionary Society, 1995. See Chapter 4 " Joseph Booth: The European Connection"
Thompson, T. Jack, Christianity in Northern Malawi: Donald Fraser's Methods and Ngoni Culture, Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1995. 292 pages, peface, glossary, map, 20 photos, bibliography, index. Charles Domingo pp. 166-169, 173, 177, 223.
White, Landeg, Magomero: Portrait of an African Village, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987, 1st paperback edition 1989. 271 pages, preface, illustrations, maps, sources, index. Much Chilembwe and some Booth information.
Williams, Walter Lee, Black Americans and the Evangelization of Africa, 1877-1900, Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
500 YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF JOHN CALVIN'S BIRTH
John Calvin (1509-1564) was born a half a millenium ago in Noyon, France. Yesterday, July 10, was the 500 year anniversary of his birth. The son of a lawyer for the Roman Catholic Church, John Calvin had a conversion experience between 1528 and 1533, and formally broke with the Roman Catholic Church in 1533. John Calvin eventually became a dominant leader in the Protestant Reformation through his powerful preaching, systematic theological writing, organizational and administrative skills, and missionary zeal. Reformers associated with Calvin in Geneva and Strasbourg included Guillaume Farel, Martin Bucer, and Theodore Beza.
The Protestant Reformation began on the European continent with intensive study of New Testament texts by scholars such as Martin Luther, Philipp Melanchthon, and John Calvin. Geneva in particular became the center of Reformation scholarship, as John Calvin and Theodore Beza were Greek and Latin scholars.The Reformers were involved in translating the Scripture into the vernacular. Many English Protestant leaders found safe haven in Switzerland and Germany. They studied and wrote primarily in Geneva. English and French translations of the New Testament and the whole Bible were produced. Miles Coverdale completed the first complete Bible with Apochrypha, in the English language. It was published in Zurich in 1535. A French Bible was translated by Pierre Olivetan, a cousin of Calvin. Notable English and Scotish Protestant exiles to the continent were William Wittingham, John Knox, John Foxe, John Bodley, John Bale, William Kethe, William Williams, Anthony Gilby, Christopher Goodman, Thomas Wood, Thomas Sampson, William Cole, and Thomas Cole. The Geneva Bible translation was supported by John Calvin, Theodore Beza, and John Knox, all considered some of the greatest Protestant theologians in history. Beza had published several editions of the Greek and Latin New Testaments. The Geneva Bible New Testament was finished in 1557 and the complete Geneva Bible in 1560, a year and a half after the death of Queen Mary, who had persecuted the Protestants. The Geneva Bible was in English, but the sources for the translation were in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, French, and prior English translations. The Geneva Bible had extensive Calvinist-oriented notes on the Bible text. John Bodley (father of the Bodelian Library of Oxford's namesake, Thomas Bodley) was the primary financial backer of the Geneva Bible. One of the primary translators, William Wittingham, a Greek scholar, was married to the sister of John Calvin's wife. The King James Bible was very indebted to the Geneva Bible, as were both translations to the earlier Tyndale Bible.
John Calvin's followers also were leaders in the developement of constitutional and representative government, the right of the people to change government, and the separation of church and civil government. In France his followers were refered to as Huguenots, and, in the British Isles and the Americas, they were called Puritans. These ideas of representative government were originally limited to the land-owning aristocracy but over the next century, especially in Holland, England and Scotland, and Colonial America more democratic ideals developed and flourished, culminating in the first flowering of extensive liberty in the small state of Rhode Island, founded by the Calvinist (or "Particular") Baptists Roger Williams and Dr. John Clarke.
It is true that Calvin's administration of justice erred. Some of his opponents were tortured and executed, the most notable being Servetus, who was burned at the stake as a heretic in 1559.
Will Durant called John Calvin's massive masterpiece, Institutes of the Christian Religion, "one of the ten books that shook the world." This influential and systematic exposition of Bible doctrine, followed and expanded on the articles of the Apostle's Creed. It was revised at least five times between 1536 (first edition) and 1559. The book became the fundamental treatise in the developement of a truly evangelical theology. Calvin held that the Bible was the basis of all Christian teaching. He was indebted, however, to the writings of Augustine, the Apostles' Creed, and the Nicene Creed, as well as to other early church writings. Calvin published the first of his many Bible commentaries, the Commentary on Romans, in Strasbourg in 1539.
His only child died at birth in 1542, and his wife died in 1549. In 1559 Calvin founded an academy in Geneva, which eventually became a university. Calvin has been described as a simple, reticent, and austere man, and not very much is known about his personal life.
Max Weber's well-known, but flawed, thesis (translated into English and published as The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism) pictured Calvin as the source and spirit of modern capitalism, drawing heavily on the ideas of deist Benjamin Franklin, and misconstruing prolific English Puritan writer Richard Baxter. Calvinists were portrayed as exhibiting brotherly love only as a means of bringing glory to God, and thus devoid of real interest in the welfare of individuals or the community. Calvin did, it is true, as opposed to Luther, encourage the taking of interest. Robert Mitchell shines a beam of light on the issue: "Calvin's theological doctrines are based upon Scripture, and his social and economic views are related to his teachings of the Bible and how he should conduct his life." Georgia Harkness states " More consistently than any other Reformation leader, Calvin taught that the Bible was the sole authority in matters of faith and conduct." William Williston argues "...Far more than Luther... Calvin treated the Scriptures as a new law regulative of the Christian life." Richard Baxter (1615-1691), himself, probably better describes this ethic than does Max Webber. In his 17th century English, Baxter writes," True Morality of the Christian Ethick, is the Love of God and Man, stirred up by the Spirit of Christ, through faith: and exercised in works of Piety, Justice, Charity, and Temperance."
Calvinists have often, and unfairly been criticized for a lack of missionary passion and activity. Roger Greenway, in his article on Calvinism, in the Evangelical Dictionary of World Missions, refutes this view both with Scripture and from history. He shows that Calvinism stresses truths that encourage missions. Three truths or doctrines are analyzed in relationship to missions: the glory of God, the kingdom of God, and the sovereignty of God. Historically, Calvinists have fielded the majority of missionaries in many parts of Asia (Korea for example) and the South Pacific , Africa (Moffat, Livingstone, Laws, Lovedale, etc.) and Latin America, and have had a major role in the missionary enterprise for over two centuries. Greenway writes, "There are critics who argue that Cavinism's emphasis on the sovereinty of God discourages mission...Calvinism's defense lies in its submission to the Scriptures which clearly teach both divine sovereignty and Christian duty to co-labor with God in mission."
John Calvin, himself, was, ostensibly, the most mission minded of all the early Reformers sending many evangelists back into his French homeland. He also in 1555 commissioned four missionaries to evangelize the indiginous people (Native Americans) of Brazil. Tragically, the mission and colony was plundered by the Portuguese and the few survivors martyred by Jesuits.
Calvin taght that the Bible was the supreme authority not only in spiritual matters, but also on the nature of all human institutions. His doctrinal statements began and ended with Scripture, even though he was well versed in the early church fathers and in the classic literature of the ages. Calvin writes in his Institutes "Read Demosthenes or Cicero, read Plato, Aristotle, or any others of that class; I grant you that you will be attracted, delighted, moved, enraptured by them in a surprising manner; but if, after reading them, you turn to the perusal of the sacred volume, whether you are willing or unwilling, it will affect you so powerfully, it will so penetrate your heart, and impress itself so strangely on your mind that, compared with its energetic influence, the beauties of rhetoricians and philosophers will almost entirely disappear; so that it is easy to perceive something divine in the sacred Scriptures, which far surpasses the highest attainments and ornaments of human industry." Further, he writes 'This is a principle which distinguishes our religion from all others, that we know that God hath spoken to us, and are fully convinced that the prophets did not speak at their own suggestion, but that, being organs of the Holy Spirit, they only uttered what they had been commissioned from heaven to declare."
Further Reading:
Brake, Donald, A Visual History of the English Bible, Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2008
Calvin, John, Institutes of the Christian Religion, translated by Henry Beveridge, 2 volumes, Grand Rapids: Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1983.
Harkness, Georgia, John Calvin: The Man and His Ethics, New York: Abingdon Press, 1931, 1958.
McNeill, John T., editor and introduction, John Calvin on God and Political Duty, New York: Liberal Arts Press, , 1950, 1956
Mitchell, Robert M., Calvin's and the Puritan's View of the Protestant Ethic, Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1979
Moreau, A. Scott, Evangelical Dictionary of World Missions, Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1990. See "Calvinism" article by Roger S. Greenway.
Van Halsema, Thea B., This was John Calvin, Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1959, 1990
The Protestant Reformation began on the European continent with intensive study of New Testament texts by scholars such as Martin Luther, Philipp Melanchthon, and John Calvin. Geneva in particular became the center of Reformation scholarship, as John Calvin and Theodore Beza were Greek and Latin scholars.The Reformers were involved in translating the Scripture into the vernacular. Many English Protestant leaders found safe haven in Switzerland and Germany. They studied and wrote primarily in Geneva. English and French translations of the New Testament and the whole Bible were produced. Miles Coverdale completed the first complete Bible with Apochrypha, in the English language. It was published in Zurich in 1535. A French Bible was translated by Pierre Olivetan, a cousin of Calvin. Notable English and Scotish Protestant exiles to the continent were William Wittingham, John Knox, John Foxe, John Bodley, John Bale, William Kethe, William Williams, Anthony Gilby, Christopher Goodman, Thomas Wood, Thomas Sampson, William Cole, and Thomas Cole. The Geneva Bible translation was supported by John Calvin, Theodore Beza, and John Knox, all considered some of the greatest Protestant theologians in history. Beza had published several editions of the Greek and Latin New Testaments. The Geneva Bible New Testament was finished in 1557 and the complete Geneva Bible in 1560, a year and a half after the death of Queen Mary, who had persecuted the Protestants. The Geneva Bible was in English, but the sources for the translation were in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, French, and prior English translations. The Geneva Bible had extensive Calvinist-oriented notes on the Bible text. John Bodley (father of the Bodelian Library of Oxford's namesake, Thomas Bodley) was the primary financial backer of the Geneva Bible. One of the primary translators, William Wittingham, a Greek scholar, was married to the sister of John Calvin's wife. The King James Bible was very indebted to the Geneva Bible, as were both translations to the earlier Tyndale Bible.
John Calvin's followers also were leaders in the developement of constitutional and representative government, the right of the people to change government, and the separation of church and civil government. In France his followers were refered to as Huguenots, and, in the British Isles and the Americas, they were called Puritans. These ideas of representative government were originally limited to the land-owning aristocracy but over the next century, especially in Holland, England and Scotland, and Colonial America more democratic ideals developed and flourished, culminating in the first flowering of extensive liberty in the small state of Rhode Island, founded by the Calvinist (or "Particular") Baptists Roger Williams and Dr. John Clarke.
It is true that Calvin's administration of justice erred. Some of his opponents were tortured and executed, the most notable being Servetus, who was burned at the stake as a heretic in 1559.
Will Durant called John Calvin's massive masterpiece, Institutes of the Christian Religion, "one of the ten books that shook the world." This influential and systematic exposition of Bible doctrine, followed and expanded on the articles of the Apostle's Creed. It was revised at least five times between 1536 (first edition) and 1559. The book became the fundamental treatise in the developement of a truly evangelical theology. Calvin held that the Bible was the basis of all Christian teaching. He was indebted, however, to the writings of Augustine, the Apostles' Creed, and the Nicene Creed, as well as to other early church writings. Calvin published the first of his many Bible commentaries, the Commentary on Romans, in Strasbourg in 1539.
His only child died at birth in 1542, and his wife died in 1549. In 1559 Calvin founded an academy in Geneva, which eventually became a university. Calvin has been described as a simple, reticent, and austere man, and not very much is known about his personal life.
Max Weber's well-known, but flawed, thesis (translated into English and published as The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism) pictured Calvin as the source and spirit of modern capitalism, drawing heavily on the ideas of deist Benjamin Franklin, and misconstruing prolific English Puritan writer Richard Baxter. Calvinists were portrayed as exhibiting brotherly love only as a means of bringing glory to God, and thus devoid of real interest in the welfare of individuals or the community. Calvin did, it is true, as opposed to Luther, encourage the taking of interest. Robert Mitchell shines a beam of light on the issue: "Calvin's theological doctrines are based upon Scripture, and his social and economic views are related to his teachings of the Bible and how he should conduct his life." Georgia Harkness states " More consistently than any other Reformation leader, Calvin taught that the Bible was the sole authority in matters of faith and conduct." William Williston argues "...Far more than Luther... Calvin treated the Scriptures as a new law regulative of the Christian life." Richard Baxter (1615-1691), himself, probably better describes this ethic than does Max Webber. In his 17th century English, Baxter writes," True Morality of the Christian Ethick, is the Love of God and Man, stirred up by the Spirit of Christ, through faith: and exercised in works of Piety, Justice, Charity, and Temperance."
Calvinists have often, and unfairly been criticized for a lack of missionary passion and activity. Roger Greenway, in his article on Calvinism, in the Evangelical Dictionary of World Missions, refutes this view both with Scripture and from history. He shows that Calvinism stresses truths that encourage missions. Three truths or doctrines are analyzed in relationship to missions: the glory of God, the kingdom of God, and the sovereignty of God. Historically, Calvinists have fielded the majority of missionaries in many parts of Asia (Korea for example) and the South Pacific , Africa (Moffat, Livingstone, Laws, Lovedale, etc.) and Latin America, and have had a major role in the missionary enterprise for over two centuries. Greenway writes, "There are critics who argue that Cavinism's emphasis on the sovereinty of God discourages mission...Calvinism's defense lies in its submission to the Scriptures which clearly teach both divine sovereignty and Christian duty to co-labor with God in mission."
John Calvin, himself, was, ostensibly, the most mission minded of all the early Reformers sending many evangelists back into his French homeland. He also in 1555 commissioned four missionaries to evangelize the indiginous people (Native Americans) of Brazil. Tragically, the mission and colony was plundered by the Portuguese and the few survivors martyred by Jesuits.
Calvin taght that the Bible was the supreme authority not only in spiritual matters, but also on the nature of all human institutions. His doctrinal statements began and ended with Scripture, even though he was well versed in the early church fathers and in the classic literature of the ages. Calvin writes in his Institutes "Read Demosthenes or Cicero, read Plato, Aristotle, or any others of that class; I grant you that you will be attracted, delighted, moved, enraptured by them in a surprising manner; but if, after reading them, you turn to the perusal of the sacred volume, whether you are willing or unwilling, it will affect you so powerfully, it will so penetrate your heart, and impress itself so strangely on your mind that, compared with its energetic influence, the beauties of rhetoricians and philosophers will almost entirely disappear; so that it is easy to perceive something divine in the sacred Scriptures, which far surpasses the highest attainments and ornaments of human industry." Further, he writes 'This is a principle which distinguishes our religion from all others, that we know that God hath spoken to us, and are fully convinced that the prophets did not speak at their own suggestion, but that, being organs of the Holy Spirit, they only uttered what they had been commissioned from heaven to declare."
Further Reading:
Brake, Donald, A Visual History of the English Bible, Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2008
Calvin, John, Institutes of the Christian Religion, translated by Henry Beveridge, 2 volumes, Grand Rapids: Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1983.
Harkness, Georgia, John Calvin: The Man and His Ethics, New York: Abingdon Press, 1931, 1958.
McNeill, John T., editor and introduction, John Calvin on God and Political Duty, New York: Liberal Arts Press, , 1950, 1956
Mitchell, Robert M., Calvin's and the Puritan's View of the Protestant Ethic, Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1979
Moreau, A. Scott, Evangelical Dictionary of World Missions, Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1990. See "Calvinism" article by Roger S. Greenway.
Van Halsema, Thea B., This was John Calvin, Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1959, 1990
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